The Romans seeing themselves in control soon wished to command.  The rich freely recognized their sovereignty; Rome served them by shattering the party of the poor.  This endured for forty years.  At last in 147, Rome being engaged with Carthage, the democratic party gained the mastery in Greece and declared war on the Romans.  A part of the Greeks were panic-stricken; many came before the Roman soldiers denouncing their compatriots and themselves; others betook themselves to a safe distance from the cities; some hurled themselves into wells or over precipices.  The leaders of the opposition confiscated the property of the rich, abolished debts, and gave arms to the slaves.  It was a desperate contest.  Once overcome, the Achaeans reassembled an army and marched to the combat with their wives and children.  The general Dioeus shut himself in his house with his whole family and set fire to the building.  Corinth had been the centre of the resistance; the Romans entered it, massacred the men, and sold the women and children as slaves.  The city full of masterpieces of art was pillaged and burnt; pictures of the great painters were thrown into the dust, Roman soldiers lying on them and playing at dice.

THE HELLENES IN THE OCCIDENT

=Influence of Greece on Rome.=—­The Romans at the time of their conquest of the Greeks were still only soldiers, peasants, and merchants; they had no statues, monuments, literature, science, or philosophy.  All this was found among the Greeks.  Rome sought to imitate these, as the Assyrian conquerors imitated the Chaldeans, as the Persians did the Assyrians.  The Romans kept their costume, tongue, and religion, and never confused these with those of the Greeks.  But thousands of Greek scholars and artists came to establish themselves in Rome and to open schools of literature and of eloquence.  Later it was the fashion for the youth of the great Roman families to go as students to the schools of Athens and Alexandria.  Thus the arts and science of the Greeks were gradually introduced into Rome.  “Vanquished Greece overcame her savage conqueror,” says Horace, the Roman poet; “she brought the arts to uncultured Latium.”

=Architecture.=—­The Romans had a national architecture.  But they borrowed the column from the Greeks and often imitated their buildings.  Many Roman temples resemble a Greek temple.

A wealthy Roman’s house is composed ordinarily of two parts:  the first, the ancient Roman house; the other is only a Greek house added to the first.

=Sculpture.=—­The Greeks had thousands of statues, in temples, squares of the city, gymnasia, and in their dwellings.  The Romans regarded themselves as the owners of everything that had belonged to the vanquished people.  Their generals, therefore, removed a great number of statues, transporting them to the temples and the porticos of Rome.  In the triumph of AEmilius Paullus, victor over the king of Macedon (Perseus), a notable spectacle was two hundred and fifty cars full of statues and paintings.