famous Sibylla of Cumae were written in Greek,(76)
and the priests (duoviri sacris faciundis) were allowed to keep two Greek
slaves for the purpose of translating these oracles.(77)

When the Romans, in 454 B. C., wanted to establish a code of laws, the
first thing they did was to send commissioners to Greece to report on the
laws of Solon at Athens and the laws of other Greek towns.(78) As Rome
rose in political power, Greek manners, Greek art, Greek language and
literature found ready admittance.(79) Before the beginning of the Punic
wars, many of the Roman statesmen were able to understand, and even to
speak Greek. Boys were not only taught the Roman letters by their masters,
the _literatores_, but they had to learn at the same time the Greek
alphabet. Those who taught Greek at Rome were then called _grammatici_,
and they were mostly Greek slaves or _liberti_.

Among the young men whom Cato saw growing up at Rome, to know Greek was
the same as to be a gentleman. They read Greek books, they conversed in
Greek, they even wrote in Greek. Tiberius Gracchus, consul in 177, made a
speech in Greek at Rhodes, which he afterwards published.(80) Flaminius,
when addressed by the Greeks in Latin, returned the compliment by writing
Greek verses in honor of their gods. The first history of Rome was written
at Rome in Greek, by Fabius Pictor,(81) about 200 B. C.; and it was
probably in opposition to this work, and to those of Lucius Cincius
Alimentus, and Publius Scipio, that Cato wrote his own history of Rome in
Latin. The example of the higher classes was eagerly followed by the
lowest. The plays of Plautus are the best proof; for the affectation of
using Greek words is as evident in some of his characters as the foolish
display of French in the German writers of the eighteenth century. There
was both loss and gain in the inheritance which Rome received from Greece;
but what would Rome have been without her Greek masters? The very fathers
of Roman literature were Greeks, private teachers, men who made a living
by translating school-books and plays. Livius Andronicus, sent as prisoner
of war from Tarentum (272 B. C.), established himself at Rome as professor
of Greek. His translation of the Odyssey into Latin verse, which marks the
beginning of Roman literature, was evidently written by him for the use of
his private classes. His style, though clumsy and wooden in the extreme,
was looked upon as a model of perfection by the rising