But a freshman like Eunapius soon got experience for himself of the ways and manners prevalent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardly entered the city, when he was caught hold of by a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to 15 practice on his awkwardness and his ignorance. At first sight one wonders at their childishness; but the like conduct obtained in the mediæval Universities; and not many months have passed away since the journals have told us of sober 20 Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations, and to the anxieties of money making, pelting each other with snowballs on their own sacred territory, and defying the magistracy, when they would interfere with their privileges of 25 becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to something or other in human nature. Meanwhile, there stands the newcomer, surrounded by a circle of his new associates, who forthwith proceed to frighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him, 30 to the extent of their wit. Some address him with mock politeness, others with fierceness; and so they conduct him in solemn procession across the Agora to the Baths; and as they approach, they dance about him like madmen. But this was to be the end of his trial, for the Bath was a sort of 5 initiation; he thereupon received the pallium, or University gown, and was suffered by his tormentors to depart in peace. One alone is recorded as having been exempted from this persecution; it was a youth graver and loftier than 10 even St. Gregory himself: but it was not from his force of character, but at the instance of Gregory, that he escaped. Gregory was his bosom friend, and was ready in Athens to shelter him when he came. It was another Saint and Doctor; the 15 great Basil, then, (it would appear,) as Gregory, but a catechumen of the Church.