indeed, of any of the conditions which could be compared with our modern universities, at any rate not before the period of the Roman Empire. In the fourth century and in the Hellenistic period the instruction merely consisted in a discourse given by the head, or a disputation with his scholars, by means of which the various branches of philosophy and ethics were treated. Practical instruction in rhetoric was also given, sometimes by philosophers, but oftener by celebrated rhetoricians, such as Isocrates, and this training lasted several years. Very often young men prepared themselves in this way for their future career as statesmen or lawyers; and in the Hellenistic period the study of philological grammar began to gain importance, especially in the schools of Alexandria, Pergamum, and Antioch, to which places celebrated teachers attracted numerous pupils. These studies were in no way connected with the regular training of ephebi. Generally speaking, we may say that the main object of the education of the youths in the best period of Greek antiquity was to train a citizen, capable in body and mind, who should be able to serve his country as well in war as in peace, in a public as in a private capacity, while all special development of any branch of learning, except, of course, the gymnastic element, was excluded. This is the more comprehensible since Greek antiquity was unacquainted with the higher professions in our sense of the word. There is far less to be said about the education of girls, since no regular instruction was given. The sphere to which women were confined in all the Greek states was the household, and their position, especially in the Ionic states, was so distinctly a subordinate one that it was not considered desirable to give them also regular teaching. In consequence there were no girls’ schools; girls belonging to the better classes were taught a little reading and writing by their mothers or nurses--the women of the lower classes did not learn even this--and, with the addition of some superficial knowledge of religion and mythology, such as could be acquired from stories or by reading the poets, this constituted all the intellectual development which fell to the lot of the girls. Sometimes a little musical instruction was also given, and even in the Ionic states there were some exceptions, since we hear of women of higher intellectual development. As a rule, it was only the hetaerae, whose freer intercourse with men enabled them to gain from them more extensive literary culture; and as a consequence we find that even men of high intellectual powers chose to associate with these persons, and that at Athens, at any rate, the men who desired the stimulus of intercourse with intellectual women, were bound to seek it from this class. The fault was, of course, their own, since the semi-Oriental system of shutting off women from the outer world and degrading them into mere managers of the household, necessarily lowered