[39] Education and study insensibly inspired the natives of those countries with the sentiments of Romans; and Italy gave fashions, as well as laws, to her Latin provincials.

They solicited with more ardor, and obtained with more facility, the freedom and honors of the state; supported the national dignity in letters [40] and in arms; and at length, in the person of Trajan, produced an emperor whom the Scipios would not have disowned for their countryman.

The situation of the Greeks was very different from that of the barbarians.

The former had been long since civilized and corrupted.

They had too much taste to relinquish their language, and too much vanity to adopt any foreign institutions.