Latin Instruction

The advance in Latin instruction was similar to that of Greek.
This in part resulted from the mere reflex influence of the Greek,
from which it in fact essentially borrowed its methods
and its stimulants. Moreover, the relations of politics, the impulse
to mount the orators' platform in the Forum which was imparted
by the democratic doings to an ever-widening circle, contributed
not a little to the diffusion and enhancement of oratorical exercises;
"wherever one casts his eyes," says Cicero, "every place is full
of rhetoricians." Besides, the writings of the sixth century,
the farther they receded into the past, began to be more decidedly
regarded as classical texts of the golden age of Latin literature,
and thereby gave a greater preponderance to the instruction
which was essentially concentrated upon them. Lastly the immigration
and spreading of barbarian elements from many quarters
and the incipient Latinizing of extensive Celtic and Spanish districts,
naturally gave to Latin grammar and Latin instruction a higher importance
than they could have had, so long as Latium only spoke Latin;
the teacher of Latin literature had from the outset a different
position in Comum and Narbo than he had in Praeneste and Ardea.
Taken as a whole, culture was more on the wane than on the advance.
The ruin of the Italian country towns, the extensive intrusion of foreign
elements, the political, economic, and moral deterioration of the nation,
above all, the distracting civil wars inflicted more injury
on the language than all the schoolmasters of the world could repair.
The closer contact with the Hellenic culture of the present,
the more decided influence of the talkative Athenian wisdom
and of the rhetoric of Rhodes and Asia Minor, supplied
to the Roman youth just the very elements that were most pernicious
in Hellenism. The propagandist mission which Latium undertook
among the Celts, Iberians, and Libyans--proud as the task was--
could not but have the like consequences for the Latin language
as the Hellenizing of the east had had for the Hellenic.
The fact that the Roman public of this period applauded
the well arranged and rhythmically balanced periods of the orator,
and any offence in language or metre cost the actor dear, doubtless
shows that the insight into the mother tongue which was the reflection
of scholastic training was becoming the common possession of an ever-
widening circle. But at the same ti