ey contented themselves with
borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to
work as little as possible. In this sense the Arpinate landlord
Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the
Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth,
the more he understood Greek.

National Decomposition

This national decomposition is, like the whole age, far from
pleasing, but also like that age significant and momentous.
The circle of peoples, which we are accustomed to call the ancient
world, advances from an outward union under the authority of Rome
to an inward union under the sway of the modern culture resting
essentially on Hellenic elements. Over the ruins of peoples of the
second rank the great historical compromise between the two ruling
nations is silently completed; the Greek and Latin nationalities
conclude mutual peace. The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for
their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs
in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand
on a footing of equality--restricted, it is true, and imperfect--
with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors
to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter.
The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will
pass into a bilingual state and the true heir of the throne and
the ideas of Alexander the Great will arise in the west, at once
a Roman and a Greek.

The suppression of the secondary, and the mutual interpenetration
of the two primary nationalities, which are thus apparent on a
general survey of national relations, now fall to be more precisely
exhibited in detail in the several fields of religion, national
education, literature, and art.

Religion

The Roman religion was so intimately interwoven with the Roman
commonwealth and the Roman household--so thoroughly in fact the
pious reflection of the Roman burgess-world--that the political
and social revolution necessarily overturned also the fabric of
religion. The ancient Italian popular faith fell to the ground;
over its ruins rose--like the oligarchy and the -tyrannis- rising
over the ruins of the political commonwealth--on the one side
unbelief, state-religion, Hellenism, and on the other side
superstition, sectarianism, the religion of the Orientals, The
germs certainly of both, as indeed the germs of the politico-social
revolution also, may be traced back to the pr