They resented any inter

ference

from the

State,

So jealous were they of their independence as to resent the least show of interference from the State,

somewhat as priests resent at times in matters of the

D. L. v. 2.5. faith any appeal to secular tribunals. On one occa

sion, as we read, a crisis in politics was followed by a liberal reaction, which found little favour with the thinkers nursed in theories like those of Plato; a law was passed in haste, at the motion of one Sophocles, which made it penal for any one to open school, or give any sort of public lectures, without the sanction of the State. The students soon were in high dudgeon when they heard that the liberty of instruction was thus narrowed, and they resolved to migrate in a body from a city so intolerant of intellectual freedom. Theophrastus, then in the zenith of his fame, and counting his pupils by the thousand, sympathised with the movement, and seceded with his scholars, till Athens realising speedily how much her attraction and renown depended on her academic throngs, repealed the unlucky law in haste, and sued them humbly to return. Some of the philosophers were men of substance, and could easily maintain themselves in studious ease, while others found their little means eked out by the help of the small endowments lately mentioned. But besides this nearly all accepted presents at the hands of those who came to hear them.

Socrates, indeed, had spoken strongly against The fees paid by what seemed to him a sordid and a mercenary prac- students.

D. L. iv. 1.

tice, for wisdom was too infinitely precious to be appraised at any money value. His own immediate followers and friends shared probably his sentiment, and taught in the true missionary spirit. But before long the prejudice grew weaker; and Speusippus, Plato's immediate successor, was taunted with disloyalty to his own master's principles, in 'exacting tri- 5. bute from all whether they would or no.' Xenocrates, indeed, adhered more faithfully to old traditions, and declined nearly all the presents sent to him, even by crowned heads, though he was so poor that he was 5. sold on one occasion when he cou'd not pay the taxes, and owed his freedom to the liberal friend of D. L. iv. 2. learning, Demetrius Phalereus. But it soon became

D. L. iv. 2.

10.

Hermo

timus.

a recognised thing that, even in the field of science the labourer was worthy of his hire, though so late as the days of Lucian it was thought unworthy of a grave professor to make much ado about his fees, Lucian, or appeal to the law courts to enforce the payment. Yet there was one sect, the Cynic or the Stoic, which for many generations discouraged all endowments, and would accept little or nothing from the living. At first its members aimed at nothing more than the means of bare subsistence, and like Crates when smitten with the love of wisdom, sold what

The Cynic

or Stoic

sect discouraged endow

ments and

fees.

they had in the spirit of the sainted Francis, and D. L. vi. 5. gave the money all away, as only a hindrance in

4.

D. L. vii. 5.2.

the perfect way of life. The scholars who gathered round them were often of the poorest, like Cleanthes, who turned the miller's wheel by night to earn a scanty pittance, that he might have leisure to attend the public courses in the day. They often did their best to drive away from them the wealthy or fastidious, by putting them to irksome tasks, like Zenon, who was bidden to carry a pot of porridge through D. L. vii. 1. the streets, and when he felt ashamed and hid it in his cloak, had a blow from his master's stick which broke the pot and spilt the mess over his clothes.

3.

The large number of

students of philosophy.

Yet in spite of all discouragements the students of philosophy increased, and rich and poor crowded alike to the lecture halls of the Professors. Theophrastus, for example, had as many as 2,000 pupils. For the passion of speculative thought was fresh and vigorous in Greece, though the currents of free life were flowing feebly; as the confidence was shaken in the old standards of authority and State enactments, men turned with eagerness to systems which promised to make them a law unto themselves; the earnest-minded crowded round the sages as in the Middle Ages men were drawn to the cloister or to the lectures of the Schoolmen, to get more light on the eternal problems of man's destiny, or to find an intellectual excitement in a subtle dialectic.

6

Stories of

sudden con

version.

3.

We may take as typical the story which we read of Zenon, visiting Athens for purposes of trade, and lighting at a bookseller's shop on the Socratic Memoirs, which he pored over with increasing interest. till he asked at length Where are such men to be D. L. vii. 1. found?' and at once attached himself to Crates, who was pointed out to him close by. The call to Philosophy in his case, as in that of many another, reads like the stories of conversion to religion, or like the sudden resolution to renounce the world as Monk or Nun.

Honorary of the philoAthens.

recognition

sophers by

Isocrates

Paneg. 50.

Athens, though she maintained no Chairs as yet, was proud of the distinguished teachers who made a home within her walls. She felt a pride in her Hellenic name, which was becoming through the world synonymous with mental cultivation. She welcomed gracefully the strangers who came to sit at the feet of famous sages; she insisted on the attendance at their lectures of the Ephebi whose studies she controlled by law; and when a great man died among them, alien though he was like Zenon, she honoured him with a solemn vote of thanks, and decreed him a public funeral as a 'good man who had done his best to form the character of his young hearers, and lead them on to manliness and self-restraint by showing his own practice to be D. L. vii. always in harmony with his professions.'

1.9.

Little endowment as yet needed.

Rival seats of learning for other branches of study.

So for ages little or no endowment of research was needed, while the passion for knowledge was intense; and multitudes who had little taste for earnest thought still flocked as a thing of course to Athens to get a sort of educational finish, or to gain a familiarity at second-hand with the great speculative questions of the day. To some study was its own reward, and they could live contentedly on little. Others who set up for Professors, and were ready to instruct all comers, could reap rich harvests, if they cared, from the payments of their willing pupils.

But it was only in philosophy that the schools of Athens reigned supreme. Other intellectual rivals were growing into note meantime, and were able to assert their separate claims.

Alexandria had her royal founder, to build and endow a great museum with cloisters, dining-hall, and library, and salaried professors who were perhaps not always bound to lecture, but might give themselves to study unhampered by restrictions, and swell the gathered store of knowledge, and stimulate mainly by example. Here were able critics, great in canons of prosody and rules of taste; poets whose facile muse was at times somewhat overweighted by its learning; geometers who carried to the furthest the Greek subtlety of deductive thought; geographers who