Some Things Never Change

An article from JSTOR, "Ancient Rome: A City of Immigrants," discusses an immigrant community adjacent to Rome called Transtiberim ("beyond the Tiber") and includes this bit:

To elites, who provide almost all the written documentation except for funerary inscriptions, Transtiberim was dangerous, déclassé, and working class (to use later jargon). Strange gods were worshipped there—worship of the Syrian goddess Atargatis by “cross-dressing eunuch priests” who practiced ritual castration was banned more than once. The neighborhood was mocked in satires and condemned for its “panhandlers, prostitutes and desperate people with nowhere else to go.”