Still preserving the prejudices after they had lost the virtues of their ancestors, they affected to despise the unpolished manners of the Roman conquerors, while they were compelled to respect their superior wisdom and power.
[Footnote.] There is not, I believe, from Dionysus to Libanus, a single Greek critic who mentions Virgil or Horace. They seem ignorant that the Romans had any good writers.
--Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-1788), Vol. 1, ch. II.
[Footnote.] An attitude alive and well today in that former empire, Britain. For example, The Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Christopher Ricks, excludes all English verse not written in the U.K. --"for he IS an EnglishMAN!" with the curious exception of Irish writers, even though Ireland has been a free country for 80 years, and not coincidentally, has finally become prosperous.
You vulgar colonials need not apply.
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