$8 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



Caesar (B.C. 48), would very probably cause their annihilation. At 

 all events, in the subsequent times, when Rome was the centre of 

 civilization as well as of empire, works of such a description became 

 Literature totally unfit to satisfy the wants of the age. A certain acquaintance 

 w ^h Greek literature, Greek philosophy, and Greek history, became 

 an essential accomplishment for the fashionable Roman; but this 

 acquaintance was nothing like the one which Cato and Scipio, which 

 Atticus and Cicero possessed. It was expected to be extremely com- 

 prehensive, 1 and, as all comprehensive knowledge must be when 

 popularized, it was proportionally superficial. To feed this appetite 

 for general information was the work of the needy men of letters 

 under the empire. In the time of the early Ptolemies and of the 

 kings of Pergamus their energies had been directed by the munificence 

 of those monarchs to the accumulation of vast stores of erudition on 

 particular subjects. The number of monographies, and the minute 

 subdivision of intellectual labour which prevailed under their patronage, 

 is scarcely equalled by the somewhat similar case of Germany at the 

 present day. Homer, a sacred book for the Greeks, was the principal 

 subject of their labours ; but indeed there was no classical author and 

 no literary or scientific question which did not employ the abilities of 

 a crowd of antiquarians or commentators. The prodigious stores thus 

 accumulated 2 formed the stock from which the litterateurs of Rome 



1 See Juvenal, Satir. vii. 229236, of the masters of his time: 



Vos saevas imponite leges, 

 Ut praeceptori verborum regula constet, 

 Ut legat historias, auctores noverit omnes 

 Tanquam ungues digitosque suos; ut forte rogatus 

 Dum petit aut thermas aut Phcebi balnea, dicat 

 Nutricem Anchisaa, nomen patriamque novercaa 

 Anchemori ; dicat, quot Acestes vixerit annos, 

 Quot Siculus Phrygibus vini donaverit urnas. 



Make it a point that all, and every part 



Of their own science be possessed by heart; 



That general history with our own they blend, 



And have all authors at their fingers' end: 



That they may straight inform you, should you meet, 



And ask them at the bath, or in the street, 



Who nurs'd Anchises ? from what country came 



Archim'rus' stepmother, and what her name? 



How long Acestes flourished ? and, in short, 



With how much wine ^Eneas left his court? 



Gifford's Version, p. 264. 



2 The number of volumes at Alexandria, in the time of Callimachus (about 259 

 B.C.) amounted to 532,000, or, according to the explanation of Ritschl (Die Alex- 

 andrinischen Bibliotheken, p. 28), 432,000. At the time of the destruction of the 

 great part by fire they had reached 700,000. The difference was caused, in a great 

 measure, by the accumulation of commentatorial or antiquarian works. Thus 

 Aristarchus is said to have written more than 800 volumes of commentaries alone. 

 (Suidas, sub v.) Some are said to have spent their whole lives on the elucidation 

 of single questions relative to Homer. (See Wolf, Prolegomena in Homerum, 

 sec. 45, 51.) Under Ptolemy Philadelphus an immense number of original works 



