What does Greece has conquered her rude conqueror mean?

Answer 1

This expression refers to the great influence the Greeks had on the Romans. Some people think that the Romans conquered the Greeks, but the Greeks conquered them culturally. The 'rude' in the expression reflect a prejudice according to which the Romans were fairly uncivilised until they were 'civilised' by the Greeks. However, this does not correspond with the facts. There had been a tendency among historians to think that Greek influence started with Rome's contacts with mainland Greece, which, by the way, started before Roman involvement in Greece. However, recent archaeological finds have drawn attention to the fact that the Greeks started influencing the Romans centuries earlier than this, since the early days of Rome, but from Italy.

Several Greek city-states established colonies (settlements) in southern Italy and Sicily in the 8th and 7th century BC, presumably due to insufficient land to support population growth in the homeland. Being a more advanced civilisation, their arrival had a big impact on all the Italic peoples they came in contact with during the archaic (early) period. This led, among other things, to the adoption and adaptation of the western Greek alphabet by all Italic peoples, including the Latins and the Romans (the Romans were Latins). The Italic peoples also adopted stone houses and temples and the columns used to support roofs or for porticoes of the Greeks.

Recent archaeological finds have shown that the archaic Latins were influenced by the Greeks of Cumae (a Greek city near Naples, some 125 miles south of Rome) as well as the Etruscan neighbours.

Already the 6th century BC the Romans started using the books of the Sibylline who were Greek oracles, some of whom lived in Greek city of Cumae in Italy. They also adopted the Greek god Apollo, who was an oracular god (that is he was the god of the oracles) and built the Temple of Apollo Medicus (the doctor) in in 431. BC. Apollo's son, who mediated Apollo's association with medicine and healing, was also adopted. The Senate was instructed to build a temple in his honour by the Sybil oracles in 293 BC. The Romans also procured a statue of him from Greece. The Romans also adopted the Greek twin gods Castor and Pollux and the mythology associated with them by the late 5th century. They turned Heracles, the Greek mythological hero (whom they called Hercules) into a god because he was said to have killed Cacus, a fire-breathing giant who was terrorising the Roman countryside and founded an altar near the city during his 10th labour. During the Second Punic War (218-202 BC) they 'imported' Cybele (whom they called Magna Mater, Great Mother) a Greek goddess because the books sibylline oracles said that with this Rome could defeat Carthage. Besides adopting some Greek gods, at one point the Romans linked their gods to the Greek gods and their associated mythologies.

With contact with mainland Greece, there was also influence from this part of the Greek world. The first professional teachers in Rome were Greeks. The children of the rich received an education in both Latin and Greek and were fluent in Greek. The pinnacle of their education was a stay in Greece to study Greek philosophy. From Augustus onwards, the Romans modelled their statues on the Hellenistic ones. They also copied and modelled statues on those of the great classical sculptors of Greece. They adopted Greek medicine and Greek sports. They adopted and greatly improved on the Greek cranes and the ballista (a crossbow-like) catapult. Latin tragedies and comedies and theatre were based on the Greek ones. Roman theatre architecture was inspired by that of the Greeks. However, whilst the seating of Greek theatres were always built on hillsides, the Romans also built theatres with their own foundations which could be built on flat land.