unt, subito quibus credas male.
In Tusco vico ibi sunt homines, qui ipsi sese venditant.
In Velabro vel pistorem vel lanium vel haruspicem
Vel qui ipsi vorsant, vel qui aliis, ut vorsentur, praebeant.
Ditis damnosos maritos apud Leucadiam Oppiam.-

The verses in brackets are a subsequent addition, inserted after the
building of the first Roman bazaar (570). The business of the baker
(-pistor-, literally miller) embraced at this time the sale of
delicacies and the providing accommodation for revellers (Festus, Ep.
v. alicariae, p. 7, Mull.; Plautus, Capt. 160; Poen. i. a, 54; Trin.
407). The same was the case with the butchers. Leucadia Oppia may
have kept a house of bad fame.

5. II. IX. The Roman National Festival

6. III. XIII. Religious Economy

Chapter XIV

Literature and Art

The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were
of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other
nation. To estimate them correctly, it is necessary in the first
place that we should glance at the instruction of the people and
its recreations during this period.

Knowledge of Languages

Language lies at the root of all mental culture; and this was
especially the case in Rome. In a community where so much importance
was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an
age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was
already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and
might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the
assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the
fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early
made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood. The Greek
language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of
Hannibal. In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which
was the general medium of intercourse for ancient civilization, had
long been a far from uncommon accomplishment; and now, when the change
of Rome's position in the world had so enormously increased the
intercourse with foreigners and the foreign traffic, such a knowledge
was, if not necessary, yet presumably of very material importance to
the merchant as well as the statesman. By means of the Italian slaves
and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half-Greek
by birth the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent
reached even the lower r