Ever since the Hannibalic war, and probably even before it, Roman nobles had felt the power of Greek culture; they had begun to think, to learn about peoples who were different from themselves in habits and manners, and to advance, the best of them at least, in wisdom and knowledge; and this is true in spite of the unquestioned fact that it was in this same era that the seeds were sown of moral and political degeneracy.  We shall have abundant opportunity of noting the effects of this degeneracy in the last age of the Republic, but it is pleasant to dwell for a moment on that more wholesome Greek influence which enticed the finer minds among the Roman nobility into a new region of culture, stimulating thought and strengthening the springs of conduct.

Even the old Cato himself, most rigid of Roman conservatives, was not unmoved by this influence,[152] and it was to him that Rome owed the introduction of Ennius, the greatest literary figure of that age, into Roman society[153].  But the first genuine example of the new culture, of the Hellenic enthusiasm of the age, is to be found in Aemilius Paullus, the conqueror of Macedonia, a true Roman aristocrat who was delighted to learn from Greeks.  Plutarch’s Life of this man is a valuable record of the tendencies of the time.  After his failure to obtain a second consulship, Plutarch tells us[154] that he retired into private life, devoting himself to religious duties and to the education of his children, training these in the old Roman habits in which he had himself been trained, but also in Greek culture, and that with even greater enthusiasm.  He had about them Greek teachers, not only of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, but of the fine arts, and even of out-door pursuits, such as hunting (to which the Romans were not greatly addicted), and of the care of horses and dogs; and he made a point of being present himself at all their exercises, bodily and mental.  The result of this wholesome Xenophontic education is seen in his son, the great Scipio Aemilianus, who was adopted into the family of the Scipios in the lifetime of his father.  Whatever view we may take of this great man’s conduct in war and politics, there can hardly be a doubt that the Romans themselves were right in treasuring his memory as one of the best of their race.  When we put all the facts of his life together, from his early youth, of which his friend Polybius has left us a most beautiful picture,[155] to his sudden and probably violent death in the maturity of his powers, we are compelled to believe that he was really a man of wide sympathies, a strong sense of justice which guided him steadily through good report and ill, perfect purity of life, and hatred of all that was low and bad, whether in rich or poor.  He was not, like his father, a Roman aristocrat patronising Greek culture;[156] in him we see a perfectly natural and mature combination of the noblest qualities of the Roman and the wholesomest qualities of the Greek.