The effect on Rome of the conquest of Greece and the Hellenized East was
very marked. Greek rhetoricians, scholars, tragedians, musicians and
philosophers in large numbers took up their abode in Rome. The city
swarmed with Greek schoolmasters. Greek tutors and philosophers, who,
even if they were not slaves, were as a rule accounted as servants, were
now permanent inmates in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them,
and there is a statement that the sum of two hundred thousand sesterces
(ten thousand dollars) was paid for a Greek literary slave of the first
class.