University Life: Athens
It has been my desire, were I able, to bring[{25}]
before the reader what Athens may have been,
viewed as what we have since called a University;
and to do this, not with any purpose of writing
a panegyric on a heathen city, or of denying
its many deformities, or of concealing what was
morally base in what was intellectually great, but
just the contrary, of representing as they really[{5}]
were; so far, that is, as to enable him to see what
a University is, in the very constitution of society
and in its own idea, what is its nature and object,
and what its needs of aid and support external to
itself to complete that nature and to secure that[{10}]
object.
So now let us fancy our Scythian, or Armenian,
or African, or Italian, or Gallic student, after
tossing on the Saronic waves, which would be his
more ordinary course to Athens, at last casting[{15}]
anchor at Piræus. He is of any condition or rank
of life you please, and may be made to order,
from a prince to a peasant. Perhaps he is some
Cleanthes, who has been a boxer in the public
games. How did it ever cross his brain to betake[{20}]
himself to Athens in search of wisdom? or, if he
came thither by accident, how did the love of it
ever touch his heart? But so it was, to Athens he
came with three drachms in his girdle, and he got
his livelihood by drawing water, carrying loads,[{25}]
and the like servile occupations. He attached
himself, of all philosophers, to Zeno the
Stoic,—to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most haughty
of speculators; and out of his daily earnings the
poor scholar brought his master the daily sum of[{30}]
an obolus, in payment for attending his lectures.
Such progress did he make, that on Zeno's death
he actually was his successor in his school; and,
if my memory does not play me false, he is the
author of a hymn to the Supreme Being, which is
one of the noblest effusions of the kind in classical[{5}]
poetry. Yet, even when he was the head of a
school, he continued in his illiberal toil as if he
had been a monk; and, it is said, that once, when
the wind took his pallium, and blew it aside, he
was discovered to have no other garment at[{10}]
all—something like the German student who came up
to Heidelberg with nothing upon him but a great
coat and a pair of pistols.
Or it is another disciple of the Porch—Stoic
by nature, earlier than by profession—who is[{15}]
entering the city; but in what different fashion
he comes! It is no other than Marcus, Emperor
of Rome and philosopher. Professors long since
were summoned from Athens for his service, when
he was a youth, and now he comes, after his [{20}]
victories in the battlefield, to make his
acknowledgments at the end of life, to the city of wisdom, and
to submit himself to an initiation into the
Eleusinian mysteries.
Or it is a young man of great promise as an[{25}]
orator, were it not for his weakness of chest, which
renders it necessary that he should acquire the art
of speaking without over-exertion, and should
adopt a delivery sufficient for the display of his
rhetorical talents on the one hand, yet merciful[{30}]
to his physical resources on the other. He is
called Cicero; he will stop but a short time, and
will pass over to Asia Minor and its cities, before
he returns to continue a career which will render
his name immortal; and he will like his short
sojourn at Athens so well, that he will take good[{5}]
care to send his son thither at an earlier age than
he visited it himself.
But see where comes from Alexandria (for we
need not be very solicitous about anachronisms),
a young man from twenty to twenty-two, who[{10}]
has narrowly escaped drowning on his voyage,
and is to remain at Athens as many as eight or
ten years, yet in the course of that time will not
learn a line of Latin, thinking it enough to
become accomplished in Greek composition, and in[{15}]
that he will succeed. He is a grave person, and
difficult to make out; some say he is a Christian,
something or other in the Christian line his father
is for certain. His name is Gregory, he is by
country a Cappadocian, and will in time become[{20}]
preëminently a theologian, and one of the
principal Doctors of the Greek Church.
Or it is one Horace, a youth of low stature and
black hair, whose father has given him an
education at Rome above his rank in life, and now is[{25}]
sending him to finish it at Athens; he is said to
have a turn for poetry: a hero he is not, and it
were well if he knew it; but he is caught by the
enthusiasm of the hour, and goes off campaigning
with Brutus and Cassius, and will leave his shield[{30}]
behind him on the field of Philippi.
Or it is a mere boy of fifteen: his name
Eunapius; though the voyage was not long, sea
sickness, or confinement, or bad living on board the
vessel, threw him into a fever, and, when the
passengers landed in the evening at Piræus, he[{5}]
could not stand. His countrymen who
accompanied him, took him up among them and carried
him to the house of the great teacher of the day,
Proæresius, who was a friend of the captain's,
and whose fame it was which drew the[{10}]
enthusiastic youth to Athens. His companions
understand the sort of place they are in, and, with the
license of academic students, they break into the
philosopher's house, though he appears to have
retired for the night, and proceed to make [{15}]
themselves free of it, with an absence of ceremony,
which is only not impudence, because Proæresius
takes it so easily. Strange introduction for our
stranger to a seat of learning, but not out of
keeping with Athens; for what could you expect of a[{20}]
place where there was a mob of youths and not
even the pretense of control; where the poorer
lived any how, and got on as they could, and the
teachers themselves had no protection from the
humors and caprices of the students who filled[{25}]
their lecture halls? However, as to this
Eunapius, Proæresius took a fancy to the boy, and told
him curious stories about Athenian life. He
himself had come up to the University with one
Hephæstion, and they were even worse off than[{30}]
Cleanthes the Stoic; for they had only one cloak
between them, and nothing whatever besides,
except some old bedding; so when Proæresius
went abroad, Hephæstion lay in bed, and
practiced himself in oratory; and then Hephæstion
put on the cloak, and Proæresius crept under the[{5}]
coverlet. At another time there was so fierce
a feud between what would be called "town and
gown" in an English University, that the
Professors did not dare lecture in public, for fear of
ill treatment.[{10}]
But a freshman like Eunapius soon got
experience for himself of the ways and manners
prevalent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardly
entered the city, when he was caught hold of by
a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to[{15}]
practice on his awkwardness and his ignorance.
At first sight one wonders at their childishness;
but the like conduct obtained in the mediæval
Universities; and not many months have passed
away since the journals have told us of sober[{20}]
Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations,
and to the anxieties of money making, pelting
each other with snowballs on their own sacred
territory, and defying the magistracy, when they
would interfere with their privileges of[{25}]
becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to
something or other in human nature. Meanwhile,
there stands the newcomer, surrounded by a circle
of his new associates, who forthwith proceed to
frighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him,[{30}]
to the extent of their wit. Some address him with
mock politeness, others with fierceness; and so
they conduct him in solemn procession across the
Agora to the Baths; and as they approach, they
dance about him like madmen. But this was to
be the end of his trial, for the Bath was a sort of[{5}]
initiation; he thereupon received the pallium, or
University gown, and was suffered by his
tormentors to depart in peace. One alone is
recorded as having been exempted from this
persecution; it was a youth graver and loftier than[{10}]
even St. Gregory himself: but it was not from his
force of character, but at the instance of Gregory,
that he escaped. Gregory was his bosom friend,
and was ready in Athens to shelter him when
he came. It was another Saint and Doctor; the[{15}]
great Basil, then, (it would appear,) as Gregory,
but a catechumen of the Church.
But to return to our freshman. His troubles
are not at an end, though he has got his gown
upon him. Where is he to lodge? whom is he[{20}]
to attend? He finds himself seized, before he
well knows where he is, by another party of men
or three or four parties at once, like foreign
porters at a landing, who seize on the baggage of the
perplexed stranger, and thrust half a dozen cards[{25}]
into his unwilling hands. Our youth is plied by
the hangers-on of professor this, or sophist that,
each of whom wishes the fame or the profit of
having a houseful. We will say that he escapes
from their hands,—but then he will have to[{30}]
choose for himself where he will put up; and, to
tell the truth, with all the praise I have already
given, and the praise I shall have to give, to
the city of mind, nevertheless, between ourselves,
the brick and wood which formed it, the actual
tenements, where flesh and blood had to lodge[{5}]
(always excepting the mansions of great men of
the place), do not seem to have been much better
than those of Greek or Turkish towns, which are
at this moment a topic of interest and ridicule
in the public prints. A lively picture has lately[{10}]
been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, says the
writer,[41] a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses
found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety
old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless
structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls,[{15}]
which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or
river-sides can supply; tumble them down on the
declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces
between house and house, thus accidentally
determined, be understood to form streets, winding of[{20}]
course for no reason, and with no meaning, up and
down the town; the roadway always narrow, the
breadth never uniform, the separate houses
bulging or retiring below, as circumstances may have
determined, and leaning forward till they meet[{25}]
overhead—and you have a good idea of
Gallipoli. I question whether this picture would
not nearly correspond to the special seat of the
Muses in ancient times. Learned writers assure
us distinctly that the houses of Athens were for[{30}]
the most part small and mean; that the streets
were crooked and narrow; that the upper stories
projected over the roadway; and that staircases,
balustrades, and doors that opened outwards
obstructed it—a remarkable coincidence of[{5}]
description. I do not doubt at all, though
history is silent, that that roadway was jolting to
carriages, and all but impassable; and that it
was traversed by drains, as freely as any Turkish
town now. Athens seems in these respects to[{10}]
have been below the average cities of its time.
"A stranger," says an ancient, "might doubt, on
the sudden view, if really he saw Athens."