It was especially at Rome that the Syrian in the first century exercised his penetrating activity. Intrusted with almost every kind of ordinary duty, guide, messenger, and letter-bearer, the _Syrus_[16.67] was admitted everywhere, bringing with him the language and manners of his own land.[16.68] He possessed neither the pride nor the philosophic loftiness of Europeans, much less their bodily vigor. Of weak frame, pale and often feverish, and not knowing how to eat or sleep at stated hours, after the fashion of our slower races; consuming little meat, and subsisting on onions and pumpkins; sleeping little and uneasily--the Syrian was habitually ailing and died young.[16.69] What did belong to him was humility, mildness, affability, and good-nature; no solidity of mind, but much that was agreeable; little sound sense, unless in driving a bargain; but an astonishing warmth and zeal, and a truly feminine seductiveness. Having never exercised any political functions, he was specially apt for religious movements. The poor Maronite, effeminate, humble, and destitute, has brought about the greatest of revolutions. His ancestor, the _Syrus_ of Rome, was the most zealous messenger of the good news to all afflicted souls. Every year colonies of Syrians arrived in Greece, Italy, and Gaul, impelled by their natural taste for trade and small employments.[16.70] They could be recognised on board of the vessels by their numerous families, by the troops of pretty children nearly alike in age, and the mother with the childish air of a girl of fourteen keeping close to her husband's side, submissive and smiling, and scarcely superior to her oldest offspring.[16.71] The heads of this peaceful group are not very strongly marked. There is no Archimedes there, no Plato or Phidias. But this Syrian trader, now arrived at Rome, will be a kind and merciful man, charitable to his countrymen, and a friend to the poor. He will talk with the slaves, and reveal to them an asylum where those miserable beings, condemned by Roman severity to a most dreary solitude, may find some solace. The Greek and Latin races, made to be masters and to accomplish great actions, knew not how to make any advantage of an humble position.[16.72] The slave of those races passed his life in revolt and in plotting evil. The ideal slave of antiquity has every fault; he is gluttonous, mendacious, mischievous, and the natural enemy of his master.[16.73] He thus, as it were, proved his nobility of race; he was a constant protest against an unnatural position. The easy, good-natured Syrian did not trouble himself to protest; he accepted his degradation and sought to do the best he could with it. He conciliated the kind feelings of his master, ventured to converse with him, and studied how to please his mistress. This great agent of democracy was thus gnawing apart, mesh by mesh, the net of the ancient civilization. The old institutions based upon pride, inequality