But though the philosophers were encouraged and cherished by Scipio, Lælius, Scævola, and others of the more mild and enlightened Romans, they were viewed with an eye of suspicion by the grave Senators and stern Censors of the republic. Accordingly, in the year 592, only six years after their first arrival in Rome, the philosophers were banished from the city by a formal decree of the Senate(366). The motives for issuing this rigorous edict are not very clearly ascertained. A notion may have been entertained by the severer members of the commonwealth, that the established religion and constitution of Rome might suffer by the discussion of speculative theories, and that the taste for science might withdraw the minds of youth from agriculture and arms. This dread, so natural to a rigid, laborious, and warlike people, would be increased by the degraded and slavish character of the Greeks, which, having been an accompaniment, might be readily mistaken for a consequence, of their progress in philosophy. As most of the philosophers, too, had come from the states of a hostile monarch, the Senate may have feared, lest they should inspire sentiments in the minds of youth, not altogether patriotic or purely republican.
"Sed vetuere patres quod non potuere vetare."
Though driven from Rome, many of the Greek philosophers took up their residence in the municipal towns of Italy. By the intercession likewise of Scipio Africanus, an exception was made in favour of Panætius and the historian Polybius, who were permitted to remain in the capital. The spirit of inquiry, too, had been raised, and the mind had received an impulse which could not be arrested by any senatorial decree, and on which the slightest incident necessarily bestowed an accelerated progress.