Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Plutarch and the Greece of His Age
decessors, they are far from being unworthy of pains
taking study. If men reflected less, they did more,
or were at least active in a larger sphere. Greeks
were now to be found in all parts
world; they still provided
of the civilized
its intellectual nourish
ment; Athens was still its university and it is of the
Greeks of these centuries more than of the earlier
that Horace could say,
Graeca capta ferum victorem cepit et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
Greek culture had become so widespread that a
sojourn in Athens was no longer necessary for those
who were ambitious to learn the language in its
purest form. Though this city was still looked upon
with a certain filial regard, half a score of rivals had
sprung up in three continents that at times seriously
threatened its prestige. The centuries that meet at
the birth of Christ are the link that unites the golden
age of Greek literature with the Renaissance. In
them was coined much of the small change of Greek
thought, which was by reason of its form the more
widely circulated. That much of it was silver, so to
speak, only made it the more generally available.
But while the writings of these three or four cen
turies have suffered greatly from neglect at the hands
of the moderns, the language in its narrower sense,
except that of the New Testament, has been almost
wholly ignored. It needs but a brief examination of
the current Greek dictionaries to convince the stu
dent that here is an ample field for profitable work.
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