=2. The Schools: their Work.=――The head-quarters of the schools of the west were fixed at Tiberias, and the centre of the eastern group was at Sura. The נָשִׂא, or Prince, was the patriarch of the western Jews; and the רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא, or Prince of the Captivity, ruled the eastern division. But there was a great difference, both of social and of religious position, between the patriarch and the prince. The patriarch in the west was president of the Sanhedrin, and generally distinguished by learning and knowledge of the Law; the prince, in the east, was merely a political vassal of the Persian or Parthian court. Some ‘princes’ acquired distinction in the knowledge of the Law, but it was an accident of their position, and not a cause or a consequence of it. Each eastern school had its own president. The high colleges, or Kallahs, were not always sitting; they met only for some months during the year. The work they did was not quite on the same lines as the university education of these days, although the name Kallahs may possibly bear a like meaning. Some commentators find the root of the word in כל, which means all or universal. The teaching was certainly that, in every sense. A week before each of the festivals popular lectures were given, and any one who liked might enter the halls. Tents were often put up to accommodate the extra numbers. One teacher of the period is said to have had 1,200 regular pupils of his own. The professors, however, did not deliver lectures, of which their students took more or less attentive notes. The instruction in these colleges was carried on by means of discussion and debate. Question was met by counter-question, and answers were often wrapped up in a parable or an allegory. The widest digressions were encouraged. The mere mention of some historical personage who had lived somewhere would lead perhaps to a long debate on political geography; this might glide off into a description of the physical peculiarities of the place or the people named, and this again into an animated botanical or even physiological discourse. All sorts of subjects were included in the ‘course’ of study――ethics, metaphysics, jurisprudence, and all the science that the period was capable of. Astronomy was one of the favourite subjects, and a certain famous scholar named Samuel, who died about the year 250, and who was a friend of Shapor, king of Persia, said, ‘The paths of the heavenly bodies are as clear to me as the streets of Nehardea.’