DR. TH. NEUMANN. 135 



in which the universal languages of ages past were 

 spread out. International commerce, a factor very 

 peaceful indeed, obliges nations to-day to seek a means 

 of mutual intercourse, while during the ages of antiquity 

 conquerors marched out in order to subdue whole con- 

 tinents and to force their language upon the nations who 

 yielded to their swords. This is the case with Alex- 

 ander, the Great, who carried Greek culture and civiliza- 

 tion across the whole Orient far into Asia and to North 

 Africa ; the same holds good of the Romans, who spread 

 out their power at first by means of the sword, but then 

 sent peaceful colonists after their victorious eagles who 

 gave Roman language, Roman manners and customs to 

 the subdued nations. 



Thus the ancients possessed two universal languages, 

 the Greek in the East, the Latin in the West. But the 

 Greek had gained greater importance than being only a 

 means of intercourse in a great territory ; it was the lan- 

 guage of philosophy, which for the first time was treat- 

 ed as a separate science by the learned Greeks. The 

 young Roman nobleman, who sought finer education, 

 went to Greece in order to visit the schools of the phil- 

 osox)hers there, and if we want to give the name phil- 

 osophers to the Roman Eclectics, we must keeji in mind 

 that they were pupils of Greek philosophy, which had come 

 to the very gates of the Roman capital, conquering the 

 minds by the superior j)ower of its intellect and art. So 

 we have the strange spectacle of a mutual conquest, for 

 while the Romans carried their victorious eagles to the 

 South of Italy, which was then occupied by Greek 

 settlers and only a Greek colony, while they went 

 across the Adriatic and subdued the Hellenic peninsula, 

 Greek art, Greek science, Greek intellect, gained a 

 decisive stronghold in the very heart of the Roman em- 

 pire, even to the neglect of the Roman language, for 

 often it happened that young nobleman, educated by 



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