What if we Collapse like Rome?

Men of learning and sobriety are shunned as bringers of bad luck who have nothing to contribute.

If they [nobles] hear of the sudden appearance of some obscure strumpet, some old street-walker who has earned her living by selling herself to the townsfolk, they vie in courting and caressing the newcomer, and praise her in such outrageously flattering terms as the Parthians used to Semiramis, the Egyptians to their Cleopatras, the Carians to Artemisia, or the people of Palmyra to Zenobia. Such is the behaviour of men among whose ancestors a senator was thought to have behaved improperly and to deserve a reprimand from the censor because he kissed his wife in the presence of their own daughter.

Let me now turn to the idle and lazy proletariat. [...] They devote their whole life to drink, gambling, brothels, shows, and pleasure in general. Their temple, dwelling, meeting-place, in fact the centre of all their hopes and desires, is the Circus Maximus.

To turn now to the vulgarity of the stage. The players are hissed off unless the favour of the mob has been purchased by a bribe. If there is no demonstration of this sort they follow the example of the savages of the Chersonese, and clamour for the expulsion of foreigners from the city, though they have always been dependent on the help of these same foreigners for their livelihood. Their language is foul and senseless, very different from that in which the commons of earlier times expressed their feelings and wishes, and of which many witty and elegant examples are preserved by tradition.