Thursday, August 25, 2022

 

The Deplorables

J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London: Duckworth, 1979), p. 25, with note on p. 265:
At the bottom of the social scale, below even the provincial, was the rusticus, the country bumpkin whom, universally, the city-dweller despised. 'Uncultured rustic clots like you,' Apuleius shouted at his prosecutor; 'uti tu es, inculti et agrestes.' Were such people men, or were they animals, Cicero asked?23

23. Apul., Apol. 23; Cic., Phil. 8, 9.
Id., p. 38, with note on p. 265:
We have Ammianus Marcellinus' description of the top Roman senatorial society which he found in the fourth century AD. Rich, narrow-minded, uncultured and conceited, its members looked down their noses at an outsider, even a respectable outsider like Ammianus himself. 'Inanes flatus quorundam vile esse quicquid extra urbis pomerium nascitur aestimant', 'There are people who, with empty bombast, treat anything born outside the city as simple dirt'.38

38. AM 14, 6 (14, 6, 22 quoted in text); 28, 4.



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