Chapter CVI: Section 2 (11)

"It is a prevalent opinion that common schools, as we now have
them, were an American invention. No legislation, it is
asserted, taxing all in order that all may be taught can be
traced back further than to the early laws of Massachusetts.
Those who deny this assertion are content with showing
something of the sort in Scotland and Germany a generation or
two before the landing of the Plymouth pilgrims. The truth is,
however, that, as much of our social wit is now credited to
the ancient Greeks, something of our educational wisdom ought
to be. Two centuries ago John Locke, as an able political
writer, was invited to draw up a code of fundamental laws for
the new colony of Carolina, and in like manner, more than
2,300 years ago, Charondas, a master of a similar type in
Magna Græcia, was called to a similar task. This was to frame
a series of statutes for the government of a Greek colony
founded about 446 B. C., in the foot of Italy. This colony was
Thurii, and conspicuous among the enactments of Charondas was
the following: 'Charondas made a law unlike those of lawgivers
before him, for he enacted that the sons of the citizens
should all learn letters (or writing) … the city making
payment to the teachers. He thought that the poor, not able to
pay wages themselves, would otherwise fail of the best
training. He counted writing the most important study, and
with reason. Through writing, most things in life, and those
the most useful, are accomplished—as ballots, epistles, laws,
covenants. Who can sufficiently praise the learning of
letters? … Writing alone preserves the most brilliant
utterances of wise men and the oracles of gods, nay philosophy
and all culture. All these things it alone hands down to all
future generations. Wherefore nature should be viewed as the
source of life, but the source of living well we should
consider the culture derived from writing. Inasmuch, then, as
illiterates are deprived of a great good, Charondas came to
their help, judging them worthy of public care and outlay.
Former legislators had caused the sick to be attended by
physicians at the public expense, thinking their bodies worthy
of cure. He did more, for he cured souls afflicted with
ignorance. The doctors of the body we pray that we may never
need, while we would fain abide for ever with those who
minister to the mind diseased.'—This extract is from the
'Bibliotheca Historica' of Diodorus Siculus (Book x. § 13),
who was flourishing at the birth of Christ and was the most
painstaking chronicler of the Augustan age. The legislation is
worth notice for more than one reason. It rebukes the
self-conceit of those who hold that the education of all at
the charge of all is an idea born in our own time or country.
It has also been strangely unnoticed by historians who ought
to have kept it before the people."

_The Nation,
March 24, 1892, pages 280-231._

EDUCATION:
Socrates and the Philosophical Schools.

"Before the rise of philosophy, the teacher of the people had
been the rhapsode, or public reciter; after that event he
gradually gives place to the sophist (… one who makes wise),
or, as he later with more modesty calls himself, the
philosopher (… lover of wisdom). The history of Greece for
centuries is, on its inner side, a history of the struggle
between what the rhapsode represents and what the philosopher
represents, between popular tradition and common sense on the
one hand, and individual opinion and philosophy on the other.
The transition from the first to the second of these mental
conditions was accomplished for the world, once for all, by
the Greeks."

_T. Davidson,
Aristotle,
book 1, chapter 5._

"There is no instance on record of a philosopher whose
importance as a thinker is so closely bound up with the
personality of the man as it was in the case of Socrates. …
His teaching was not of a kind to be directly imparted and
faithfully handed down, but could only be left to propagate
itself freely by stirring up others to a similar self·culture.
… The youth and early manhood of Socrates fall in the most
brilliant period of Grecian history. Born during the last
years of the Persian war, he was a near contemporary of all
those great men who adorned the age of Pericles. As a citizen
of Athens he could enjoy the opportunities afforded by a city,
which united every means of culture by its unrivalled
fertility of thought. Poverty and low birth were but slender
obstacles in the Athens of Pericles. … Socrates, no doubt,
began life by learning his father's trade, … which he
probably never practised, and certainly soon gave up.
{683}
He considered it to be his special calling to labour for the
moral and intellectual improvement of himself and others—a
conviction which he felt so strongly that it appeared to him
in the light of a divine revelation. Moreover he was confirmed
in it by a Delphic oracle, which, of course, must not be
regarded as the cause of, but rather as an additional support
to his reforming zeal. … To be independent, he tried, like
the Gods, to rise superior to his wants; and by carefully
practising self-denial and abstemiousness, he was really able
to boast that his life was more pleasant and more free from
troubles than that of the rest of mankind. Thus he was able to
devote his whole powers to the service of others, without
asking or taking reward; and thus he became so engrossed by
his labours for his native city, that he rarely passed its
boundaries or even went outside its gates. He did not,
however, feel himself called upon to take part in the affairs
of the state. … Anyone convinced as he was, that care for
one's own culture must precede care for public business, and
that a thorough knowledge of self, together with a deep and
many-sided experience, was a necessary condition of public
activity, must have thought that, to educate individuals by
influence, was the more pressing need, and have held that he
was doing his country a better service by educating able
statesmen for it, than by actually discharging a statesman's
duties. Accordingly, Socrates never aimed at being anything
but a private citizen. … Just as little was he desirous of
being a public teacher like the Sophists. He not only took no
pay, but he gave no methodical course. He did not profess to
teach, but to learn in common with others, not to force his
convictions upon them, but to examine theirs; not to pass the
truth that came to hand like a coin fresh from the mint, but
to stir up a desire for truth and virtue, to point out the way
to it, to overthrow what was spurious, and to seek out real
knowledge. Never weary of talking, he was on the look out for
every opportunity of giving an instructive and moral turn to
the conversation. Day by day he was about in the market and
public promenades, in schools and workshops, ever ready to
converse with friends or strangers, with citizens and
foreigners, but always prepared to lead them to higher
subjects; and whilst thus in his higher calling serving God,
he was persuaded that he was also serving his country in a way
that no one else could do. Deeply as he deplored the decline
of discipline and education in his native city, he felt that
he could depend but little on the Sophists, the moral teachers
of his day. The attractive powers of his discourse won for him
a circle of admirers, for the most part consisting of young
men of family, drawn to him by the most varied motives,
standing to him in various relations, and coming to him, some
for a longer, others for a shorter time. For his own part, he
made it his business not only to educate these friends, but to
advise them in everything, even in worldly matters. But out of
this changing, and in part loosely connected, society, a
nucleus was gradually formed of decided admirers,—a Socratic
school, which we must consider united far less by a common set
of doctrines, than by a common love for the person of
Socrates."

_E. Zeller,
Socrates and the Socratic Schools,
chapter 3._

"Nowhere, except in Athens, do we hear of a philosophic body
with endowments, legal succession, and the other rights of a
corporation. This idea, which has never since died out of the
world, was due to Plato, who bequeathed his garden and
appointments in the place called after the hero Hekademus, to
his followers. But he was obliged to do it in the only form
possible at Athens. He made it a religious foundation, on the
basis of a fixed worship to the Muses. … The head or
President of Plato's 'Association of the Muses,' was the
treasurer and manager of the common fund, who invited guests
to their feasts, to which each member contributed his share.
… The members had, moreover, a right to attend lectures and
use the library or scientific appointments, such as maps,
which belonged to the school. It was this endowment on a
religious basis which saved the income and position of Plato's
school for centuries. … This then is the first Academy, so
often imitated in so many lands, and of which our colleges are
the direct descendants. … The school of Plato, then governed
by Xenocrates, being the bequest of an Athenian citizen who
understood the law, seems never to have been assailed. The
schools of Epicurus and Zeno were perhaps not yet recognised.
But that of Theophrastus, perhaps the most crowded, certainly
the most distinctly philo-Macedonian, … this was the school
which was exiled, and which owed its rehabilitation not only
to the legal decision of the courts, but still more to the
large views of King Demetrius, who would not tolerate the
persecution of opinion. But it was the other Demetrius, the
philosopher, the pupil of Aristotle, the friend of
Theophrastus, to whom the school owed most, and to whom the
world owes most in the matter of museums and academies, next
after Plato. For this was the man who took care, during his
Protectorate of Athens in the interest of Casander, to
establish a garden and 'peripatos' for the Peripatetic school,
now under Theophrastus. … It is remarkable that the Stoic
school—it too the school of aliens—did not establish a local
foundation or succession, but taught in public places, such as
the Painted Portico. In this the Cynical tone of the Porch
comes out. Hence the succession depended upon the genius of
the leader."

_J. P. Mahaffy,
Greek Life and Thought,
chapter 7._

An account of the Academy, the Lyceum, etc., will be found
under the caption GYMNASIA.

EDUCATION:
University of Athens.

"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.)_

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EDUCATION: Mediæval.
The Chaos of Barbaric Conquest.

"The utter confusion subsequent upon the downfall of the Roman
Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by
the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of
scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of
grammar for ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check
the influence of many causes leading to this overthrow of
learning. It was impossible to communicate more than a mere
tincture of knowledge to students separated from the classical
tradition, for whom the antecedent history of Rome was a dead
letter. The meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was
lost. … Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond
description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The
three persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and
mystic numbers in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies
like that of language came to be regarded as an open field for
the exercise of the mythologising fancy; and etymology was
reduced to a system of ingenious punning. … Virgil, the only
classic who retained distinct and living personality, passed
from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from
Sibyl to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as
the truth about him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend
him weakened. Forming the staple of education in the schools
of the grammarians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar
consciousness into a wizard, he waited on the extreme verge of
the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the
type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and
Purgatory."

_J. A. Symonds,
Renaissance in Italy: the Revival of Learning;
chapter 2._

EDUCATION: Mediæval.
Gaul: 4th-5th Centuries.

"If institutions could do all, if laws supplied and the means
furnished to society could do everything, the intellectual
state of Gaulish civil society at this epoch [4th-5th
centuries] would have been far superior to that of the
religious society. The first, in fact, alone possessed all the
institutions proper to second the development of mind, the
progress and empire of ideas. Roman Gaul was covered with
large schools. The principal were those of Trèves, Bordeaux,
Autun, Toulouse, Poitiers, Lyons, Narbonne, Aries, Marseilles,
Vienne, Besançon, &c. Some were very ancient; those of
Marseilles and of Autun, for example, dated from the first
century. They were taught philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence,
literature, grammar, astrology, all the sciences of the age.
In the greater part of these schools, indeed, they at first
taught only rhetoric and grammar; but towards the fourth
century, professors of philosophy and law were everywhere
introduced. Not only were these schools numerous, and provided
with many chairs, but the emperors continually took the
professors of new measures into favor. Their interests are,
from Constantine to Theodosius the younger, the subject of
frequent imperial constitutions, which sometimes extended,
sometimes confirmed their privileges. … After the Empire was
divided among many masters, each of them concerned himself
rather more about the prosperity of his states and the public
establishments which were in them. Thence arose a momentary
amelioration, of which the schools felt the effects,
particularly those of Gaul, under the administration of
Constantius Clorus, of Julian, and of Gratian. By the side of
the schools were, in general, placed other analogous
establishments. Thus, at Trèves there was a grand library of
the imperial palace, concerning which no special information
has reached us, but of which we may judge by the details·
which have reached us concerning that of Constantinople. This
last had a librarian and seven scribes constantly
occupied—four for Greek, and three for Latin. They copied
both ancient and new works. It is probable that the same
institution existed at Trèves, and in the great towns of Gaul.
Civil society, then, was provided with means of instruction
and intellectual development. It was not the same with
religious society. It had at this epoch no institution
especially devoted to teaching; it did not receive from the
state any aid to this particular aim. Christians, as well as
others, could frequent the public schools; but most of the
professors were still pagans. … It was for a long time in
the inferior classes, among the people, that Christianity was
propagated, especially in the Gauls, and it was the superior
classes which followed the great schools. Moreover, it was
hardly until the commencement of the fourth century that the
Christians appeared there, and then but few in number. No
other source of study was open to them. The establishments
which, a little afterwards, became, in the Christian church,
the refuge and sanctuary of instruction, the monasteries, were
hardly commenced in the Gauls. It was only after the year 360
that the two first were founded by St. Martin—one at Ligugé,
near Poitiers, the other at Marmoutiers, near Tours; and they
were devoted rather to religious contemplation than to
teaching. Any great school, any special institution devoted to
the service and to the progress of intellect, was at that
time, therefore, wanting to the Christians. … All things in
the fifth century, attest the decay of the civil schools. The
contemporaneous writers, Sidonius Apollinaris and Mamertius
Claudianus, for example, deplore it in every page, saying that
the young men no longer studied, that professors were without
pupils, that science languished and was being lost. … It was
especially the young men of the superior classes who frequented
the schools; but these classes … were in rapid dissolution.
The schools fell with them; the institutions still existed,
but they were void—the soul had quitted the body. The
intellectual aspect of Christian society was very different.
… Institutions began to rise, and to be regulated among the
Christians of Gaul. The foundation of the greater portion of
the large monasteries of the southern provinces belongs to the
first half of the fifth century. … The monasteries of the
south of Gaul were philosophical schools of Christianity; it
was there that intellectual men meditated, discussed, taught;
it was from thence that new ideas, daring thoughts, heresies,
were sent forth. …
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Towards the end of the sixth century, everything is changed:
there are no longer civil schools; ecclesiastical schools
alone subsist. Those great municipal schools of Treves, of
Poitiers, of Vienne, of Bordeaux, &c., have disappeared; in
their place have arisen schools called cathedral or episcopal
schools, because each episcopal see had its own. The cathedral
school was not always alone; we find in certain dioceses other
schools, of an uncertain nature and origin, wrecks, perhaps,
of some ancient civil school, which, in becoming
metamorphosed, had perpetuated itself. … The most
flourishing of the episcopal schools from the sixth to the
middle of the eighth century were those of:
1. Poitiers. There were many schools in the monasteries of the
diocese at Poitiers itself, at Ligugé, at Ansion, &c.
2. Paris.
3. LeMans.
4. Bourges.
5. Clermont. There was another school in the town where they
taught the Theodosian code; a remarkable circumstance, which I
do not find elsewhere.
6. Vienne.
7. Châlons-sur-Saone.
8. ArIes.
9. Gap.

The most flourishing of the monastic schools of the same epoch
were those of:
1. Luxeuil, in Franche-Comté.
2. Fontenelle, or Saint Vandrille, in Normandy; in which were
about 300 students.
3. Sithiu, in Normandy.
4. Saint Médard, at Soissons.
5. Lerens.

It were easy to extend this list; but the prosperity of
monastic schools was subject to great vicissitudes; they
flourished under a distinguished abbot, and declined under his
successor. Even in nunneries, study was not neglected; that
which Saint Cesaire founded at Aries contained, at the
commencement of the sixth century, two hundred nuns, for the
most part occupied in copying books, sometimes religious
books, sometimes, probably, even the works of the ancients.
The metamorphosis of civil schools into ecclesiastical schools
was complete. Let us see what was taught in them. We shall
often find in them the names of sciences formerly professed in
the civil schools, rhetoric, logic, grammar, geometry,
astrology, &c.; but these were evidently no longer taught
except in their relations to theology. This is the foundation
of the instruction: all was turned into commentary of the
Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral,
commentary. They desired only to form priests; all studies,
whatsoever their nature, were directed towards this result.
Sometimes they went even further: they rejected the profane
sciences themselves, whatever might be the use made of them."

_F. Guizot,
History of Civilization to the French Revolution,
volume 2, lecture 4 and 16._

EDUCATION:
Ireland.
Scotland.
Schools of Iona.

Popular accounts represent St. Patrick as "founding at least a
hundred monasteries, and even those who consider that the
greater number of the Irish colleges were raised by his
followers after his death, admit the fact of his having
established an episcopal monastery and school at Armagh, where
he and his clergy carried out the same rule of life that he
had seen followed in the churches of Gaul. … The school,
which formed a portion of the Cathedral establishment, soon
rose in importance. Gildas taught here for some years before
joining St. Cadoc at Llancarvan; and in process of time the
number of students, both native and foreign, so increased that
the university, as we may justly call it, was divided into
three parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students of
the Anglo-Saxon race. Grants for the support of the schools
were made by the Irish kings in the eighth century; and all
through the troublous times of the ninth and tenth centuries,
when Ireland was overrun by the Danes, and so many of her
sanctuaries were given to the flames, the succession of
divinity professors at Armagh remained unbroken, and has been
carefully traced by Usher. We need not stop to determine how
many other establishments similar to those of Armagh were
really founded in the lifetime of St. Patrick. In any case the
rapid extension of the monastic institute in Ireland, and the
extraordinary ardour with which the Irish cœnobites applied
themselves to the cultivation of letters remain undisputed
facts. 'Within a century after the death of St. Patrick,' says
Bishop Nicholson, 'the Irish seminaries had so increased that
most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated here,
and drew thence their bishops and teachers.' The whole country
for miles round Leighlin was denominated the 'land of saints
and scholars.' By the ninth century Armagh could boast of
7,000 students, and the schools of Cashel, Dindaleathglass,
and Lismore vied with it in renown. This extraordinary
multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may be
explained partly by the constant immigration of British
refugees who brought with them the learning and religious
observances of their native cloisters, and partly by that
sacred and irresistible impulse which animates a newly
converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice. In Ireland the
infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with the blood of
martyrs. … The bards, who were to be found in great numbers
among the early converts of St. Patrick, had also a
considerable share in directing the energies of their
countrymen to intellectual labour. They formed the learned
class, and on their conversion to Christianity were readily
disposed to devote themselves to the culture of sacred
letters. … It would be impossible, within the limits of a
single chapter, to notice even the names of all the Irish
seats of learning, or of their most celebrated teachers,
everyone of whom has his own legend in which sacred and poetic
beauties are to be found blended together. One of the earliest
monastic schools was that erected by Enda, prince of Orgiel,
in that western island called from the wild flowers which even
still cover its rocky soil, Aran-of-the-Flowers, a name it
afterwards exchanged for that of Ara-na-naomh, or
Aran-of-the-Saints. … A little later St. Finian founded his
great school of Clonard, whence, says Usher, issued forth a
stream of saints and doctors, like the Greek warriors from the
wooden horse. …. This desolate wilderness was soon peopled
by his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3,000, of whom
the twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles
of Ireland. … Among them none were more famous than St.
Columba, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. The first of these is
known to every English reader as the founder of Iona; and
Kieran, the carpenter's son, as he is called, is scarcely less
renowned among his own countrymen. … It was in the year 563
that St. Columba, after founding the monasteries of
Doire-Calgaich and Dair-magh in his native land, and incurring
the enmity of one of the Irish kings, determined on crossing
over into Scotland in order to preach the faith to the
Northern Picts. Accompanied by twelve companions, he passed
the Channel in a rude wicker boat covered with skins, and
landed at Port-na Currachan, on a spot now marked by a heap of
huge conical stones.
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Conall, king of the Albanian Scots, granted him the island of
I, Hi, or Ai, hitherto occupied by the Druids, and there he
erected the monastery which, in time, became the mother of
three hundred religious houses. … Iona, or I-Colum-kil, as
it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as the chief
seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole
Western world. 'Thither, as from a nest,' says Odonellus,
playing on the Latin name of the founder, 'these sacred doves
took their flight to every quarter.' They studied the
classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They
improved the arts of husbandry and horticulture, supplied the
rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with
ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught them the
use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk
was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new
homes all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. … In every
college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded or on
whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with
the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were
religious houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the
Church office was often kept up without intermission by day
and night; but they were also seminaries of learning, wherein
sacred and profane studies were cultivated with equal success.
Not only their own monasteries but those of every European
country were enriched with their manuscripts, and the
researches of modern bibliopolists are continually
disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an
Ovid, or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand
which traced its delicate letters."

_A. T. Drane,
Christian Schools and Scholars,
chapter 2._

EDUCATION:
Charlemagne.

"If there ever was a man who by his mere natural endowments
soared above other men, it was Charlemagne. His life, like his
stature, was colossal. Time never seemed wanting to him for
anything that he willed to accomplish, and during his ten
years campaign against the Saxons and Lombards, he contrived
to get leisure enough to study grammar, and render himself
tolerably proficient as a Latin writer in prose and verse. He
found his tutors in the cities that he conquered. When he
became master of Pisa, he gained the services of Peter of
Pisa, whom he set over the Palatine school, which had existed
even under the Merovingian kings, though as yet it was far
from enjoying the fame to which it was afterwards raised by
the teaching of Alcuin. He possessed the art of turning
enemies into friends, and thus drew to his court the famous
historian, Paul Warnefrid, deacon of the Church of Rome, who
had previously acted as secretary to Didier, king of the
Lombards. … Another Italian scholar, St. Paulinus, of
Aquileja, was coaxed into the service of the Frankish
sovereign after his conquest of Friuli; I will not say that he
was bought, but he was certainly paid for by a large grant of
confiscated territory made over by diploma to 'the Venerable
Paulinus, master of the art of grammar.' But none of these
learned personages were destined to take so large a part in
that revival of learning which made the glory of Charlemagne's
reign, as our own countryman Alcuin. It was in 781, on
occasion of the king's second visit to Italy, that the meeting
took place at Parma, the result of which was to fix the
English scholar at the Frankish court. Having obtained the
consent of his own bishop and sovereign to this arrangement,
Alcuin came over to France in 782, bringing with him several
of the best scholars of York, among whom were Wizo, Fredegis,
and Sigulf. Charlemagne received him with joy, and assigned
him three abbeys for the maintenance of himself and his
disciples, those namely, of Ferrières, St. Lupus of Troyes,
and St. Josse in Ponthieu. From this time Alcuin held the
first place in the literary society that surrounded the
Frankish sovereign, and filled an office the duties of which
were as vast as they were various. Three great works at once
claimed his attention, the correction of the liturgical books,
the direction of the court academy, and the establishment of
other public schools throughout the empire. … But it was as
head of the Palatine school that Alcuin's influence was
chiefly to be felt in the restoration of letters. Charlemagne
presented himself as his first pupil, together with the three
princes, Pepin, Charles, and Louis, his sister Gisla and his
daughter Richtrude, his councillors Adalard and Angilbert, and
Eginhard his secretary. Such illustrious scholars soon found
plenty to imitate their example, and Alcuin saw himself called
on to lecture daily to a goodly crowd of bishops, nobles, and
courtiers. The king wished to transform his court into a new
Athens preferable to that of ancient Greece, in so far as the
doctrine of Christ is to be preferred to that of Plato. All
the liberal arts were to be taught there, but in such a way as
that each should bear reference to religion, for this was
regarded as the final end of of all learning. Grammar was
studied in order better to understand the Holy Scriptures and
to transcribe them more correctly; music, to which much
attention was given, was chiefly confined to the
ecclesiastical chant; and it was principally to explain the
Fathers and refute errors contrary to the faith that rhetoric
and dialectics were studied. 'In short,' says Crevier, 'the
thought both of the king and of the scholar who laboured with
him was to refer all things to religion, nothing being
considered as truly useful which did not bear some relation to
that end.' At first Alcuin allowed the study of the classic
poets, and in his boyhood, as we know, he had been a greater
reader of Virgil than of the Scriptures. … The authors whose
study Charlemagne and Alcuin desired to promote, were not so
much Virgil and Cicero, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine; and
Charlemagne, in his excessive admiration of those Fathers,
gave utterance to the wish that he had a dozen such men at his
court. The 'City of God' was read at the royal table, and the
questions addressed by the court students to their master
turned rather on the obscurities of Holy Writ than the
difficulties of prosody. In one thing, however, they betrayed
a classic taste, and that was in their selection of names. The
Royal Academicians all rejoiced in some literary soubriquet;
Alcuin was Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; but Charlemagne himself
adopted the more scriptural appellation of David. The
eagerness with which this extraordinary man applied himself to
acquire learning for himself, and to extend it throughout his
dominions, is truly admirable, when we remember the enormous
labours in which he was constantly engaged."

_A. T. Drane,
Christian Schools and Scholars,
chapter 5._

See, also,
SCHOOL OF THE PALACE, CHARLEMAGNE'S.

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EDUCATION: England
King Alfred.