THE NEW EDUCATION OF THE ROMANS. The Greeks also taught the Romans how to write poems and histories. The first histories were written in Greek, but later the Romans learned how to write in Latin prose and poetry as good as much that had been written by the Greeks. Greek became the second language of every educated Roman, and thus he could enjoy the books of the Greeks as well as those written by Romans. The education of the Roman boy now began with the poems of Homer, and the young man's education was not thought to be finished until he had traveled in Greece and the lands along the eastern Mediterranean. QUESTIONS 1. How long did it take the Romans to conquer Italy? How long to conquer the lands about the Mediterranean? In what "Times" did all this happen? 2. Why did the Carthaginians and the Romans fight? What did Hannibal promise his father? What sort of a leader was Hannibal? 3. How did Hannibal reach Italy? How did he win the battle of the Trebia? 4. Why was he unable to force the Romans to yield? 5. How long before the beginning of the Christian Era did this war with Hannibal close? How long after the battle of Marathon, and after the death of Alexander the Great? 6. What other lands did the Romans conquer? How did they rule these colonies? 7. Were they better for the wealth and power they gained? What became of many of the Italian farmers? Where did the Romans get their slaves? 8. What good things did they learn from the Greeks? What was the Graeco-Roman world? EXERCISES 1. On an outline map of the lands around the Mediterranean mark on each land, Spain, Greece, northern Africa, Asia Minor, and Egypt, the dates at which the Romans conquered each, finding these dates in any brief Roman or Ancient History--Botsford, Myers, Morey, West, Wolfson. CHAPTER VII THE ANCIENT WORLD EXTENDED TO THE SHORES OF THE ATLANTIC NEW CONQUESTS OF THE ROMANS. The Romans had as yet conquered only civilized peoples like themselves, with the exception of the tribes in Spain and southern Gaul. Now the Roman armies were to push northward over the plains and through the forests of Gaul, across the Rhine into unknown Germany, and over the Channel into Britain, equally unknown. They were to be explorers as well as conquerors. In this way they were to carry their civilization to the Rhine and the Atlantic, and so increase greatly the part of the earth where men lived and thought as the Romans did and as the Greeks had before them. The ancient civilized world was beginning to move from its older center, the Mediterranean, toward the shore of the Atlantic.