Greek philosophy was probably first introduced into Rome by the Achæan exiles, of whom Polybius was one.[842] The embassy of Carneades the Academic, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic, followed six years afterwards. In vain the stern M. Porcius Cato caused their dismissal; for some of the most illustrious and accomplished Romans, such as Africanus, Lælius, and Furius, had already profited by their lectures and instructions.[843] Whilst the educated Romans were gaining an historical insight into the doctrines of these schools, the Stoic Panætius, who was entertained in the household of Scipio Africanus, was unfolding the mysterious and transcendental doctrines of the great object of his veneration, Plato. But although the Romans could appreciate the majestic dignity and poetical beauty of his style, they were not equal to the task of penetrating his hidden meaning; they were, therefore, content to take upon trust the glosses and commentaries of his expositors. These inclined to the New Academy rather than to the Old: in its skeptical spirit they compared and balanced opposing probabilities; and went no farther than recommending the adoption of opinions upon which they could not pronounce with certainty. Neither did the Peripatetic doctrines meet with much favour, although the works of Aristotle had been brought to Rome by the dictator Sulla, partly, as Cicero says, because of the vastness of the subjects treated, partly because they seemed incapable of satisfactory proof to unskilled and inexperienced minds.[844] The philosophical system which first arrested the attention of the Romans, and gained an influence over their minds, was the Epicurean.[845] But it is somewhat remarkable that, although this philosophy was in its general character ethical, a people so eminently practical in their turn of mind should have especially devoted themselves to the study of the physical speculations of this school.[846] The only apparent exception to this statement is Catius, but even his principal works, although he wrote one, “_de Summo Bono_,” are on the physical nature of things.[847] Cicero accounts for the popularity of Epicureanism by saying that it was easy—that it appealed to the blandishments of pleasure; and that its first professors, Amafanius and Rabirius, used none of the refinements of art or subtleties or dialectic, but clothed their discussions in a homely and popular style, suited to the simple and unlearned. There were many successors to Amafanius; and the doctrines which they taught rapidly spread over the whole of Italy. Many illustrious statesmen, also, were amongst the believers in this fashionable creed; of whom the best known are C. Cassius, the fellow-conspirator of Brutus, and T. Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero. All the monuments and records, however, of the Epicurean philosophy, which were published in Latin, have perished, with the exception of the immortal work of T. Lucretius Carus, “De Naturâ Rerum.”