n troops--and as teachers not merely of the language
but of literature and culture in general--at the newly-opened
lucrative market for the sale of their wisdom. Greek tutors and
teachers of philosophy, who, even if they were not slaves, were
as a rule accounted as servants,(17) were now permanent inmates
in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there is
a statement that 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds) were paid for
a Greek literary slave of the first rank. As early as 593 there
existed in the capital a number of special establishments for
the practice of Greek declamation. Several distinguished names
already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius
has been already mentioned;(18) the esteemed grammarian Crates of
Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal rival of Aristarchus,
found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and
illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems. It is
true that this new mode of juvenile instruction, revolutionary
and anti-national as it was, encountered partially the resistance
of the government; but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities
in 593 fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained
(chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief
magistrates) like all similar commands without any result worth
mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there were still
doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with his views, but
there was no further action. The higher instruction in Greek and
in the sciences of Greek culture remained thenceforth recognized
as an essential part of Italian training.

Latin Instruction
Public Readings of Classical Works

But by its side there sprang up also a higher Latin instruction.
We have shown in the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction
raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken
by the Latin Odyssey as a sort of improved primer, and the Roman
boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-tongue
by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original:
how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus,
Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children properly
so called, but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not
disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with the Greek.
These were the first steps towards a higher Latin instruction, but
they did not as yet f