extent in Rome.  But the epoch now before us initiated an education, the aim of which was to communicate not merely an outward expertness, but a real mental culture.  Hitherto in Rome a knowledge of Greek had conferred on its possessor as little superiority in civil or social life, as a knowledge of French perhaps confers at the present day in a hamlet of German Switzerland; and the earliest writers of Greek chronicles may have held a position among the other senators similar to that of the farmer in the fens of Holstein who has been a student and in the evening, when he comes home from the plough, takes down his Virgil from the shelf.  A man who assumed airs of greater importance by reason of his Greek, was reckoned a bad patriot and a fool; and certainly even in Cato’s time one who spoke Greek ill or not at all might still be a man of rank and become senator and consul.  But a change was already taking place.  The internal decomposition of Italian nationality had already, particularly in the aristocracy, advanced so far as to render the substitution of a general humane culture for that nationality inevitable:  and the craving after a more advanced civilization was already powerfully stirring the minds of men.  Instruction in the Greek language as it were spontaneously met this craving.  The classical literature of Greece, the Iliad and still more the Odyssey, had all along formed the basis of that instruction; the overflowing treasures of Hellenic art and science were already by this means spread before the eyes of the Italians.  Without any outward revolution, strictly speaking, in the character of the instruction the natural result was, that the empirical study of the language became converted into a higher study of the literature; that the general culture connected with such literary studies was communicated in increased measure to the scholars; and that these availed themselves of the knowledge thus acquired to dive into that Greek literature which most powerfully influenced the spirit of the age —­the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander.

In a similar way greater importance came to be attached to instruction in Latin.  The higher society of Rome began to feel the need, if not of exchanging their mother-tongue for Greek, at least of refining it and adapting it to the changed state of culture; and for this purpose too they found themselves in every respect dependent on the Greeks.  The economic arrangements of the Romans placed the work of elementary instruction in the mother-tongue—­like every other work held in little estimation and performed for hire—­chiefly in the hands of slaves, freedmen, or foreigners, or in other words chiefly in the hands of Greeks or half-Greeks;(4) which was attended with the less difficulty, because the Latin alphabet was almost identical with the Greek and the two languages possessed a close and striking affinity.  But this was the least part of the matter; the importance of the study of Greek in a formal point of view exercised