grammatical terminology, which had been carried from Athens to Alexandria,
flowed back to Rome, to spread from thence over the whole civilized world.

Dionysius, however, though the author of the first practical grammar, was
by no means the first "_professeur de langue_" who settled at Rome. At his
time Greek was more generally spoken at Rome than French is now spoken in
London. The children of gentlemen learnt Greek before they learnt Latin,
and though Quintilian in his work on education does not approve of a boy
learning nothing but Greek for any length of time, "as is now the
fashion," he says, "with most people," yet he too recommends that a boy
should be taught Greek first, and Latin afterwards.(70) This may seem
strange, but the fact is that as long as we know anything of Italy, the
Greek language was as much at home there as Latin. Italy owed almost
everything to Greece, not only in later days when the setting sun of Greek
civilization mingled its rays with the dawn of Roman greatness; but ever
since the first Greek colonists started Westward Ho! in search of new
homes. It was from the Greeks that the Italians received their alphabet
and were taught to read and to write.(71) The names for balance, for
measuring-rod, for engines in general, for coined money,(72) many terms
connected with seafaring,(73) not excepting _nausea_ or sea-sickness, are
all borrowed from Greek, and show the extent to which the Italians were
indebted to the Greeks for the very rudiments of civilization. The
Italians, no doubt, had their own national gods, but they soon became
converts to the mythology of the Greeks. Some of the Greek gods they
identified with their own; others they admitted as new deities. Thus
_Saturnus_, originally an Italian harvest god, was identified with the
Greek _Kronos_, and as _Kronos_ was the son of _Uranos_, a new deity was
invented, and _Saturnus_ was fabled to be the son of _Coelus_. Thus the
Italian _Herculus_, the god of hurdles, enclosures, and walls, was merged
in the Greek _Heracles_.(74) _Castor_ and _Pollux_, both of purely Greek
origin, were readily believed in as nautical deities by the Italian
sailors, and they were the first Greek gods to whom, after the battle on
the Lake Regillus (485), a temple was erected at Rome.(75) In 431 another
temple was erected at Rome to Apollo, whose oracle at Delphi had been
consulted by Italians ever since Greek colonists had settled on their
soil. The oracles of the