[extropy-chat] CULTURE: Did Romans ruin Greek Culture?

[scerir at libero.it]

> Any thoughts?
> Natasha

Yes. 

"Graecia capta ferum victorum cepit et artes 
intulit agresti Latio"

- Horace, Epist. II, 1, 156-7

http://tabula.rutgers.edu:8080/cocoon/latintexts/horace/epistulae/2epistula1.xml

"Upon being seized, Greece seized her savage victor 
and brought the arts into rustic Latium" 

Susan Alcock wrote the excellent book "Graecia Capta: 
The Landscapes of Roman Greece" (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993).

The great mystery (at least to me) is why the Etruscan culture and
civilization (and the Etruscan population too) was completely wiped out 
by Romans.  What was the danger ? What was the superiority?
Look it is very rare that a culture, a civilization is completely wiped out
by another!

s.

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file below taken from the amazing YahooGroup:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nova-roma/

see also:  http://www.novaroma.org/forum/
and:  http://www.novaroma.org/main.html

The Impact of Hellenism On Rome
by Myrle Winn

The name Greek is no longer a mark of a race, but of an outlook, and 
is accorded to those who share our culture rather than our blood," 
said the Athenian orator Isokrates in 380 BCE.

By this time the Greek city-states no longer held political and 
military dominance in the Hellenic world of the eastern 
Mediterreanean. Greek culture however, continued to spread throughout 
the Mediterranean into Egypt and the vast Persian empire.

By the middle of the fourth centry, King Philip of Macedonia began to 
move toward an empire that united all of Greece. Upon his 
assasination in 336 BCE, his son Alexander (the Greek), became king. 
In one continuous campaign Alexander brought together the Greek and 
Eastern empires. The spread of Greek culture from the Himalayas to 
the Nile, blending the arts, cultures and institutions of Anatolia, 
Egypt, Syria and Iran producing multitude of ideals and behaviours 
that constituted what the heirs of the Athenians poleis and the 
remainder of the western world would come to know as Hellenism.

With the conquests of Alexander, the political horizon of these 
societies were extended over an immense area embracing diverse 
peoples and civilizations who knew little of each other, and far less 
of the ideals of Pericles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and 
Demosthenes until many years after their deaths.

Rome came under Greek influence very early in the eight century BCE, 
when Greek colonies were established in southern Italy and Sicily. 
For generations Roman people were surrounded by Hellenized Etruscans 
in the north, and in Naples and Sicily in the south. Though Hellenism 
was to leave its unmistakable mark on almost every aspect of Roman 
life and thought, they were originally very ambivalent about the 
Greeks. Though Hellenism was to leave its unmistakable mark on almost 
every aspect of Roman life and thought, they were originally very 
ambivalent about the Greeks. On one hand they were in awe of an 
obviously superior civilization, and yet there was hostility, for 
Greek culture amounted to a reversal of Roman values. The Greeks were 
literate, artistic, intellectual, sophisticated, delighting always in 
the pleasures of life, while the Romans were hard-working, boorish 
farmers with superstition ruling their lives and very often harsh 
words for the 'decadent' Greeks.

After the expulsion of the Roman kings(509 BCE) the influence of the 
Greeks on Italian convention began to increase. Just as Greece was 
reaching its climax of culture with regard to political, military, 
and artistic phases of development, the Roman farmers began to open 
their eyes and realize how very much the Greeks had to offer. The 
whole Italian peninsula came alive with a new civilization, similar 
to the Greek model, and fashioned after it. As time went on this new 
society began to gain more and more strength. Etruria began to abound 
with Greek works of art, and in Lucania and Campania Greek language 
and writing prevailed to a great extant.

The Greeks proved to be as gifted as a people as mankind has ever 
produced, achieving supreme heights in thought and letters. They 
absorbed the knowledge of the knowledge of the mysterious East, the 
lore of the ancient Caldeans, the arts and crafts they found in Asia 
Minor and the wonders of Egypt all to their liking. They added 
immediately to everything that they learned. It was the Greeks of the 
fifth and fourth centuries BCE who first became fully conscious of 
the power of the human wind, who formulated what the Western world 
long meant by the beautiful, and who first speculated on political 
freedom. Herodotus, 'the father of history,' travelled throughout the 
Greek world and far beyond, learning of the past. Thucydides, in his 
account of the wars between Athens and Sparta presented history as a 
guide to an enlightened citizenship and statecraft of the two great 
nations.

The most famous "Greeks" after the fourth century BCE usually did not 
come from Greece but from the Hellenized Near East, and especially 
from Alexandria in Egypt. In later years the cities of Alexandria and 
Antioch would play out a role possibly as large as Athens in the 
spread of Hellenism. These two cities in particular guaranteed the 
survival of the Hellenistic ideals and were the foundation of much of 
the brilliance and prosperity enjoyed by the Roman Empire at the 
height of its glory in the East.

Both, the Latin and the Greek branches of Hellenism came under the 
political domain of the Roman Empire, and thusly Hellenism was 
gradually transformed from the original Greek influence to the Roman 
state and finally to the society of Europe. But even before Hellenism 
came into contact with the budding Roman civilization, it had met and 
interacted with the rich and ancient societies of the Near East, and 
it was from this union rather than from an immediate contact with the 
fifth century Greece that Roman Hellenism was born. Rome herself 
became gradually Hellenized over the centuries of the Republic, 
absorbing the new culture at increasing speed as her power and wealth 
grew.

The greatest unifying effect of Hellenism; specifically between Rome 
and Greece; was communication. The spoken word, and the language of 
printing, sculpture, mosaics and architecture all of which they, and 
the various provinces shared. As the provinces absorbed the culture 
at a constant downhill rater, they also managed to keep their own 
unique local characteristics and incorporated them when exploring the 
arts themselves.

When the conquest of Magna Graecia and Sicily in the third century 
BCE, and the expansion of Roman power into the eastern Mediterranean 
in the second century, exposed the Romans to the cultural influences 
of the brilliant Hellenistic world, the ultra-conservatives among the 
Roman nobility recognized that Hellenism, with its emphasis on 
intellectualism and individual happiness, represented a threat to 
their traditional doctrine of subordination of self to family, class, 
state, and the gods, and was thus a threat to the stability of their 
rule. Accordingly, they launched a vigorous but futile campaign to 
eradicate these "dangerous new ideas" from Roman life. "For indeed it 
was not a little rivulet that flowed from Greece into our city, but a 
mightly river of culture and learning."(1)

The anti-Hellenic movement, of which Cato the Elder (234-149 BCE), 
was for a time the leader completely failed; eventually every branch 
of Roman learning; philosophy, oratory, science, art, religion, 
morals, manners, and dress surrenedered to Greek influence. By the 
end of the second century the ancestral Roman way of life had been 
transformed into a Greco-Roman culture that survived until the 
decline of the Roman empire.

As the cultural 'decadence' of Greece and the joining of the noble 
families took place, luxury in Rome was commented on through the 
Roman historian Livy(59 BCE- 17 CE). He spoke of how the army 
returned with military prizes of "bronze couches, costly 
coverlets...banquets were made more attractive by the presence of 
girls who played the lute and harp by other forms of 
entertainment..."(2), cooking became a fine art, and the cook who was 
once looked down as the lowest type of slave, was now considered to 
be the practitioner of a fine art.

As Rome grew and expanded, the wall of hypocrisy grew ever higher. 
Those who pointed their fingers of scorn at Greek "decadence," were 
themselves products of Hellenic education; Greek "decadence," were 
themselves products of Hellenic education; Greek was their second 
language and Athens or Rhodes the goal of their studies. No more 
perfect example could compete with Marcus Tullio Cicero (106-43 BCE) 
as a Roman intellectual schooled in Hellenism. The translator of 
Plato, Xenophon, Demosthemes, Homer and the tradgedians, he wrote a 
history of his own consulate in Greek, and tradgedians, and even his 
Latin writings, particularly the philosophical works, bear the stamp 
of their Greek models. And yet Cicero's speeches and letters are 
filled with unbelievably harsh judgments about the degeneracy of the 
contemporary Greek.

The affects of Greek life and its culture on Rome was to last 
forever. Commerce, war, and finally occupation and administration of 
new territories transported the Romans throughout the Mediterranean. 
Soldiers returning from eastern campaigns, and Greeks coming to Rome 
as hostages, envoys, traders, professional men and educated slaves 
familiarized the Romans with the Greek language and Greek ways. 
Doctors and philosophers brought Greek skills. The plunder of cities 
such as Syracuse and Corinth brought Greek works of art, great 
libraries and learned men to Rome and teased the appetites of Roman 
nobles for more. Few well-off Romans could resist the attractions of 
civilized Greek life. Roman children were now taught in both Greek 
and Latin, and it was now impossible to deny the benefits Rome was 
acquiring.

Roman philosophy was a part of Greek philosophy, Roman art was 
developed from Greek models. Roman gods were taken from the Greek 
world of religion, and in the second century the forerunner of the 
imperial cult began to take shape, paving the way for the divinity of 
Roman emperors. In the third century BCE came the first plays of the 
Greek model in Latin. The Romans even defined their early history to 
fit precisely into the Trojan cycle and Rome itself. As Rome grew so 
too did its magnetism for Greek artists and intellectuals, and she 
suddenly found herself equal to Alexandria.

In the third century the beginnings of Roman literature appeared, and 
a great deal of its form and content was modeled after the Greeks. 
However, though the words of Homer and Sophocles were within reach 
and would forever be considered golden, the writers of Rome such as 
Horace, Sallust, and Ovid all developed their own brilliant and 
unmistakable Latin flavor.

Actual works of Greek art came into Roman hands as booty from 
military campaigns. There are frequent references to the Roman 
borrowing of Greek forms and styles. The divisions between Greek and 
Roman art at times are difficult to determine. These difficulties 
arise because the Romans appropriated Greek forms but then frequently 
used them for different purposes, the result is superficially close 
but essentially different from the Greek. 

The 1st century BCE, witnessed a belated artistic impact of Greece 
upon the aristocratic and family traditions of Rome, and this 
influence caused remarkable developments in portraiture. The affluent 
of Rome were among the world's great art patrons. Surviving passages 
in Latin literature often refer to the decoration of their palaces 
and villas with Greek reliefs, decorated urns, sarcophagi, statues 
and portraits busts. Wealthy Romans commissioned copies of Greek 
works of all epochs ranging from sixth to the second century BCE.

Most Roman patrons knew very little of art, but they knew what they 
liked. Portraits were what they wanted above all. The mentality of 
upper-class Romans contained an ingrained sense of history and of 
facturalism and was deeply attracted by portraits which would record 
and analyze the features and expressions of the individual in his own 
social and historical setting and without sparing his physical 
oddities. They wanted a sculptural biography chronicling and summing 
up a man's achievement and experiences. They endowed the art not only 
with an incentive and with funds but with a Roman definiteness, 
purpose, and dignity and with an inspiring, challenging new range of 
subjects-namely their own resolute, tough, square faces, vigorously 
displaying every blend between northern endurance and southern 
exuberance.

At Rome there was an increasing demand for realistic portraits of the 
living as well as the dead, and in the final century of the Republic 
the Greek custom of erecting statues in honour of famous men was 
extended to Rome, where senior officials became entitled to set up 
portrait statues of themselves in public places.

The sculptors of the Roman portrait gallery that now began, and 
became one of the chief glories of Roman civilization, were only very 
infrequently Romans or Italians; They were very nearly all Greeks or 
Orientals of Greek culture and training. In common with artists, they 
had gained in esteem under the monarchies which followed Alexander. 
In this most Roman of all achievements it was Greek-speaking non-
Romans and easterners who were the experts. In particular, the 
employment of marble, used for sculpture and wall decoration in Roman 
homes from the first century BCE onward, involved techniques with 
which only those brought up in Near Eastern traditions were familar.

In the sculptural reliefs which decorate their monuments, the Romans, 
and their Greek or eastern artists, achieved undeniable originality. 
Scenic reliefs had many centuries earlier been a conspicuous feature 
of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian art, and in the fifth and 
fourth centuries BCE the Greeks began experimenting with figures 
placed at different levels in battle scenes and other elaborate low-
relief compositions reminiscent of paintings. Then in the official 
sculpture; and painting of the monarchs who succeeded to Alexander's 
heritage, attention was increasingly devoted to narrating past and 
present events of national significance.

Many of the ingredients in this past history of the sculptural relief 
were utilized, in original fashion, by the Greek sculptors of the 
Altar of Peace(Ara Pacis) erected by Augustus at Rome. Consecrated in 
13 BCE the Ara Pacis is adorned with rich and luscious floral 
decoration; the designs engraved upon the Augustan Altar include set 
pieces of legendary patriotic scenes.

Architecture also was but another facet of Greek life that the Romans 
borrowed various aspects of. The simple but exquisitedly executed 
Hellenic style had captivated the Romans as much as other 
perspectives of Greece had. From the Greeks they took the three basic 
orders of architecture; Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, based on 
different forms of column and foundation, and added to them a hybrid 
of their own, known as Composite.

Architecture became a common denominator in the religious lives of 
Rome and Greece. During the last century of the Republic the 
attachment of the old indigenous form of worship was more and more 
supplanted by the influence of modern Greek civilization. This 
admixture of Greek mythology and Greek scepticism soon tended to 
abolish the deep religious feeling characteristic of the old Romans. 
The religious indifference of the upper classes grew into a decided 
aversion to religion itslef, and many of the old temples fell into 
disarray. When finally repaired, the old Roman temples took on a 
decidedly Greek flavor.

With the influence of the Sibylline books, a great influx of Greek 
gods and Greek rites took place in the early centuries of the 
Republic. In the fifth century BCE the practice developed of 
consulting the Greek oracle of the Sibyl at Cumae. The first Greek 
gods had entered the Roman pantheon in the fifth century, but with 
the entry of Aesculapius, the Greek god of medicine in 293 BCE, many 
more were imported, until by the end of the third century the 
amalgamation of Greek and Roman religion was completed. 

Within the scope of religion, and as Rome became the dominant factor 
in Hellenistic politics, the Greek cities began to transfer to her 
the phenomenon of king-worship. With the expansion of the Empire, 
Rome came to rule eastern nations that were accustomed to worshipping 
their kings as gods and readily transferred their worship to Roman 
rulers.

Augustus and his successor, Tiberius, allowed the habit to continue 
in the eastern provinces during their reigns, however in the west it 
was discouraged. Rather than fostering the idea of divinity upon 
himself, Augustus encouraged the worship of Roma , the divine spirit 
of Rome. In the east teh emperor himself was a god, but his cult had 
less personal character than that of the Hellenistic monarchs. He was 
a god so long as he governed the State and because he governed the 
State. The sanctity of the State was embodied in the Emperor's person.

Religious belief once revered in Rome was shattered by the economic 
and social unrest of the second and first centuries BCE. The 
seemingly unlimited population of landless masses in Rome and the 
rapid individualization of Roman society under the impact of 
Hellenism, created an emptiness that the educated tried to fill 
through Greek philosophy, and the lower classes in Hellenic and 
Oriental mystery cults.

In 155 BCE the Athenian government send the heads of the three great 
philosophical schools; as a political embassy to the impressionable 
Romans: Carneades the Academic, Diogenes the Stocia and Critolaus the 
Peripatetic. In the course of their extended visit Carneades treated 
his Roman hosts to a spectacular display of "arguing both sides."

Carneades created a sensation at Rome, particularly among the young 
who came flocking to hear Hellenism's premier intellectual perform. 
Hellenism took Rome by storm once again, but this time it was not 
literature, art or myth that came garbed in Greek attire, but 
philosophy. It was Rome's first real encounter with that aspect of 
Hellenism, and it was to be a momentous one. Not all the Romans were 
happy with the learned ambassadors. Cato the Censor was determined to 
have all Greek philosophers banned from Rome. He publicly expressed 
his disgust at what he construed to be revolutionary notions, and 
exhorted the Senate to ride Rome of these troubles. His success was 
minimal and short-lived.

The Romans viewed Hellenistic intellectuals with suspicion, and the 
only Stoics; who believed in an uncomplaining performance of duty and 
paramount virtue; were really welcome in Rome.

A Greek Stoic, Panaetius, lived for many years in the home of P. 
Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the son of a noble Roman family. 
Panaetius taught Scipio and many others of nobility the principles of 
Stoicism. In a book "On Duties" Panaetius laid down the central ideas 
of Stoicism; that man is a part of a whole, that he is here not to 
enjoy the pleasures of the sense, but to do his duty without 
complaint. Educated Romans grasped at this philosophy as dignified 
and presentable. They found in its ethics a moral code completely 
congenial to their ancient traditions and ideals. Stoicism became the 
inspiration of Scipio, the consolation of Marcus Aurelius, and the 
conscience of Rome.

The period which followed the end of the third Macedonian War was one 
of great significant in the histyory of education in Rome. Thousands 
of prisoners were brought across the Adriatic, many of whom found 
employment as 'pedagogues' or tutors in Roman families. Greek slaves 
tutored Roman children in the Greek language and the classics: Homer, 
Hesiod, and the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Cleander. In the 
third and second centuries BCE, education was gradually 
institutionalized and merged with Greek intellectualism. Despite 
conservative opposition schools were introduced; these were largely 
in the hands of Greek slaves and freedmen. Literature, both Greek and 
Latin, philosophy, rhetoric, and other aspects of the liberal arts 
became part of the formal curriculum. For increasing numbers, formal 
education culminated in a trip to the "university centers" of the 
Greek East. Rome learned from Greek humanism.

It is clear that the Imperium Romanum was founded on the polis. 
Cities provided Rome with a convenient channel for her commands and 
her demnads for resources through taxation. The Romans themselves had 
neither the manpower nor the funds to staff the lower levels of 
provincial administration.

The situation was nothing new in the ancient world. The empires of 
classical Greece, those of Sparta and Athens, subordinated other 
cities without necessarily subjecting them to direct rule by imperial 
power. Their principle was inherited by the Macedonian monarchs: 
Alexander the Great, who took over and used the old organization of 
the Persian empire in Asia, created new cities and his successors, 
especially the Seleucides, added more, either re-enforcing old 
communities or creating them from their demobilized soldiers.

In the Hellenized provinces, Rome based her arrangements on their own 
cities from the time she first organized Siciliy onwards. In 
provinces, where there was an existing network of villages, she used 
these as a basis, until the majority of them became municipia under 
the Principate.

No Roman magistrates were regularly installed in the Eastern 
Mediterranean until 148-7 BCE. Instead commanders were sent, when and 
where necessary, to fight wars and to organize peoples who had 
voluntarily became allies or succumbed to Roman power.

Such indirect control was possible because the Romans were dealing 
with monarchs or with well-established local institutions in the form 
of a city or a non-urban political community, which they could on the 
whole manipulate to achieve stability in their own interests.

Roman citizenship was a unifying factor but a distinct privelege. 
Although Roman law was entreched inside colonies and municipia, 
elsewhere it co-existed with local law. Laws varied from province to 
province and even from city to city. 

The term that the Romans came to use for the areas directly 
administered by their officials was provincia, (appointment, task). 
Provincia was first used with the creation of the province of 
Macedonia in 148-7, and its Greek annexes in 146-145.

Rome, however, was cautious about direct intervention in Greek 
affairs. The designation of "free city" was given to many cities now 
in Roman control. They were allowed to be free, in possession of 
their own laws, free from garrisons and from paying tribute.(4)

Rome had been learning from her Greek mentors. Such declarations had 
been formally made about individual cities by Antiochus II and III 
and by Philip V; even Ptolmy II and Alexander had made similar 
statements.(5)

The freedom was conditional on the Greeks' continued friendship with 
Rome, but the Greeks had little doubt that they were still subject to 
a dominant power.

The cities in Africa were again treated differently. After the 
destruction of Carthage, Rome acknowledged the freedom of those 
cities which had supported her in the war against Carthage, and 
granted them their own land.

In the Hellenized provinces of the Greek east the existing Greek 
cities there provided the Roman empire with ready-made urban centers, 
but some sort of compromise was required between the Roman 
expectations and the long tradition of Greek city politics.

>From the time the Romans began to exercise power in Greece, they had 
tended to favor oligarchic constitutions, without trying to eliminate 
entirely any of the three many elements, which were the foundation 
not only of the Greek constitution but of their own republican system.

During the late Republic some Romans became citizens of Athens and 
actually were elected to various governmental councils - something 
which Cicero showed strong disapproval in 65 BCE.(6) It is believed 
that these actions were taken in order to ensure that the wealthier 
and more aristocratic section of society dominated politics and the 
judiciary.

This example of Athens shows the impact that Roman power could have 
on a Greek city, but also how this was mediated by the use of Greek 
institutions.

In the provinces of Asia Minor Rome established colonies of veterans 
at Antioch and Seleucia and founded Cremna, Parlais and Olbasa. 
Baths, theatres, temples, basilicas, markets, and a system of roads 
was begun, all adorning the new towns and cities. Here Rome seriously 
undertook the task of spreading Hellenism. She did not acquire any 
new methods, but rather followed in the foosteps of previous 
conquerors. Like the Hellenistic soveriegns, they founded new cities 
by bringing together isolated groups under common ground, worked for 
the development of a better municipal system and encouraged inter-
provincial trade.

With the battle of Actium (31 BCE) Augustus ruled alone. "Magis alii 
homines alii mores."(7) There was peace after many years and Rome was 
grateful. Much of the land captured was filled with barbarians, but 
much of the realm of Hellenistic culture. It was the Greeks who made 
the Romans conscious of their own individual character and while Rome 
assimilated the culture of the Greeks, and all they had to offer they 
also shaped their history, traditions and what it meant to be a Roman.

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