Without Greek everybody confesses that a full half (probably more) of the world’s entire wit and wisdom is locked away. Without Greek not merely must a man refuse to claim the least real culture; he is handicapped in all the professions and in most forms of business. He can have no commercial dealings with the Levant. If he travels anywhere East of the Adriatic, he can hardly make himself understood outside of the governors’ prætoria and the camps. Even into the literary Latin there have crept an enormous number of Greek terms, mostly having to do with matters of learning or luxury. In short without the mastery of Greek a Roman of any ambitions is hopelessly lost. A scholar need not, however, bother about any third language. Practically all Levantines can jabber _some_ Greek, even though their accent be abominable, and their native tongue Syriac or Coptic. As for Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons doubtless interpreters are needful if you visit their crude villages, but all their upper classes are now busily learning Latin just as they are learning the joys of Roman baths, circus races, and cookery. With Latin and Greek you are ready to meet the world. Greek is taught in the schools, but hardly as a painfully acquired foreign language. From infancy Titus, Decimus, and Junia have had Greek-speaking attendants, and their own parents (very fair Greek scholars) take pains to talk in good Attic part of the time while they play with them. As the children grow up about half of all the more elegant and refined conversation they must hear will be in Greek--and so through all their education. The result will be that Junia may turn out to be a learned lady like the poetess Julia Balbilla, the Empress Sabina’s friend, who has written some very fine Greek elegiacs,[101] “worthy of Sappho,” say her friends; or Titus if he dabbles in philosophy, may write a long treatise in good Attic prose as well as can his contemporary the destined emperor, Marcus Aurelius.