In return for the liberty it then enjoyed, what a company of thinkers the Mind led forth?
There was a glory for every excellence, and a perfection so absolute that in everything but war even the Roman has stooped to imitation.

A Greek is now the model of the orators in the Forum; listen, and in every Roman song you will hear the rhythm of the Greek; if a Roman opens his mouth speaking wisely of moralities, or abstractions, or of the mysteries of nature, he is either a plagiarist or the disciple of some school which had a Greek for its founder.

In nothing but war, I say again, has Rome a claim to originality.

Her games and spectacles are Greek inventions, dashed with blood to gratify the ferocity of her rabble; her religion, if such it may be called, is made up of contributions from the faiths of all other peoples; her most venerated gods are from Olympus--even her Mars, and, for that matter, the Jove she much magnifies.

So it happens, O my son, that of the whole world our Israel alone can dispute the superiority of the Greek, and with him contest the palm of original genius.
"To the excellences of other peoples the egotism of a Roman is a blindfold, impenetrable as his breastplate.