That's not so strange. When the Romans invaded Greece the pretty much so sponged up its culture. The timeline is tad off, as I'm not sure the Romans had conquered Greece at the time, but I'm not sure about that.
"Republicans who did not play the patronage game were ridiculed as the Mugwumps for sitting on the fence--their "mugs" on one side of the fence and "wumps" on the other. Historians generally consider this era a low point in American politics."--United States History by John J. Newman and John M. Schmalbach