LECTURE II. GREEK EDUCATION. THE general result of the considerations to which I have already invited your attention is, that a study of the growth and modifications of the early forms of Christianity must begin with a study of their environment. For a complete study, it would be necessary to examine that environment as a whole. In some respects all life hangs together, and no single element of it is in absolute isolation. The political and economical features of a given time affect more or less remotely its literary and philosophical features, and a complete investigation would take them all into account. But since life is short, and human powers are limited, it is necessary in this, as in many other studies, to be content with something less than ideal completeness. It will be found sufficient in practice to deal only with the proximate causes of the phenomena into which we inquire; and in dealing, as we shall mainly do, with literary effects, to deal also mainly with those features of the age which were literary also. The most general summary of those features is, that the Greek world of the second and third centuries was, in a sense which, though not without some just demur, has tended to prevail ever since, an educated world. It was reaping the harvest which many generations had sown. Five centuries before, the new elements of knowledge and cultured speech had begun to enter largely into the simpler elements of early Greek life. It had become no longer enough for men to till the ground, or to pursue their several handicrafts, or to be practised in the use of arms. The word σοφός, which in earlier times had been applied to one who was skilled in any of the arts of life, who could string a bow or tune a lyre or even trim a hedge, had come to be applied, if not exclusively, yet at least chiefly, to one who was shrewd with practical wisdom, or who knew the thoughts and sayings of the ancients. The original reasons, which lay deep in the Greek character, for the element of knowledge assuming this special form, had been accentuated by the circumstances of later Greek history. There seems to be little reason in the nature of things why Greece should not have anticipated modern Europe in the study of nature, and why knowledge should not have had for its chief meaning in earlier times that which it is tending to mean now, the knowledge of the phenomena and laws of the physical world. The tendency to collect and colligate and compare the facts of nature appears to be no less instinctive than the tendency to become acquainted with the thoughts of those who have gone before us. But Greece on the one hand had lost political power, and on the other hand possessed in her splendid literature an inalienable heritage. She could acquiesce with the greater equanimity in political subjection, because in the domain of letters she was still supreme with an indisputable supremacy. It was natural that she should turn to letters. It was natural also that the study of letters should be reflected upon speech. For the love of speech had become to a large proportion of Greeks a second nature. They were a nation of talkers. They were almost the slaves of cultivated expression. Though the public life out of which orators had grown had passed away with political freedom, it had left behind it a habit which in the second century of our era was blossoming into a new spring. Like children playing at "make-believe," when real speeches in real assemblies became impossible, the Greeks revived the old practice of public speaking by addressing fictitious assemblies and arguing in fictitious courts. In the absence of the distractions of either keen political struggles at home or wars abroad, these tendencies had spread themselves over the large surface of general Greek society. A kind of literary instinct had come to exist. The mass of men in the Greek world tended to lay stress on that acquaintance with the literature of bygone generations, and that habit of cultivated speech, which has ever since been commonly spoken of as education. Two points have to be considered in regard to that education before it can be regarded as a cause in relation to the main subject which we are examining: we must look first at its forms, and secondly at its mass. It is not enough that it should have corresponded in kind to certain effects; it must be shown to have been adequate in amount to account for them. I. The education was almost as complex as our own. If we except only the inductive physical sciences, it covered the same field. It was, indeed, not so much analogous to our own as the cause of it. Our own comes by direct tradition from it. It set a fashion which until recently has uniformly prevailed over the whole civilized world. We study literature rather than nature because the Greeks did so, and because when the Romans and the Roman provincials resolved to educate their sons, they employed Greek teachers and followed in Greek paths. The two main elements were those which have been already indicated, Grammar and Rhetoric.1 1. By Grammar was meant the study of literature.? In its original sense of the art of reading and writing, it began as early as that art begins among ourselves. "We are given over to Grammar," says Sextus Empiricus,3" from childhood, and almost from our baby-clothes." But this elementary part of it was usually designated by another name, 4 and Grammar itself had come to include 1 The following is designed to be a short account, not of all the elements of later Greek education, but only of its more prominent and important features: nothing has been said of those elements of the Eykúkλios mαideía which constituted the medieval quadrivium. The works bearing on the subject will be found enumerated in K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten, Bd. iv. p. 302, 3te aufl. ed. Blumner: the most important of them is Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht im classischen Alterthum, Bd. i. and ii. Würzburg, 1864: the shortest and most useful for an ordinary reader is Ussing, Erziehung und Jugendunterricht bei den Griechen und Römern, Berlin, 1885. 2 Litteratura is the Latin for ypaμμатɩký: Quintil. 2. 1. 4. 3 Adv. Gramm. 1. 44. 4 γραμματιστική, which was taught by the γραμματιστής, whereas γραμματικὴ was taught by the γραμματικός. The relation between the two arts is indicated by the fact that in the Edict of Diocletian the fee of the former is limited to fifty denarii, while that of the latter rises to two hundred: Edict. Dioclet. ap. Haenel, Corpus Legum, No. 1054, p. 178. all that in later times has been designated Belles Lettres. This comprehensive view of it was of slow growth; consequently, the art is variously defined and divided. The division which Sextus Empiricus1 speaks of as most free from objection, and which will sufficiently indicate the general limits of the subject, is into the technical, the historical, and the exegetical elements. The first of these was the study of diction, the laying down of canons of correctness, the distinction between Hellenisms and Barbarisms. Upon this as much stress was laid as was laid upon academic French in the age of Boileau. "I owe to Alexander," says Marcus Aurelius,2 "my habit of not finding fault, and of not using abusive language to those who utter a barbarous or awkward or unmusical phrase." "I must apologize for the style of this letter," says the Christian Father Basil two centuries afterwards, in writing to his old teacher Libanius; "the truth is, I have been in the company of Moses and Elias, and men of that kind, who tell us no doubt what is true, but in a barbarous dialect, so that your instructions have quite gone out of my head."3 The second element of Grammar was the study of the antiquities of an author: the explanation of the names of the gods and heroes, the legends and histories, which were mentioned. It is continued to this day in most notes upon classical authors. The third 1 Adv. Gramm. 1. 91 sqq., cf. ib. 250. This is quoted as being most representative of the period with which these Lectures have mainly to do. With it may be compared the elaborate account given by Quintilian, 1. 4 sqq. 2 1. 10. 3 The substance of Basil's letter, Ep. 339 (146), tom. iii. p. 455. There is a charming irony in Libanius's answer, Ep. 340 (147), ibid. |