philosopher doubling as drawing master. He also brought the royal library of Macedon to Rome, the first
great Greek library to reach it. Polybius attests that there were now many Greek teachers there.
Distinguished savants began to arrive, at first as envoys; the serious study of grammatike was dated to
the embassy of Crates of Pergamum, who broke his leg in an open sewer and lectured while
immobilized. And in 155 Athens sent the heads of three philosophical schools, whose lectures caused a
sudden rage for philosophy-though Cato, "who thought philosophy 'mere gibberish', pressed the Senate
to conclude their business quickly so that the young could return to learning from 'the laws and the
magistrates'.
One must not exaggerate the depth of Greek influence at this period. There is evidence that Greek
medicine was regarded with suspicion still, and in general the Romans "were intellectually, as also
artistically, clumsy and immature. Poetry was more developed than prose, though even poetry "was
crude, as Horace complained. Cicero thought that it "was only towards the end of the century that
orators really profited from the study of rhetoric, which taught one how to organize and argue, as "well
as ornament, a speech. What we know of prose literature suggests that the Romans, like many primitive
peoples, found generalization and abstraction hard. It was only from about 100 BC, too, that they began
to use traditional Greek logical structure in treatises, with explicit definitions of the subject and all key
concepts, and careful division of the material into parts or aspects, instead of piling up information
hugger-mugger like Cato in his agricultural treatise. And it was in the first century that Latin was refined
into the splendid vehicle it was to be for prose as -well as poetry, and that Latin authors colonized many
new prose genres, including the philosophic treatise.
It was only now too that it became common for young gentlemen to study rhetoric or philosophy at
Athens or Rhodes (more independent Alexandria seems to have been out of bounds), though sons of
negotiatores were often educated in the East, and might go through a city's ephebeia, a state-run training
course now more cultural than military. The Mithridatic wars swept Greek refugees and captives to
Rome, both classes including learned men; also great libraries. And they detained many Romans long
years in the East. (The historian Sallust dated Rome's collapse into luxury from Sulla's campaigns in
Asia.) Afterwards, Rome was equal to Alexandria as a magnet for Greek artists and intellectuals; there
was patronage to be found almost nowhere else. And the Romans felt that they were, in one field after
another, catching up with the Greeks. Cicero and his friend Atticus, admittedly exceptional men, must
have met their Greek amid on fully equal terms.
In the West Rome felt she had little to learn, though an isolated work on agriculture was translated by
official order from Punic. But the very fact that Romans rarely bothered to learn western languages
helped to prepare for an extension of privilege here too; for the native elites gradually took on the
colours of what seemed a superior, if at first often a hated, civilization. Trade and the influx of settlers
helped to Romanize. Rome rarely consciously forwarded the process, though there was some
encouragement in Spain of agriculture and urban settlement in the valleys, to replace less controllable
pastoral communities. Though there was cultural prejudice against barbarians, there was little racial
prejudice. If barbarians gave up their ways (beastly, like the habit of some Spanish tribes of washing
their teeth in urine, or less so, like those of the Gauls, whom Caesar found intelligent and courageous, if
unsteady), they could rise above the status of barbarians; the geographer Strabo's description of southern