nation was driven to
reject and place under the ban of outlawry the literature of Hellenism
along with Hellenism itself. The Romans in the time of Cato stood
opposed to Greek literature, very much as in the time of the Caesars
they stood opposed to Christianity; freedmen and foreigners formed the
main body of the poetical, as they afterwards formed the main body of
the Christian, community; the nobility of the nation and above all
the government saw in poetry as in Christianity an absolutely hostile
power; Plautus and Ennius were ranked with the rabble by the Roman
aristocracy for reasons nearly the same as those for which the
apostles and bishops were put to death by the Roman government.
In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the
vigorous champion of his native country against the foreigners. The
Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum
of the radically corrupt Greek people,(72) and the Roman "ballad-
singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt.(73) He and
those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured
on this account, and certainly the expressions of his displeasure
are not unfrequently characterized by the bluntness and narrowness
peculiar to him; on a closer consideration, however, we must not only
confess him to have been in individual instances substantially right,
but we must also acknowledge that the national opposition in this
field, more than anywhere else, went beyond the manifestly inadequate
line of mere negative defence. When his younger contemporary, Aulus
Postumius Albinus, who was an object of ridicule to the Hellenes
themselves by his offensive Hellenizing, and who, for example, even
manufactured Greek verses--when this Albinus in the preface to his
historical treatise pleaded in excuse for his defective Greek that he
was by birth a Roman--was not the question quite in place, whether he
had been doomed by authority of law to meddle with matters which he
did not understand? Were the trades of the professional translator of
comedies and of the poet celebrating heroes for bread and protection
more honourable, perhaps, two thousand years ago than they are now?
Had Cato not reason to make it a reproach against Nobilior, that he
took Ennius--who, we may add, glorified in his verses the Roman
potentates without respect of persons, and overloaded Cato himself
with praise--along with him to Ambracia as the celebrator of hi