But at length the civil wars have come to an end, and the Empire introduces, for the first time in the melancholy history of man, a state of universal peace. Greece still maintains her pre-eminence in literature and art, and her schools are frequented by the sons of the Roman aristocracy. Her elder poets serve as models to the literary genius of the Augustan age. … The historians form themselves on Attic prototypes, and the philosophers of Rome divide themselves among the Grecian sects, while in Athens the Platonists, the Stoics, the Peripatetics, and the Epicureans still haunt the scenes with which the names of their masters were inseparably associated. … The establishment of the Empire made but little change in the administration of Greece. Augustus, indeed, showed no great solicitude, except to maintain the country in subjection by his military colonies,—especially those of Patræ and Nicopolis. He even deprived Athens of the privileges she had enjoyed under the Republic, and broke down the remaining power of Sparta, by declaring the independence of her subject towns. Some of his successors treated the country with favor, and endeavored, by a clement use of authority, to mitigate the sufferings of its decline. Even Nero, the amiable fiddler of Rome, was proud to display the extent of his musical abilities in their theatres. … The noble Trajan allowed the Greeks to retain their former local privileges, and did much to improve their condition by his wise and just administration. Hadrian was a passionate lover of Greek art and literature. Athens especially received the amplest benefits from his taste and wealth. He finished the temple of Olympian Zeus; established a public library; built a pantheon and a gymnasium; rebuilt the temple of Apollo at Megara; improved the old roads of Greece and made new ones. … Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius showed good will to Greece. The latter rebuilt the temple at Eleusis, and improved the Athenian schools, raising the salaries of the teachers, and in various ways contributing to make Athens, as it had been before, the most illustrious seat of learning in the world. It was in the reign of this Emperor, in the second century of our era, that one of the greatest benefactors of Athens and all Greece lived,--Herodes Atticus, distinguished alike for wealth, learning, and eloquence. Born at Marathon, … educated at Athens by the best teachers his father's wealth could procure, he became on going to Rome, in early life, the rhetorical teacher of Marcus Aurelius himself. Antoninus Pius bestowed on him the honor of the consulship; but he preferred the career of a teacher at Athens to the highest political dignities … , and he was followed thither by young men of the most eminent Roman families, from the Emperor's down. … {1605}