ABSTRACT
Hellenistic influences, meanwhile, had become disseminated as well in the western regions of the Mediterranean, chiefly as a consequence of the Greek colonization of the coastline of Iberia, Gaul and southern Italy. Greek influence on elementary schooling extended also to higher learning. The legal basis to Roman life and the growing need for an apparatus of administration made Rome especially susceptible to the blandishments of Greek rhetoric. Cicero gave a clear account of the direction that the process of education was taking in Rome in the first century b.c.De oratore is the definitive statement; it issued from a context of a wide and implicit public acceptance, and throughout the first century its ideas evoked neither opposition nor criticism. Marcus Cato’s activities were prompted by his reaction against that growing trend, for he sensed the dangers to the Roman way of life once it adopted the most characteristic of all Greek developments, its style of education.
