ABSTRACT
When, at the beginning of the IInd century before our era, the Romans landed in Greece, their state of mind was rather like that of the young men who later, at the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, set out, when they had finished their studies, to see at last for themselves the places of which they had been told so much. So their feelings towards Greece show, at any rate at first, the warmth of youthful enthusiasm. This age, which was that of Ennius and Plautus, was for the Romans a period of burning phil-Hellenism, which we have every reason to believe sincere. The proclamation of the independence of Greece in 196 is an evidence of it. 1
