Part 215

"Some scholars … may doubt if there was anything at Athens which could answer to the College Life of modern times. Indeed it must be owned that formal history is nearly silent on the subject, that ancient writers take little notice of it, and such evidences as we have are drawn almost entirely from a series of inscriptions on the marble tablets, which were covered with the ruins and the dust of ages, till one after another came to light in recent days, to add fresh pages to the story of the past. Happily they are both numerous and lengthy, and may be already pieced together in an order which extends for centuries. They are known to Epigraphic students as the records which deal with the so-called Ephebi; with the youths, that is, just passing into manhood, for whom a special discipline was provided by the State, to, fit them for the responsibilities of active life. It was a National system with a many-sided training; the teachers were members of the Civil Service; the registers were public documents, and, as such, belonged to the Archives of the State. {684} The earlier inscriptions of the series date from the period of Macedonian ascendency, but in much earlier times there had been forms of public drill prescribed for the Ephebi. … We find from a decree, which, if genuine, dates even from the days of Pericles, that the young men of Cos were allowed by special favour to share the discipline of the Athenian Ephebi. Soon afterwards others were admitted on all sides. The aliens who had gained a competence as merchants or as bankers, found their sons welcomed in the ranks of the oldest families of Athens; strangers flocked thither from distant countries, not only from the isles of Greece, and from the coasts of the Ægean, but, as Hellenic culture made its way through the far East, students even of the Semitic race were glad to enrol their names upon the College registers, where we may still see them with the marks of their several nationalities affixed. The young men were no longer, like soldiers upon actual service, beginning already the real work of life, and on that account, perhaps, the term was shortened from the two years to one; but the old associations lasted on for ages, even in realistic Athens, which in early politics at least had made so clean a sweep. The outward forms were still preserved, the soldier's drill was still enforced, and though many another feature had been added, the whole institution bore upon its face the look rather of a Military College than of a training school for a scholar or a statesman. The College year began somewhat later than the opening of the civil year, and it was usual for all the students to matriculate together; that is, to enter formally their names upon the registers, which were copied afterwards upon the marble tablets, of which large fragments have survived. … 'To put the gown on,' or, as we should say, 'to be a gownsman,' was the phrase which stood for being a member of the College; and the gown, too, was of black, as commonly among ourselves. But Philostratus tells us, by the way, that a change was made from black to white at the prompting of Herodes Atticus, the munificent and learned subject of the Antonines, who was for many years the presiding genius of the University of Athens. The fragment of an inscription lately found curiously confirms and supplements the writer's statement. … The members of the College are spoken of as 'friends' and 'messmates'; and it is probable that some form of conventual life prevailed among them, without which the drill and supervision, which are constantly implied in the inscriptions, could scarcely have been enforced by the officials. But we know nothing of any public buildings for their use save the gymnasia, which in all Greek towns were the centres of educational routine, and of which there were several well known at Athens. … The College did not try to monopolise the education of its students. It had, indeed, its own tutors or instructors, but they were kept for humbler drill; it did not even for a long time keep an organist or choirmaster of its own; it sent its students out for teaching in philosophy and rhetoric and grammar, or, in a word, for all the larger and more liberal studies. Nor did it favour any special set of tenets to the exclusion of the rest. It encouraged impartially all the schools of higher thought. … The Head of the College held the title of Cosmetes, or of rector. … The Rector, appointed only for a year by popular election, was no merely honorary head, but took an important part in the real work of education. He was sometimes clothed with priestly functions. … The system of education thus described was under the control of the government throughout. … It may surprise us that our information comes almost entirely from the inscriptions, and that ancient writers are all nearly silent on the subject. … But there was little to attract the literary circles in arrangements so mechanical and formal; there was too much of outward pageantry, and too little of real character evolved."

_W. W. Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens, chapter 1._

_J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches, chapter 4._

The reign of the Emperor Justinian "may be signalised as the fatal epoch at which several of the noblest institutions of antiquity were abolished. He shut the schools of Athens (A. D. 529), in which an uninterrupted succession of philosophers, supported by a public stipend, had taught the doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, ever since the time of the Antonines. They were, it is true, still attached to paganism, and even to the arts of magic."

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 1, chapter 10._

See ATHENS: A. D. 529.

EDUCATION: Alexandria.

"Ptolemy, upon whom, on Alexander's death, devolved the kingdom of Egypt, supplies us with the first great instance of what may be called the establishment of Letters. He and Eumenes may be considered the first founders of public libraries. … A library, however, was only one of two great conceptions brought into execution by the first Ptolemy; and as the first was the embalming of dead genius, so the second was the endowment of living. … Ptolemy, … prompted, or at least, encouraged, by the celebrated Demetrius of Phalerus, put into execution a plan for the formal endowment of literature and science. The fact indeed of the possession of an immense library seemed sufficient to render Alexandria a University; for what could be a greater attraction to the students of all lands, than the opportunity afforded them of intellectual converse, not only with the living, but with the dead, with all who had anywhere at any time thrown light upon any subject of inquiry? But Ptolemy determined that his teachers of knowledge should be as stationary and as permanent as his books; so, resolving to make Alexandria the seat of a 'Studium Generale,' he founded a College for its domicile, and endowed that College with ample revenues. Here, I consider, he did more than has been commonly done, till modern times. It requires considerable knowledge of medieval Universities to be entitled to give an opinion; as regards Germany, for instance, or Poland, or Spain; but, as far as I have a right to speak, such an endowment has been rare down to the sixteenth century, as well as before Ptolemy. … To return to the Alexandrian College. It was called the Museum,—a name since appropriated to another institution connected with the seats of science. … There was a quarter of the city so distinct from the rest in Alexandria, that it is sometimes spoken of as a suburb. It was pleasantly situated on the water's edge, and had been set aside for ornamental buildings, and was traversed by groves of trees. Here stood the royal palace, here the theatre and amphitheatre; here the gymnasia and stadium; here the famous Serapeum. {685} And here it was, close upon the Port, that Ptolemy placed his Library and College. As might be supposed, the building was worthy of its purpose; a noble portico stretched along its front, for exercise or conversation, and opened upon the public rooms devoted to disputations and lectures. A certain number of Professors were lodged within the precincts, and a handsome hall, or refectory, was provided for the common meal. The Prefect of the house was a priest, whose appointment lay with the government. Over the Library a dignified person presided. … As to the Professors, so liberal was their maintenance, that a philosopher of the very age of the first foundation called the place a 'bread basket,' or a 'bird coop'; yet, in spite of accidental exceptions, so careful on the whole was their selection, that even six hundred years afterwards, Ammianus describes the Museum under the title of 'the lasting abode of distinguished men.' Philostratus, too, about a century before, calls it 'a table gathering together celebrated men.' … As time went on new Colleges were added to the original Museum; of which one was a foundation of the Emperor Claudius, and called after his name. … A diversity of teachers secured an abundance of students. 'Hither,' says Cave, 'as to a public emporium of polite literature, congregated, from every part of the world, youthful students, and attended the lectures in Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry, Philosophy, Astronomy, Music, Medicine, and other arts and sciences'; and hence proceeded, as it would appear, the great Christian writers and doctors, 'Clement, … Origen, Anatolius, and Athanasius. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, in the third century, may be added; he came across Asia Minor and Syria from Pontus, as to a place, says his namesake of Nyssa, 'to which young men from all parts gathered together, who were applying themselves to philosophy.' As to the subjects taught in the Museum, Cave has already enumerated the principal; but he has not done justice to the peculiar character of the Alexandrian school. From the time that science got out of the hands of the pure Greeks, into those of a power which had a talent for administration, it became less theoretical, and bore more distinctly upon definite and tangible objects. … Egyptian Antiquities were investigated, at least by the disciples of the Egyptian Manetho, fragments of whose history are considered to remain; while Carthaginian and Etruscan had a place in the studies of the Claudian College. The Museum was celebrated, moreover, for its grammarians; the work of Hephæstion 'de Metris' still affords matter of thought to a living Professor of Oxford; and Aristarchus, like the Athenian Priscian, has almost become the nickname for a critic. Yet, eminent as is the Alexandrian school in these departments of science, its fame rests still more securely upon its proficiency in medicine and mathematics. Among its physicians is the celebrated Galen, who was attracted thither from Pergamus; and we are told by a writer of the fourth century, that in his time the very fact of a physician having studied at Alexandria, was an evidence of his science which superseded further testimonial. As to Mathematics, it is sufficient to say, that, of four great ancient names, on whom the modern science is founded, three came from Alexandria. Archimedes indeed was a Syracusan; but the Museum may boast of Apollonius of Perga, Diophantus, a native Alexandrian, and Euclid, whose country is unknown. To these illustrious names, may be added, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, to whom astronomy has obligations so considerable; Pappus; Theon; and Ptolemy, said to be of Pelusium, whose celebrated system, called after him the Ptolemaic, reigned in the schools till the time of Copernicus, and whose Geography, dealing with facts, not theories, is in repute still. Such was the celebrated 'Studium' or University of Alexandria; for a while in the course of the third and fourth centuries, it was subject to reverses, principally from war. The whole of the Bruchion, the quarter of the city in which it was situated, was given to the flames; and, when Hilarion came to Alexandria, the holy hermit, whose rule of life did not suffer him to lodge in cities, took up his lodgment with a few solitaries among the ruins of its edifices. The schools, however, and the library continued; the library was reserved for the Caliph Omar's famous judgment; as to the schools, even as late as the twelfth century, the Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, gives us a surprising report of what he found in Alexandria."

_J. H. Newman, Historical Sketches: Rise and Progress of Universities, chapter 8._

"In the three centuries which intervened between Alexander and Augustus, Athens was preëminently the training school for philosophy, Rhodes, on the other hand, as the only Greek state of political importance in which a career of grand and dignified activity was open for the orator, distinguished itself in the study of eloquence, while Alexandria rested its fame chiefly on the excellence of its instruction in Philology and Medicine. At a subsequent period the last mentioned University obtained even greater celebrity as having given birth to a school of philosophers who endeavored to combine into a species of theosophic doctrine the mental science of Europe with the more spiritual minded and profoundly human religions of the East. In the third century Alexandria became conspicuous as the headquarters of the Eclectics and Neo·Platonists."

_E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 24, pages 466-467)._

EDUCATION: Rome.

"If we cast a final glance at the question of education, we shall find but little to say of it, as far as regards the period before Cicero. In the republican times the state did not trouble itself about the training of youth: a few prohibitory regulations were laid down, and the rest left to private individuals. Thus no public instruction was given; public schools there were, but only as private undertakings for the sake of the children of the rich. All depended on the father; his personal character and the care taken by the mother in education decided the development of the child's disposition. Books there were none; and therefore they could not be put into the hands of children. A few rugged hymns, such as those of the Salii and Arval brothers, with the songs in Fescennine verse, sung on festivals and at banquets, formed the poetical literature. A child would hear, besides, the dirges, or memorial verses, composed by women in honour of the dead, and sometimes, too, the public panegyrics pronounced on their departed relatives, a distinction accorded to women also from the time of Camillus. {686} Whatever was taught a boy by father or mother, or acquired externally to the house, was calculated to make the Roman 'virtus' appear in his eyes the highest aim of his ambition; the term including self-mastery, an unbending firmness of will, with patience, and an iron tenacity of purpose in carrying through whatever was once acknowledged to be right. The Greek palestra and its naked combatants always seemed strange and offensive to Roman eyes. In the republican times the exercises of the gymnasium were but little in fashion; though riding, swimming, and other warlike exercises were industriously practised, as preparations for the campaign. The slave pædagogus, assigned to young people to take charge of them, had a higher position with the Romans than the Greeks; and was not allowed to let his pupils out of his sight till their twentieth year. The Latin Odyssey of Livius Andronicus was the school-book first in use; and this and Ennius were the only two works to create and foster a literary taste before the destruction of Carthage. The freedman Sp. Carvilius was the first to open a school for higher education. After this the Greek language and literature came into the circle of studies, and in consequence of the wars in Sicily, Macedon, and Asia, families of distinction kept slaves who knew Greek. Teachers quickly multiplied, and were either liberti, or their descendants. No free-born Roman would consent to be a paid teacher, for that was held to be a degradation. The Greek language remained throughout the classical [age] one for Romans: they even made their children begin with Homer. As, by the seventh century of the republic, Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius, and Terence, had already become old poets, dictations were given to scholars from their writings. The interpretation of Virgil began under Augustus, and by this time the younger Romans were resorting to Athens, Rhodes, Apollonia, and Mitylene, in order to make progress in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. As Roman notions were based entirely on the practical and the useful, music was neglected as a part of education; while, as a contrast, boys were compelled to learn the laws of the twelve tables by heart. Cicero, who had gone through this discipline with other boys of his time, complains of the practice having begun to be set aside; and Scipio Æmilianus deplored, as an evil omen of degeneracy, the sending of boys and girls to the academies of actors, where they learnt dancing and singing, in company with young women of pleasure. In one of these schools were to be found as many as five hundred young persons, all being instructed in postures and motions of the most abandoned kind. … On the other hand, the gymnastic exercises, which had once served the young men as a training for war, fell into disuse, having naturally become objectless and burdensome, now that, under Augustus, no more Roman citizens chose to enlist in the legions. Still slavery was, and continued to be, the foremost cause of the depravation of youth, and of an evil education. … It was no longer the mothers who educated their own children: they had neither inclination nor capacity for such duty, for mothers of the stamp of Cornelia had disappeared. Immediately on its birth, the child was intrusted to a Greek female slave, with some male slave, often of the worst description, to help her. … The young Roman was not educated in the constant companionship of youths of his own age, under equal discipline: surrounded by his father's slaves and parasites, and always accompanied by a slave when he went out, he hardly received any other impressions than such as were calculated to foster conceit, indolence, and pride in him."

_J. J. I. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, volume 2, pages 279-281._

EDUCATION: Higher Education under the Empire.

"Besides schools of high eminence in Mytilene, Ephesus, Smyrna, Sidon, etc., we read that Apollonia enjoyed so high a reputation for eloquence and political science as to be entrusted with the education of the heir-apparent of the Roman Empire. Antioch was noted for a Museum modelled after that of the Egyptian metropolis, and Tarsus boasted of Gymnasia and a University which Strabo does not hesitate to describe as more than rivaling those of Athens and Alexandria. There can be little doubt that the philosophers, rhetoricians, and grammarians who swarmed in the princely retinues of the great Roman aristocracy, and whose schools abounded in all the most wealthy and populous cities of the empire east and west, were prepared for their several callings in some one or other of these institutions. Strabo tells us … that Rome was overrun with Alexandrian and Syrian grammarians, and Juvenal describes one of the Quirites of the ancient stamp as emigrating in sheer disgust from a city which from these causes had become thoroughly and utterly Greek. … That external inducements were held out amply sufficient to prevail upon poor and ambitious men to qualify themselves at some cost for vocations of this description is evident from the wealth to which, as we are told, many of them rose from extreme indigence and obscurity. Suetonius, in the still extant fragment of his essay 'de claris rhetoribus,' after alluding to the immense number of professors and doctors met with in Rome, draws attention to the frequency with which individuals who had distinguished themselves as teachers of rhetoric had been elevated into the senate, and advanced to the highest dignities of the state. That the profession of a philologist was occasionally at least well remunerated is evident from the facts recorded by the same author in his work 'de claris grammaticis,' section 3. He there mentions that there were at one time upwards of twenty well attended schools devoted to this subject at Rome, and that one fortunate individual, Q. Remmius Palaemon, derived four hundred thousand sesterces, or considerably above three thousand a year, from instruction in philology alone. Julius Caesar conferred the citizenship, together with large bounties in money, and immunity from public burthens, on distinguished rhetoricians and philologists, in order to encourage their presence at Rome. … That individuals who thus enjoyed an income not greatly below the revenues of an English Bishopric were not, as the name might lead us to imagine, employed in teaching the accidents of grammar, but possessed considerable pretensions to that higher and more thoughtful character of the scholar which it has been reserved for modern Europe to exhibit in perfection, is not only in itself highly probable, but supported by the distinctest and most unimpeachable evidence. Seneca tells us that history was amongst the subjects professed by grammarians, and Cicero regards the most thorough and refined perception of all that pertains to the spirit and individuality of the author as an indispensable requisite in those who undertake to give instruction in this subject. … The grammatici appear to have occupied a position very closely analogous to that of the teachers of collegiate schools in England, and the gymnasial professors in Germany."

_E. Kirkpatrick, Historical Development of Superior Instruction (Barnard's American Journal of Education, volume 24, pages 468-470.)_

{687}

EDUCATION: Mediæval. The Chaos of Barbaric Conquest.