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self had to learn it in his old age, in order to teach his boy what he considered, if not useful, at least harmless in Greek literature. It has been the custom to laugh at Cato for his dogged opposition to everything Greek ; but there was much truth in his denunciations. We have heard much of young Bengál-young Hindus who read Byron and Voltaire, play at billiards, drive tandems, laugh at their priests, patronize missionaries, and believe nothing. The description which Cato gives of the young idlers at Rome reminds us very much of young Bengál.

When Rome took the torch of knowledge from the dying hands of Greece, that torch was not burning with its brightest light. Plato and Aristotle had been succeeded by Chrysippus and Carneades; Euripides and Menander had taken the place of Eschylus and Sophocles. In becoming the guardian of the Promethean spark first lighted in Greece, and intended hereafter to illuminate not only Italy, but every country of Europe, Rome lost much of that native virtue to which she owed her greatness. Roman frugality and gravity, Roman citizenship and patriotism, Roman purity and piety, were driven away by Greek luxury and levity, Greek intriguing and self-seeking, Greek vice and infidelity. Restrictions and anathemas were of no avail; and Greek ideas were never so attractive as when they had been reprobated by Cato and his friends. Every new generation became more and more impregnated with Greek. In 1311 we hear of a consul (Publius Crassus) who, like another Mezzofanti, was able to converse in the various dialects of Greek. Sulla allowed foreign ambassadors to speak Greek

1 Mommsen, ii. 407.

before the Roman senate.1 The Stoic philosopher Panatius 2 lived in the house of the Scipios, which was for a long time the rendezvous of all the literary celebrities at Rome. Here the Greek historian Polybius, and the philosopher Cleitomachus, Lucilius the satirist, Terence the African poet (196–159), and the improvisatore Archias (102 B. c.), were welcome guests. In this select circle the master-works of Greek literature were read and criticised; the problems of Greek philosophy were discussed; and the highest interests of human life became the subject of thoughtful conversation. Though no poet of original genius arose from this society, it exercised a most powerful influence on the progress of Roman literature. formed a tribunal of good taste; and much of the correctness, simplicity, and manliness of the classical Latin is due to that "Cosmopolitan Club," which met under the hospitable roof of the Scipios.

It

All

The religious life of Roman society at the close of the Punic wars was more Greek than Roman. who had learnt to think seriously on religious questions were either Stoics or followers of Epicurus; or they embraced the doctrines of the New Academy, denying the possibility of any knowledge of the Infinite, and putting opinion in the place of truth. Though the doctrines of Epicurus and the New Academy were always considered dangerous and heretical, the philosophy of the Stoics was tolerated, and a kind of compromise effected between philosophy and religion. There was a state-philosophy as well as a state

1 Mommsen, ii. 410. 2 Ibid. ii. 408. 8 Ibid. ii. 437, note; ii. 430. 4 Zeno died 263; Epicurus died 270; Arcesilaus died 241; Carneades died 129.

religion. The Roman priesthood, though they had succeeded, in 161, in getting all Greek rhetors and philosophers expelled from Rome, perceived that a compromise was necessary. It was openly avowed that in the enlightened classes1 philosophy must take the place of religion, but that a belief in miracles and oracles was necessary for keeping the large masses in order. Even Cato,2 the leader of the orthodox, national, and conservative party, expressed his surprise that a haruspex, when meeting a colleague, did not burst out laughing. Men like Scipio Emilianus and Lælius professed to believe in the popular gods; but with them Jupiter was the soul of the universe, the statues of the gods mere works of art. Their gods, as the people complained, had neither body, parts, nor passions. Peace, however, was preserved between the Stoic philosopher and the orthodox priest. Both parties professed to believe in the same gods, but they claimed the liberty to believe in them in their own way.

I have dwelt at some length on the changes in the intellectual atmosphere of Rome at the end of the Punic wars, and I have endeavored to show how completely it was impregnated with Greek ideas in order to explain, what otherwise would seem almost inexplicable, the zeal and earnestness with which the study of Greek grammar was taken up at Rome, not only by a few scholars and philosophers, but by the leading statesmen of the time. To our minds, discussions on nouns and verbs, on cases and gender, on regular and irregular conjugation, retain always something of the tedious character which these subjects 1 Mommsen, ii. 417, 418.

2 Ibid. i. 845.

3 Ibid. ii. 415, 417.

had at school, and we can hardly understand how at Rome, grammar- pure and simple grammar-should have formed a subject of general interest, and a topic of fashionable conversation. When one of the first grammarians of the day, Crates of Pergamus, was sent to Rome as ambassador of King Attalus, he was received with the greatest distinction by all the literary statesmen of the capital. It so happened that when walking one day on the Palatian hill, Crates caught his foot in the grating of a sewer, fell and broke his leg. Being thereby detained at Rome longer than he intended, he was persuaded to give some public lectures, or akroaseis, on grammar; and from these lectures, says Suetonius, dates the study of grammar at Rome. This took place about 159 B. C., between the second and third Punic wars, shortly after the death of Ennius, and two years after the famous expulsion of the Greek rhetors and philosophers (161). Four years later Carneades, likewise sent to Rome as ambassador, was prohibited from lecturing by Cato. After these lectures of Crates, grammatical and philological studies became extremely popular at Rome. We hear of Lucius Elius Stilo,1 who lectured on Latin as Crates had lectured on Greek. Among his pupils were Varro, Lucilius, and Cicero. Varro composed twenty-four books on the Latin language, four of which were dedicated to Cicero. Cicero, himself, is quoted as an authority on grammatical questions, though we know of no special work of his on grammar. Lucilius devoted the ninth book of his satires to the reform of spelling.

But nothing shows

1 Mommsen, ii. 413, 426, 445, 457. Lucius Elius Stilo wrote a work on etymology, and an index to Plautus. - Lersch, Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, ii. 111.

2 Lersch, ii. 113, 114, 143.

more clearly the wide interest which grammatical studies had then excited in the foremost ranks of Roman society than Cæsar's work on Latin grammar. It was composed by him during the Gallic war, and dedicated to Cicero, who might well be proud of the compliment thus paid him by the great general and statesman. Most of these works are lost to us, and we can judge of them only by means of casual quotations. Thus we learn from a fragment of Cæsar's work, De analogia, that he was the inventor of the term ablative in Latin. The word never occurs before, and, of course, could not be borrowed, like the names of the other cases, from Greek grammarians, as they admitted no ablative in Greek. To think of Cæsar fighting the barbarians of Gaul and Germany, and watching from a distance the political complications at Rome, ready to grasp the sceptre of the world, and at the same time carrying on his philological and grammatical studies together with his secretary, the Greek Didymus,1 gives us a new view both of that extraordinary man, and of the time in which he lived. After Cæsar had triumphed, one of his favorite plans was to found a Greek and Latin library at Rome, and he offered the librarianship to the best scholar of the day, to Varro, though Varro had fought against him on the side of Pompey.2

We have thus arrived at the time when, as we saw in an earlier part of this lecture, Dionysius Thrax published the first elementary grammar of Greek at Rome. Empirical grammar had thus been transplanted to Rome, the Greek grammatical terminology was translated into Latin, and in this new Latin garb it has travelled now for nearly two thousand years over the whole civilized world. 1 Lersch, iii. 144.

2 Mommsen, iii. 557. 48 B. C.

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