round the wells and outcry over broken jars. With us the public fountains flow for ornament, since every one has water within his doors. And this water is so clear that the pail appears empty, and so pleasant that it invites us to drink."[86] Such was the description of a pagan who saw Antioch even as St. Paul saw it, and testified concerning the natural gifts with which God had endowed it. But, alas! as with individuals, so is it with cities. God may lavish His best blessings, and yet instead of bringing forth the fruits of righteousness His choicest gifts of nature may be turned into fruitful seed plots of lust and sin. Sodom and Gomorrha were planted in a vale that was well watered and fair and fruitful, even as the Garden of the Lord; but the inhabitants thereof were wicked, and sinners before the Lord exceedingly; and so it was with Antioch. This city so blessed in situation and in nature's richest and most precious gifts was celebrated for its wicked pre-eminence amid the awful corruption which then overspread the cities of the world. When the Roman satirist Juvenal, writing about this period of which we treat, would fain account for the excessive dissolution of morals which then prevailed at Rome, his explanation of it was that the manners of Antioch had invaded Rome and corrupted its ancient purity: "Jampridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes."[87] [86] The same orator informs us that the streets of Antioch were lighted at night with public lamps. In this respect it stood alone among the cities of antiquity: see Libanius, I., 363, and the notes of Valesius on Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv., 1, 9. [87] Juv., _Sat._, iii., 62. See Farrar's _St. Paul_, ch. xvi., for a more minute account of the wickedness of Antioch than we can give in this place. He well remarks: "Cities liable to the influx of heterogeneous races are rarely otherwise than immoral and debased. Even Rome in the decadence of its Cæsarism could groan to think of the dregs of its degradation--the quacks and pandars, and musicians and dancing girls--poured into the Tiber by the Syrian Orontes.... It seems as though it were a law of human intercourse that, when races are commingled in large masses, the worst qualities of each appear intensified in the general iniquity."