ught, letters,
and art. All round the coasts, in all the great cities, on all the
main routes, up all the great river valleys of these eastern kingdoms,
this graecizing proceeded. Alexander had founded the city of
Alexandria, and soon that great and opulent city became more the home
of Greek science and literature than Athens itself. His successors
founded other great cities, such as Antioch, and there also the
civilisation was Greek.

Egyptians, Jews, and Syrians who were possessed of any kind of public,
social, or even mercantile ambition therefore naturally spoke Greek,
either only, or more often in conjunction with their native tongue.
This is the reason why the Septuagint appeared in Greek; why Greek as
well as Hebrew and Latin was written over the Cross; why our New
Testament was written in Greek; and why Paul could travel about the
eastern half of the Roman world and talk fluently wherever he went. He
could address a Roman governor directly at Paphos because that
governor had learned Greek at Rome, either in school or under his
nurse or tutor. He could stand before the Areopagus at Athens and
address that distinguished body in its own tongue because it was also
one of _his_ own tongues.

Not that one could expect the Greek culture, or even the language, to
remain pure when thus spread abroad. There were blendings of Oriental
elements, Egyptian, Jewish, or Syrian; but these elements were
themselves derived from advanced and time-honoured civilisations.

It follows, therefore, that all through the Eastern half of its domain
Rome could not contrive to romanize. She did not attempt to suppress
Greek ideas; she preferred to utilise them. So long as the Roman rule
was obeyed in its essentials, Rome was satisfied.

In the main, then, we have, outside Italy, two very distinct halves of
the Roman world: the Eastern, with its large cities, its active civic
life, its high culture, its contributions to science, art, and
luxury--and, it must be added, its general dissoluteness--with here
and there its pronounced leanings to Oriental fanaticism; and the
Western, with very few large towns, with a life more determined by
clans and tribes or country districts, with comparatively little
social culture, contributing almost nothing to art or science,
stronger in its contribution of natural products and virile men than
in those of the more refined or artificial luxury. Over this half the
Roman tongue, Roman dress, and Roman mann