A praetor who had to present a grand spectacle asked Lucullus if he
would lend him one hundred purple robes; he replied by tendering two
hundred.
Lucullus remained the representative of the new manners, as Cato of
the old customs. For the ancients Cato was the virtuous Roman,
Lucullus the degenerate Roman. Lucullus, in effect, discarded the
manners of his ancestors, and so acquired a broader, more elevated,
and more refined spirit, more humanity toward his slaves and his
subjects.
=The New Education.=--At the time when Polybius lived in Rome (before
150) the old Romans taught their children nothing else than to
read.[139] The new Romans provided Greek instructors for their
children. Some Greeks opened in Rome schools of poesy, rhetoric, and
music. The great families took sides between the old and new systems.
But there always remained a prejudice against music and the dance;
they were regarded as arts belonging to the stage, improper for a man
of good birth. Scipio AEmilianus, the protector of the Greeks, speaks
with indignation of a dancing-school to which children and young girls
of free birth resorted: "When it was told me, I could not conceive
that nobles would teach such things to their children.
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