[41] Mr. Russell's Letters in the Times newspaper (1854).
I grant all this, and much more, if you will;
but, recollect, Athens was the home of the [{15}]
intellectual and beautiful; not of low mechanical
contrivances and material organization. Why
stop within your lodgings counting the rents in
your wall or the holes in your tiling, when nature
and art call you away? You must put up with[{20}]
such a chamber, and a table, and a stool, and a
sleeping board, anywhere else in the three
continents; one place does not differ from another
indoors; your magalia in Africa, or your grottoes
in Syria are not perfection. I suppose you did [{25}]
not come to Athens to swarm up a ladder, or to
grope about a closet: you came to see and to
hear, what hear and see you could not elsewhere.
What food for the intellect is it possible to
procure indoors, that you stay there looking about[{30}]
you? do you think to read there? where are your
books? do you expect to purchase books at
Athens—you are much out in your calculations.
True it is, we at this day, who live in the
nineteenth century, have the books of Greece as a
perpetual memorial; and copies there have been,[{5}]
since the time that they were written; but you
need not go to Athens to procure them, nor would
you find them in Athens. Strange to say, strange
to the nineteenth century, that in the age of Plato
and Thucydides, there was not, it is said, a[{10}]
bookshop in the whole place: nor was the book trade
in existence till the very time of Augustus.
Libraries, I suspect, were the bright invention of
Attalus or the Ptolemies;[42] I doubt whether
Athens had a library till the reign of Hadrian.[{15}]
It was what the student gazed on, what he heard,
what he caught by the magic of sympathy, not
what he read, which was the education furnished
by Athens.
[42] I do not go into controversy on the subject, for which the
reader must have recourse to Lipsius, Morhof, Boeckh, Bekker, etc.; and
this of course applies to whatever historical matter I introduce, or
shall introduce.
He leaves his narrow lodging early in the[{20}]
morning; and not till night, if even then, will he
return. It is but a crib or kennel, in which
he sleeps when the weather is inclement or the
ground damp; in no respect a home. And he
goes out of doors, not to read the day's[{25}]
newspaper, or to buy the gay shilling volume, but to
imbibe the invisible atmosphere of genius, and
to learn by heart the oral traditions of taste.
Out he goes; and, leaving the tumble-down
town behind him, he mounts the Acropolis to
the right, or he turns to the Areopagus on the left.
He goes to the Parthenon to study the sculptures [{5}]
of Phidias; to the temple of the Dioscuri to see
the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed take
our Sophocles or Æschylus out of our coat pocket;
but, if our sojourner at Athens would understand
how a tragic poet can write, he must betake[{10}]
himself to the theater on the south, and see and
hear the drama literally in action. Or let him go
westward to the Agora, and there he will hear
Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes
haranguing. He goes farther west still, along the[{15}]
shade of those noble planes, which Cimon has
planted there; and he looks around him at the
statues and porticoes and vestibules, each by
itself a work of genius and skill, enough to be the
making of another city. He passes through the[{20}]
city gate, and then he is at the famous Ceramicus;
here are the tombs of the mighty dead; and here,
we will suppose, is Pericles himself, the most
elevated, the most thrilling of orators, converting a
funeral oration over the slain into a philosophical[{25}]
panegyric of the living.
Onwards he proceeds still; and now he has
come to that still more celebrated Academe,
which has bestowed its own name on Universities
down to this day; and there he sees a sight which[{30}]
will be graven on his memory till he dies. Many
are the beauties of the place, the groves, and the
statues, and the temple, and the stream of the
Cephissus flowing by; many are the lessons
which will be taught him day after day by teacher
or by companion; but his eye is just now arrested[{5}]
by one object; it is the very presence of Plato.
He does not hear a word that he says; he does
not care to hear; he asks neither for discourse
nor disputation; what he sees is a whole,
complete in itself, not to be increased by addition, and[{10}]
greater than anything else. It will be a point in
the history of his life; a stay for his memory to
rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of
union with men of like mind, ever afterwards.
Such is the spell which the living man exerts on[{15}]
his fellows, for good or for evil. How nature
impels us to lean upon others, making virtue, or
genius, or name, the qualification for our doing
so! A Spaniard is said to have traveled to Italy,
simply to see Livy; he had his fill of gazing, and[{20}]
then went back again home. Had our young
stranger got nothing by his voyage but the sight
of the breathing and moving Plato, had he
entered no lecture room to hear, no gymnasium to
converse, he had got some measure of education,[{25}]
and something to tell of to his grandchildren.
But Plato is not the only sage, nor the sight of
him the only lesson to be learned in this
wonderful suburb. It is the region and the realm
of philosophy. Colleges were the inventions of[{30}]
many centuries later; and they imply a sort of
cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely
natural to an Athenian. It was the boast of the
philosophic statesman of Athens, that his
countrymen achieved by the mere force of nature and
the love of the noble and the great, what other[{5}]
people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all
who came among them were submitted to the
same method of education. We have traced our
student on his wanderings from the Acropolis to
the Sacred Way; and now he is in the region of[{10}]
the schools. No awful arch, no window of
many-colored lights marks the seats of learning there
or elsewhere; philosophy lives out of doors. No
close atmosphere oppresses the brain or inflames
the eyelid; no long session stiffens the limbs.[{15}]
Epicurus is reclining in his garden; Zeno looks
like a divinity in his porch; the restless Aristotle,
on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism
to Plato, is walking his pupils off their legs in his
Lyceum by the Ilyssus. Our student has[{20}]
determined on entering himself as a disciple of
Theophrastus, a teacher of marvelous popularity, who
has brought together two thousand pupils from
all parts of the world. He himself is of Lesbos;
for masters, as well as students, come hither from[{25}]
all regions of the earth—as befits a University.
How could Athens have collected hearers in such
numbers, unless she had selected teachers of such
power? it was the range of territory, which the
notion of a University implies, which furnished[{30}]
both the quantity of the one and the quality of
the other. Anaxagoras was from Ionia, Carneades
from Africa, Zeno from Cyprus, Protagoras from
Thrace, and Gorgias from Sicily. Andromachus
was a Syrian, Proæresius an Armenian, Hilarius
a Bithynian, Philiscus a Thessalian, Hadrian a[{5}]
Syrian. Rome is celebrated for her liberality in
civil matters; Athens was as liberal in
intellectual. There was no narrow jealousy, directed
against a Professor, because he was not an
Athenian; genius and talent were the qualifications;[{10}]
and to bring them to Athens, was to do homage
to it as a University. There was a brotherhood
and a citizenship of mind.
Mind came first, and was the foundation of the
academical polity; but it soon brought along with[{15}]
it, and gathered round itself, the gifts of fortune
and the prizes of life. As time went on, wisdom
was not always sentenced to the bare cloak of
Cleanthes; but, beginning in rags, it ended in
fine linen. The Professors became honorable[{20}]
and rich; and the students ranged themselves
under their names, and were proud of calling
themselves their countrymen. The University
was divided into four great nations, as the
mediæval antiquarian would style them; and in the[{25}]
middle of the fourth century, Proæresius was the
leader or proctor of the Attic, Hephæstion of
the Oriental, Epiphanius of the Arabic, and
Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors
were both patrons of clients, and hosts and[{30}]
proxeni of strangers and visitors, as well as masters
of the schools: and the Cappadocian, Syrian,
or Sicilian youth who came to one or other of
them, would be encouraged to study by his
protection, and to aspire by his example.
Even Plato, when the schools of Athens were[{5}]
not a hundred years old, was in circumstances
to enjoy the otium cum dignitate. He had a villa
out at Heraclea; and he left his patrimony to
his school, in whose hands it remained, not only
safe, but fructifying, a marvelous phenomenon in[{10}]
tumultuous Greece, for the long space of eight
hundred years. Epicurus too had the property
of the Gardens where he lectured; and these too
became the property of his sect. But in Roman
times the chairs of grammar, rhetoric, politics,[{15}]
and the four philosophies were handsomely
endowed by the State; some of the Professors
were themselves statesmen or high functionaries,
and brought to their favorite study senatorial
rank or Asiatic opulence.[{20}]
Patrons such as these can compensate to the
freshman, in whom we have interested ourselves,
for the poorness of his lodging and the turbulence
of his companions. In everything there is a
better side and a worse; in every place a[{25}]
disreputable set and a respectable, and the one is
hardly known at all to the other. Men come
away from the same University at this day, with
contradictory impressions and contradictory
statements, according to the society they have found[{30}]
there; if you believe the one, nothing goes on
there as it should be: if you believe the other,
nothing goes on as it should not. Virtue,
however, and decency are at least in the minority
everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud or
disadvantage; and this being the case, it is so[{5}]
much gain whenever an Herodes Atticus is found,
to throw the influence of wealth and station on
the side even of a decorous philosophy. A
consular man, and the heir of an ample fortune, this
Herod was content to devote his life to a[{10}]
professorship, and his fortune to the patronage of
literature. He gave the sophist Polemo about
eight thousand pounds, as the sum is calculated,
for three declamations. He built at Athens a
stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white[{15}]
marble, and capable of admitting the whole
population. His theater, erected to the memory of
his wife, was made of cedar wood curiously carved.
He had two villas, one at Marathon, the place of
his birth, about ten miles from Athens, the other[{20}]
at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and thither
he drew to him the èlite, and at times the whole
body of the students. Long arcades, groves of
trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and
recruited the summer visitor. Never was so[{25}]
brilliant a lecture room as his evening
banqueting hall; highly connected students from Rome
mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece
or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the
nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp,[{30}]
met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable
to his deserts. Herod was noted for his
repartees; and we have instances on record of
his setting down, according to the emergency,
both the one and the other.
A higher line, though a rarer one, was that[{5}]
allotted to the youthful Basil. He was one of
those men who seem by a sort of fascination to
draw others around them even without wishing
it. One might have deemed that his gravity and
his reserve would have kept them at a distance;[{10}]
but, almost in spite of himself, he was the center
of a knot of youths, who, pagans as most of them
were, used Athens honestly for the purpose for
which they professed to seek it; and, disappointed
and displeased with the place himself, he seems[{15}]
nevertheless to have been the means of their
profiting by its advantages. One of these was
Sophronius, who afterwards held a high office in
the State: Eusebius was another, at that time
the bosom friend of Sophronius, and afterwards[{20}]
a Bishop. Celsus too is named, who afterwards
was raised to the government of Cilicia by the
Emperor Julian. Julian himself, in the sequel of
unhappy memory, was then at Athens, and known
at least to St. Gregory. Another Julian is also[{25}]
mentioned, who was afterwards commissioner of
the land tax. Here we have a glimpse of the better
kind of society among the students of Athens; and
it is to the credit of the parties composing it,
that such young men as Gregory and Basil, men[{30}]
as intimately connected with Christianity, as they
were well known in the world, should hold so high
a place in their esteem and love. When the two
saints were departing, their companions came
around them with the hope of changing their
purpose. Basil persevered; but Gregory relented,[{5}]
and turned back to Athens for a season.