Roman's house is composed ordinarily of two parts: the
first, the ancient Roman house; the other is only a Greek house added
to the first.

=Sculpture.=--The Greeks had thousands of statues, in temples, squares
of the city, gymnasia, and in their dwellings. The Romans regarded
themselves as the owners of everything that had belonged to the
vanquished people. Their generals, therefore, removed a great number
of statues, transporting them to the temples and the porticos of Rome.
In the triumph of AEmilius Paullus, victor over the king of Macedon
(Perseus), a notable spectacle was two hundred and fifty cars full of
statues and paintings.

Soon the Romans became accustomed to adorn with statues their
theatres, council-halls, and private villas; every great noble wished
to have some of them and gave commissions for them to Greek artists.
Thus a Roman school of sculpture was developed which continued to
imitate ancient Greek models. And so it was Greek sculpture, a little
blunted and disfigured, which was spread over all the world subject to
the Romans.

=Literature.=--The oldest Latin writer was a Greek, Livius Andronicus,
a freedman, a schoolmaster, and later an actor. The first works in
Latin were translations from the Greek. Livius Andronicus had
translated the Odyssey and several tragedies. The Roman people took
pleasure in Greek pieces and would have no others. Even the Roman
authors who wrote for the theatre did nothing but translate or arrange
Greek tragedies and comedies. Thus the celebrated works of Plautus and
of Terence are imitations of the comedies of Menander and of Diphilus,
now lost to us.

The Romans imitated also the Greek historians. For a long time it was
the fashion to write history, even Roman history, in Greek.

The only great Roman poets declare themselves pupils of the Greeks.
Lucretius writes only to expound the philosophy of Epicurus; Catullus
imitates the poets of Alexander; Vergil, Theocritus and Homer; Horace
translates the odes of the Greek lyrics.

=Epicureans and Stoics.=--The Romans had a practical and literal
spirit, very indifferent to pure science and metaphysics. They took
interest in Greek philosophy only so far as they believed it had a
bearing on morals.

Epicureans and Stoics were two sects of Greek philosophers. The
Epicureans maintained that pleasure is the supreme good, not sensual
pleasure, but the calm and reasonable pleasure of the temperate man;
happiness consists in