Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
General
Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
American essays; English essays
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 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, Proaeresius an Armenian, Hilarius a
Bithynian, Philiscus a Thessalian, Hadrian a 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; 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 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 honourable 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 medieval antiquarian would style them; and
in the middle of the fourth century, Proaeresius was the leader or
proctor of the Attic, Hephaestion of the Oriental, Epiphanius of the
Arabic, and Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors were both
patrons of clients, and hosts and _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 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 marvellous
phenomenon in 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, and the four philosophies, were
handsomely endowed by the State; some of the Professors were themselves
statesmen or high functionaries, and brought to their favourite study
senatorial rank or Asiatic opulence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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