thus acquired to dive into that Greek literature which most powerfully influenced the spirit of the age—the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander. In a similar way greater importance came to be attached to the study of Latin. The higher society of Rome began to feel the need, if not of exchanging their mother-tongue for Greek, at least of refining it and adapting it to the changed state of culture. … But a Latin culture presupposed a literature, and no such literature existed in Rome. … The Romans desired a theatre, but the pieces were wanting. On these elements Roman literature was based; and its defective character was from the first and necessarily the result of such an origin. … Roman poetry in particular had its immediate origin not in the inward impulse of the poet, but in the outward demands of the school, which needed Latin manuals, and of the stage, which needed Latin dramas. Now both institutions—the school and the stage—were thoroughly anti-Roman and revolutionary. … The school and the theatre became the most effective levers in the hands of the new spirit of the age, and all the more so that they used the Latin tongue. {1641} Men might perhaps speak and write Greek, and yet not cease to be Romans; but in this case they were in the habit of speaking in the Roman language, while the whole inward being and life were Greek. It is one of the most pleasing, but it is one of the most remarkable and in a historical point of view most instructive, facts in this brilliant era of Roman conservatism, that during its course Hellenism struck root in the whole field of intellect not immediately political, and that the school-master and the maître de plaisir of the great public in close alliance created a Roman literature." _T. Mommsen, The History of Rome, book 3, chapter 13 (volume 2)._