Old Greek Education

by J. P. Mahaffy

The example of the Stoics, who taught in the city, was followed by other schools, after that the successive devastations of the neighborhood of Athens by Philip V. of Macedon (200 B.C.), and by Sulla, had injured the gardens and groves of both Kynosarges, Academy, and Lykeion. We hear of the Ptolemeion and Diogeneion as the fashionable places of resort, then Hadrian’s gymnasium—all within the town, and all the gift of individual founders—the Diogenes in question being a condottiere who commanded the second King Demetrius’s troops in Attica, 225 B.C. There is some slight evidence that this man’s gymnasium was used for beginners, and possibly they may even have resided there; for we hear that scholars often set up huts (καλύβια) near the house of their favorite teachers. There were libraries in connection with Ptolemy’s and Hadrian’s gymnasia. Indeed, it seems, in later days, that such was the danger of a riot if professors lectured in any public building, that they built private theatres for themselves, attached to their own houses, and elegantly appointed. In these we may be sure that their teaching took the form of a lecture, not of disputation or of catechising. This latter kind of lesson was very popular in Socrates and Plato’s time; but Aristotle already severed it from his regular discourses, and held his philosophic conversations with his pupils walking in the Peripatos: hence the title of his school.

§ 81. We only know now the names of those professors who lived for the world and for posterity, and strove to teach by publishing their works. In an age when originality was dead, and the highest ability consisted in the best commentary on Plato and Aristotle, this literary activity, once admired and praised, seems to us, for the most part, idle subtlety. Even in rhetoric all the laws and models were fixed; Longinus only shows us a modern and æsthetic appreciation of beauty in style, which we do not find in earlier rhetors. But, of all the scholarchs at Athens, none are now of the least consideration save the heads of the Neo-Platonic school; and even these were but followers of this strange, fascinating doctrine, already preached in Alexandria and in Rome, which strove to give a new meaning to the metaphysic of the Academy, and accommodate it to the spiritual wants of earnest heathen, in the face of Christianity.

But it is more than probable that, as in our own universities, so at Athens, the best and most earnest of the teachers set themselves so exclusively to their task that they left nothing behind them except in the note-books of their classes. This sort of university teacher never earns any wider popularity than that of his college; and yet there, and among those who have known his diligence, his patience, and his power, he will always rank far higher than those who rush before the public from ambition, often with badly digested ideas. We shall, therefore, do well not to set down the philosophical teaching at Athens at the level of those tedious commentaries which the student will find collected in the later volumes[70] of Mullach’s “Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum.”

§ 82. As regards the length of the course which the students were expected to attend, there are very varying statements. Five to eight years are mentioned, a period far too long for young gentlemen like Cicero’s nephews, and probably only meant to apply to those who went for professional purposes. There were lads of tender age, sometimes under the care of a pædagogue, and men of middle-age, waiting for the chance of a post. There seems to have been no limit of age, or any compulsion or rule as to the number of courses to be kept. Every student (or his parent) was supposed to select for himself what subjects he should pursue. This was perhaps less mischievous than it would now be, seeing the quadrivium of humanities was so fixed by tradition that most students fell into it as a matter of course. Neither was there in old days that multitude of special subjects, totally unconnected either with each other or with a liberal education, which now infests our educational establishments, and causes the hurry after tangible results to displace the only true outcome of a higher education—that capacity to think consecutively and clearly, which is to be acquired by studying a logical and thoroughly articulated branch of knowledge for the sake of its accuracy and method.

During most of the flourishing age of Hellenistic culture the rhetor was the acknowledged practical teacher; and his course, which occupied several years, with the interruption of the summer holidays, comprised first a careful reading of classical authors, both poetical and prose, with explanations and illustrations. This made the student acquainted with the language and literature of Greece. But it was only introductory to the technical study of expression, of eloquence based on these models, and of accurate writing as a collateral branch of this study. When a man had so perfected himself, he was considered fit for public employment. In the latest times a special knowledge of jurisprudence became more and more necessary for public servants, and was provided for by special schools. We have, unfortunately, no minute description of the precise course of reading adopted by either Sophists or Rhetors, and are therefore confined to this general description. But it is, in our days of hurry and of intellectual compression of subjects, a remarkable thing to contemplate the youth of the civilized world spending four or five years in the mere acquiring of accuracy and elegance of expression after they had learned at school reading, writing, and the elements of science.

§ 83. In this account of ancient university life our attention has been almost exclusively confined to Athens, though there were other seats of education very celebrated, and in much request—Rhodes, Massilia, Tarsus, and, above all, Alexandria. Many Roman nobles preferred sending their sons to Massilia for their education—a Greek town, planted far away from the vices and luxuries of the East. Rhodes maintained its political freedom longer than any other Hellenic settlement, and was famous as a school of rhetoric. Tarsus, from which we know at least one splendid specimen of a student—the Apostle Paul—always had a high and solid reputation for work, and it is very remarkable how the most serious of all the practical systems, the Stoic, is identified with that part of Asia Minor. Afterwards iconoclasm found its cradle there, and thus this land of serious reforms over and over again forced upon the world an earnest view of life.[71] It is worthy of note how constantly the great chairs at Athens were filled by men from these outlying schools; indeed, a native Athenian in the Sophist’s chair was a great rarity. Yet we know so little of the inner life of these remote towns that they cannot now afford us any materials for our inquiry.

§ 84. The case is different with Alexandria, concerning which much has been written and recorded. But, in the first place, it is hardly correct to speak of education in Alexandria as strictly Hellenic, or even Hellenistic. It was the meeting-ground of all the faith and dogma of the old world. The Egyptian, Jewish, and Syrian elements were so strong there that, considering the absence of all old Hellenic traditions in this newest of all Greek-speaking towns, we could hardly use it as a fair specimen of the good and evil in old Greek training. We may add that up to the days of the great theological controversies—days so graphically pictured in Kingsley’s “Hypatia”—we know comparatively little about the students of Alexandria. All our information clusters about the teachers. As we might expect, Alexandria was regarded as the university of progress, the laboratory of positive science, in contrast to the conservative and literary Athens. Nevertheless, even all the sound literary criticism of those days comes from Alexandria. For it is plain that the Ptolemies intended it not as a training-place for youth so much as a home for research, richly endowed with the means and materials for serious study—first of all, an ample library, then handsome buildings, retirements, and adequate endowments. These conceptions, and the success in their execution, are profoundly interesting in the history of education, but are beyond the scope of the present work.

FOOTNOTES

[61] Βίοι σοφ. ii. 32, 2.

[62] The picture of Athens given in the Acts of the Apostles (ch. xvii.) shows that the city was full of people cultivated in philosophy and letters, but indisposed to pursue any serious calling. They lived in the agora all day, as in a great club, looking out for gossip and news. If any one desires to see a modern parallel, I refer him to the Hall and Library of the Four Courts in Dublin—the most agreeable place in the world to visit; for there the bar of Ireland, many of them for want of briefs, occupy themselves with all the scandal of the day. Nay, even those who are busy refresh themselves, in passing, with five minutes’ talk, and are never too hurried to enjoy a good story when it is offered to them. There is even a great deal of real business done in this desultory and peripatetic way. Whether a new system of philosophy or a new religion would find a hearing is perhaps doubtful, and marks the difference between the old Greek and the modern idler.