Throughout the eastern half of the Mediterranean countries, conquering Rome had been face to face with an older, a more polished, a more keenly intellectual, and more artistic culture than her own.  This was the civilisation of Greece.  We need not dwell upon the character of Hellenic culture.  Anyone who has made acquaintance with the richness of Greek literature, the clear sureness of Greek art, the keen insight of Greek science and philosophy, and the bold experiments of Greek society—­especially as represented by Athens—­will understand at once what is meant.  When the Romans, more than two hundred years before our date, conquered Greece, in so far as they were a people of letters or of effort in abstract thought, in so far as they possessed the arts of sculpture, architecture, painting, and music, they were almost wholly indebted to Greece.  Their own strength lay in solidity and gravity of character, in a strong sense of national and personal discipline, in the gift of law-making and law-obeying.  In culture they stood to the Greeks of that time very much as the Germans of two centuries ago stood to the French.  After their conquest by the Romans the Greeks perforce submitted to the rule of might, but the typical Greek never looked upon the Roman as socially or intellectually his equal.  He became himself the philosophic, artistic, and social teacher of his conqueror.  His own language was richer in literature, and it was better adapted to every form of conversation.  The Latin of the Romans therefore made no progress in Greece or the Greek world.  It might be made the language of the Roman courts and of official documents; but beyond this the ordinary Greek disdained to study it.  On the other hand the ordinary well-educated Roman could generally speak Greek.  Magistrates and officials were almost invariably thus accomplished, and in Athens or Ephesus they talked Greek as we should naturally talk French in Paris—­only better, inasmuch as they learned the language in a more rational and practical way.  Nero himself could act, or thought he could act, a Greek play and sing a Greek ode among the Greeks.  Most probably the Roman noble had been brought up by a Greek nurse, just as so many English families formerly employed a nurse imported from France.  Nor did the Greeks merely ignore the Latin language.  They refused to be romanized in any other respect.  Even the Roman amusements tended to disgust them, and it is to the credit of his superior refinement that the average Greek was repelled by those brutal exhibitions of gladiatorial bloodshed and slaughter over which the coarser Roman gloated.