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Amid it all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his countrymen in thus representing to them in their native language the learning by which they might best be softened. "Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes. Intulit agresti Latio." Here, too, he explains his own conduct in a beautiful passage.
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit. The sun still hung high over a neat little farm among the Sabine hills, although the midday heat had given way to the soft and comforting warmth of a September afternoon. Delicate shadows from dark-leaved ilexes, from tall pines and white poplars, fell waveringly across a secluded grass-plot which looked green and inviting even after the parching summer.
For the King the Pyrenees, or so he fancied, ceased to exist; by a more magnificent conquest you overcame the Channel. If England vanquished your country's arms, it was through you that France ferum victorem cepit, and restored the dynasty of Comedy to the land whence she had been driven. In one respect, to be sure, times and manners have altered.
If the Romans did possess any taste for the fine arts, they left the exercise of it to the conquered to Greece, who had no longer her Solon, Lycurgus, Themistocles, and Epaminondas, but was unarmed, depressed, and had become the slave of Rome. 'Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit. How poor are such triumphs to those gained by the fine arts!
SENTIAM: future indicative. PERACTIO: the noun is said to occur only here in Cic.; cf. however 64 peragere; 70. HAEC ... DICEREM: the same words occur at the end of the Laelius; for habeo quod dicam Cic. often says habeo dicere, as in Balb. 34. Horace, Ep. 2, 1, 156: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes Intulit agresti Latio. De Off. 1, 1 2: philosophandi scientiam concedens multis etc.
Accordingly about the middle of the Epistle, a dilemma occurs from which no escape or deliverance is possible, except by an almighty falsehood. Take the leap Pope must, or else he must turn back when half-way through. 'Graecia capta ferum ietorera cepit, et artes Intulit agresti Latio.
On us the power of the material world has, through our very mastery of it and the dependence which results from that mastery, both inwardly and outwardly increased its hold. Capta ferum victorem cepit. We have taken possession of it, and now we cannot move without it.
The vices of the former were those of a coward; the vices of the latter were those of a tyrant. It may be added, that the Spaniard, like the Roman, did not disdain to study the arts and the language of those whom he oppressed. A revolution took place in the literature of Spain, not unlike that revolution which, as Horace tells us, took place in the poetry of Latium: "Capta ferum victorem cepit."
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