THE RELATIONS OF LATIN 181 



but these have never overthrown, though they have modified, the 

 structure which was erected on a Latin foundation. Just as the 

 political institutions and the law of Rome form a large part of 

 the structure of every modern state, Roman roads playing the part 

 of modern railways in opening up new avenues for civilization, so 

 Roman thought is the predominating partner fti the intellectual life 

 of to-day. 



The first period in the history of the Latin language, so regarded, 

 is the period of Greek influence; and its most important subdivision 

 falls in the middle of the second century B. c., the time First 

 when Greeks like Polybius and Pansetius introduced to the Period 

 "Scipionic circle" at Rome an intenser form of Greek culture than 

 had been known there before. From this time onwards for over 

 three hundred years a new influence dominates Latin literature, 

 the influence of Greek philosophy and especially of Stoicism. Of all 

 the gifts of Greece to Rome, none was fraught with such far-reaching 

 consequences as the philosophy of the Stoa. The fact that it caught 

 the ear of Rome as no other system of philosophy ever did, that it 

 exercised a profound influence on life and thought from the middle 

 of the second century B. c. till the end of the second century A. D., 

 that it transformed the whole system of Roman jurisprudence 

 through the idea of the Rights of Man (the Jus Naturae), that it 

 became nothing less than the religion of the educated classes under 

 the early Empire, all this is unmistakable testimony to two facts: 

 (1) that there was no absolute breach of continuity between the 

 Greek and the modern world; and (2) that Stoicism was really 

 congenial to the Roman temperament. 



But what was Stoicism? Not purely Greek, it would seem: every 

 one of its men of note such as Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, 

 Aratus, and at a later date Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater, Pansetius, 

 Poseidonius, Athenodorus (Canaanites) hailed from the East, and 

 some of them were of Semitic blood : the period at which it sprang 

 into existence was that of the decay of the Greek city-states; the 

 atmosphere it breathed was that of the Greater Greece opened up by 

 the conquests of Alexander; the ideals it expressed were those of an 

 epoch of expansion, ideals of cosmopolitanism (the very word has 

 a Stoic ring), 1 of the brotherhood of man, of philosophic liberalism 

 and imperialism. Its monism and monotheism stood in marked con- 

 trast to the dualistic tendencies of Greek philosophy since Anax- 

 agoras. Altogether, though much be explained as development on 

 purely Greek lines, yet the probability, both external and internal, 

 of an Oriental and indeed a Semitic strain in Stoicism seems too 

 strong to be resisted. Greece, in fact, had grown into Stoicism but 



It seems to have come to the Stoics from the Cynic Diogenes; his answer 

 to the question woSairbs ef, is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, VI, 63. 



