Cicero again (might be thinking of rappers, too):

“But when poets are so highly extolled, what darkness they bring into the soul! What fears they incite! What passions they enkindle!

“They present debauchery and adultery in a pleasing manner; they rehearse varied forms of deception; they teach theft, robbery, and arson.

“Every example of evil which exists, or has existed, or can be imagined, they lay before the eyes of the illiterate rabble.

“No heavenly conflagration, no flood, no earthquake has spread devastation among men comparable to the ruin which the poets have brought upon morality.”

…

“Because they considered the stage and all theatrical art degrading, [Rome’s founders] desired not only that this class of people should be ineligible to posts of honor which were open to other citizens, but also that the names of such persons should be erased from the tribal rolls by the censor.”

Cicero paraphrases a scenario described by Plato centuries earlier:

“There is no distinction between citizen and foreigner; teachers fear their pupils and flatter them; pupils scorn their teachers; the young affect the gravity of age, and old men revert to youthful pranks in order not to be tiresome and displeasing to the young.

. . .

“From this boundless license, the following result inevitably follows: so sensitive and effeminate do the feelings of the citizens become that, if the least restraint is applied to them, they are enraged and cannot endure it. Then they begin to ignore the laws also, and are completely without any master.

. . .

“This extreme of license, which is their only idea of freedom, is a sort of root from which the tyrant springs and, if I may say so, is born. Even as the extreme power of the aristocracy brings about the downfall of the aristocracy, so freedom itself punishes with slavery a people whose freedom has no bounds.”

A 1929 translation (by Sabine and Smith) of a
51 B.C. work by Cicero (“On the Commonwealth”)

“Because few men possess excellence, few are able to recognize and judge it.

“Thus, being ignorant of its nature, the masses suppose that men of wealth, influence, and important family connections are the best.

“When, as a result of this error on the part of the commons, the wealth rather than the excellence of a few men has come to control the state, these leaders cling stubbornly to the title of aristocrats, utterly lacking though they may be in the substance of excellence.

“For riches and reputation and power, if devoid of wisdom and of moderation in conduct and in the exercise of authority, are characterized by shamelessness and insufferable arrogance.

“There is, indeed, no uglier kind of state that one in which the richest men are thought to be the best.”