190] Asiatico-Hellenic luxury, such as prevailed at Ephesus and Alexandria, transferred its empty refinement and its petty trifling, destructive alike of money, time, and pleasure, to Rome. … As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an economic revolution in its train. Residence in the capital became more and more coveted as well as more costly. Rents rose to an unexampled height. Extravagant prices were paid for the new articles of luxury. … The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. … 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 indicate 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 Sterne's English or Wieland's German without a knowledge of French. Men of senatorial families, however, not only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their speeches. … Under the influence of such circumstances Roman education 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 considerable knowledge of reading, writing, and counting. … Elementary instruction, as well us instruction in Greek, must have been long ere 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. The internal decomposition of Italian nationality had already, particularly in the aristocracy, advanced so far as to render the substitution of a broader human culture for that nationality inevitable: and the craving after a more advanced civilization was already powerfully stirring men's minds. The study of the Greek language as it were spontaneously met this craving. The classical literature of Greece, the Iliad and still more the Odyssey, had all along formed the basis of instruction; the overflowing treasures of Hellenic art and science were already by this means spread before the eyes of the Italians. Without any outward revolution, strictly speaking, in the character of instruction the natural result was, that the empirical study of the language became converted into a higher study of the literature; that the general culture connected with such literary studies was communicated in increased measure to the scholars; and that these availed themselves of the knowledge