Min. vol. iii. p. 487. They were accordingly given in the revised edition of 1868 from the Latin text Baehrens (Poet. Lat. Min. vol. iv. p. 347) follows Lucian Muller in reading -offucia-. --TR.]
4. A sort of -parabasis- in the -Curculio- of Plautus describes what went on in the market-place of the capital, with little humour perhaps, but with life-like distinctness.
-Conmonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco, Ne nimio opere sumat operam, si quis conventum velit Vel vitiosum vel sine vitio, vel probum vel inprobum. Qui perjurum convenire volt hominem, ito in comitium; Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cloacinae sacrum. [Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito. Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta quique stipulari solent.] Symbolarum conlatores apud forum piscarium. In foro infumo boni homines atque dites ambulant; In medio propter canalem ibi ostentatores meri. Confidentes garrulique et malevoli supra lacum, Qui alteri de nihilo audacter dicunt contumeliam Et qui ipsi sat habent quod in se possit vere dicier. Sub veteribus ibi sunt, qui dant quique accipiunt faenore. Pone aedem Castoris ibi sunt, subito quibus credas male. In Tusco vico ibi sunt homines, qui ipsi sese venditant. In Velabro vel pistorem vel lanium vel haruspicem Vel qui ipsi vorsant, vel qui aliis, ut vorsentur, praebeant. Ditis damnosos maritos apud Leucadiam Oppiam.-
The verses in brackets are a subsequent addition, inserted after the building of the first Roman bazaar (570). The business of the baker (-pistor-, literally miller) embraced at this time the sale of delicacies and the providing accommodation for revellers (Festus, Ep. v. alicariae, p. 7, Mull.; Plautus, Capt. 160; Poen. i. a, 54; Trin. 407). The same was the case with the butchers. Leucadia Oppia may have kept a house of bad fame.
5. II. IX. The Roman National Festival
6. III. XIII. Religious Economy
Chapter XIV
Literature And Art
The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. To estimate them correctly, it is necessary in the first place that we should glance at the instruction of the people and its recreations during this period.
Knowledge Of Languages
Language lies at the root of all mental culture; and this was especially the case in Rome. In a community where so much importance was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood. The Greek language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of Hannibal. In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which was the general medium of intercourse for ancient civilization, had long been a far from uncommon accomplishment; and now, when the change of Rome's position in the world had so enormously increased the intercourse with foreigners and the foreign traffic, such a knowledge was, if not necessary, yet presumably of very material importance to the merchant as well as the statesman. By means of the Italian slaves and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half-Greek by birth the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent reached even the lower ranks of the population, especially in the capital. The comedies of this period may convince us that even the humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin, which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of Greek than the English of Sterne or the German of Wieland without a knowledge of French.(1) Men of senatorial families, however, not only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their speeches--Tiberius Gracchus (consul in 577 and 591) so published a speech which he had given at Rhodes--and in the time of Hannibal wrote their chronicles in Greek, as we shall have occasion to mention more particularly in the sequel. Individuals went still farther. The Greeks honoured Flamininus by complimentary demonstrations in the Roman language,(2) and he returned the compliment; the "great general of the Aeneiades" dedicated his votive gifts to the Greek gods after the Greek fashion in Greek distichs.(3) Cato reproached another senator with the fact, that he had the effrontery to deliver Greek recitations with the due modulation at Greek revels.
Under the influence of such circumstances Roman instruction developed itself. It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially inferior to our own times in the general diffusion of elementary attainments. Even among the lower classes and slaves there was much reading, writing, and counting: in the case of a slave steward, for instance, Cato, following the example of Mago, takes for granted the ability to read and write. Elementary instruction, as well as instruction in Greek, must have been long before this period imparted to a very considerable 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.