disease which were polluting the farthest reaches of the Empire!
And the Roman mobs of many races! Even Julius Caesar had feared them, with reason, and had cowered before them, and had flattered them and placated them. The volatile, unstable, many-tongued, bloodthirsty, heartless, ravenous Roman mobs! Where once there had lived a sober and thrifty citizenry, proud of their founding fathers, jealous of their Republic, finding their full expression of being in work and family and their gods, and in their quiet homes and the shadows of their trees, there now lived a motley and rapacious rabble, quick to acclaim, quick to murder, quick to quarrel and as senselessly quick to approve, crowded in storied cesspools of houses, loathing work and preferring to beg and everlastingly calling upon the State to support them, fawning on vile politicians who catered to them and threatening the few honest men who opposed them for the good of Rome, and even for their own good; endlessly demanding bread and circuses, seeking mean pleasures, adoring mindless gladiators, and worshiping the newest racer or actor, or discus thrower as if he were the greatest of men; devouring, in their idleness, the crushing taxes imposed on worthier men for their support, when the world would have well been rid of them by starvation or pestilence — ah, the Roman mobs, the accursed mobs, fit masters and slaves of their patrons, their politicians, the gatherers of their votes!
No wonder there were now so few sound artisans, merchants, workers, and builders in Rome. The monstrous government sucked in the fruit of their labors in the form of taxes for an idle and screaming and devouring State-supported rabble. What mattered it to the slavering, bulging-eyed, open-mouthed man on the street that he had destroyed the heroic splendor of Rome, had defamed its gods, and had thrown dung on the statues of the fathers? Could he not, now, by howling and by marking on walls at night, get his bowl refilled with more beans and more soup and more bread, or watch bloodier spectacles in the Circus Maximus? The masters were worthy of their slaves, and the slaves their masters.
There was the aging soldier, Caesar Augustus, in the Palatine, a stern and moral man. But what could he do, surrounded as he was by corrupt senators and statesmen elected by an even more corrupt rabble? Diodorus suddenly remembered a letter he had received a few weeks ago from one of his friends, carefully sealed and sent by trusted messenger. (How long had it been since honest men had been forced to seal their letters from the prying and vindictive eyes of spies employed by the State?) The friend had written, “I fear me that Rome is dying. I, like you, dear friend, have believed too long, and with prayer, that the old virtues still flourished somewhere in the city, like excellent and beautiful flowers in a forgotten garden, preparing seed which would grow in the waste places once more. But the garden does not exist! It has been trampled into the mud by the mobs, and by their craven masters, who live on the favor of the mobs.”
Diodorus, sunken in a despondency and hopelessness he had never experienced before, thought of the gods of Rome. Once they had personified honorable labor, love, the sacredness of home and private property, freedom, grace, kindliness, the military qualities of devotion and duty, the cherishing of children, the respect between those who employed and those who were employed, patriotism, obedience to divine and immutable decrees, and the pride and dignity of the individual. But what had Rome done to these gods? She had made of them venal and unspeakable replicas of herself in all her aspects.
Diodorus flung his goblet from him, and it crashed against the marble wall. He leaped to his feet, and walked up and down the lonely white floors, his sandals hammering on them like the frantic beat of a drum.
He remembered the ending of his friend’s letter: “The
And the Roman mobs of many races! Even Julius Caesar had feared them, with reason, and had cowered before them, and had flattered them and placated them. The volatile, unstable, many-tongued, bloodthirsty, heartless, ravenous Roman mobs! Where once there had lived a sober and thrifty citizenry, proud of their founding fathers, jealous of their Republic, finding their full expression of being in work and family and their gods, and in their quiet homes and the shadows of their trees, there now lived a motley and rapacious rabble, quick to acclaim, quick to murder, quick to quarrel and as senselessly quick to approve, crowded in storied cesspools of houses, loathing work and preferring to beg and everlastingly calling upon the State to support them, fawning on vile politicians who catered to them and threatening the few honest men who opposed them for the good of Rome, and even for their own good; endlessly demanding bread and circuses, seeking mean pleasures, adoring mindless gladiators, and worshiping the newest racer or actor, or discus thrower as if he were the greatest of men; devouring, in their idleness, the crushing taxes imposed on worthier men for their support, when the world would have well been rid of them by starvation or pestilence — ah, the Roman mobs, the accursed mobs, fit masters and slaves of their patrons, their politicians, the gatherers of their votes!
No wonder there were now so few sound artisans, merchants, workers, and builders in Rome. The monstrous government sucked in the fruit of their labors in the form of taxes for an idle and screaming and devouring State-supported rabble. What mattered it to the slavering, bulging-eyed, open-mouthed man on the street that he had destroyed the heroic splendor of Rome, had defamed its gods, and had thrown dung on the statues of the fathers? Could he not, now, by howling and by marking on walls at night, get his bowl refilled with more beans and more soup and more bread, or watch bloodier spectacles in the Circus Maximus? The masters were worthy of their slaves, and the slaves their masters.
There was the aging soldier, Caesar Augustus, in the Palatine, a stern and moral man. But what could he do, surrounded as he was by corrupt senators and statesmen elected by an even more corrupt rabble? Diodorus suddenly remembered a letter he had received a few weeks ago from one of his friends, carefully sealed and sent by trusted messenger. (How long had it been since honest men had been forced to seal their letters from the prying and vindictive eyes of spies employed by the State?) The friend had written, “I fear me that Rome is dying. I, like you, dear friend, have believed too long, and with prayer, that the old virtues still flourished somewhere in the city, like excellent and beautiful flowers in a forgotten garden, preparing seed which would grow in the waste places once more. But the garden does not exist! It has been trampled into the mud by the mobs, and by their craven masters, who live on the favor of the mobs.”
Diodorus, sunken in a despondency and hopelessness he had never experienced before, thought of the gods of Rome. Once they had personified honorable labor, love, the sacredness of home and private property, freedom, grace, kindliness, the military qualities of devotion and duty, the cherishing of children, the respect between those who employed and those who were employed, patriotism, obedience to divine and immutable decrees, and the pride and dignity of the individual. But what had Rome done to these gods? She had made of them venal and unspeakable replicas of herself in all her aspects.
Diodorus flung his goblet from him, and it crashed against the marble wall. He leaped to his feet, and walked up and down the lonely white floors, his sandals hammering on them like the frantic beat of a drum.
He remembered the ending of his friend’s letter: “The
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