The Romans’ enthusiasm for Greek culture and literature is well attested. Equally well attested is how this enthusiasm did not translate into to kind treatment of actual Greeks. This early disconnect feeds into Wallace Hadrill’s theory of how in this period Romanization and Hellenization are the two effects of the same process. Even at this period, Romanization is marked by the particular politicization of certain spaces, while Hellenization refers to the cultural practice of people in those places. That these two movements are part of the same process is perhaps best seen in Roman education: for the Romans, it was perfectly obvious that a thoroughly Roman education was grounded in Greek literature and philosophy, in the original Greek.
How did these Roman aristocrats learn Greek? From Greek slaves. Unfortunately, we primarily know about this because of a description of an exception: Plutarch reports how Cato dismissed his son’s Greek tutor so that he could oversee his son’s education personally. This tutor was a Greek slave named Chilon, who had a good reputation as a teacher:
“After the birth of his son, no business could be so urgent, unless it had a public character, as to prevent him from being present when his wife bathed and swaddled the babe. For the mother nursed it herself, and often gave suck also to the infants of her slaves, that so they might come to cherish a brotherly affection for her son. As soon as the boy showed signs of understanding, his father took him under his own charge and taught him to read, although he had an accomplished slave, Chilo by name, who was a schoolteacher, and taught many boys. Still, Cato thought it not right, as he tells us himself, that his son should be scolded by a slave, or have his ears tweaked when he was slow to learn, still less that he should be indebted to his slave for such a priceless thing as education.”
(Plutarch, Life of Cato 20.2-4, trans. B. Perrin)
Here its quite clear that for Cato the problem with his son’s education was a tangled combination of how the tutor was both a slave and a Greek.
Cicero, who lived at the end of the Republic, provides some evidence for this attitude from earlier periods. In Pro Balbo 28, he notes how a Greek freedman Gnaeus Publicius Menander was taken to Greece as an interpreter. Although he doesn’t specify when he did given how there are many accounts of Romans being fluent in Greek in the 3rd century, that this use of a freedman’s translating abilities was more for the Romans to force the Greeks to speak to use this translator and thereby note his inferior status to the Romans.
How did these Roman aristocrats learn Greek? From Greek slaves. Unfortunately, we primarily know about this because of a description of an exception: Plutarch reports how Cato dismissed his son’s Greek tutor so that he could oversee his son’s education personally. This tutor was a Greek slave named Chilon, who had a good reputation as a teacher:
“After the birth of his son, no business could be so urgent, unless it had a public character, as to prevent him from being present when his wife bathed and swaddled the babe. For the mother nursed it herself, and often gave suck also to the infants of her slaves, that so they might come to cherish a brotherly affection for her son. As soon as the boy showed signs of understanding, his father took him under his own charge and taught him to read, although he had an accomplished slave, Chilo by name, who was a schoolteacher, and taught many boys. Still, Cato thought it not right, as he tells us himself, that his son should be scolded by a slave, or have his ears tweaked when he was slow to learn, still less that he should be indebted to his slave for such a priceless thing as education.”
(Plutarch, Life of Cato 20.2-4, trans. B. Perrin)
Here its quite clear that for Cato the problem with his son’s education was a tangled combination of how the tutor was both a slave and a Greek.
Cicero, who lived at the end of the Republic, provides some evidence for this attitude from earlier periods. In Pro Balbo 28, he notes how a Greek freedman Gnaeus Publicius Menander was taken to Greece as an interpreter. Although he doesn’t specify when he did given how there are many accounts of Romans being fluent in Greek in the 3rd century, that this use of a freedman’s translating abilities was more for the Romans to force the Greeks to speak to use this translator and thereby note his inferior status to the Romans.