#graecia capta

[harrowianthe]

[pupil-of-law]

when you’re so angry with everyone you go to a cell in the library and translate an entire play by aristophanes from the p.o.v of the angriest man in the world

[nunc2020]

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit.

[boatcats]

O Rosa Bella

Francis is  injured and care in the field brings back painful memories. Philippa is there to help him recover.

I don’t know what to say, y’all. I just. I need to apologize to the tiny fandom in advance for this fic. This is the meanest thing I’ve ever written. It’s mean enough that I put the CW under the cut. Let me know if I should add additional tags ‘cause - ouch, I’m sorry.

Dead dove, do not eat. Etc.

EDIT: No one dies! And there is a lot of love and comfort. Just. Uh. There’s a reason that characters need comfort ….

Shoutout to @stripedroseandsketchpads for encouraging me to be evil (ACCOMPLICE LIABILITY). And to @erinaceina-blog for the concept of Francis being shy around asking for affection and support (a concept she explores much better in her beautiful fic and which is so perfectly in character).

CW for 16th Century medicine, PTSD, medical trauma, flashback, dissociation, blood, injury, burns. And. Um. The Galleys.

“I know he seems fine,” Archie said, following Francis with his gaze as he stalked across the courtyard, supervising the unloading of horses and giving orders. “But the wound was bleeding bad that first night. We didn’t have much with us in the field. We had to seal it with a hot iron.”

This last sentence was said like a confession before Philippa’s level gaze, said as though Archie deserved censure.

Philippa only raised her eyebrows in response, so Archie struggled doggedly on. “The galleys… I knew. I knew about the brand and perhaps the memories… But he’d agreed it needed to be done. Then afterwards, he stopped talking. He didn’t talk for hours. He was conscious. He just didn’t respond. And then the next day he woke and seemed fine. He was talking, responding, taking charge.”

And Francis did seem fine now, muddy and pale though he was, wearing his bandages with applomb. He was his acidly competent self, but no more acid than usual.

He hadn’t cried out, though he’d jerked against the hands holding him steady. Archie winced at the memory.

“Of course he isn’t fine,” Philippa said, calm as a warrior saint in stained glass. And Archie breathed a sigh of relief, able at last to pass on his watch.

“Thank you for taking care of him, Archie,” she added. She seemed to mean it.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

–

When Philippa went to him, Francis was crouched before their little Chris, engaged in serious conversation. He smiled when he saw Philippa approach, lifting the child with his good arm and balancing him on his hip, then moving to kiss her on the forehead. He smelled of sweat and pinesmoke and blood. Philippa didn’t flinch at it.

“Welcome home, my love.”

“Yunitsa,” Francis said, and there was a world of ache in the word, a world of longing. “I’m glad to be home.”

Up close he looked exhausted, fine lines of pain tightening his eyes and the corners of his mouth. He swayed minutely on his feet, a fact that clearly worried him because he handed Chris off quickly to Philippa’s waiting arms.

He wrinkled his nose in an attempt at lightheartedness and said, “I need a wash.”

Chris wrinkled his own little nose in response, embracing the opportunity to tell his father to take a bath. “You do!”

Francis’s mouth twitched into a smile, his face relaxing as he reached to smoothe Chris’s hair. “You could use a wash yourself, mo cridhe. Why are you so sticky? Is that jam?”

“It might be. I don’t remember.”

“Ah, not an outright denial of jam, then. Don’t think an attack of forgetfulness will save you. If you can’t remember, you need a wash. The presumption is that it’s jam. It’s incumbent on you to convince me otherwise.”

“Francis,” Philippa interrupted gently, “you’re working very hard.” She turned to Chris with a smile. “Your father’s trying to be amusing but I think he needs his bed. Why don’t you run along and see if Kuzum can help you with the presumed jam.”

Chris nodded, planting a cheerfully sticky kiss on his father’s cheek before his mother set him on his feet.

Francis took a deep breath and waited to speak until Chris had rounded the corner. “Archie told you?”

“Yes.”

“I think I need to sit down. I’ve got perhaps a half an hour of competence left in me. And I need to …” He gestured at his muddy bandages.

“Do you want me to help you with it?” Philippa asked.

God, how she longed to simply take charge. She would have done nearly anything to spare him his planned half hour of competence. But she wouldn’t take the bit of control he had left. She would give him her trust and an offer of help, but nothing more forceful than that.

Francis sighed and lifted his fingers to her cheek, stroking along the edge of her hair. “‘That way a thorn expands to a rose.’” In his face she saw an echo of the courage it must have taken to agree to hot iron in the dark. Then he dropped his eyes and added, with a shyness that hurt her heart, “I’d be pleased if you sat with me.”

“Of course I’ll sit with you. I’m always glad to sit with you.”

–

He asked her to help with his shirt. She was very gentle, humming tunelessly as she untied his laces and eased the shirt over his head. He flinched, all the same, when her hand got too near his bandaged shoulder.

“Francis?”

“Sorry. I can do that.”

“Yes, of course.”

He untied the bandages with steady fingers and examined his shoulder clinically. “It’ll heal.”

It was red and angry and Philippa had to suppress a sympathetic wince. But Francis was right, it was healing. He would heal.

He set about cleaning it, expression distant, as though he were doing a boring task as a favor to someone else - balancing accounts or listing out supplies. Philippa wanted nothing more than for him to be done so she could hold him and hold him and not let him go.

At last, he dropped his hands to his lap and blinked dazedly at the wall.

“I think it’s clean. Non plus ultra. I can’t… I can’t do any more. I’m sorry, Yunitsa. It seems I’ve used my half hour.”

“Francis. My love. Dear heart. Can I stroke your hair?”

He blinked then nodded. “Yes.”

She ran her fingers over his forehead and through his sweaty curls, whispering to him:

A moment of happiness,

you and I sitting on the verandah,

apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

We feel the flowing water of life here,

you and I, with the garden’s beauty

and the birds singing.

“Can I finish up for you? We need to bandage this.”

He nodded, closing his eyes and leaning into her hand as she brushed it again over his forehead. “It feels like it did during the first week in the galleys. I can’t quite tell if I’m there or here.”

“I wasn’t with you then.”

“No. I would have remembered that, I think.” The corners of his lips curved up in a smile. “I would have got out much faster, too. Graecia capta ferum victorum cepit. I imagine you’d have taken down the entire government of France to secure our release.”

“Well, then.” Philippa smiled and swallowed down tears. “Let’s see if some salve might make it feel a little better.”

There was little left to do. All the same, his face was nearly as white as the bandages when she finished.

“Francis? Do you want to come to bed? Maybe we can leave the bath for another day.”

Francis nodded and let her help him to his feet. He shook himself as though attempting to banish an unpleasant thought, then was perfectly silent on the journey to the bed. Once beneath the covers, he still didnt say a word, but he nestled his body into Philippa’s arms when she joined him, pressing his face into her shoulder, and she knew that he knew her and knew himself to be safe. He fell asleep almost instantly and slept furiously, as though he were competing at it, dead to the world.

Philippa was worried he’d wake and once again be fine in a way that was anything but. Instead he opened his eyes hours later and blinked at her owlishly. Then the weight of the past days appeared to hit him all at once.

“Christ,” Francis said, covering his face with his hands.

“Well, no,” Philippa replied. “Just your wife. But I’m here. I’m here.”

That startled him into a laugh, and laughing he took her hand and kissed the fingers. “And so the thorn does become a rose,” he murmured.

NOTES: 

Yes, Francis and Philippa are reciting English translations of Rumi back and forth to each other.

[garak]

ok. here’s the plan. i do latin for four years. great scores in history and literature. i go to a liberal arts college, possibly knox, and get a phd in history, focusing on pre classical period greek literature and mythos. i work with classical period roman mythos as well; i can read the texts in their original form. perhaps i write a book. i get a teaching degree. i teach high school or middle school but NOT elementary school, little kids get on my nerves and i would end up punting one. i get tired of it. i’ve been saving money by not having lights and only having candles as well as day trading and playing the stock market. i move to italy, continue my work on cultural exchange between grecians and romans: graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, as horace once said. i write and publish a few more papers. i move back to america and start to teach again, this time as a professor, preferably at my alma mater. i start a class specifically focusing on the non hemogenized parts of classical study, looking at the myths surrounding africa, india, china, and how not everyone in the grecoroman world was a cishet white general of the army. i decide not to teach my students anything about cicero because he sucks. i retire happily at age 82 and live the rest of my days with my husband and three greyhounds named bubba satoriasis and liver. as i get older, i decide to write my will, giving everything to whatever poor child i accidentally became a father figure to, since i know my husband will die before me. i tell them to bury me in a church graveyard and plant hyacinths and forget me nots around my headstone. when the time finally comes, and my family is gathered around my deathbed, i will close my eyes and whisper these parting words: zephyrus was never the villain.

[theearlymorningmist]

140, 141, 144, 145, 148

140. Summer or Winter?

Summer!

141. Night or Day? 

Night

144. Dark, milk or white chocolate?

Dark

145. Tea or Coffee?

Tea

148. What’s your favourite quote?

GRAECIA CAPTA FERUM VICTORUM CEPIT ET ARTES INTULT AGRESTI LATIO. 

[silviascorcella]

Camilla Vaccari p/e 2017: L'Asie rêvée, un viaggio sognato nell’Oriente prezioso

Quante declinazioni inaspettate, ma altrettanto ricercate, può avere il lusso, oggigiorno? Domandina un pizzico provocatoria questa: eppure, trust me! quest’ouverture rigorosa vi accompagnerà dentro un racconto alla cui base giacciono i principi che a noi tanto piacciono. Ovvero, la passione vera per l’eccellenza del saper fare ad arte, la fantasia sbrigliata dalle tendenze capricciose, la determinazione a creare con le proprie mani una moda che è frutto di amore e grande preparazione, custodita nella discrezione. 

E, last ma assolutamente not least, quel tanto di orgoglio italiano che è sempre cosa buona e giusta valorizzare, assieme alla giovinezza dell’età e delle intenzioni, nonché delle aspirazioni.

Or dunque, questa è una storia che nasce dalla passione vasta che guida le mani sagge di Camilla Vaccari, e prende ancora forma nella nuova collezione della linea ribattezzata proprio con il suo nome, “Camilla”, dedicata alla stagione Primavera-Estate 2017!

Alle orecchie degli affezionati lettori di questa nostra rubrica, il nome di Camilla certo risuonerà familiare: è stata lei, infatti, la voce narrante che, qualche tempo fa, ha guidato la sottoscritta nella scrittura dell’articolo a proposito di “Lo Fai: Handmade Bar”, spazio sinergico ubicato nella città di Piacenza che al suo interno abbraccia e promuove la creatività nuova allacciata al saper fare che il made in Italy insegna a chi ne sa accogliere i valori intramontabili. Camilla appartiene proprio a questa cerchia: una cerchia intensa, composta di creativi sinceri, che tra l’immaginazione brillante e il talento allenato delle mani plasmano creazioni fatte della stessa sostanza del lusso.

Ed eccoci riagganciati all’ouverture di cui sopra: scorrere le creazioni nate dal talento risoluto e garbato di Camilla non solo accarezza il gusto e solletica il desiderio, ma riesce a spostare gli orizzonti delle categorie un po’ più in là, oltre le consuetudini, là dove tutto è amore per la bellezza ben fatta. E consapevolezza.

S’intitola “L'Asie rêvée” la nuova collezione p/e 2017 di Camilla: una carrellata di abiti che narrano di un’ispirazione preziosa, nata nell’intimità di una passione curata attraverso l’immersione curiosa nello studio denso delle arti e dei costumi, dedicata ad un Oriente tanto reale quanto un sogno lucido, dove ogni dettaglio appare all’immaginazione così tangibile come un’esperienza vissuta davvero fin nel profondo, e dunque del tutto lontano da facili orientalismi tout-court. Tale predilezione che Camilla nutre per quest’affascinante terra lontana in occasione della collezione dedicata alla bella stagione corrente si sofferma ad Istanbul, in quello scrigno maestoso che è Topkapi Sarayi, il museo Ottomano della città.

Un universo di bellezza intensa, di ricchezza ed opulenza, di sfavillii e sofisticatezza che non sono meri atti di vanità, ma il frutto di una cultura millenaria composta dalla stratificazione dei saperi di vari popoli: Camilla racconta questo bagaglio inestimabile attraverso il suo lessico inconfondibile, fatto di abiti dalle forme di un’eleganza asciutta che nella sua essenzialità lascia spazio alla ricercatezza dei dettagli lussuosi, racchiusi nella fattura d’alta sartoria dove sono le mani a prendersi cura delle lavorazioni e delle applicazioni preziose, mentre la scelta dei tessuti è riservata rigorosamente a quelli d’origine naturale e pregiata, come le sete e lo shantung dalle tinte accese e i riflessi metallici, che restituiscono indosso e nello sguardo gli stessi baluginii dei manufatti ottomani. 

Ed in più, un pizzico di ellenismo sapiente, quello racchiuso nella celebre citazione oraziana “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit”, ovvero un’ode alla forza della cultura classica cantata negli abiti con scollo a drappeggio e nelle plissettature.

Scegliere un capo ideato, realizzato e firmato da Camilla significa indossare un vero pezzo unico: con tutti i pregi del vero lusso, quello che ha a che fare con l’eccellenza accurata della qualità, impreziosito da un invito ad un viaggio fantastico, nel vero senso del termine!

Silvia Scorcella

[published on Webelieveinstyle]

[quotedacademia]

Graecia capta ferum victorem coepit et artes Intulit agresti Latio.

Grecia, una vez conquistada conquistó a su feroz vencedor a introdujo las artes en el agreste Lacio.

Horacio.

[harrowianthe]

[alda-rana]

First question: Italy was not a political entity in Antiquity, it was just the name of a geographical region. Inside it, people would have considered themselves Italians but mostly Volsci, Etruscans, Oscans, Greeks (lots of those in the southern part), and so on...

Then that little upstart city called Rome started conquering the whole peninsula, and in 89BC, a law made every free man in Italy a Roman citizen. From that point on, yeah, they would have called themselves Romans. By the end of the 1st century BC there wasn’t really any significant difference between a Roman citizen from Rome and a Roman citizen from, say, Pompeii; they had citizenship, they spoke Latin, they were members of a same political and cultural entity. Romans the lot of them.

As for Greek influence: how so! As the poete Horace wrote, graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, “conquered Greece conquered its uncouth victor”. When part of the Greek world fell under Roman influence (first the Greek colonies in Italy and North Africa, then mainland Greece itself that was captured in 146 BC), Romans become enamoured with Greek culture and appropriated it almost wholesale. Greek became a prestige language for cultured Romans; they would use it among themselves instead of Latin. Rich people bought Greek slaves to teach their children, and it was a common thing for (rich) young men to travel to Athens to learn philosophy and rhetorics there. The main Greek literary genres, that is epic poetry, tragedy, comedy... were imported into the Roman language. The first Roman author we know of was actually of Greek heritage; his name was Livius Andronicus, a Roman nomen followed by a Greek cognomen, and he is known to have translated Homer into Latin in the 3rd century BC. As for theatre, the first comedies written by Plautus and Terentius were adaptations from Greek plays, which is why all the characters have Greek names, the plays tend to have Greek titles and are set in Greece. Later, Greek mythology became a subject of choice for Latin poets: lots of Greek myths are actually known today not through Greek literature but through Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a Latin work.

The Roman language started incorporating tons of Greek words; two letters, Y and Z, were “stolen” from Greek and added to the Latin alphabet just to write down sounds that didn’t exist in Latin at the time.

Roman deities like Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Juno and so on were assimilated with their Greek equivalents, even though they were originally quite different (though they were never totally identical, Mars was a lot more important to Romans than Ares was to Greeks for example).

I’m probably leaving stuff out but I have to go since I’m teaching an online class in five minutes and I’m still not dressed^^ I suppose there’s nothing stopping me from teaching in my pyjamas since I don’t turn the camera on but it’s a matter of Principle.

I know greeks called themselves romans, but do you know if italians called themselves romans too or was that something we (the west) just called them? Also is it true that ancient rome was heavily influenced by Greece? Thanks 😊

I think they did, for some period. But I am not sure :/ Maybe some Italian friends or people who study the Italian culture can answer?

The Roman culture was influenced by the Greek to a big extend but I cannot name all the influences. I would say the influences were on fashion, architecture, language and religion mostly...

[release-info]

Following the assassination of Phillip II, his son Alexander III (“The Great”) assumed the leadership of the League of Corinth and launched an invasion of the Persian Empire with the combined forces of the League in 334 BC. Undefeated in battle, Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire in its entirety by 330 BC. By the time of his death in 323 BC, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to India. His empire split into several kingdoms upon his death, the most famous of which were the Seleucid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and the Indo-Greek Kingdom. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch, Seleucia, and the many other new Hellenistic cities in Asia and Africa.[47] Although the political unity of Alexander’s empire could not be maintained, it resulted in the Hellenistic civilization and spread the Greek language and Greek culture in the territories conquered by Alexander.[48] Greek science, technology, and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period.[49] Hellenistic and Roman periods (323 BC – 4th century AD) Main articles: Hellenistic Greece and Roman Greece See also: Wars of Alexander the Great and Roman Empire The Antikythera mechanism (c. 100 BC) is considered to be the first known mechanical analog computer (National Archaeological Museum, Athens). A view from the ancient royal Macedonian tombs in Vergina After a period of confusion following Alexander’s death, the Antigonid dynasty, descended from one of Alexander’s generals, established its control over Macedon and most of the Greek city-states by 276 BC.[50] From about 200 BC the Roman Republic became increasingly involved in Greek affairs and engaged in a series of wars with Macedon.[51] Macedon’s defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC signalled the end of Antigonid power in Greece.[52] In 146 BC, Macedonia was annexed as a province by Rome, and the rest of Greece became a Roman protectorate.[51][53] The process was completed in 27 BC when the Roman Emperor Augustus annexed the rest of Greece and constituted it as the senatorial province of Achaea.[53] Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace’s famous statement: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit (“Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive”).[54] The epics of Homer inspired the Aeneid of Virgil, and authors such as Seneca the younger wrote using Greek styles. Roman heroes such as Scipio Africanus, tended to study philosophy and regarded Greek culture and science as an example to be followed. Similarly, most Roman emperors maintained an admiration for things Greek in nature. The Roman Emperor Nero visited Greece in AD 66, and performed at the Ancient Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation. Hadrian was also particularly fond of the Greeks. Before becoming emperor, he served as an eponymous archon of Athens. The Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens, built in 161 AD Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenised East were instrumental in the spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries,[55] and Christianity’s early leaders and writers (notably St Paul) were mostly Greek-speaking, though generally not from Greece itself.[56] The New Testament was written in Greek, and some of its sections (Corinthians, Thessalonians, Philippians, Revelation of St. John of Patmos) attest to the importance of churches in Greece in early Christianity. Nevertheless, much of Greece clung tenaciously to paganism, and ancient Greek religious practices were still in vogue in the late 4th century AD,[57] when they were outlawed by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in 391–392.[58] The last recorded Olympic games were held in 393,[59] and many temples were destroyed or damaged in the century that followed.[60] In Athens and rural areas, paganism is attested well into the sixth century AD[60] and even later.[61] The closure of the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens by the Emperor Justinian in 529 is considered by many to mark the end of antiquity, although there is evidence that the Academy continued its activities for some time after that.[60] Some remote areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remained pagan until well into the 10th century AD.[62] http://bit.ly/2QR5IV1

[angulusridet]

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio.

- Orazio

[benito-cereno]

Not a Latin question, but rather a Roman one: What's your favorite aspect of Roman culture that's thoroughly Roman (as opposed to, say, borrowed, stolen or adapted from the Greeks)?

This is a question that’s been sitting in my ask box for a while, but I was just scrolling down and happened to see it. I think I didn’t have an immediate answer to this question when it first arrived, but I think I have one now.

Rome as a civilization was established as a refuge for fugitives and the homeless and people who otherwise did not have anywhere else to go (if you believe the stories). It was so dude-heavy that they literally had to steal women from their neighbors so that they did not die out in one generation (again, if you believe the stories).

They had very little culture or philosophy of their own, as they co-opted so much from the Greeks whom they defeated--the line from Horace is “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio,” or “captive Greece took her savage conqueror captive and bestowed her arts upon rustic Latium.” The words “savage” and “rustic” imply what was true about early Rome: they were uncultured and largely agrarian.

Rome was good at two things, and they knew it: fighting and farming. Their ideal hero was Cincinnatus, who laid down his plow to take up the toga and become dictator of Rome in its time of need, only to lay down the toga and resume the plow when the threat was past.

You can tell a lot about a culture by the literature that most defines it, especially if it has a national epic. A true epic captures the ethos of its culture within its themes. The Iliad reveals a great deal about archaic Greece’s shame-based morality, while the Argonautica shows a shift to the more emotional man of the Hellenistic period.

The key attribute of the protagonist of Rome’s great epic--Vergil’s Aeneid--is pietas, the defining trait for better or worse of the hero Aeneas, whose epithet is Aeneas pius. It is easy (indeed facile) to translate these words by their direct derivatives--piety and pious--but that misses the mark by a pretty wide margin.

For a Roman, pietas was not merely a religious devotion; rather, it was the ability to know what your obligations are, and to whom, and it what order they were important. Your duty lies with god, with country, with family, usually but not always in that order. Aeneas constantly has to make the tough decisions--often to his own detriment--because he knows he has to do what he has to do. He’s not “pious Aeneas.” He’s “duty-bound Aeneas.”

To me, there is something very admirable about having a national ethos centered around having your priorities straight and keeping your eyes focused on the larger good, even if it means personal sacrifice. Our personal obligations may not be the same as Aeneas’s, but I feel like there is still an abstract worth emulating there.

[novicescholar-blog]

Section 1 : Plautus’ Aulularia

Introduction notable quotes

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio. 

Greece, the captive, made her savage victor captive, and brought the arts into rustic Latium. - Horace on Rome’s debt to Greek culture

Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Grai! Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade.

Make way, you Roman writers, make way, Greeks! Something greater than the Iliad is born. - Propertius on Vergil’s Illiad

graeculus esuriens

Starving little Greek - Juvenal on Greek upstarts in the city of Rome

We are governing a civilised race, in fact the race from which civilisation is believed to have passed to others, and assuredly we ought to give civilisation’s benefits above all to those from whom we have received it. Yes, I say it without shame, especially as my life and record leave no opening for any suspicion of indolence or frivoloty: everything that I have attained I owe to those pursuits and disciplines which have been handed down to us in the literature and teachings of Greece. Therefore, we may well be thought to owe a special duty to this people over and above our common obligation to mankind; schooled by their precepts, we must wish to exhibit what we have learned before the eyes of our instructors.

- Cicero, ad Quintum 1.1

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part one Plautus’ comedies

Titus Macc(i)us Plautus 250-180 bc

wrote circa 130 comedies of which 19 survive

Drew inspiration from earlier Greek models

Aulularia based on a play by the Athenian Menander (340-290)

written for production at Roman festivals (feriae, ludi)

Originals were written in verse

Aulularia begins with the entry of the family Lar ( household god) 

Gives us an outline of the family and Euclio’s miserliness

Vocab for introduction

https://decks.memrise.com/course/5495011/reading-latin/1/

https://pastebin.com/uSj7b0BT

[emanfarahahmed-blog]

2.Early Empire

Life in Greece continued under the Roman Empire much the same as it had previously. Roman culture was highly influenced by the Greeks; as Horace said, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror") [3]. The epics of Homer inspired the Aeneid of Virgil, and authors such as Seneca the younger wrote using Greek styles. While some Roman nobles regarded the Greeks as backwards and petty, many others embraced Greek literature and philosophy. The Greek language became a favorite of the educated and elite in Rome, such as Scipio Africanus, who tended to study philosophy and regard Greek culture and science as an example to be followed.

Similarly, most Roman emperors maintained an admiration for things Greek in nature. The Roman Emperor Nero visited Greece in AD 66, and performed at the Ancient Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation. He was honored with a victory in every contest, and in the following year he proclaimed the freedom of the Greeks at the Isthmian Games in Corinth, just as Flamininus had over 200 years previously. Hadrian was also particularly fond of the Greeks; before he became emperor he served as an eponymous archon of Athens. He also built his Arch of Hadrian there.

Many temples and public buildings were built in Greece by emperors and wealthy Roman nobility, especially in Athens. Julius Caesar began construction of the Roman agora in Athens, which was finished by Augustus. The main gate, Gate of Athena Archegetis, was dedicated to the patron goddess of Athens, Athena. The Agrippeia was built in the center of the newly built Roman Agora by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. The Tower of the Winds was built by Andronicus of Cyrrhus in 50 BC, although it may predate the entire Roman section of Athens. The emperor Hadrian was a philhellene and an ardent admirer of Greece and, seeing himself as an heir to Pericles, made many contributions to Athens. He built the Library of Hadrian in the city, as well as completing construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, some 638 years after its construction was started by Athenian tyrants, but ended due to the belief that building on such a scale was hubristic. The Athenians built the Arch of Hadrian to honor Emperor Hadrian. The side of the arch facing the Athenian agora and the Acropolis had an inscription stating "This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus." The side facing the Roman agora and the new city had an inscription stating "This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus." Adrianou (Hadrian Street) exists to this day, leading from the arch to the Roman agora.

The Pax Romana was the longest period of peace in Greek history, and Greece became a major crossroads of maritime trade between Rome and the Greek speaking eastern half of the empire. The Greek language served as a lingua franca in the East and in Italy, and many Greek intellectuals such as Galen would perform most of their work in Rome.

During this time, Greece and much of the rest of the Roman east came under the influence of Early Christianity. The apostle Paul of Tarsus preached in Philippi, Corinth and Athens, and Greece soon became one of the most highly Christianized areas of the empire.