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The Romans didn't have a high opinion of Greeks initially. Old Cato the Censor, out of patriotic zeal, spent a considerable amount of time haranguing about Greeks in the Senate as sneaky, untrustworthy, etc. at a time when Greek philosophy and medicine was penetrating into Roman society. They got a taste of fighting Greeks against the Epriotes led by Pyrrhus and were able to adapt the manipular legion to outfight the Macedonian-styled phalanxes and whatnot. The biggest weakness of the Greeks was that they didn't have the ruthless efficiency of the Romans in forcing conformity on subjugated territories but in Byzantine times the Greeks in the East were able to keep the efficiency and organization of the old Roman military for some time when the West had degenerated into semi-barbaric kingdoms with little military organization outside of the warbands of whichever leader was then in power.
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