plunder or purchase, instead of creating for themselves, they did so; it was a wretched indication of the poverty of Roman architecture, that it already began to employ the columns of the old Greek temples; the Roman Capitol, for instance, was embellished by Sulla with those of the temple of Zeus at Athens.  The works, that were produced in Rome, proceeded from the hands of foreigners; the few Roman artists of this period, who are particularly mentioned, are without exception Italian or transmarine Greeks who had migrated thither.  Such was the case with the architect Hermodorus from the Cyprian Salamis, who among other works restored the Roman docks and built for Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the temple of Jupiter Stator in the basilica constructed by him, and for Decimus Brutus (consul in 616) the temple of Mars in the Flaminian circus; with the sculptor Pasiteles (about 665) from Magna Graecia, who furnished images of the gods in ivory for Roman temples; and with the painter and philosopher Metrodorus of Athens, who was summoned to paint the pictures for the triumph of Lucius Paullus (587).  It is significant that the coins of this epoch exhibit in comparison with those of the previous period a greater variety of types, but a retrogression rather than an improvement in the cutting of the dies.

Finally, music and dancing passed over in like manner from Hellas to Rome, solely in order to be there applied to the enhancement of decorative luxury.  Such foreign arts were certainly not new in Rome; the state had from olden time allowed Etruscan flute-players and dancers to appear at its festivals, and the freedmen and the lowest class of the Roman people had previously followed this trade.  But it was a novelty that Greek dances and musical performances should form the regular accompaniment of a genteel banquet.  Another novelty was a dancing-school, such as Scipio Aemilianus full of indignation describes in one of his speeches, in which upwards of five hundred boys and girls—­the dregs of the people and the children of magistrates and of dignitaries mixed up together—­received instruction from a ballet-master in far from decorous castanet-dances, in corresponding songs, and in the use of the proscribed Greek stringed instruments.  It was a novelty too—­ not so much that a consular and -pontifex maximus- like Publius Scaevola (consul in 621) should catch the balls in the circus as nimbly as he solved the most complicated questions of law at home—­ as that young Romans of rank should display their jockey-arts before all the people at the festal games of Sulla.  The government occasionally attempted to check such practices; as for instance in 639, when all musical instruments, with the exception of the simple flute indigenous in Latium, were prohibited by the censors.  But Rome was no Sparta; the lax government by such prohibitions rather drew attention to the evils than attempted to remedy them by a sharp and consistent application of the laws.