Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/351

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ROMAN VIEW OF GREEKS
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If we turn from material grievances to those of sentiment, we must note that the Roman and the Greek did not easily amalgamate in Greek lands. The Greek in Rome was both useful and agreeable, and most of the leading men found it convenient and pleasant to have educated Greeks as members of their household, not only to educate their children, but to supply themselves with the society they needed, to be friend, secretary, and the companion of leisure hours. We hear of this as early as the third century B.C., and with the increased interest in philosophy and art it became even more common. Nevertheless the average Roman despised the average Greek, and thought him shifty, supple, or false. And when he went into the Greek's own lands he felt it due to his dignity not. to be on too familiar terms with the “inferior people.” Even Cicero, writing to his brother Quintus, who was governing Asia (B.C. 60), says:—

“Among the Greeks themselves you must be on your guard against admitting close intimacies, except in the case of the very few, if such are to be found, who are worthy of ancient Greece. As things now stand, indeed, too many of them are untrustworthy, false, and schooled by long servitude in the arts of extravagant adulation. My advice is that these men should all be entertained with courtesy, but that close ties of hospitality or friendship should only be formed with the best of them: excessive intimacies with them are not very safe—for they do not venture to oppose our wishes—and they are not only jealous of our countrymen but of their own as well.”

We seem to hear an elderly Indian civilian dis-

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