Language lies at the root of all mental culture; and this was especially the case in Rome.  In a community where so much 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 times in the general diffusion of elementary attainments.  Even among the lower classes and slaves there was much reading, writing, and counting:  in the case of a slave steward, for instance, Cato, following the example of Mago, takes for granted the ability to read and write.  Elementary instruction, as well as instruction in Greek, must have been long before this period imparted to a very considerable