e literary gains were now more abundant than anywhere else.
Among those thus mentioned as settled in Rome we find the physician
Asclepiades whom king Mithradates vainly endeavoured to draw away from it
into his service; the universalist in learning, Alexander of Miletus,
termed Polyhistor; the poet Parthenius from Nicaea in Bithynia;
Posidonius of Apamea in Syria equally celebrated as a traveller,
teacher, and author, who at a great age migrated in 703 from Rhodes
to Rome; and various others. A house like that of Lucius Lucullus
was a seat of Hellenic culture and a rendezvous for Hellenic literati
almost like the Alexandrian Museum; Roman resources and Hellenic
connoisseurship had gathered in these halls of wealth and science
an incomparable collection of statues and paintings of earlier
and contemporary masters, as well as a library as carefully selected
as it was magnificently fitted up, and every person of culture
and especially every Greek was welcome there--the master of the house
himself was often seen walking up and down the beautiful colonnade
in philological or philosophical conversation with one of his
learned guests. No doubt these Greeks brought along with their
rich treasures of culture their preposterousness and servility
to Italy; one of these learned wanderers for instance, the author
of the "Art of Flattery," Aristodemus of Nysa (about 700)
recommended himself to his masters by demonstrating that Homer
was a native of Rome!

Extent of the Literary Pursuits of the Romans

In the same measure as the pursuits of the Greek literati prospered
in Rome, literary activity and literary interest increased among
the Romans themselves. Even Greek composition, which the stricter
taste of the Scipionic age had totally set aside, now revived.
The Greek language was now universally current, and a Greek treatise
found a quite different public from a Latin one; therefore Romans
of rank, such as Lucius Lucullus, Marcus Cicero, Titus Atticus,
Quintus Scaevola (tribune of the people in 700), like the kings
of Armenia and Mauretania, published occasionally Greek prose
and even Greek verses. Such Greek authorship however by native Romans
remained a secondary matter and almost an amusement; the literary
as well as the political parties of Italy all coincided in adhering
to their Italian nationality, only more or less pervaded
by Hellenism. Nor could there be any complaint at least as to want
of activity in the field of