It became the granary of Rome and the free population naturally degenerated and died out.
After him Roman history-writing speedily degenerated.
In birds of various groups the clavicles are more or less degenerated, the reduction beginning at the distal end.
The latter, entrusted to irresponsible subordinates, degenerated into a despotism which brought the system into great discredit.
In the middle ages the stimulus to write was mainly of a moral or ecclesiastical nature, though the patriotic impulse which had suggested the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was perhaps never entirely absent, and the ecclesiastical motive often degenerated into a desire to glorify, sometimes even by forgery, not merely the church as a whole, but the particular monastery to which the writer belonged.
