THE HUMANISTIC COURSE OF STUDY. The new instruction was based on the study of Greek and Latin, combined with the courtly ideal and with some of the physical activities of the old chivalric education. Latin was begun with the first year in school, and the regular Roman emphasis was placed on articulation and proper accent. After some facility in the language had been gained, easy readings, selected from the greatest Roman writers, were attempted. As progress was made in reading and writing and speaking Latin as a living language, Cicero and Quintilian among prose writers, and Vergil, Lucan, Horace, Seneca, and Claudian among the poets, were read and studied. History was introduced in these schools for the first time and as a new subject of study, though the history was the history of Greece and Rome and was drawn from the authors studied. Livy and Plutarch were the chief historical writers used. Nothing that happened after the fall of Rome was deemed as of importance. Much emphasis was placed on manners, morality, and reverence, with Livy and Plutarch again as the great guides to conduct. Throughout all this the use of Latin as a living language was insisted upon; declamation became a fine art; and the ability to read, speak, and compose in Latin was the test. Cicero, in particular, because of the exquisite quality of his Latin style, became the great prose model. Quintilian was the supreme authority on the purpose and method of teaching (R. 25). Greek also was begun later, though studied much less extensively and thoroughly. The Greek grammar of Theodorus Gaza (p. 248) was studied, followed by the reading of Xenophon, Isocrates, Plutarch, and some of Homer and Hesiod. This thorough drill in ancient history and literature was given along with careful attention to manners and moral training, and each pupil's health was watchfully supervised--an absolutely new thought in the Christian world. Such physical sports and games as fencing, wrestling, playing ball, football, running, leaping, and dancing were also given special emphasis. Competitive games between different schools were held, much as in modern times. The result was an all-round physical, mental, and moral training, vastly superior to anything previously offered by the cathedral and other church schools, and which at once established a new type which was widely copied. A number of these new teachers, called _humanists_, wrote treatises on the proper order of studies, the methods to be employed, the right education of a prince, liberal education, and similar topics. [2] One of these, Battista Guarino, describing the education provided in the school which his father founded at Ferrara (R. 135), laid down a dictum which was accepted widely until the middle of the nineteenth century, when he wrote: