1. By Grammar was meant the study of literature.[10] In its original sense of the art of reading and writing, it began as early as that art begins among ourselves. “We are given over to Grammar,” says Sextus Empiricus,[11] “from childhood, and almost from our baby-clothes.” But this elementary part of it was usually designated by another name,[12] and Grammar itself had come to include all that in later times has been designated Belles Lettres. This comprehensive view of it was of slow growth; consequently, the art is variously defined and divided. The division which Sextus Empiricus[13] speaks of as most free from objection, and which will sufficiently indicate the general limits of the subject, is into the technical, the historical, and the exegetical elements. The first of these was the study of diction, the laying down of canons of correctness, the distinction between Hellenisms and Barbarisms. Upon this as much stress was laid as was laid upon academic French in the age of Boileau. “I owe to Alexander,” says Marcus Aurelius,[14] “my habit of not finding fault, and of not using abusive language to those who utter a barbarous or awkward or unmusical phrase.” “I must apologize for the style of this letter,” says the Christian Father Basil two centuries afterwards, in writing to his old teacher Libanius; “the truth is, I have been in the company of Moses and Elias, and men of that kind, who tell us no doubt what is true, but in a barbarous dialect, so that your instructions have quite gone out of my head.”[15] The second element of Grammar was the study of the antiquities of an author: the explanation of the names of the gods and heroes, the legends and histories, which were mentioned. It is continued to this day in most notes upon classical authors. The third element was partly critical, the distinguishing between true and spurious treatises, or between true and false readings; but chiefly exegetical, the explanation of an author’s meaning. It is spoken of as the prophetess of the poets,[16] standing to them in the same relation as the Delphian priestess to her inspiring god. The main subject-matter of this literary education was the poets. They were read, not only for their literary, but also for their moral value.[17] They were read as we read the Bible. They were committed to memory. The minds of men were saturated with them. A quotation from Homer or from a tragic poet was apposite on all occasions and in every kind of society. Dio Chrysostom, in an account of his travels, tells how he came to the Greek colony of the Borysthenitæ, on the farthest borders of the empire, and found that even in those remote settlements almost all the inhabitants knew the Iliad by heart, and that they did not care to hear about anything else.[18]