During most of the flourishing age of Hellenistic culture the rhetor was the acknowledged practical teacher; and his course, which occupied several years, with the interruption of the summer holidays, comprised first a careful reading of classical authors, both poetical and prose, with explanations and illustrations. This made the student acquainted with the language and literature of Greece. But it was only introductory to the technical study of expression, of eloquence based on these models, and of accurate writing as a collateral branch of this study. When a man had so perfected himself, he was considered fit for public employment. In the latest times a special knowledge of jurisprudence became more and more necessary for public servants, and was provided for by special schools. We have, unfortunately, no minute description of the precise course of reading adopted by either Sophists or Rhetors, and are therefore confined to this general description. But it is, in our days of hurry and of intellectual compression of subjects, a remarkable thing to contemplate the youth of the civilized world spending four or five years in the mere acquiring of accuracy and elegance of expression after they had learned at school reading, writing, and the elements of science. § 83. In this account of ancient university life our attention has been almost exclusively confined to Athens, though there were other seats of education very celebrated, and in much request--Rhodes, Massilia, Tarsus, and, above all, Alexandria. Many Roman nobles preferred sending their sons to Massilia for their education--a Greek town, planted far away from the vices and luxuries of the East. Rhodes maintained its political freedom longer than any other Hellenic settlement, and was famous as a school of rhetoric. Tarsus, from which we know at least one splendid specimen of a student--the Apostle Paul--always had a high and solid reputation for work, and it is very remarkable how the most serious of all the practical systems, the Stoic, is identified with that part of Asia Minor. Afterwards iconoclasm found its cradle there, and thus this land of serious reforms over and over again forced upon the world an earnest view of life.[71] It is worthy of note how constantly the great chairs at Athens were filled by men from these outlying schools; indeed, a native Athenian in the Sophist’s chair was a great rarity. Yet we know so little of the inner life of these remote towns that they cannot now afford us any materials for our inquiry.