THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XIV - Literature and Art

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Page 118

He and those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured on this account, and certainly the expressions of his displeasure are not unfrequently characterized by the bluntness and narrowness peculiar to him; on a closer consideration, however, we must not only confess him to have been in individual instances substantially right, but we must also acknowledge that the national opposition in this field, more than anywhere else, went beyond the manifestly inadequate line of mere negative defence.

When his younger contemporary, Aulus Postumius Albinus, who was an object of ridicule to the Greeks themselves by his offensive Hellenizing, and who, for example, even manufactured Greek verses--when this Albinus in the preface to his historical treatise pleaded in excuse for his defective Greek that he was by birth a Roman--was not the question quite in place, whether he had been doomed by authority of law to meddle with matters which he did not understand? Were the trades of the professional translator of comedies and of the poet celebrating heroes for bread and protection more honourable, perhaps, two thousand years ago than they are now?

Had Cato not reason to make it a reproach against Nobilior, that he took Ennius--who, we may add, glorified in his verses the Roman potentates without respect of persons, and overloaded Cato himself with praise--along with him to Ambracia as the celebrator of his future achievements? Had he not reason to revile the Greeks, with whom he had become acquainted in Rome and Athens, as an incorrigibly wretched pack? This opposition to the culture of the age and the Hellenism of the day was well warranted; but Cato was by no means chargeable with an opposition to culture and to Hellenism in general.

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