e desire of
propagating Hellenic polity at the expense of eastern despotism--the
two principles that helped to regulate, for instance, the treatment of
Macedonia--were fixed ideas of the new school, just as dread of the
Carthaginians was the fixed idea of the old; and, if Cato pushed the
latter to a ridiculous excess, Philhellenism now and then indulged in
extravagances at least quite as foolish. For example, the conqueror
of king Antiochus not only had a statue of him self in Greek costume
erected on the Capitol, but also, instead of calling himself in good
Latin -Asiaticus-, assumed the unmeaning and anomalous, but yet
magnificent and almost Greek, surname of --Asiagenus--.(1) A more
important consequence of this attitude of the ruling nation towards
Hellenism was, that the process of Latinizing gained ground everywhere
in Italy except where it encountered the Hellenes. The cities of the
Greeks in Italy, so far as the war had not destroyed them, remained
Greek. Apulia, about which, it is true, the Romans gave themselves
little concern, appears at this very epoch to have been thoroughly
pervaded by Hellenism, and the local civilization there seems to have
attained the level of the decaying Hellenic culture by its side.
Tradition is silent on the matter; but the numerous coins of cities,
uniformly furnished with Greek inscriptions, and the manufacture of
painted clay-vases after the Greek style, which was carried on in that
part of Italy alone with more ambition and gaudiness than taste, show
that Apulia had completely adopted Greek habits and Greek art.

But the real struggle between Hellenism and its national antagonists
during the present period was carried on in the field of faith, of
manners, and of art and literature; and we must not omit to attempt
some delineation of this great strife of principles, however difficult
it may be to present a summary view of the myriad forms and aspects
which the conflict assumed.

The National Religion and Unbelief

The extent to which the old simple faith still retained a living hold
on the Italians is shown very clearly by the admiration or
astonishment which this problem of Italian piety excited among the
contemporary Greeks. On occasion of the quarrel with the Aetolians it
was reported of the Roman commander-in-chief that during battle he was
solely occupied in praying and sacrificing like a priest; whereas
Polybius with his somewhat stale moralizing calls the attentio