Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
The beginnings of scientific culture, and even of authorship relating
to it, also fall within this epoch. The instruction hitherto given
had been substantially confined to reading and writing and a knowledge
of the law of the land.(65)
65. Plautus (Mostell. 126) says of parents, that they teach their
children -litteras-, -iura-, -leges-; and Plutarch (Cato Mai. 20)
testifies to the same effect.
But a closer contact with the Greeks
gradually suggested to the Romans the idea of a more general culture;
and stimulated the endeavour, if not directly to transplant this
Greek culture to Rome, at any rate to modify the Roman culture to
some extent after its model.
