In B.C. 146, Greece, and, in B.C. 30, Egypt, fell into the hands of the Romans and thenceforth formed provinces of their empire. Athens and Alexandria were now Roman university-towns, while Rome became more and more the diffusing centre of Greek and Oriental influence. It would be impossible, in a work like the present, to give even a sketch of the forms which education assumed in these three great centres, or in the world that revolved round them, in the six hundred and more years that passed between the loss of Greek autonomy and the triumph of Christianity. We shall merely endeavor to give a general notion of its two chief tendencies, which, as we saw, were towards rhetoric and philosophy; and we shall do this in connection with the names of two men, who may be regarded as respectively typical of the two tendencies, Quintilian the rhetorician, and Plotinus the philosopher. By doing so we shall pave the way for the consideration of the Rise of the Christian Schools. CHAPTER II QUINTILIAN AND RHETORICAL EDUCATION Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both have for their subjects those things which, in a certain way, are matters of common knowledge, and belong to no definite science. Hence everybody, in some degree, is gifted with them; for everybody, to some extent, tries to examine and sustain an argument, to defend himself, and to accuse others.--Aristotle. There is a certain political theory which is made up of many great things. A large and important part of it is artificial eloquence, which they call rhetoric.--Cicero. Every duty which tends to preserve human relations and human society must be assigned a higher place than any that stops short with knowledge and science.--_Id._ Zeno, having pressed his fingers together and closed his fist, said that was like Dialectic; having spread them out and opened his hand, he said Eloquence was like his palm there.--_Id._ To act considerately is of more moment than to think wisely.--_Id._ I pass to the pleasure of oratorical eloquence, the delight of which one enjoys not at any one moment, but almost every day and every hour.--Tacitus. Grammar is an experimental knowledge of the usages of language as generally current among poets and prose writers. It is divided into six parts, (1) trained reading with due regard to prosody [_i.e._ aspiration, accentuation, quantity, emphasis, metre, etc.], (2) exposition according to poetic figures [literary criticism], (3) ready statement of dialectical peculiarities and allusions [philology, geography, history, mythology], (4) discovery of etymologies, (5) accurate account of analogies [accidence and syntax], (6) criticism of poetical productions, which is the noblest part of the grammatic art [ethics, politics, strategy, etc.].--Dionysius Thrax.