anks of the population, especially in the
capital. The comedies of this period may convince us that even the
humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin,
which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of
Greek than the English of Sterne or the German of Wieland without
a knowledge of French.(1) Men of senatorial families, however, not
only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their
speeches--Tiberius Gracchus (consul in 577 and 591) so published a
speech which he had given at Rhodes--and in the time of Hannibal wrote
their chronicles in Greek, as we shall have occasion to mention more
particularly in the sequel. Individuals went still farther. The
Greeks honoured Flamininus by complimentary demonstrations in the
Roman language,(2) and he returned the compliment; the "great general
of the Aeneiades" dedicated his votive gifts to the Greek gods after
the Greek fashion in Greek distichs.(3) Cato reproached another
senator with the fact, that he had the effrontery to deliver Greek
recitations with the due modulation at Greek revels.

Under the influence of such circumstances Roman instruction developed
itself. It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially
inferior to our own times in the general diffusion of elementary
attainments. Even among the lower classes and slaves there was much
reading, writing, and counting: in the case of a slave steward, for
instance, Cato, following the example of Mago, takes for granted the
ability to read and write. Elementary instruction, as well as
instruction in Greek, must have been long before this period imparted
to a very considerable extent in Rome. But the epoch now before us
initiated an education, the aim of which was to communicate not merely
an outward expertness, but a real mental culture. Hitherto in Rome
a knowledge of Greek had conferred on its possessor as little
superiority in civil or social life, as a knowledge of French perhaps
confers at the present day in a hamlet of German Switzerland; and the
earliest writers of Greek chronicles may have held a position among
the other senators similar to that of the farmer in the fens of
Holstein who has been a student and in the evening, when he comes home
from the plough, takes down his Virgil from the shelf. A man who
assumed airs of greater importance by reason of his Greek, was
reckoned a bad patriot and a fool; and certainly even in Cato's time
one w