In 155 BCE, the Athenians sent a delegation to Rome. It included three
philosophers, among them Carneades. He was an important member of Plato's school, the
Academy, which by this time had become a center of skepticism. Carneades shocked
Rome by arguing convincingly for one argument one day, and then refuting all his arguments
the following day. Cato the Censor reacted unfavorably - all three philosophers were sent
back to Athens.
[Cato] was now grown old, when Carneades the Academic, and Diogenes the Stoic, came as
deputies from Athens to Rome, praying for release from a penalty of five hundred talents
laid on the Athenians, in a suit, to which they did not appear, in which the Oropians were
plaintiffs and Sicyonians judges. All the most studious youth immediately waited on these
philosophers, and frequently, with admiration, heard them speak. But the gracefulness of
Carneades's oratory, whose ability was really greatest, and his reputation equal to it,
gathered large and favourable audiences, and ere long filled, like a wind, all the city
with the sound of it. So that it soon began to be told that a Greek, famous even to
admiration, winning and carrying all before him, had impressed so trange a love upon the
young men, that quitting all their pleasures and pastimes, they ran mad, as it were, after
philosophy; which indeed much pleased the Romans in general; nor could they but with much
pleasure see the youth receive so welcomely the Greek literature, and frequent the company
of learned men. But Cato, on the other side, seeing the passion for words flowing into the
city, from the beginning took it ill, fearing lest the youth should be diverted that way,
and so should prefer the glory of speaking well before that of arms and doing well. And
when the fame of the philosophers increased in the city, and Caius Acilius, a person of
distinction, at his own request, became their interpreter to the senate at their first
audience, Cato resolved, under some specious pretence, to have all philosophers cleared
out of the city; and, coming into the senate, blamed the magistrates for letting these
deputies stay so long a time without being despatched, though they were persons that could
easily persuade the people to what they pleased; that therefore in all haste something
should be determined about their petition, that so they might go home again to their own
schools, and declaim to the Greek children, and leave the Roman youth to be obedient, as
hitherto, to their own laws and governors.
Yet he did this not out of any anger, as some think, to Carneades; but because he
wholly despised philosophy, and out of a kind of pride scoffed at the Greek studies and
literature; as, for example, he would say, that Socrates was a prating, seditious fellow,
who did his best to tyrannize over his country, to undermine the ancient customs, and to
entice and withdraw the citizens to opinions contrary to the laws. Ridiculing the school
of Isocrates, he would add, that his scholars grew old men before they had done learning
with him, as if they were to use their art and plead causes in the court of Minos in the
next world. And to frighten his son from anything that was Greek, in a more vehement tone
than became one of his age, he pronounced, as it were, with the voice of an oracle, that
the Romans would certainly be destroyed when they began once to be infected with Greek
literature; though time indeed has shown the vanity of this his prophecy; as, in truth,
the city of Rome has risen to its highest fortune while entertaining Grecian learning. Nor
had he an aversion only against the Greek philosophers, but the physicians also; for
having, it seems, heard how Hippocrates, when the king of Persia sent for him, with offers
of a fee of several talents, said, that he would never assist barbarians who were enemies
to the Greeks; he affirmed, that this was now become a common oath taken by all
physicians, and enjoined his son to have a care and avoid them; for that he himself had
written a little book of prescriptions for curing those who were sick in his family; he
never enjoined fasting to any one, but ordered them either vegetables, or the meat of a
duck, pigeon, or leveret; such kind of diet being of light digestion and fit for sick
folks, only it made those who ate it dream a little too much; and by the use of this kind
of physic, he said, he not only made himself and those about him well, but kept them so.
