draws a melancholy picture of the misery to which Illustration

from a

speech of

Libanius

on the poverty of

the pro

fessors.

they were exposed. A French bishop pleading for his clergy, who can scarcely live upon their scanty pittance, taunting the state for its cruel neglect of so many of its faithful servants; this would be, perhaps, the nearest analogue in our experience to the Sophist's expostulation with the citizens of Antioch. 'Be Lib. ii. 20o. not misled,' he says, by names like those of orators and professorial Chairs, but listen to the truth from one who knows it well. Some of them have not even now a cottage of their own, but, like cobblers, live in hired lodgings; or if any one has bought a little house, it is still so mortgaged that the owner has more anxiety than if he had never bought it.

'One has three slaves, another two, a third still fewer; these are all the more insolent and tipsy, because their master is so poor. . . . One rhetorician counts himself a lucky man because he only has a single child; another thinks his numerous family a real misfortune; the prudent avoid marriage altogether. In former days, the schoolmen used to stroll into the goldsmiths' shops, and talk freely to the craftsmen, finding fault with the workmanship of one, or pointing out the finer tooling, or praising them for promptitude, or blaming them if they were too slow. Now they have to deal mainly with the bakers, to whom they owe the very bread they eat;

they have to promise that they soon will pay, and beg a little more meantime; they are driven to grievous straits, for they would gladly shun their shops, because they are ashamed to owe them money, but are forced by hunger to go to them again. As the debt goes on increasing always, and no funds come in to meet it, they curse their literary craft, and carry to the bakers the earrings or necklace of their wives; they must not think what present they can give them to replace it, but only what other ornament there is to sell.

'Their lessons over, they do not hurry home, as would be natural, to enjoy their leisure, but linger awhile longer in their lecture rooms, because they know that they will feel their misery more at home. They sit down, and talk and bemoan their wretchedness to one another, but each finds that however piteous his tale, he has something worse to hear.'

The Speaker claims his right to raise his voice in their behalf even in the council chamber. Their influence had made Antioch what it was--the home of liberal studies; their moral character was worthy of themselves and of the reputation of the State. He could point to their bearing their poverty with unrepining patience, mingling with noblemen and squires, but saying nothing of their personal wants, and meantime neglecting none of the duties of their

calling.

The artisans, in their workshops, might indeed make much ado about the fees and presents

on which the teachers grew so fat, but in sad earnest they were very few, and national help was needed if they would not see them starve.

He does not ask, however, for a grant of public money, the pressure of which would fall upon the rates; but there were waste lands at the disposal of the city, ground at least which was unclaimed at present, most of which, indeed, must go to the landowners, to meet the growing burdens of taxation, but of which, perhaps, some little might be spared to supply each teacher with a modest glebe.

It will be noticed that our information on this point deals solely with the state of things at Antioch, but the same forces were at work elsewhere, and there is reason to believe that the like holds good for Athens.

CA

96

CHAPTER IV.

Our pictures of student life

at Athens are drawn mainly from

writers of the fourth century.

Few students were of

Attic race.

IT is from the writers of the fourth century that we mainly learn the habits of the student world at Athens. So many men of eminence, both Christians and Pagans, passed years of their growing manhood in its schools, that it is no wonder if in later life they recurred fondly to the friendships formed, the knowledge learnt, and even to the frivolities and pranks witnessed if not indulged in by themselves.

6

Scarcely any of the teachers, and few seemingly among the students, were of the Attic race. • Men of all the nations subject to the Roman sway,' says Eunapius, were gathered there;' but the West was little represented. Italian names seldom occur in our authorities, for Autun (Augustodunum) and Trèves (Augusta Treverorum), Marseilles and Alexandria, in addition to the old imperial city, carried off probably the studious youth of one-half of the empire. But the Hellenized inhabitants of Asia Minor, and the populations of Syria and Phoenicia

of ripe age,

betook themselves especially to Athens, whose name stood highest wherever the language and art of Greece were prized. Many came in riper years, after Some were a long course of study, spent in one or more of the other seats of learning, as German students in our own days pass from one University to another, attracted by some celebrated name. Thus the future Emperor Julian was twenty-four, Basil was twenty-five, and Gregory Nazianzen nearly thirty when they still carried on the life which brought them there together. Sometimes even practised teachers sought to profit for a time by the experience and skill of a more

conspicuous talent. But more often they were younger than the undergraduates of our own days. Eunapius the biographer was only sixteen, as he tells us, when he entered, and they are spoken of so often as mere lads in the speeches of the time that we cannot doubt that they were very young.

but comwere very

monly they

young,

who had

As they came at such an early age from distant homes, and their parents very rarely could be with them-though we do hear of some at times they often had their personal attendants, pedagogues or private tutors, to exercise some con- private trol, and represent the influence of home. "Watch- them; men and guardians,' as they were termed in the rhetorical phrases of the day; 'bulwarks to protect the growing manhood, barking hounds to frighten

H

tutors with