Divitiae molles.
(Foul money it was that first brought in foreign manners; wealth weakened and broke down the vigour of the age with base luxury). But pre-eminently applicable are the following words (III. 60 sqq.) of the same poet:
Non possum ferre, Quirites!
Graecam urbem, quamvis quota portio faecis Achaeae?
Iam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes,
Et linguam et mores et cum tibicine chordas
Obliquas, nec non gentilia tympana secum
Vexit et ad Circum iustas prostare puellas.
(I cannot bear, Quirites, to see Rome a Greek city,—and yet how mere a fraction of the whole corruption is found in these dregs of Achaea? Long since has the Syrian Orontes flowed into the Tiber, and brought along with it the Syrian tongue and manners and cross-stringed harp—and harper, and exotic timbrels, and girls bidden stand for hire at the Circus).
[173] The usual derivation of the word lupanar (brothel) is from Lupa, the wife of Faustulus (Livy, I. 4.); thus Lactantius, Divin. Instit., bk. I. 20 sqq., says, fuit enim Faustuli uxor et, propter vulgati corporis vilitatem, Lupa inter pastores, id est meretrix, nuncupata est, unde etiam lupanar dicitur. (For she was the wife of Faustulus, and because of the easy rate at which her person was held at the disposal of all, was called among the shepherds Lupa, (she-wolf), that is harlot, whence also Lupanar—a brothel—is so called). Comp. Isidore, bk. XVIII. etymol. 42. Jerome, in Eusebius’ Chronicle. However it is a fruitless effort to try and connect lupar and lupanar with lupus, the wolf. If we are not mistaken, the root-word is the Greek λῦμα, filth, and so, shameless person; from this comes lupa, just as from λῦμαρ was formed lupar, the oldest form for lupanar, which has maintained itself in the adjective luparius, and in lupariae in Rufus and A. Victor as synonyms of lupanar. Indeed Lactantius speaks of the hetaerae Leaena and Cedrenus as γυναῖκας λυκαίνας.