nturies preceding the Punic Wars. Spain at
thirteen decades before Scipio, Gaul at as much before Caesar,
Britain at as much before Caesar or Claudius, may well have
been strong and cultured countries: because you wake quickly
after the thirteen decade period of rest, but slowly after
the long pralayas.

Roman Italy woke very slowly at the touch of Greece; and woke,
not like Spain and Gaul afterwards at Rome's touch, to culture;
not to learning or artistic fertility. What happened was what
always does happen when a really inferior civilization comes
in contact with a really superior one. Rome did not become
civilized in any decent sense: she simply forwent Roman virtues
and replaced them with Greek vices; and made of these, not the
vices of a degenerate culture, but the piggishness of cultureless
boors.--Behold her Gadarene stations, after Flamininus's return:--

Millions of money, in indemnities, loot, and what not,--in bribes
before very long,--are flowing in to her. Where not so long
since she was doing all her business with stamped lumps of bronze
or copper, a pound or so in weight, in lieu of coinage, nor
feeling the need of anything more handy,--now she is receiving
yearly, monthly, amounts to be reckoned in millions sterling;
and has no more good notion what to do with them than ever she
had of old. If the egos (of Crest-Wave standing) had come in as
quickly as did the shekels, things might have gone manageably;
but they did not by any means. Her great misfortune was to enter
the world-currents only on the material plane; to find her poor
little peasant-bandit-souled self mistress of the world and its
money, and still provincial to the core and with no ideas of
bigness that were not of the earth earthy; with nothing whatever
that was both spiritual and Roman to thrill to life the higher
side of her;--a multimillionaire that could hardly read or write,
and knew no means of spending her money that was not essentially
vulgar. She had given up her sole means of salvation--which was
hoeing cabbages; her slaves did all that for her now;--and so
was at a loss for employment; and Satan found plenty of mischief
for her idle hands to do. There were huge all-day-long banquets,
where you took your emetic from time to time to keep you going.
There were slaves,--armies of them; to have no more than a dozen
personal attendants was poverty. There were slaves from the East
to minister to your vices; some might cost