Old Greek Education

by J. P. Mahaffy

§ 76. A great deal of obscurity still remains, not only concerning the exact number of salaried professors of sophistic and rhetoric, but concerning their relations to the crowd of assistants, recognized and unrecognized, which must have existed at the University of Athens. So clear was the policy of Hadrian, and still more of M. Aurelius, to make it the main seat of the world’s learning, that all manner of students went thither to enjoy the various privileges offered. The grand man, the Sophist, could not be expected to do tutor’s or coaching work; and as many lads came from the far East and West with little training, there must have been a considerable class of private teachers to help them on. This was also done by the lad’s pædagogue, who came with him from home. But there appears to have been a licensed class of secondary professors, the Privat-Docenten of the Germans, who enjoyed no salary, but lived on the fees of pupils. It is not likely that the total number of these licensed lecturers in sophistic and rhetoric exceeded eight or ten; the private tutors were probably very numerous.

We naturally inquire how this State appointment to professorial chairs was consistent with the succession already described in the four philosophical schools. In these there was no formal change; they were elected by a committee of recognized heads of each school. But gradually the influence of the emperor made itself felt. The procurator, who came from Corinth to look after such matters, either influenced the nomination of the committee, or recommended the election of a particular candidate. Even in the case of the public chairs there was sometimes a competition, and often the emperor did not interfere with his lieutenant’s arrangements. Herodes Atticus was almost omnipotent in his day in these appointments. Dismissals from the public chairs were very unusual, but distinctly asserted as the emperor’s right. The Prohæresius above mentioned was dismissed by the Emperor Julian, because he appeared to be a Christian.

§ 77. It is more interesting to turn to the peculiarities of life which bound together the young men at the University of Athens, and the various customs which then, as now, gave a peculiar tone to the student’s life. What is called the atmosphere of Oxford or Cambridge, of Dublin or Harvard, consists in a body of traditional customs maintained by the peculiar conservatism of youth, which moulds every new-comer, and produces a certain type of character, and even a certain fixity of manners. It seems probable that the earliest Italian universities in the Middle Ages, which go back to the eleventh or twelfth century, acquired some of these traditions from the Greek universities of the decadence, and thus a direct filiation may be traced between the customs now to be described, as existing at Athens in the Hellenistic period, and those of modern Europe. But to investigate this obscure subject thoroughly would lead us far beyond our present limits.

We hear that no one was allowed to attend lectures, at least in the fourth century A.D., without dressing in the scholar’s short cloak (τρίβων)—in fact, our college gown; and the right of wearing it was only obtained by leave of the Sophist. This in itself was a mark probably more universal than the gowns at Oxford and Cambridge, for we have no evidence that Greek gentlemen, like the modern English, hated all official costumes.[65]

There was no arrangement for a daily commons of students; there were no college buildings, and the students lodged where they could, as they do in the foreign universities, such as Göttingen or Leyden. But there were special dining societies in each of the four philosophic schools, meeting once a month or oftener, for which funds were bequeathed, and which were regarded as a special bond of union. Of course, simple fare and philosophical conversation was the original plan: it degenerated into luxury and sumptuous feasting; for the dinners given by Lycon, when head of the Peripatetic school, lasted till the following morning. He entertained twenty at a time for the nominal fee of nine obols, which was even remitted to poor scholars. This took place on the last day of the month. Epicurus, in his will, made special provision for a feast every twentieth of the month. The Stoics had three such clubs, called after scholarchs who probably were the founders. The intention of these feasts, which were more like Oxford gaudies than ordinary commons, was to bring masters and pupils into closer relation, and this is found a true plan in all modern society. People seldom become intimate who do not dine together.

At Athens, too, there was no official tutorial discipline;[66] there were no compulsory chapels, or lectures, or fines; and order seems to have been kept by the very republican arrangement of a senior prefect (ἄρχων), elected by the class every ten days. We are told that the professor, besides remonstrance, sometimes struck idle or stupid scholars; and Libanius talks of being “sent down” as a terrible disgrace, involving serious consequences to the lad’s parents, and even to his native town. Perhaps it may correspond to expulsion from our universities; but this must have been for the gravest crimes only. The pupils of any professor were merely known as his circle (οἱ ἀπό, or περί, τινος); they were only his pupils or hearers in that they attended his lectures. Indeed, they often designated him by a nickname public enough to have been transmitted in after-literature.

§ 78. We find an unusual variety of terms,[67] all transferred from other combinations, to express the clubs or unions of students among themselves, and they are constantly mentioned in books and inscriptions of the second and third centuries A.D. They naturally grew out of the old separation of the ephebi into a separate class long before university education was organized, or rather crystallized, into the shape we are now discussing. The presidents of these clubs were called choregi (also κορυφαῖοι and ἀκρωμῖται). Inscriptions tell us of similar private combinations among the ephebi in the second century A.D., in which names from the general lists are repeated under the separate heads of Heracleids and Theseids, two associations to be compared with the students’ clubs at the Italian and German universities, which often bear the names of nations, thus pointing to their mediæval origin. There is evidence of some peculiar importance, possibly of rivalry, as regards the Theseids and Heracleids at Athens, and the German critics are probably right in suspecting a political bias to have been the true ground of difference. The constant relations of Heracles and Theseus in the legends and the religion of Attica are well known; the Temple of Theseus, still standing at Athens, is by many considered a Heracleion, and the deeds of Heracles are more conspicuously celebrated than those of Theseus in its sculptured reliefs. Theseus was certainly raised by Attic legends into the position of founder of the democracy, and the ideal of an ephebus, and as such he may have been contrasted to Heracles, who was the ancestor of Doric nobility, and might be regarded as of aristocratic tendency. This conjecture has the merit of probability, though it has no basis beyond these general grounds.

§ 79. When we come to later days, especially to the fourth century A.D., we hear much about the students’ clubs from Philostratus, Eunapius, Libanius, and others. It is remarkable that they were not then formed on the national basis, as we may conceive the older Heracleids to have been Bœotian youths, severed from the Attic Theseids, or as we could conceive Irish students associating themselves in an English university. They were rather suggested by the rivalries of their teachers, originally of the separate philosophic schools, but afterwards merely formed on the grounds of ambition and popularity. A crowded attendance at lectures was so anxiously desired that every kind of device was used by the rival professors to induce students to come to them. This evil became so apparent in its effects upon the students, who were flattered and courted by their masters, that Libanius mentions a proposed agreement (συνθήκη) between the professors on the question, which was, however, unsuccessful. Thus in the older University of Dublin the profits of college tutors were so great that a similar rivalry in popularity existed, and the dons are said to have studied unworthy arts to secure a full chamber. Such canvassing has almost disappeared since the treaty, as Libanius calls it, of putting the pupils’ fees into a common fund, of which the greater part is divided according to the tutor’s standing, and only a small premium is allowed for the actual number of pupils.

The constant jealousies and factions occasioned by this competition among professors were reproduced in the Italian universities of the Renaissance period; indeed, all through the Middle Ages. Thus, according to Eunapius, the president of the club called Σπάρτη ἄτακτος considered it part of his duty to bring his club in full force, and well armed, to the Peiræus, or even down to Sunium, in order to catch students coming from the East, green and fresh, and secure them for the professor he patronized. Rival clubs met on these errands, and had pitched battles worse than those of town and gown in England. Every attempt was made to secure lads, even before they left their homes. Libanius tells us he came to Athens, having been already canvassed at his home in Antioch to attend the rhetor Aristodemus, but was seized by a club in the interest of Diophantus, and only let free with great difficulty, and after he had sworn allegiance to Diophantus. We hear of every sort of violence being committed by these students, in whose disputes the Roman governor at Corinth was sometimes obliged to interfere. We hear of their debts and their poverty, their dissoluteness and idleness. But, of course, the diligent and orderly minority have left no trace behind, and we must take care to give no exaggerated weight to the noisy doings of the baser sort. Even tossing in a blanket (or carpet) was well known to them,[68] and applied to unpopular teachers, probably of the obscurer sort, as may be seen from Libanius’s oration On the Carpet, in which he lectures them on the subject. We do not hear of any scholarships, bursaries, or exhibitions intended to help indigent lads of ability. Indeed, this giving a lad money rewards for educating himself seems a very evil device of modern times. To support a student with the bare necessaries of life, and give him free instruction, is a different thing, and this was the idea of the pious founders of scholarships. To repay him in part for an extravagant preparation by extravagant prizes is a very different notion, but now so diffused that its absurdity no longer strikes the public mind in England.

§ 80. Gregory the Nazianzen tells us of comic ceremonies by which the freshman was initiated to his studies, and these practices were technically called τελεταί, or initiatory rites. These are to be compared to the teasing of beginners known at the German universities under the name of deposition. At Athens the novice was brought by a band to the baths through the market-place. Then those in front began to push him back, and refuse to let him in, while those behind thrust him forward. After a rude struggle, probably intended to try his temper, he was let in, bathed, and thus formally admitted, receiving his tribon, or college gown. There was also some unknown ceremony in the theatre, called κυλίστραι, of which the name only is preserved, from its being forbidden by law in 693 A.D., and this by a Church synod in Constantinople. It was identified with other heathen practices and traditions, and hence considered worthy of being threatened with excommunication. These late occurrences of student practices give rise to the suspicion that they may have been copied in the early school of Bologna. Perhaps the most curious allusion[69] is to the fact that, after a certain standing, students were by common consent excused from these follies, as now in Germany a graduate at Leipzig or Göttingen, or a professor, would no more think of fighting a student’s duel than an English gentleman would; while every younger man is compelled to do so by an iron custom amounting to the most absolute tyranny.