importance
was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an
age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was
already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and
might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the
assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the
fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early
made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood. The Greek
language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of
Hannibal. In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which
was the general medium of intercourse for ancient civilization, had
long been a far from uncommon accomplishment; and now, when the change
of Rome's position in the world had so enormously increased the
intercourse with foreigners and the foreign traffic, such a knowledge
was, if not necessary, yet presumably of very material importance to
the merchant as well as the statesman. By means of the Italian slaves
and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half-Greek
by birth the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent
reached even the lower ranks of the population, especially in the
capital. The comedies of this period may convince us that even the
humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin,
which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of
Greek than the English of Sterne or the German of Wieland without
a knowledge of French.(1) Men of senatorial families, however, not
only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their
speeches--Tiberius Gracchus (consul in 577 and 591) so published a
speech which he had given at Rhodes--and in the time of Hannibal wrote
their chronicles in Greek, as we shall have occasion to mention more
particularly in the sequel. Individuals went still farther. The
Greeks honoured Flamininus by complimentary demonstrations in the
Roman language,(2) and he returned the compliment; the "great general
of the Aeneiades" dedicated his votive gifts to the Greek gods after
the Greek fashion in Greek distichs.(3) Cato reproached another
senator with the fact, that he had the effrontery to deliver Greek
recitations with the due modulation at Greek revels.

Under the influence of such circumstances Roman instruction developed
itself. It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially
inferior to our own