liveonearth | Decline of a Nation (Reply)

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 (the nation), even for their own good; endlessly demanding bread and circuses, seeking mean pleasures, adoring mindless (athletes), 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 (Nation's) mobs, the accursed mobs, fit masters and slaves of their patrons, their politicians, the gatherers of the votes!

--sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?--this impressive run-on sentence from Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell,
p50 in the paperback published 2008 (the book is the story of Saint Luke, aka Lucanus)
--parenthetical words are replacements, the originals are Rome, gladiators, Roman.

BREAD AND CIRCUSES