became aware of themselves as comparatively barbarous and uncouth. The Greeks were
immeasurably their superiors in many ways: in manufacture and in the technique of agriculture; in
the kinds of knowledge that are necessary for a good official; in conversation and the art of
enjoying life; in art and literature and philosophy. The only things in which the Romans were
superior were military tactics and social cohesion. The relation of the Romans to the Greeks was
something like that of the Prussians to the French in 1814 and 1815; but this latter was temporary,
whereas the other lasted a long time. After the Punic Wars, young Romans conceived an
admiration for the Greeks. They learnt the Greek language, they copied Greek architecture, they
employed Greek sculptors. The Roman gods were identified with the gods of Greece. The Trojan
origin of the Romans was invented to make a connection with the Homeric myths. Latin poets
adopted Greek metres, Latin philosophers took over Greek theories. To the end, Rome was
culturally parasitic on Greece. The Romans invented no art forms, constructed no original system
of philosophy, and made no scientific discoveries. They made good roads, systematic legal codes,
and efficient armies; for the rest they looked to Greece.
The Hellenizing of Rome brought with it a certain softening of manners, abhorrent to the elder
Cato. Until the Punic Wars, the Romans had been a bucolic people, with the virtues and vices of
farmers: austere, industrious, brutal, obstinate, and stupid. Their family life had been stable and
solidly built on the patria potestas; women and young people were completely subordinated. All
this changed with the influx of sudden wealth. The small farms disappeared, and were gradually
replaced by huge estates on which slave labour was employed to carry out new scientific kinds of
agriculture. A great class of traders grew up, and a large number of men enriched by plunder, like
the nabobs in eighteenth-century England. Women, who had been virtuous slaves, became free
and dissolute; divorce became common; the rich ceased to have children. The Greeks, who had
gone through a similar development centuries ago, encouraged, by their example, what historians
call the decay of morals. Even in the most dissolute times of the Empire, the average Roman still
thought of Rome as the upholder of a purer ethical standard against the decadent corruption of
Greece.