Rome’s introduction to Greek philosophy came at this unhappy moment, and through the tutelage of the most pitiful representatives of Greek metaphysical eristic, which had nothing of value to offer to Rome. In the year 155 Carneades, while serving on an Athenian embassy at Rome, gave a demonstration of his dialectic ability by lauding justice one day and the next proving with equal facility the futility of the preceding speech. The third book of Cicero’s _De Republica_, has preserved the gist of his argument. Young men were delighted with the show, but the aged shook their heads. The pragmatist argument seemed to them a dangerous introduction to ethics. Carneades, being a state envoy, must be respected, but Cato insisted that the senate finish its business with him speedily so that he might the sooner be sent home; and when during the next year two Epicurean teachers came to Rome to display their doctrines, the authorities ordered them to leave.[2] Roman cultural history might have been very different if the first philosophers had come with a positive message, if the Platonic dialogues had still been in vogue, or if the minds of the slow-moving Romans had been gradually prepared for the incoming skepticism by proofs that this new philosophy was itself but a transient phase. As it was, the leap from old-time orthodoxy to untrammeled agnosticism was too great. The danger to political and civic stability was fully sensed by the cautious senators. The demonstration of the ridiculous futility of the new learning, if culture produced men like these prattling Greeks, was all too patent. Rome was projected into a fear and hatred of metaphysical dialectic that a century of similar experiences hardly removed. Only Panaetius, the Stoic, had better success, for, concerning himself less with metaphysics, giving more attention to ethics of a type that justified Roman ideas of jurisprudence and political activity, he was welcomed by the small circle of men who acknowledged the leadership of the younger Scipio. Stoicism thus gained respectability, but it was Stoicism prudently narrowed to ethical dogmatism.