of statues and paintings of earlier and contemporary masters, as well as a library as carefully selected as it was magnificently fitted up, and every person of culture and especially every Greek was welcome there—­the master of the house himself was often seen walking up and down the beautiful colonnade in philological or philosophical conversation with one of his learned guests.  No doubt these Greeks brought along with their rich treasures of culture their preposterousness and servility to Italy; one of these learned wanderers for instance, the author of the “Art of Flattery,” Aristodemus of Nysa (about 700) recommended himself to his masters by demonstrating that Homer was a native of Rome!

Extent of the Literary Pursuits of the Romans

In the same measure as the pursuits of the Greek literati prospered in Rome, literary activity and literary interest increased among the Romans themselves.  Even Greek composition, which the stricter taste of the Scipionic age had totally set aside, now revived.  The Greek language was now universally current, and a Greek treatise found a quite different public from a Latin one; therefore Romans of rank, such as Lucius Lucullus, Marcus Cicero, Titus Atticus, Quintus Scaevola (tribune of the people in 700), like the kings of Armenia and Mauretania, published occasionally Greek prose and even Greek verses.  Such Greek authorship however by native Romans remained a secondary matter and almost an amusement; the literary as well as the political parties of Italy all coincided in adhering to their Italian nationality, only more or less pervaded by Hellenism.  Nor could there be any complaint at least as to want of activity in the field of Latin authorship.  There was a flood of books and pamphlets of all sorts, and above all of poems, in Rome.  Poets swarmed there, as they did only in Tarsus or Alexandria; poetical publications had become the standing juvenile sin of livelier natures, and even then the writer was reckoned fortunate whose youthful poems compassionate oblivion withdrew from criticism.  Any one who understood the art, wrote without difficulty at a sitting his five hundred hexameters in which no schoolmaster found anything to censure, but no reader discovered anything to praise.  The female world also took a lively part in these literary pursuits; the ladies did not confine themselves to dancing and music, but by their spirit and wit ruled conversation and talked excellently on Greek and Latin literature; and, when poetry laid siege to a maiden’s heart, the beleaguered fortress not seldom surrendered likewise in graceful verses.  Rhythms became more and more the fashionable plaything of the big children of both sexes; poetical epistles, joint poetical exercises and competitions among good friends, were of common occurrence, and towards the end of this epoch institutions were already opened in the capital, at which unfledged Latin poets might learn verse-making for money.  In consequence of the large consumption of books the