Soon the Romans became accustomed to adorn with statues their theatres, council-halls, and private villas; every great noble wished to have some of them and gave commissions for them to Greek artists.  Thus a Roman school of sculpture was developed which continued to imitate ancient Greek models.  And so it was Greek sculpture, a little blunted and disfigured, which was spread over all the world subject to the Romans.

=Literature.=—­The oldest Latin writer was a Greek, Livius Andronicus, a freedman, a schoolmaster, and later an actor.  The first works in Latin were translations from the Greek.  Livius Andronicus had translated the Odyssey and several tragedies.  The Roman people took pleasure in Greek pieces and would have no others.  Even the Roman authors who wrote for the theatre did nothing but translate or arrange Greek tragedies and comedies.  Thus the celebrated works of Plautus and of Terence are imitations of the comedies of Menander and of Diphilus, now lost to us.

The Romans imitated also the Greek historians.  For a long time it was the fashion to write history, even Roman history, in Greek.

The only great Roman poets declare themselves pupils of the Greeks.  Lucretius writes only to expound the philosophy of Epicurus; Catullus imitates the poets of Alexander; Vergil, Theocritus and Homer; Horace translates the odes of the Greek lyrics.

=Epicureans and Stoics.=—­The Romans had a practical and literal spirit, very indifferent to pure science and metaphysics.  They took interest in Greek philosophy only so far as they believed it had a bearing on morals.

Epicureans and Stoics were two sects of Greek philosophers.  The Epicureans maintained that pleasure is the supreme good, not sensual pleasure, but the calm and reasonable pleasure of the temperate man; happiness consists in the quiet enjoyment of a peaceful life, surrounded with friends and without concern for imaginary goods.  For the Stoics the supreme good is virtue, which consists in conducting one’s self according to reason, with a view to the good of the whole universe.  Riches, honor, health, beauty, all the goods of earth are nothing for the wise man; even if one torture him, he remains happy in the possession of the true good.

The Romans took sides for one or the other philosophy, usually without thoroughly comprehending either.  Those who passed for Epicureans spent their lives in eating and drinking and even compared themselves to swine.  Those calling themselves Stoics, like Cato and Brutus, affected a rude language, a solemn demeanor and emphasized the evils of life.  Nevertheless these doctrines, spreading gradually, aided in destroying certain prejudices of the Romans.  Epicureans and Stoics were in harmony on two points:  they disdained the ancient religion and taught that all men are equal, slaves or citizens, Greeks or barbarians.  Their Roman disciples renounced in their school certain old superstitions, and learned to show themselves less cruel to their slaves, less insolent toward other peoples.