ame himself the philosophic, artistic, and social teacher of his
conqueror. His own language was richer in literature, and it was
better adapted to every form of conversation. The Latin of the Romans
therefore made no progress in Greece or the Greek world. It might be
made the language of the Roman courts and of official documents; but
beyond this the ordinary Greek disdained to study it. On the other
hand the ordinary well-educated Roman could generally speak Greek.
Magistrates and officials were almost invariably thus accomplished,
and in Athens or Ephesus they talked Greek as we should naturally talk
French in Paris--only better, inasmuch as they learned the language in
a more rational and practical way. Nero himself could act, or thought
he could act, a Greek play and sing a Greek ode among the Greeks. Most
probably the Roman noble had been brought up by a Greek nurse, just as
so many English families formerly employed a nurse imported from
France. Nor did the Greeks merely ignore the Latin language. They
refused to be romanized in any other respect. Even the Roman
amusements tended to disgust them, and it is to the credit of his
superior refinement that the average Greek was repelled by those
brutal exhibitions of gladiatorial bloodshed and slaughter over which
the coarser Roman gloated.

When, next, we pass from Greece proper--that is to say, from the
Grecian peninsula and the islands and Asiatic shores of the Aegean
Sea--into Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, we still find the Roman
conqueror annexing peoples more versed in the higher arts of life than
himself. For ages there had existed in these regions various forms of
advanced civilisation. The Assyrian, Babylonian, Phoenician, Hebrew,
and Egyptian cultures were old before Rome was born. Later the Persian
subjugated all these peoples. And then, four hundred years before the
time with which we are dealing, had come the Macedonian Greek
Alexander the Great, and had conquered every one of those provinces
which were subsequently to form the eastern part of the Roman Empire
as represented on our map. The language and culture of Alexander were
Greek, and he carried these and settled them with the most determined
policy in every available quarter. After his death his empire broke up
into kingdoms, but those kings who succeeded him--every Antiochus of
Syria and every Ptolemy of Egypt--were Greek. Their court was Greek,
and Hellenism was everywhere the fashion in life, tho