Page images
PDF
EPUB

manity. Discovery and advance, we are everywhere given to understand, is the result, neither of a priori nor a posteriori investigation exclusively, but of a combination of both, or rather of a prophetic foreboding and pre-occupancy of ultimate principles brought into living union with the most thorough mastery of individual particulars.1

16. The admirably just and accurate conception of the norma of scientific progress brought to light by Aristotle could not fail to give a prodigious impulse to that freer education in which, as we have seen, knowledge is imparted dynamically, and in the very act and process of its own productivity. The general outlines marked out in the instruction of the Sophists became only the starting point for a mode of study equally direct and practical, while rising immeasurably in dignity, power, and amplitude, in consequence of its more intimate conjunction with the elements of higher speculation, and philosophic certainty. No slight approximation to the essentials of the principle of conveying the widest and most elevated wisdom in and through a liberal training for the forms of definite action is observable in those learned institutions which everywhere started into existence in the most populous and flourishing cities of the vast empire embraced by the language and civilization of Greece under the successors of Alexander.

MUSEUM OF ALEXANDRIA-SCHOOLS OF ATHENS AND RHODES.

3

17. The Museum,2 or academic corporation of Alexandria, which with its Rector (iepeúc), its dining hall (avorirov), cloisters (dpa), and grounds (EρiлаTоç), presents so singular a counterpart to the external forms of English collegiate life, was entirely organized in accordance with a system of professorial Faculties. The teachers of this institution, and of course the students also, were distributed amongst the several departments of Philosophy, Medicine, and Philology, a classification almost literally corresponding with the traditional arrangements of modern Universities. That this form and

1. Brandis Aristoteles, p. 45.

2. For an account of the Museum see Strabo XVII, 9. Fr. Gronov. De Museo Alexandrino Thesaur. Antiq. Gr. VIII, 2741-60, and L. Neocor. d. M. A. ib. 2767–78.

3. So called from the fact that this official was at the same time the priest either of Apollo and the Muses, or of the contiguous temple of Serapis. It affords some confirmation to the latter view of the subject that the veшkópos of the temple of Serapis is expressly mentioned in inscriptions as a member of this association (τῶν ἐν Μουσείῳ σιτουμένων ἀτελῶν Boeckh. Cor. pus Inser. XXIX. § 3. No. 4724.) The Rector of the Museum was probably invested with this sacerdotal office very much in the same way as deaneries, and other ecclesiastical dignities are at present attached to college appointments in England; and possibly also for the purpose of surrounding him with a certain nimbus of sanctity in the eyes of the Orientals.

principle of higher education was at all peculiar to the University of the Ptolemies, except in so far as it exhibited the most complete and richly furnished institution of the kind with which the world was then acquainted, is the more improbable from the fact that in all other respects, and especially in the social and collegiate arrangements just referred to, the Museum of Alexandria was, we find, a perfect copy of the principal schools in Athens. We have it on the clearest evidence that the Peripatetics and philosophers of the Academy had gradually assumed the consistency of distinctly organized and corporate bodies.. The will of Theophrastus preserved in Diogenes Laertius' bequeathes to the sect over which he presided the buildings in which he taught (μουσεῖον) also called διατριβή, with adjacent grounds (τὸν κῆπον KaÌ TÙY TEρÍTаTоv). The former is described as furnished with a library, maps, &c., and adorned, like the chapel (iɛpór) of the society, with a statue of the founder of the sect, and those of certain tutelary divinities. The individuals attached to each school in the capacity of teachers and disciples were in the practice of dining together on certain regular and stated occasions, a part of the arrangements of the sect which Aristotle considered of so much importance as himself to draw up a code of laws (vóμοi ovμñotikoi),3 for its better regulation. Theophrastus, we are informed by Athenaeus, expressly provided for the maintenance of this custom by means of a pecuniary bequest, the original property of the Academic school had, we are told by Photius, been augmented more than three hundred fold by successive benefactions. The disciples of Polemo are said to have established their abode in the neighborhood of the head of the school," and the grounds of the Academy were laid out at the expense of

4

1. V. 51. sqq.

2. Those doubtless of Apollo, the Muses, and the Graces, which by a custom derived apparently, like many other peculiarities of the academic life of the ancients, from the Pythagoreans, formed a regular part of the furniture of the lecture rooms of philosophers and Sophists. The circumstance that the number of tutelary divinities was thus not unfrequently larger than that of the audience is often alluded to in the bon mots and epigrams of antiquity. See Jacobs Anthol. III. p. 279. 602.

3. καὶ τοις φιλοσόφοις δὲ ἦν ἐπιμελὲς συνάγουσι τους νέους μετ' αὐτῶν πρός τινα τεταγμέ νον νόμον εὐωχεῖσθαι· τοῦ γοῦν Ξενοκράτους ἐν ̓Ακαδεμίᾳ καὶ πάλιν ̓Αριστοτέλους συμπος TIKOI TIVES hoav vóμol. Athon. Deipnos. V. 2, p. 186.

Athen. Deipnos. V. p. 186.

4. κατέλιπε δὲ Θεόφραστος εἰς τὴν τοιαύτην σύνοδον χρήματα. 5. Biblioth. p. 565. Hoesch. See also Suid. s. v. Ilλáτwv. 6. Diog. Laert. IV. 35. An even closer union between the professor and his class seems to have prevailed at Alexandria, where Gnipho is said by Suetonius (illustr. gram. c. 7.) to have belonged to the contubernuim of Dionysius Scythobrachion. Persaeus, the friend and disciple of Zeno, is in a similar manner said to have lived in the same house with his master. Appollonius Rhodius is also mentioned as (Athen. Deipn. XII. 86.) having resided on the same familiar footing with Callimachus, and Galen (de libr. propr. I. XIX (K) p. 43) relates that when sent by his father to study under Chrysippus he took up his abode along with that philosopher. See Lehrs stud. Aristarchi. p. 16. Note. The sons of the highest Roman nobility were occasionally boarded in the houses of academic teachers. Thus Augustus when studying at Apollonia re30

1

Attalus king of Pergamus. In obedience to the same general tendency Epicurus made over a house and grounds to his followers, and, as an additional means of strengthening the sense of the bond of union and true kindredship which held them together, ordered by will a sum of money to be invested sufficient in amount to defray the expenses of a banquet to his disciples on the twentieth of each month ἑκάστου μηνὸς τοῖς εἰκάσιν, and also on the anniversary of his birth. In a manner precisely similar, as we learn from Plutarch, the birthday of Plato was annually celebrated by his admirers. Of the extreme importance attached in Athens to everything which could contribute to give definite form and visible reality to the academic body we have a remarkable instance in the correspondence of Cicero. In one of his Epistolae ad Failmiaris, XIII, 1, he requests Memmius on behalf of Patro, the existing head of the Epicurean sect, to waive the right already conceded by the Areopagus of taking possession of the house of Epicurus. Patro tenaciously insisted upon the duty incumbent upon him, as diúdoxos, of preserving for the society the original seat of the school (honorem, officium, testamentorum, jus, Epicuri auctoritatem, Phaedri obtestationem, sedem, domicilium, vestigia summorum hominum sibi tuenda esse dicit).

18. Any dissimilarity which existed between Athens and Alexandria arose doubtless from the fact that the latter did not exhibit the anomalies and excrescences of successive experiments, but only came into existence at a time when the results of long experience had caused the nature of these institutions to be comparatively well understood. A farther difference is known to have been occasioned by the prominence assigned to peculiar subjects of study in each-a circumstance perfectly analogous with what we shall hereafter have occasion to notice in many of the most famous Universities of later times. In the three centuries which intervened between Alexander and Augustu“, Athens was preeminently 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

sided in the family of the philosopher Areus (Sueton. vit. Octavian. c. 89. That no usage ordinarily existed in the later University life of the Greeks is evident from Liban. Ep. 333. 1. Alluded to by Horace, Ep. II. 45. Inter silvas Academi quaerere verum.

2. Ilence the term Icadistae popularly given to the Epicureans. Aegid. Menag. ad Diog. Laert. X. 18.

3. Diog. Laert. X. 10. 17. sqq.

4. Symposiac, p. 715.

5. Grafenhahn Gesch. der Class. Philol. im Alterthum. I. p. 352. C. G. Zumpt, über den Bestand der philosoph. Schulen zu Athen und die Succession der Scholarchen, pag. 4.

obtained ever 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. Ammonius Saccas, the Preceptor of Origen, Porphyrius, Polemon, Plotinus, and many others scarcely inferior in renown, are mentioned as having taught in its schools.1

HIGHER EDUCATION AMONG THE ROMANS.

19. Many of those who attended the teaching of these institutions inquestionably proposed to themselves no further end than the finished completion of a liberal education. At a somewhat later period Marcus Cicero, Bibulus, Varus, Messalla, Horace, Ovid, &c., frequented the schools of Athens very much in the same manner as men of fortune at the present day attend the Universities with the view of obtaining a general preparation for political and literary life. This however, then as now, can only have been the case with a very small fraction of the academic population. When we read that no less than two thousand students attended the lectures of Theophrastus alone, and that the number of those who collected around this philosopher and other teachers of suspected political honesty became so formidable that decrees were passed forbidding any one to exercise such an office without a special license from the senate and demos,3 we cannot but conclude that the great majority was composed of the

In consequence of this almost exclusive celebrity in one Department of knowledge we find that in later ages it was a frequent practice to supplement the instruction of one University by that of another. Gregory of Nazianz studied first at Caesarea, then at Alexandria, and finally at Athens. St. Basil visited as a student Caesaria, Constantinople, and Athens in succession. Gregor. Nazianz orat XX, p. 35.

A medical degree of Alexandria was regarded as a passport to professional success. Pro omni experimento sufficiat medico ad commendandam artis auctoritatem si Alexandriae se dixerit eruditum. Ammian. Marcell. 22. 16. cited by C. Neocori Diatr. de Museo Alexandrino. Anatomy, Surgery, Botany, and Pathology were cultivated at Alexandria with peculiar success. Bernhardy Grundr. der Gr. Litt. I. p. 383. Respecting the important position which family physicians held in the higher circles at Rome during the empire, see in the same work I. p. 395. Persons of this class were often described as invested with the highest dignities of state. A certain Arcadius is addressed by Himerius (orat. 33.) as 'Apxíaтpos kaì Kóμns (i. e. Comes sacri Palatii.

1. Originating with Ammonius in Alexandria as a species of mystical doctrine, Neo-platonism was propagated by Plotinus in Rome, maintained in Italy by the labors of Amelius and Porphyrius, and finally transplanted into Syria by Jamblichus. Zumpt über den Bestand der philosoph. Schul. zu Athen. Bernhardy Grundriss der Gr. Litt. I. pp. 401 and 429.

2. Alexid. 'Immeús Meinecke Fr. com. III. p. 42. Diog. Laert. V. 2. 37. Niebuhr Vorles. über alte Gesch. III. p. 118. Anm. 2.

3. The philosophers of this period were generally friendly to absolutism, or at all events hostile to democracy. See Zumpt über den Bestand der philosoph. Schulen zu Athen, p. 17. Anm. 3.

youth of the middle class, in combination with choicer specimens of the lower orders. Persons belonging to these walks in life, however ambitious of deriving benefit from the refining influences of University education, would have been utterly unable to afford the time and money necessary for such an object, had there not been the prospect of an adequate material compensation, in the shape of professionally available knowledge. This inference derives greater probability when we consider the very great number of similar institutions which flourished at the same period, each, of course, the gathering point of a considerable body of academic students. Besides schools of high eminence in Mytiline, 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 (Geogr. XV. p. 962,), 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 (Sat. III., 1. 60). That external inducements were held out amply sufficient to prevail upon poor and ambitious men to qualify themselves at some cost for vacations 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, 1. Gräfenhahn Geschichte der Class. Litt. I. pp. 334, 408. Respecting the number of higher schools in Asia see also Bernhardy Grundr. der Gr. Litt. I. p. 398.

2. Sueton. vit. Octav. c. 8.

3. Gräfenhahn Gesch. der Class. Litt. I. p. 409.

4. Geogr. XIV. p. 960. ὧρθ' ὑπερβεβλημένας καὶ ̓Αθήνας καὶ ̓Αλεξάνδρειαν καὶ εἴ τινα άλο λον τόπον δυνατὸν εἰπειν.

5. A terrible picture of the inhuman treatment to which many of this class were subjected in Rome is given in Lucian de Mercede conductis (see especially p. 702 sqq.). The author admits however that the hardships of their lot were often richly deserved (p. 700), and that the humiliations and indignities to which men of learning were necessarily exposed when depending for existence upon private individuals could not occur in the case of those who were employed by the state (p. 719). That the conversation of men of this class was often highly prized, and they themselves treated with the most delicate and deferential courtesy is evident from the biogra phies of all the nobler Romans. Plut. vit. cat. pp. 224, 229, 275.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »