Do you agree wit horace's claim on page 178 that when it come to culture, greece in essence conqured rome? expain

Yes, Sam is entirely correct - Greece was one of those cultures that could not be totally vanquished from the world - in fact for a period of time in Roman history the Greek language and culture wasnecessary as it was the most common language spoken across the entire Roman Empire. Horace was correct in saying that Roman culture was behind and lacked the same experience and popularity that the Greek culture had. 

Rome conquered Greece through militaristic ways - Greece conquered rome through social, culture, economic and other ways. And even after Roman decline Greek culture still played a massive part in Ancient world. It was even more important and advanced than that of the Egyptians. Whilst Rome andother superpowers died and were killed off - Greece remained strong for plenty of years to come - without Greek culture and society much of the Roman empire would have remained useless due to lack of latin or native languge speaks in the different areas