For as in the writers of annals it is not difficult to see that
the later writer always presupposes the earlier, without whom he
could by no means relate the former times, so too we are to think
of the authors of the sciences. For no man by himself has
brought forth any science, since between the earliest students
and those of the latter time we find intermediaries, ancient if
they be compared with our own age, but modern if we think of the
foundations of learning, and these men we consider the most
learned. What would Virgil, the chief poet among the Latins,
have achieved, if he had not despoiled Theocritus, Lucretius, and
Homer, and had not ploughed with their heifer? What, unless
again and again he had read somewhat of Parthenius and Pindar,
whose eloquence he could by no means imitate? What could
Sallust, Tully, Boethius, Macrobius, Lactantius, Martianus, and
in short the whole troop of Latin writers have done, if they had
not seen the productions of Athens or the volumes of the Greeks?
Certes, little would Jerome, master of three languages,
Ambrosius, Augustine, though he confesses that he hated Greek, or
even Gregory, who is said to have been wholly ignorant of it,
have contributed to the doctrine of the Church, if more learned
Greece had not furnished them from its stores. As Rome, watered
by the streams of Greece, had earlier brought forth philosophers
in the image of the Greeks, in like fashion afterwards it
produced doctors of the orthodox faith.
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