pise the
unpolished manners of the Roman conquerors, whilst they were compelled
to respect their superior wisdom and power. Nor was the influence of the
Grecian language and sentiments confined to the narrow limits of that
once celebrated country. Their empire, by the progress of colonies and
conquest, had been diffused from the Adriatic to the Euphrates and the
Nile. Asia was covered with Greek cities, and the long reign of the
Macedonian kings had introduced a silent revolution into Syria and
Egypt. In their pompous courts, those princes united the elegance of
Athens with the luxury of the East, and the example of the court was
imitated, at an humble distance, by the higher ranks of their subjects.
Such was the general division of the Roman empire into the Latin and
Greek languages. To these we may add a third distinction for the body of
the natives in Syria, and especially in Egypt, the use of their ancient
dialects, by secluding them from the commerce of mankind, checked the
improvements of those barbarians. The slothful effeminacy of the former
exposed them to the contempt, the sullen ferociousness of the latter
excited the aversion, of the conquerors. Those nations had submitted to
the Roman power, but they seldom desired or deserved the freedom of the
city: and it was remarked, that more than two hundred and thirty years
elapsed after the ruin of the Ptolemies, before an Egyptian was admitted
into the senate of Rome.

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. 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 th