ABSTRACT

Long before the end of the Republic, it often happened that Romans with intellectual interests, when on official service abroad, would take the opportunity of visiting one or other of the main centres of learning, in order to listen to their leading scholars, and perhaps to join in friendly discussion with them. [1] Athens, Rhodes and various cities of Asia Minor welcomed such visits, which could give rise to a stimulating exchange of ideas, and sometimes led to an invitation to join a Roman retinue or to teach in Rome. Athens and the philosophical lectures and discussions of a flourishing New Academy proved a particular attraction. It was there that Metellus Numidicus had listened to the aged Carneades, its founder, and here Crassus, returning from his quaestorship in Macedonia in 110 B.C., met several of his pupils, as well as philosophers of other schools, and read the Gorgias of Plato with Charmadas. [2] Some years later, in 102, Antonius, visiting Athens on the way to Cilicia as pro-praetor (and accompanied, incidentally, by Cicero's uncle, Lucius) heard these same philosophers, and also the rhetoricians, including Menedemus, who later became his guest at Rome. [3] He also called at Rhodes. Such contacts opened the way for young Romans to enjoy a more extended period of study abroad. Usually, they would be younger than Cicero had been in 79-77 B.C., or than Julius Caesar was when, in 75, or thereabouts, he set out to study rhetoric with Molo at Rhodes. [4] Both Brutus and Cassius later studied in Greece, Cassius at Rhodes [5] and Brutus at Athens. Brutus became devoted to his teachers, especially Aristus, brother of Antiochus, of the Academy, and the orator Pammenes, with whom he read the whole of Demosthenes’ speeches. Empylus, a Rhodian rhetorician, also became his close friend. [6] Then, at the very end of the Republic, we find Horace, who would be about twenty, ‘seeking for truth amid the groves of the Academy’, [7] and he was followed there, under the Empire, by Ovid, [8] and, later, Lucan. [9] By Ovid's day, it would seem, Athens was beginning to lose its monopoly as the centre of study par excellence for young Romans, for Strabo tells us that many parents were then sending their sons to Marseilles, a city which was not only an ancient seat of learning but also much respected for its good morals. [10] But, before that time, particular interest attaches to a small group of students who were together at Athens in 45 B.C. It included not only Valerius Messala Corvinus, who became a distinguished statesman, orator, scholar and patron of literature under Augustus, and Calpurnius Bibulus, son of Brutus’ wife, Porcia, by her first marriage, and grandson of the younger Cato, but also Cicero's son, Marcus. [11] It is due to his appearance in Cicero's correspondence that we know at least something about student life at Athens at that time.