The bacchanalian orgies were first suppressed nearly two hundred years before Christ. The above extract from Livy reminds us that at that time the Romans were still strong and virtuous, and that a proposal of their Consul to eradicate a vicious evil that threatened the existence of both domestic life and the State, met with warm approval and hearty support from both the Senate and the people. But the insidious infection was never completely eradicated; and the work of the "Greek from Etruria" bore bitter fruit in the centuries that followed. And when we consider that not only bacchanalian orgies, but Greek literature, painting, sculpture, tragedy and comedy, were the chief causes of the pollution of Roman morals and the destruction of the Roman State, should we be surprised that Juvenal, in an outburst of patriotic wrath, should have declaimed against "a Grecian capital in Italy";[179] and that he should have hurled withering scorn at The flattering, cringing, treacherous, artful race, Of fluent tongue and never-blushing face, A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call, That shifts to every form, and shines in all. And, when we consider the state of the Roman world at the time of Christ, should we be surprised that St. Paul should have described Romans as "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful"?[180]