hilst he had almost forgot Greek, and neither could nor would speak
Latin, (Apolog. p. 596.) The greater part of St. Austin's congregations
were strangers to the Punic.]

[Footnote 40: Spain alone produced Columella, the Senecas, Lucan,
Martial, and Quintilian.]

[Footnote 41: There is not, I believe, from Dionysius to Libanus, a
single Greek critic who mentions Virgil or Horace. They seem ignorant
that the Romans had any good writers.]

[Footnote 42: The curious reader may see in Dupin, (Bibliotheque
Ecclesiastique, tom. xix. p. 1, c. 8,) how much the use of the Syriac
and Egyptian languages was still preserved.]

[Footnote 43: See Juvenal, Sat. iii. and xv. Ammian. Marcellin. xxii.
16.]

[Footnote 44: Dion Cassius, l. lxxvii. p. 1275. The first instance
happened under the reign of Septimius Severus.]

It is a just though trite observation, that victorious Rome was herself
subdued by the arts of Greece. Those immortal writers who still command
the admiration of modern Europe, soon became the favorite object of
study and imitation in Italy and the western provinces. But the elegant
amusements of the Romans were not suffered to interfere with their sound
maxims of policy. Whilst they acknowledged the charms of the Greek, they
asserted the dignity of the Latin tongue, and the exclusive use of the
latter was inflexibly maintained in the administration of civil as well
as military government. [45] The two languages exercised at the same time
their separate jurisdiction throughout the empire: the former, as the
natural idiom of science; the latter, as the legal dialect of public
transactions. Those who united letters with business were equally
conversant with both; and it was almost impossible, in any province, to
find a Roman subject, of a liberal education, who was at once a stranger
to the Greek and to the Latin language.

[Footnote 45: See Valerius Maximus, l. ii. c. 2, n. 2. The emperor
Claudius disfranchised an eminent Grecian for not understanding Latin.
He was probably in some public office. Suetonius in Claud. c. 16. *
Note: Causes seem to have been pleaded, even in the senate, in both
languages. Val. Max. loc. cit. Dion. l. lvii. c. 15.--M]

It was by such institutions that the nations of the empire insensibly
melted away into the Roman name and people. But there still remained, in
the centre of every province and of every family, an unhappy condition
of men who endured the weight, without sharing the bene