THE LIBRARY The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Toronto, Canada LIBRARY :2ilSSS« RIVERSIDE TEXTBOOKS IN EDUCATION EDITED BY ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY DIVISION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION UNDER THE EDITORIAL DIRECTION OF ALEXANDER INGLIS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION HARVARD UNIVERSITY RIVERSIDE TEXTBOOKS IN EDUCATION BY THE SAME AUTHOR READINGS IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION A COLLECTION OF SOURCES AND READINGS TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE, THEORY, AND ORGANIZATION A Companion Volume to the Present Volume 684 pages, 375 Readings, 90 Illustrations. PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES A STUDY AND INTERPRETATION OF AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL HISTORY An Introductory Textbook dealing with the Larger Problems of Present-Day Education in the Light of their Historical Development 517 pages, 85 illustrations in text, 20 insert plates "I have always thought that the chief object of education was to awaken the spirit, and that inasmuch as a literature whenever it has touched its great and highest notes w^as an expression of the spirit of mankind, the best induction into education was to feel the pulses of humanity which had beaten from age to age through the universities of men who had penetrated to the secrets of the human spirit." (Wood ROW Wilson, in acknowledg- ing receipt of the Doctor's Degree from the University of Paris, Dec. 21, 1918.) "The study of the past begins to inspire us with new hopes for the future of humanity. The life which, viewed from without, seems in us, and thousands such as we, so petty and trivial, catches a new significance and even grandeur from the thought that it is not the isolated, transient thing we deemed it. We begin to perceive that no earnest effort for the good of humanity is ever lost, no life, however obscure, that has been devoted to the highest ends, to the service of mankind, to the progress of truth and good- ness in the world, is ever spent in vain. For we think of them as contributions to a life which is not of to-day or yesterday, but of all time — a life which, never hasting, never resting, is through the ages ever advancing to its consummation." (John Caird, in an Address on "The Study of History" delivered at the University of Glasgow, November 8, 1884. "University Addresses," p. 253.) I|ll""n||l"'lll|l I|l |||II"II||||IM|||||||.'1||||1IH|||J|.MM||]||11M||J|||U,|||| |||||MI,|;.|||,r,||||M.M||p|„„||||||Mn|||||U||||||M.l||||„H||||| ||||MM|||{|llllliinlllli lIllh.illllM.Mllllln.illllll/.illIll l{|liHlllllllHlllllll..illllll.ull!llli.illll lIlllMllllllli.llllllliilllll llll llllllMllllllh.illLj THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE AND PROGRESS CONSIDERED AS A PHASE OF THE DEVELOPMENT AND SPREAD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION HY ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO i:-nl""'l|ll >l||l""l|||ll"lll||l"'ll||l l|ll""l|||l""H||l"'l'l|ill""||i 1||| |||1 |||ll"ll||| l|||ll"l||||||M|,H||t1M|||||M.|||||imi|||| ||| Ijl |j||MII||j|||l.1,7j^ iiHillliiMMlllii,uillliiMiilllin.iHllihiiillliiuillliiiiiillliii I A >i^ ^ % «.l . < CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS U • S • A TO MY WIFE FOR THIRTY YEARS BEST OF COMPANIONS IN BOTH WORK AND PLAY PREFACE The present volume, as well as the companion volume of Readings, arose out of a practical situation. Twenty-two years ago, on en- tering Stanford University as a Professor of Education and be- ing given the history of the subject to teach, I found it necessary, almost from the first, to begin the construction of a Syllabus of Lectures which would permit of my teaching the subject more as a phase of the history of the rise and progress of our Western civihzation than would any existing text. Through such a study it is possible to give, better than by any other means, that vision of world progress which throws such a flood of light over all our educational efforts. The Syllabus grew, was made to include de- tailed citations to historical literature, and in 1902 was published in book form. In 1905 a second and an enlarged edition was issued,^ and these volumes for a time formed the basis for class- work and reading in a number of institutions, and, though now out of print, may still be found in many libraries. At the same time I began the collection of a series of short, illustrative sources for my students to read. It had been my intention, after the publication of the second edition of the Syllabus, to expand the outline into a Text Book which would embody my ideas as to what university students should be given as to the history of the work in which they were engaged. I felt then, and still feel, that the history of education, properly conceived and presented, should occupy an important place in the training of an educational leader. Two things now happened which for some time turned me aside from my original purpose. The first was the publication, late in 1905, of Paul Monroe's very comprehensive and scholarly Text Book in the History of Education, and the second was that, with the expan- sion of the work in education in the university with which I was connected, and the addition of new men to the department, the general history of education was for a time turned over to another to teach. I then began, instead, the development of that introductory course in education, dealing entirely with ' Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Edtication, with Bibliographies, ist ed., 302 pp., illustrated, New York, 1902; 2d ed., with classified bibliographies, 358 pp., illustrated, New York, 1905. viii PREFACE American educational history and problems, out of which grew my Public Education in the United States. The second half of the academic year 1910-11 I acted as visiting Lecturer on the History of Education at both Harvard University and Radcliffe College, and while serving in this capac- ity I began work on what has finally evolved into the present volume, together with the accompanying book of illustrative Readings. Other duties, and a deep interest in problems of school administration, largely engaged my energies and writing time until some three years ago, when, in rearranging courses at the university, it seemed desirable that I should again take over the instruction in the general history of education. Since then I have pushed through, as rapidly as conditions would permit, the organization of the parallel book of sources and documents, and the present volume of text. In doing so I have not tried to prepare another history of edu- cational theories. Of such we already have a sufficient num- ber. Instead, I have tried to prepare a history of the progress and practice and organization of education itself, and to give to such a history its proper setting as a phase of the history of the development and spread of our Western civilization. I have especially tried to present such a picture of the rise, struggle for existence, growth, and recent great expansion of the idea of the improvability of the race and the elevation and emancipation of the individual through education as would be most illuminat- ing and useful to students of the subject. To this end I have traced the great forward steps in the emancipation of the intellect of man, and the efforts to perpetuate the progress made through the organization of educational institutions to pass on to others what had been attained. I have also tried to give a proper set- ting to the great historic forces which have shaped and moulded human progress, and have made the evolution of modern state school systems and the world-wide spread of Western civilization both possible and inevitable. To this end I have tried to hold to the main lines of the story, and have in consequence omitted reference to many theorists and reformers and events and schools which doubtless were im- portant in their land and time, but the influence of which on the main current of educational progress was, after all, but small. For such omission I have no apology to make. In their place I have introduced a record of world events and forces, not included in PREFACE ix the usual history of education, which to me seem important as having contributed materially to the shaping and directing of intellectual and educational progress. While in the treatment major emphasis has been given to modern times, I have never- theless tried to show how all modern education has been after all a development, a culmination, a fiowering-out of forces and im- pulses which go far back in history for their origin. In a civiliza- tion such as we of to-day enjoy, with roots so deeply embedded in the past as is ours, any adequate understandin-g of world prac- tices and of present-day world problems in education calls for some tracing of development to give proper background and perspec- tive. The rise of modern state school systems, the variations in types found to-day in different lands, the new conceptions of the educational purpose, the rise of science study, the new functions which the school has recently assumed, the world-wide sweep of modern educational ideas, the rise of many entirely new types of schools and training within the past century — these and many other features of modern educational practice in progressive nations are better understood if viewed in the light of their proper historical setting. Standing as we are to-day on the threshold of a new era, and with a strong tendency manifest to look only to the future and to ignore the past, the need for sound educational perspective on the part of the leaders in both school and state is given new emphasis. To give greater concreteness to the presentation, maps, dia- grams, and pictures, as commonly found in standard historical works, have been used to an extent not before employed in writ- ings on the history of education. To give still greater concrete- ness to the presentation I have built up a parallel volume of Read- ings, containing a large collection of illustrative source material designed to back up the historical record of educational develop- ment and progress as presented in this volume. The selections have been fully cross-referenced (R. 129; R. 176; etc.) in the pages of the Text. Depending, as I have, so largely on the com- panion volume for the necessary supplemental readings, I have reduced the chapter bibliographies to a very few of the most valuable and most commonly found references. To add to the teaching value of the book there has been appended to each chap- ter a series of questions for discussion, bearing on the Text, and another series of questions bearing on the Readings to be found in the companion volume. In this form it is hoped that the Text X PREFACE will be found good in teaching organization; that the treatment may prove to be of such practical value that it will contribute materially to relieve the history of education from much of the criticism which the devotion in the past to the history of educa- tional theory has brought upon it; and that the two volumes which have been prepared may be of real service in restoring the subject to the position of importance it deserves to hold, for mature stu- dents of educational practice, as the interpreter of world progress as expressed in one of its highest creative forms. Ellwood p. Cubberley Stanford University, Cal. September 4, 1920 CONTENTS Introduction : The Sources OF OUR Civilization . . . 3 PART I THE ANCIENT WORLD FOUNDATION ELEMENTS OF OUR WESTERN CIVILIZATION GREECE — ROME — CHRISTIANITY Chapter I. The Old Greek Education I. Greece and its People 15 II. Early Education IN Greece 21 Chapter 1 1. Later Greek Education III. The New Greek Education Chapter III. The Education and Work of Rome I. The Romans and their Mission . II. The Period of Home Education . HI. The Transition to School Education IV. The School System as finally established V. Rome's Contribution to Civilization 39 53 58 60 63 74 Chapter IV. The Rise and Contribution of Chris- tianity I. The Rise and Victory of Christianity .... 82 II. Educational and Governmental Organization of the Early Church 92 HI. What the Middle Ages started WITH . . . .101 PART II THE MEDIEVAL WORLD THE DELUGE OF BARBARISM; THE MEDLEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REESTABLISH CIVILIZATION Chapter V. New Peoples in the Empire .... 109 Chapter VI. Education during the Early Middle Ages I. Condition and Preservation of Learning . . .126 Chapter VII. Education during the Early Middle Ages 11. Schools established and Instruction provided . .150 xii CONTENTS Chapter VIII. Influences tending toward a Revival OF Learning I. Moslem Learning from Spain i8o II. The Rise OF Scholastic Theology i86 III. Law and Medicine as New Studies 192 IV. Other New Influences and Movements . . . .199 Chapter IX. The Rise of the Universities . . .215 PART III THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN ATTITUDES THE RECOVERY OF THE ANCIENT LEARNING; THE REAWAKENING OF SCHOLARSHIP; AND THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY Chapter X. The Revival of Learning 241 Chapter XL Educational Results of the Revival of Learning 263 Chapter XII. The Revolt against Authority . . . 287 Chapter XIII. Educational Results of the Protestant Revolts I. Among Lutherans and Anglicans 306 Chapter XIV. Educational Results of the Protestant Revolts II. Among Calvinists and Catholics 330 Chapter XV. Educational Results of the Protestant Revolts HI. The Reformation and American Education . . . 356 Chapter XVI. The Rise of Scientific Inquiry . . . 379 Chapter XVI I. The New Scientific Method and the Schools I. Humanistic Realism 397 II. Social Realism 401 III. Sense Realism , . . . 405 IV. Realism and the Schools 416 Chapter XVIII. Theory and Practice by the Middle OF the Eighteenth Century I. Pre-Eighteenth-Century Educational Theories . . 428 II. Mid-Eighteenth-Century Educational Conditions . 437 CONTENTS xiii PART IV MODERN TIMES THE ABOLITION OF PRIVILEGE; THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY; A NEW THEORY FOR EDUCATION EVOLVED- THE STATE TAKES OVER THE SCHOOL Chapter XIX. The Eighteenth a Transition Century I. Work of the Benevolent Despots of Continental Europe 473 11. The Unsatisfied Demand for Reform in France . .478 HI. England THE First Democratic Nation .... 486 IV. Institution of Constitutional Government and Re- ligious Freedom in America 494 V. The French Revolution sweeps away Ancient Abuses 498 Chapter XX. The Beginnings of National Education I. New Conceptions of the Educational Purpose . . 506 II. The New State Theory IN France 508 HI. The New State Theory IN America 519 Chapter XXI. A New Theory and Subject-Matter for THE Elementary School I. The New Theory stated 530 II. German Attempts to work out a New Theory . . 533 HI. The Work and Influence of Pestalozzi .... 539 IV. Redirection of the Elementary School .... 547 Chapter XXI I. National Organization in Prussia I. The Beginnings of National Organization . . . 552 II. A State School System at last created . . . 566 Chapter XXIII. National Organization in France and Italy I. National Organization IN France 588 II. National Organization in Italy 603 Chapter XXIV. The Struggle for National Organiza- tion IN England I. The Charitable-Voluntary Beginnings . . . .613 II. The Period of Philanthropic Effort (1800-33) • .622 HI. The Struggle for National Education .... 633 IV. The Development of a National System .... 644 Chapter XXV. Awakening an Educational Conscious- ness in the United States I. Early National Attitudes and Interests . . . 653 II. Awakening an Educational Consciousness . . .658 xiv CONTENTS Til. Social, Political, and Economic Influences . . . 667 IV. Alignment of Interests, and Propaganda . . . 672 Chapter XXVI. The American Battle for Free State Schools I. The Battle for Tax Support 676 II. The Battle to Eliminate the Pauper-School Idea . 679 III. The Battle to make the Schools entirely Free . . 684 IV. The Battle to establish School Supervision . . 687 V. The Battle to Eliminate Sectarianism . . . .691 VI. The Battle to Establish the American High School . 695 VII. The State University crowns the System . . . 702 Chapter XXVII. Education becomes a Great National Tool I. Spread OF THE State-Control Idea 711 II. New Modifying Forces 723 III. Effect OF These Changes ON Education . . . . 736 Chapter XXVIII. Nevv^ Conceptions of the Educational Process I. The Psychological Organization of Elementary In-- struction 745 II. New Ideas from Herbartian Sources .... 759 III. The Kindergarten, Play, and Manual Activities . 764 IV. The Addition of Science Study 772 V. Social Meaning of these Changes 779 Chapter XXIX. New Tendencies and Expansions I. Political 787 II. Scientific 795 III. Vocational 805 IV. Sociological . 812 V. The Scientific Organization of Education . . . 824 Conclusion; The Future 833 Index 841 LIST OF PLATES Facing 1. The Cloisters of a Monastery, near Florence, Italy . .140 2. The Library of the Church of Saint Wallberg, at Zutphfn, Holland 140 3. Saint Thomas Aquinas in the School of Albertus Magnus 190 4. A Lecture on Theology by Albertus Magnus .... 22^! 5. Stratford-on-Avon Grammar School 278 6. Educational Leaders in Protestant Germany .... 308 7. The Free School at Harrow 322 8. Map showing the Spread of Jesuit Schools in Northern Territory by the Year 1725 . . 340 9. Two Tablets on the West Gateway at Harvard University 364 10. John Amos CoMENius (1592-1670) 410 11. Pestalozzi Monument AT YvERDON 542 12. Fellenberg's Institute at Hofwyl 546 13. Two Leaders in the Regeneration of Prussia .... 568 14. Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787- 1874) . . . 598 15. John Pounds' Ragged School at Portsmouth .... 618 16. An English Village Voluntary School 618 17. Two Leaders in the Educational Awakening in the United States 690 18. Two Leaders in the Reorganization of Educational Theory 762 LIST OF FIGURES 1 . The Greek Conception of the World ..... 5 2. Ancient Greece AND THE i^GE AN World 15 3. The City-State OF Attica 17 4. Distribution of the Population of Athens and Attica, ABOUT 430 B.C. 21 5. A Greek Boy 25 6. An Athenian Inscription 26 7. Greek Writing-Materials 27 8. A Greek Counting-Board 27 9. An Athenian School 29 10. Greek School Lessons 31 11. Ground-Plan of the Gymnasium at Ephesos, in Asia Minor 33 12. Socrates (469-399 b.c.) 44 13. Evolution of the Greek University 45 14. The Greek University W^orld 47 15. The Known World about 150 a.d 48 16. The Early Peoples of Italy, and the Extension of the Roman Power 53 17. The Principal Roman Roads 54 18. The Great Extent of the Roman Empire .... 56 19. A Roman Father instructing his Son 59 20. Cato the Elder (234-148 b.c.) 63 21. Roman Writing-Materials 64 22. A Roman Counting-Board 65 23. A Roman Primary School 66 24. A Roman School of Rhetoric 70 25. The Roman Voluntary Educational System, as finally EVOLVED 72 26. Origin of our Alphabet 77 27. The Growth of Christianity to the End of the Fourth Century 89 28. A Bishop 96 29. A Benedictine Monk, Abbot, and Abbess 99 30. Showing the Final Division of the Empire and the Church 103 31. A Bodyguard OF Germans no 32. The German Migrations 112 33. The Known World IN 800 114 34. A German War Chief 115 35.* Romans DESTROYING A German Village 116 36. A Page OF THE Gothic Gospels 119 37. A Typical Monastery OF Southern Europe .... 128 LIST OF FIGURES xvii 38. Bird's-Eye View of a Medieval Monastery . . . .130 39. Initial Letter from an Old Manuscript 133 40. A Monk in a Scriptorium 134 41. Charlemagne's Empire, and the Important Monasteries of THE Time 136 42. Where the Danes ravaged England 145 43. An Outer Monastic School 150 44. The Medieval System of Education summarized . . .154 45. A School : A Lesson IN Grammar . 156 46. An Anglo-Saxon Map of the World 161 47. An Early Church Musician . . . . . . . . 162 48. A Squire being knighted 168 49. A Knight of the Time of the First Crusade . . . .169 50. Evolution of Education during the Early Middle Ages . 175 51. Showing Centers of Moslem Learning 183 52. Aristotle 185 53. The Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris 189 54. The City-States of Northern Italy 194 55. Fragment from the Recovered "Digest" of Justinian . 195 56. The Father of Medicine, Hippocrates of Cos .... 197 57. A Pilgrim of the Middle Ages 200 58. A Typical Medleval Town (Prussian) 203 59. The Educational Pyramid ... 205 60. Trade Routes and Commercial Cities 206 61. Showing Location of the Chief Universities founded be- fore 1600 219 62. Seal of a Doctor, University of Parts 223 63. New College, at Oxford 224 64. A Lecture on Civil Law by Guillaume Benedicti . . . 227 65. Library of the University of Leyden, in Holland . . . 228 66. A University Disputation 231 67. A University Lecture and Lecture Room 232 68. Petrarch (1304-74) 244 69. Boccaccio (1313-75) 245 70. Demetrius Chalcondyles (1424-15 11) 249 71. Bookcase and Desk in the Medicean Library at Florence 251 72. Two Early Northern Humanists . . . . . . .253 73. An Early Sixteenth-Century Press 255 74. An Early Specimen of Caxton's Printing 256 75. The World as known to Christian Europe before Colum- bus 258 76. Saint Antoninus and his Scholars . . . . . . 264 77. Two Early Italian Humanist Educators 266 •78. Guillaume Bud.^us (1467-1540) , . . . . . . 268 79. College de France 269 80. JOHANN ReUCHLIN (1455-1522) 27O 81. JoHANN Sturm (1507-89) 272 xviii LIST OF FIGURES 82. Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536) 274 83. Saint Paul's School, London 276 84. GiGGLESwicK Grammar School 277 85. The Evolution OF Modern Studies 281 86. John Wycliffe (i320?-84) 290 87. Religious Warfare in Bohemia 291 88. Showing the Results of the Protestant Revolts . , , 296 89. huldreich zwingli (1487-i531) 297 90. John Calvin (1509-64) 299 91. A French Protestant (c. 1600) 301 92. Two Early Vernacular Schools 309 93. The First Page OF Wycliffe' s Bible 311 94. Luther giving Instruction 313 95. Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1558) 314 96. Evolution of German State School Control . . . .319 97. A Chained Bible 321 98. A French School of the Seventeenth Century . . . 332 99. A Dutch Village School 334 too. John Knox (i 505 ?-72) 335 [Oi. Ignatius de Loyola (1491-1556) 337 [02. Plan of a Jesuit Schoolroom 342 [03. An Ursuline 346 [04. A School of La Salle at Paris, 1688 349 [05. The Brothers of the Christian Schools by 1792 . . . 350 [06. Tendencies in Educational Development in Europe, 1500 TO 1700 353 [07. Map showing the Religious Settlements in America . . 358 [08. Homes of the Pilgrims, and their Route to America . . 359 [09. New England Settlements, 1660 . 361 10. The Boston Latin Grammar School 362 11. Where Yale College was founded 367 12. An Old Quaker Meeting-House and School at Lampeter, Pennsylvania 370 ;i3. Nicholas Kopernik (Copernicus) (1473-1543) .... 386 14. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) 387 15. Galileo Galilei (1564- 1 642) 388 16. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) 388 17. William Harvey ( 1 578-1 657) 389 ;i8. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) 390 19. The Loss and Recovery OF THE Sciences 393 [20. Ren^ Descartes (i 596-1650) 394 f2i. Francois Rabelais (1483-1553) 399 [22. John Milton (1608-74) 400 [23. Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) 401* [24. John Locke (1632-1704) 403 [25. An Academie des Armes 404 [26. A Sample Page from the "OrbiS Pictus" 414 LIST OF FIGURES xix 127. Part of a Page from a Latin-English Edition of the "Ves- tibulum" 415 128. Augustus Hermann Francke (1663-1727) 419 129. A French School before the Revolution 431 130. A Horn Book 440 131. The Westminster Catechism 442 132. Thomas Dilworth (?-i78o) 443 133. Frontispiece to Noah Webster's ''American Spelling Book" 444 134. Title-Page of Hodder's Arithmetic 445 135. A "Christian Brothers" School 447 136. An English Dame School 448 137. Gravel Lane Charity-School, Southwark 449 138. A Charity-School Girl in Uniform 450 139. A Charity-School Boy in Uniform 451 140. Advertisement for a Teacher to let 452 141. A School Whipping-Post 455 142. An Eighteenth-Century German School 455 143. Children as Miniature Adults 458 144. A Pennsylvania Academy 463 145. Frederick the Great 474 146. Maria Theresa 475 147. Montesquieu (1689-1755) . 480 148. TuRGOT (1727-81) 481 149. Voltaire (1694-1778) 481 150. Diderot (1713-84) 482 151. John Wesley (1707-82) 489 152. Nationality of the White Population, as shown by the Family Names in the Census of 1790 494 153. The States-General in Session at Versailles .... 499 154. Rousseau (1712-78) 508 155. La Chalotais (1701-83) 510 156. Rolland (1734-93) 510 157. Count de Mirabeau (1749-91) 513 158. Talleyrand (1758-1838) 513 159. CONDORCET (1743-94) 514 160. The Institute of France 515 161. Lakanal (1762-1845) 516 162. Thomas Jefferson ( 1 743-1 826) 525 163. The Rousseau Monument at Geneva 531 164. Basedow (1723-90) 535 165. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) 537 166. The Scene of Pestalozzi's Labors 541 167. Fellenberg (1771-1844) 547 168. The School of a Handworker 556 169. The Kingdom OF Prussia, 1740-86 . . . . „ .' . 559 170. A German Late Eighteenth-Century School .... 564 XX LIST OF FIGURES [71. DiNTER (1760-1831) 570 [72. DiESTERWEG (179O-1866) 57 1 [73. The Prussian State School System created .... 577 [74. An Old Foundation transformed 589 [75. Count de Fourcroy (1755-1809) 590 [76. Victor Cousin (i 792-1 867) 597 {']'j. Outline of the Main Features of the French State School System 598 [78. Europe in 1810 604 [79. The Unification of Italy, SINCE 1848 608 [80. Count of Cavour (1810-61) 609 ii . Outline of the Main Features of the Italian State School System 610 [82. A Ragged-School Pupil 618 [83. Adam Smith (1723-90) 621 [84. The Reverend T. R. Malthus (1766-1834) 621 [85. The Creators of the Monitorial System 624 [86. The Lancastrian Model School in Borough Road, South- WARK, London 626 [87. Monitors TEACHING Reading AT "Stations" .... 627 \. Proper Monitorial-School Positions 628 [89. Robert Owen (1771-1858) 630 [90. Lord Brougham (1778-1868) 636 [91. An English Village School in 1840 637 [92. Expenditure from the Education Grants, 1839-70 . . 639 [93. Lord T. B. Macaulay (1800-59) ^4^ [94. Work of the School Boards in providing School Accommo- dations 643 [95. The English Educational System as finally evolved . . 649 [96. The First Schoolhouse built by the Free School Society IN New York City 661 [97. "Model" School Building of the Public School Society . 665 [98. Evolution of the Essential Features of the American Public School System 666 199. Dates of the Granting of Full Manhood Suffrage . . 670 200. The First Free Public School in Detroit .... 678 201. The Pennsylvania School Elections OF 1835 .... 682 202. The New York Referendum of 1850 685 203. Status of School Supervision in the United States by 1861 688 204. A Typical New England Academy 696 205. The Development of Secondary Schools in the United States 699 206. The First High School in the United States .... 700 207. High Schools in the United States by i860 .... 701 208. Colleges and Universities established by i860 . . . 704 209. The American Educational Ladder 708 210. The School System of Denmark 713 LIST OF FIGITRES xxi 211. The Progress of Literacy in P3urope by the Close of the Nineteenth Century -714 21^. The School System of the Argentine Republic . . . 718 213. The Japanese Two-Class School System 720 214. The Chinese Educational Ladder 721 215. Baron Justus VON LiEBiG (1803-73) 724 216. Charles Darwin (1809-82) 726 217. Louis Pasteur (1822-95) 727 218. Man Power before the Days of Steam 729 219. Threshing Wheat a Century Ago 730 220. A City Water-Supply, about 1830 731 221. The Great Trade Routes of the Modern World . . . 733 222. An Example of the Shifting of Occupations .... 734 223. The Philippine School System 740 224. The First Modern Normal School 749 225. Teacher-Training in the United States by i860 . . . 752 226. Evolution of the Elementary-School Curriculum, and of Methods of Teaching 756 227. An "Usher" AND HIS Class 758 228. Redirected Manual Training 771 229. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) 777 230. Thomas H. Huxley (1825-95) 778 231. A Reorganized Kindergarten 781 232. The Peking Union Medical College 804 233. The Destruction of the Trades in Modern Industry . 808 234. School Attendance of American Children, Fourteen to Twenty Years of Age 810 235. Abbe DE l'Ep6e (1712-89) 819 236. The Reverend Thomas H. Gallaudet teaching the Deaf and Dumb 819 237. Educational Institutions maintained by the State . . 820 238. Karl Georg von Raumer (1783-1865) 825 239. The Established and Experimental Nations of Europe . 835 240. The Educational Problems of the Future .... 838 GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY In addition to the List of Readings and the Supplemental Ref- erences given in the chapter bibliographies, the following works, not cited in the chapter bibliographies, will be found in most libraries and may be consulted, on all points to which they are likely to apply, for additional material : I. GENERAL HISTORIES OF EDUCATION I. Davidson, Thomas. History of Education. 292 pp. New York, 1900. Good on the interpretation of the larger movements of history. *2. Monroe, Paul. Text Book in the History of Education. 772 pp. New York, 1905. Our most complete and scholarly history of education. This volume should be consulted freely. See analytical table of contents. 3. Munroe, Jas. P. The Educational Ideal. 262 pp. Boston, 1895. Contains very good short chapters on the educational reformers. *4. Graves, F. P. A History of Education. 3 vols. New York, 1909-13. Vol. I. Before the Middle Ages. 304 pp. Vol. II. During the Middle Ages. 314 pp. Vol. III. In Modern Times. 410 pp. These volumes contain valuable supplementary material, and good chap- ter bibhographies. 5. Hart, J. K. Democracy in Education. 418 pp. New York, 1918. An interpretation of educational progress. 6. Quick, R. H. Essays on Educational Reformers. 568 pp. 2d ed., New York, 1890. A series of well- written essays on the work of the theorists in education since the time of the Renaissance. *7. Parker, S. C. The History of Modern Elementary Education. 506 pp. Boston, 191 2. An excellent treatise on the development of the theory for our modern elementary school, with some good descriptions of modern practice. II. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATION I. Cubberley, E. P. Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Education. 358 pp. New York. First ed., 1902; 2d ed., 1905. Gives detailed and classified bibliographies for all phases of the subject. Now out of print, but may be found in most normal school and college libraries, and many pubhc libraries. XXIV GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY III. CYCLOPEDIAS * I. Monroe, Paul, Editor. Cyclopedia oj Education. 5 vols. New York, 1911-13. The most important Cyclopaedia of Education in print. Contains ex- cellent articles on all historical points and events, with good selected bib- liographies. A work that should be in all libraries, and freely consulted in using this Text. Its historical articles are too numerous to cite in the chapter bibliographies, but, due to the alphabetical arrangement and good cross-referencing, they may be found easily. *2. EncylopcBdia Britannica. nth ed., 29 vols. Cambridge, 1910-11. Contains numerous important articles on all types of historical topics, and excellent biographical sketches. Should be consulted freely in using this Text. IV. MAGAZINES *i. BsLTnard's American Journal of Education. Edited by Henry Barnard. 31 vols. Hartford, 1855-81. Reprinted, Syracuse, 1902. Index to the 31 vols, published by the United States Bureau of Education, Washington, 1892. A wonderful mine of all kinds of historical and educational information, and should be consulted freely on all points relating to European or American educational history. In the chapter bibhographies, as above, the most important references are indicated with an asterisk (*). THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION INTRODUCTION THE SOURCES OF OUR CIVILIZATION The Civilization which we of to-day enjoy is a very complex thing, made up of many different contributions, some large and some small, from people in many different lands and different ages. To trace all these contributions back to their sources would be a task impossible of accompHshment, and, while specific parts would be interesting, for our purposes they would not be im- portant. Especially would it not be profitable for us to attempt to trace the development of minor features, or to go back to the rudimentary civilizations of primitive peoples. The early de- velopment of civilization among the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Egyptians, or the American Indians all alike present features which to some form a very interesting study, but our western civilization does not go back to these as sources, and con- sequently they need not concern us in the study we are about to begin. While we have obtained the alphabet from the Phoenicians and some of our mathematical and scientific developments through the medium of the Mohammedans, the real sources of our present- day civilization lie elsewhere, and these minor sources will be referred to but briefly and only as they influenced the course of western progress. The civilization which we now know and enjoy has come down to us from four main sources. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Christians laid the foundations, and in the order named, and the study of the early history of our western civilization is a study of the work and the blending of these three main forces. It is upon these three foundation stones, superimposed upon one an- other, that our modern European and American civilization has been developed. The Germanic tribes, overrunning the bound- aries of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, added another new force of largest future significance, and one 4 HISTORY OF EDUCATION which profoundly modified all subsequent progress and develop- ment. To these four main sources we have made many additions in modern times, building an entirely new superstructure on the old foundations, but the groundwork of our civihzation is com- posed of these four foundation elements. For these reasons a history of even modern education almost of necessity goes back, briefly at least, to the work and contributions of these ancient peoples. Starting, then, with the work of the Greeks, we shall state briefly the contributions to the stream of civilization which have come down to us from each of the important historic peoples or groups or forces, and shall trace the blending and assimilating processes of the centuries. While describing briefly the educa- tional institutions and ideas of the different peoples, we shall be far less concerned, as we progress down the centuries, with the educational and philosophical theories advanced by thinkers among them than with what was actually done, and with the last- ing contributions which they made to our educational practices and to our present-day civilization. The work of Greece lies at the bottom and, in a sense, was the most important of all the earlier contributions to our education and civilization. These people, known as Hellenes, were the pioneers of western civilization. Their position in the ancient world is well shown on the map reproduced opposite. To the East lay the older political despotisms, with their caste-type and in- tellectually stagnant organization of society, and to the North and West a little-known region inhabited by barbarian tribes. It was in such a world that our western civilization had its birth. These Greeks, and especially the Athenian Greeks, represented an entirely new spirit in the world. In place of the repression of all individuality, and the stagnant conditions of society that had characterized the civilizations before them, they developed a civilization characterized by individual freedom and opportunity, and for the first time in world history a premium was placed on personal and pohtical initiative. In time this new western spirit was challenged by the older eastern type of civilization. Long foreseeing the danger, and in fear of what might happen, the little Greek States had developed educational systems in part de- signed to prepare their citizens for what might come. Finally, in a series of memorable battles, the Greeks, led by Athens, broke the dread power of the Persian name and made the future of thi§ INTRODUCTION 5 new t3^e of civilization secure. At Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea the fate of our western civiUzation trembled in the bal- ance. Now followed the great creative period in Greek life, dur- ing which the Athenian Greeks matured and developed a litera- ture, philosophy, and art which were to be enjoyed not only by themselves, but by all western peoples since their time. In these lines of culture the world will forever remain debtor to this small but active and creative people. A m a I c h i 2t m Ma r e 'ndua F. Fig. I . The Early Greek Conception of the World The World according to Hecataeus, a geographer of Miletus, Asia Minor. Hecataeus was the first Greek traveler and geographer. The map dates from about 500 B.C. The next great source of our western civilization was the work of Rome. Like the Greeks, the Romans also occupied a penin- sula jutting southward into the Mediterranean, but in most re- spects they were far different in type. Unlike the active, imagina- tive, artistic, and creative Greeks, the Romans were a practical, concrete, unimaginative, and executive people. Energy, person- ality, and executive power were in greatest demand among them. 6 HISTORY OF EDUCATION The work of Rome was political, governmental, and legal — not artistic or intellectual. Rome was strong where Greece was weak, and weak where Greece was strong. As a result the two peoples supplemented one another well in laying the foundations for our western civilization. The conquests of Greece were intel- lectual; those of Rome legal and governmental. Rome absorbed and amalgamated the whole ancient world into one Empire, to which she gave a common language, dress, manners, religion, literature, and political and legal institutions. Adopting Greek learning and educational practices as her own, she spread them throughout the then-known world. By her political organiza- tion she so fixed Roman ideas as to law and government through- out the Empire that Christianity built firmly on the Roman foundations, and the German barbarians, who later swept over the Empire, could neither destroy nor obliterate them. The Ro- man conquest of the world thus decisively influenced the whole course of western history, spread and perpetuated Greek ideas, and ultimately saved the world from a great disaster. To Rome, then, we are indebted most of all for ideas as to gov- ernment, and for the introduction of law and order into an unruly world. In all the intervening centuries between ancient Rome and ourselves, and in spite of many wars and repeated onslaughts of barbarism, Roman governmental law still influences and guides our conduct, and this influence is even yet extending to other lands and other peoples. We are also indebted to Rome for many practical skills and for important engineering knowledge, which was saved and passed on to Western Europe through the medium of the monks. On the other side of the picture, the recent great World War, with all its awful destruction of life and property, and injury to the orderly progress of civilization, may be traced di- rectly to the Roman idea of world empire and the sway of one imperial government, imposing its rule and its culture on the rest of mankind. Into this Roman Empire, united and made one by Roman arms and government, came the first of the modern forces in the ancient world — that of Christianity — the third great foundation element in our western civilization. Embracing in its early development many Greek philosophical ideas, building securely on the Roman governmental organization, and with its new mes- sage for a decaying world, Christianity forms the connecting link between the ancient and modern civilizations. Taking the INTRODUCTION 7 conception of one God which the Jewish tribes of the East had developed, Christianity changed and expanded this in such a way as to make it a dominant idea in the world. Exalting the teach- ings of the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the future Hfe, and the need for preparation for a hereafter, Christianity introduced a new type of religion and offered a new hope to the poor and oppressed of the ancient world. In so doing a new ethical force of first importance was added to the effective ener- gies of mankind, and a basis for the education of all was laid, for the first time, in the history of the world. Christianity came at just the right time not only to impart new energy and hopefulness to a decadent ancient civilization, but also to meet, conquer, and in time civilize the barbarian hordes from the North which overwhelmed the Roman Empire. A new and youthful race of German barbarians now appeared upon the scene, with resulting ravage and destruction, and anarchy and ignorance, and long centuries ensued during which ancient civili- zation fell prey to savage violence and superstition. Progress ceased in the ancient world. The creative power of antiquity seemed exhausted. The digestive and assimilative powers of the old world seemed gone. Greek was forgotten. Latin was cor- rupted. Knowledge of .the arts and sciences was lost. Schools disappeared. Only the Christian Church remained to save civili- zation from the wreck, and it, too, was almost submerged in the barbaric flood. It took ten centuries partially to civilize, educate, and mould into homogeneous units this heterogeneous horde of new peoples. During this long period it required the strongest energies of the few who understood to preserve the civilization of the past for the enjoyment and use of a modern world. Yet these barbarian Germans, great as was the havoc they wrought at first, in time contributed much to the stream of our modern civilization. They brought new conceptions of individual worth and freedom into a world thoroughly impregnated with the ancient idea of the dominance of the State over the individual. The popular assembly, an elective king, and an independent and developing system of law were contributions of first importance which these peoples brought. The individual man and not the State was, with them, the important unit in society. In the hands of the Angles and Saxons, particularly, but also among the Celts, Franks, Helvetii, and Belgae, this idea of individual free- dom and of the subordination of the State to the individual has 8 HISTORY OF EDUCATION borne large fruit in modern times in the self-governing States of France, Switzerland, Belgium, England and the English self- governing dominions, and in the United States of America. After much experimenting it now seems certain that the Anglo- Saxon type of self-government, as developed first in England and further expanded in the United States, seems destined to be the type of government in future to rule the world. It took Europe almost ten centuries to recover from the effects of the invasion of barbarism which the last two centuries of the Roman Empire witnessed, to save itself a little later from Moham- medan conquest, and to pick up the lost threads of the ancient life and begin again the work of civilization. Finally, however, this was accomplished, largely as a result of the labor of monks and missionaries. The barbarians were in time induced to settle down to an agricultural life, to accept Christianity in name at least, and to yield a more or less grudging obedience to monk and priest that they might thereby escape the torments of a world to come. Slowly the monasteries and the churches, aided here and there by far-sighted kings, worked at the restoration of books and learning, and finally, first in Italy, and later in the nations evolved from the tribes that had raided the Empire, there came a period of awakening and rediscovery which led to the development of the early university foundations, a wonderful revival of ancient learn- ing, a great expansion of men's thoughts, a great religious awak- ening, a wonderful period of world exploration and discovery, the founding of new nations in new lands, the reawakening of the spirit of scientific inquiry, the rise of the democratic spirit, and the evolution of our modern civilization. By the end of the eleventh century it was clear that the long battle for the preservation of civilization had been won, but it was not until the fourteenth century that the Revival of Learning in Italy gave clear evidence of the rise of the modern spirit. By the year 1 500 much had been accomplished, and the new modern questioning spirit of the Italian Revival was making progress in many directions. Most of the old learning had been recovered; the printing-press had been invented, and was at work multiply- ing books; the study of Greek and Hebrew had been revived in the western world; trade and commerce had begun; the cities and the universities which had arisen had become centers of a new life ; a new sea route to India had been found and was in use ; Colum- bus had discovered a new world; the Church was more tolerant INTRODUCTION 9 of new ideas than it had been for centuries; and thought was be- ing awakened in the western world to a degree that had not taken place since the days of ancient Rome. The world seemed about ready for rapid advances in many directions, and great progress in learning, education, government, art, commerce, and inven- tion seemed almost within its grasp. Instead, there soon opened the most bitter and vindictive religious conflict the world has ever known; western Christian civilization was torn asunder; a century of religious warfare ensued; and this was followed by other centuries of hatred and intolerance and suspicion awak- ened by the great conflict. Still, out of this conflict, though it for a time checked the or- derly development of civilization, much important educational progress was ultimately to come. In promulgating the doctrine that the authority of the Bible in religious matters is superior to the authority of the Church, the basis for the elementary school for the masses of the people, and in consequence the education of all, was laid. This meant the creation of an entirely new type of school — the elementary, for the masses, and taught in the native tongue — to supplement the Latin secondary schools which had been an outgrowth of the revival of ancient learning, and the still earlier cathedral and monastery schools of the Church. The modern elementary vernacular school may then be said to be essentially a product of the Protestant Reformation. This is true in a special sense among those peoples which embraced some form of the Lutheran or Calvinistic faiths. These were the Ger- mans, Moravians, Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, Danes, Dutch, Walloons, Swiss, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, French Huguenots, and the English Puritans. As the Renaissance gave a new emphasis to the development of secondary schools by supplying them with a large amount of new subject-matter and a new motive, so the Reformation movement gave a new motive for the education of children not intended for the service of the State or the Church, and the development of elementary vernacular schools was the result. Only in England, of all the revolting countries, did this Protestant conception as to the necessity of education for salva- tion fail to take deep root, with the result that elementary edu- cation in England awaited the new political and social and in- dustrial impulses of the latter half of the nineteenth century for its real development. The rise of the questioning and inferring spirit in the Italian 10 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Renaissance marked the beginnings of the transition from mediae- val to modern attitudes, and one of the most important out- growths of this was the rise of scientific inquiry which in time followed. This meant the application of human reason to the investigation of the phenomena of nature, with all that this eventually implied. This, slowly to be sure, turned the energies of mankind in a new direction, led to the substitution of inquiry and patient experimentation for assumption and disputation, and in time produced a scientific and industrial revolution which has changed the whole nature of the older problems. The scientific spirit has to-day come to dominate all lines of human thinking, and the applications of scientific principles have, in the past cen- tury, completely changed almost all the conditions surrounding human life. Applied to education, this new spirit has transformed the instruction and the methods of the schools, led to the crea- tion of entirely new types of educational institutions, and intro- duced entirely new aims and methods and purposes into the edu- cational process. From inquiry into religious matters and inquiry into the phenomena of nature, it was but a short and a natural step to inquiry into the nature and functions of government. This led to a critical questioning of the old established order, the rise of new types of intellectual inquiry, the growth of. a consciousness of national problems, and the bringing to the front of questions of political interest to a degree unknown since the days of ancient Rome. The eighteenth century marks, in these directions, a sharp turning-point in human thinking, and the end of mediaeval- ism and the ushering in of modern forms of intellectual liberty. The eighteenth century, too, witnessed a culmination of a long series of progressive changes which had been under way for cen- turies, and the flood time of a slowly but steadily rising tide of protest against the enslavement of the intellect and the limita- tion of natural human liberties by either Church or State. The flood of individualism which characterized the second half of the eighteenth century demanded outlet, and, denied, it rose and swept away ancient privileges, abuses, and barriers — religious, intellectual, social, and political — and opened the way for the marked progress in all lines which characterized the nineteenth century. Out of this new spirit was to come the American and the French Revolutions, the establishment of constitutional liberty and religious freedom, the beginnings of the abolition of privilege, INTRODUCTION II the rise of democracy, a great extension of educational advan- tages, and the transfer of the control of the school from the Church to the State that the national welfare might be better promoted thereby. Now arose the modern conception. of the school as the great constructive instrument of the State, and a new individual and national theory as to both the nature and the purpose of education was advanced. Schools were declared to be essentially civil af- fairs; their purpose was asserted to be to promote the common welfare and advance the interests of the political State; minis- ters of education began to be appointed by the State to take over and exercise control; the citizen supplanted the ecclesiastic in the organization of education and the supervision of classroom teaching; the instruction in the school was changed in direction, and in time vastly broadened in scope; and the education of all now came to be conceived of as a birthright of the child of every citizen. Since the middle of the nineteenth century a great world move- ment for the realization of these new aims, through the taking- over of education from religious bodies and the establishment of state-controlled school systems, has taken place. This move- ment is still going on. Beginning in the nations which were earliest in the front of the struggle, to preserve and extend what was so well begun by little Greece and Imperial Rome, the state- control conception of education has, in the past three quarters of a century, spread to every continent on the globe. For ages a Church and private affair, of no particular concern to govern- ment and of importance to but a relatively small number of the people, education has to-day become, with the rise and spread of modern ideas as to human freedom, political equality, and in- dustrial progress, a prime essential to the maintenance of good government and the promotion of national welfare, and it is now so recognized by progressive nations everywhere. With the spread of the state-control idea as to education have also gone western ideas as to government, human rights, social obligations, political equality, pure and applied science, trade, industry, transportation, intellectual and moral improvement, and human- itarian influences which are rapidly transforming and modern- izing not only less progressive western nations, but ancient civili- zations as well, and along the lines so slowly and so painfully worked out by the inheritors of the conceptions of human free- 12 HISTORY OF EDUCATION dom first thought out in Httle Greece, and those of poUtical equahty and government under law so well worked out by an- cient Rome. Western civilization thus promises to become the dominant force in world civilization and human progress, with general education as its agent and greatest constructive force. Such is a brief outline sketch of the history of the rise and spread and progress of our western civilization, as expressed in the history of the progress of education, and as we shall trace it in much more detail in the chapters which are to follow. The road that man has traveled from the days when might made right, and when children had no claims which the State or parents were bound to respect, to a time when the child is regarded as of first importance, and adults represented in the State declare by law that the child shall be protected and shall have abundant educa- tional advantages, is a long road and at times a very crooked one. Its ups and downs and forward movements have been those of the progress of the race, and in consequence a history of edu- cational progress must be in part a history of the progress of civilization itself. Human civilization, though, represents a more or less orderly evolution, and the education of man stands as one of the highest expressions of a belief in the improvability of the race of which mankind is capable. It is such a development that we propose to trace, and, having now sketched the broader outlines of the treatment, we next turn to a filling-in of the details, and begin with the Ancient World and the first foundation element as found in the little City-States of ancient Greece. PART I THE ANCIENT WORLD • THE FOUNDATION ELEMENTS OF OUR WESTERN CIVILIZATION GREECE — ROME — CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER I THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION I. GREECE AND ITS PEOPLE The land. Ancient Greece, or Hellas as the Greeks called their homeland, was but a small country. The map given below shows the /Egean world superimposed on the States of the old Northwest Territory, from which it may be seen that the Greek mainland was a little less than half as large as the State of Illinois. Greece proper was about the size of the State of West Virginia, but it was Fig. 2. Ancient Greece and the ^gean World Superimposed on the East-North-Central Group of American States, to show rela- tive size. Dotted lines indicate the boundaries of the American States — Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, etc. All of Greece will be seen to be a little less than half the size of the State of Illinois,' the ^Egean Sea about the size of the State of Indiana, and Attica not quite so large as two average-size Illinois counties. 1 6 HISTORY OF EDUCATION a much more mountainous land. No spot in Greece was over forty miles from the sea. Attica, where a most wonderful intel- lectual life arose and flourished for centuries, and whose contri- butions to civilization were the chief glory of Greece, was smaller than two average -size Illinois counties, and about two thirds the size of the little State of Rhode Island.^ The country was sparsely populated, except in a few of the City-States, and prob- ably did not, at its most prosperous period, contain much more than a million and a half of people — citizens, foreigners, and slaves included. The land was rough and mountainous, and deeply indented by the sea. The climate and vegetation were not greatly unlike the climate and vegetation of Southern, California. Pine and fir on the mountain-slopes, and figs, olives, oranges, lemons, and grapes on the hillsides and plains below, were characteristic of the land. Fishing, agriculture, and the raising of cattle and sheep were the important industries. A temperate, bracing climate, short, mild winters, and a long, dry summer gave an opportunity for the de- velopment of this wonderful civilization. Like Southern Cali- fornia or Florida in winter, it was essentially an out-of-doors country. The high mountains to the rear, the sun-steeped skies, and the brilliant sea in front were alike the beauty of the land and the inspiration of the people. Especially was this true of Attica, which had the seashore, the plain, the high mountains, and everywhere magnificent views through an atmosphere of remarkable clearness. A land of incomparable beauty and charm, it is little wonder that the Greek citizen, and the Athenian in particular, took pride in and loved his country, and was willing to spend much time in preparing himself to govern and defend it. The government. Politically, Greece was composed of a num- ber of independent City-States of small size. They had been set- tled by early tribes, which originally held the land in common. Attica, with its approximately seven hundred square miles of territory, was an average-size City-State. The central city, the surrounding farming and grazing lands, and the coastal regions all taken together, formed the State, the citizens of which — city- residents, farmers, herdsmen, and fishermen — controlled the ^ The average size of an Illinois county is 550 square miles, or an area 22X 25 miles square. The State of West Virginia contains 24,022 .square miles, and Rhode Island 1067 square miles. Rhode Island would be approximately 30X36 miles square, which would make Attica approximately 20X36 miles square in area. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 17 government. There were in all some twenty of these City-States in mainland Greece, the most important of which were Attica, of which Athens was the central city; Laconia, of which Sparta was the central city; and Boeotia, of which Thebes was the central city. Some of the States developed democracies, of which class Athens became the most notable example, while some were gov- erned as oligarchies. Of all the different States but few played any conspicuous part in the history of Greece. Of these few Attica stands clearly above them all as the leader in thought and art and the most progressive in government. Here, truly, was a most wonderful people, and it Scale of Miles is with Attica that the student of the history of education is most concerned. The, best of all Greece was there. The little City-States of Greece, as has just been said, were independent States, just like modern nations. While all the Greeks regarded them- selves as tribes of a single family, descended from a com- mon ancestor, Hellen, and the bonds of a common race, lan- guage, and religion tended to unite them into a sort of brotherhood, the different City- States were held apart by their tribal origins, by narrow polit- ical sympathies, and by petty laws. A citizen of one city, for example, was an alien in another, and could not hold property or marry in a city not his own. Such attitudes and laws were but natural, the time and age considered. Sometimes, in case of great danger, as at the time of the Persian invasions (492-479 B.C.), a number of the States would combine to form a defensive league ; at other times they made war on one an- other. The federal principle, such as we know it in the United States in our state and national governments, never came into play. At different times Athens, Sparta, and Thebes aspired to the leadership of Greece and tried to unite the Httle States into a Hellenic Nation, but the mutual jealousies and the extreme indi- 10 15 20 Fig. 3. The City-State of Attica 1 8 HISTORY OF EDUCATION vidualism of the people, coupled with the isolation of the States and the difficulties of intercommunication through the mountain passes, stood in the way of any permanent union. ^ What Rome later accomplished with relative ease and on a large scale, Greece was unable to do on even a small scale. A lack of capacity to unite for cooperative undertakings seemed to be a fatal weakness of the Greek character. The people. The Greeks were among the first of the European peoples to attain to any high degree of civilization. Their story runs back almost to the dawn of recorded history. As early as 3500 B.C. they were in an advanced stone age, and by 2500 B.C. had reached the age of bronze. The destruction of Homer's Troy dates back to 1200 B.C.. and the Homeric poems to iioo B.C., while an earlier Troy (Schliemann's second city) goes back to 2400 B.C. This history concerns the mainland of Asia Minor. By 1000 B.C. the southern peninsula of Greece had been colonized, between 900 and 800 B.C. Attica and other portions of upper Greece had been settled, and by 650 B.C. Greek colonization had extended to many parts of the Mediterranean.^ The lower part of the Greek peninsula, known as Laconia, was settled by the Dorian branch of the Greek family, a practical, forceful, but a wholly unimaginative people. Sparta was their most important city. To the north were the Ionic Greeks, a many-sided and a highly imaginative people. Athens was their ^ The nearest analogy we have to the Greek City-States exists in the local town governments of the New England States, particularly Massachusetts, and the local county-unit governmental organizations of a number of the Southern States, though in each of these cases we have a state and a federal government above to unify and direct and control these small local governments, which did not exist, except tempo- rarily, in Greece. If an area the size of West Virginia were divided into some twenty independent counties, which could arrange treaties, make alliances, and declare war, and which sometimes united into leagues for defense or offense, but which were never able to unite to form a single State, we should have a condition analogous to that of main- land Greece. 2 A sea-faring people, the Greeks became to the ancient Mediterranean world what the English have been to the modern world. Southern Italy became so thickly set with small Greek cities that it was known as Magna Grcecia. On the island of Sicily the city of Syracuse was founded (734 B.C.), and became a center of power and a home of noted Greeks. The city of Marseilles, in southern France, dates from an Ionic settlement about 600 B.C. The presence of another seafaring people, the Phcenicians, along the northern coast of Africa and southern and eastern Spain, probably checked the further spread of Greek colonies to the westward. ,The city of Gyrene, in northern Africa, dates from about 630 B.C. Greek colonists also went north and east, through the Dardanelles and on into the Black Sea. (See map, Figure 2.) Salonica and Constantinople date back to Greek colonization. Many of the colonies reflected great honor and credit on the motherland, and served to spread Greek manners, language, and religion over a wide area. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 19 chief city. In the settlement of Laconia the Spartans imposed themselves as an army of occupation on the original inhabitants, whom they compelled to pay tribute to them, and established a military monarchy in southern Greece. The people of Attica, on the other hand, absorbed into their own body the few earlier set- tlers of the Attic plain. They also established a monarchy, but, being a people more capable of progress, this later evolved into a democracy. The people of Attica were in consequence a some- what mixed race, which possibly in part accounts for their greater intellectual ability and versatility.^ It accounts, though, only in part. Climate, beautiful surround- ings, and contact with the outside world probably also contrib- uted something, but the real basis underneath was the very su- perior quality of the people of Attica. In some way, just how we do not know, these people came to be endowed with a superior genius and the rather unusual ability to make those progressive changes in living and government which enabled them to make the most of their surroundings and opportunities, and to advance while others stood still. Far more than other Greeks, the people of Attica were imaginative, original, versatile, adaptable, pro- gressive, endowed with rare mental ability, keenly sensitive to beauty in nature and art, and possessed of a wonderful sense of proportion and a capacity for moderation in all things. Only on such an assumption can we account for their marvelous achievements in art, philosophy, literature, and science at this very early period in the development of the civilization of the world. Classes in the population. Greece, as was the ancient world in general, was built politically on the dominant power of a ruling class. In consequence, all of course could not become citizens of the State, even after a democracy had been evolved. Citizen- ship came with birth and proper education, and, before 509 B.C., foreigners were seldom admitted to privileges in the State. Only a male citizen might hold ofhce, protect himself in the courts, own land, or attend the public assemblies. Only a citizen, too, could participate in the religious festivals and rites, for religion was an affair of the ruling families of the State. In consequence, family, rehgion, and citizenship were all bound up together, and educa- ^ It is the great mixed races that have counted for most in history. The strength of England is in part due to its wonderful mixture of peoples — Britons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Northmen, to mention only the more important earlier peo- ples which have been welded together to form the English people. 20 HISTORY OF EDUCATION tion and training were chiefly for citizenship and religious (moral) ends. Even more, citizenship everywhere in the earlier period was a degree to be attained to only after proper education and prelim- inary military and political training. This not only made some form of education necessary, but confined educational advantages to male youths of proper birth. There was of course no purpose in educating any others.^ From Figure 4 it will be seen what a small percentage of the total population this included. Educa- tion in Greece was essentially the education of the children of the ruling class to perpetuate the rule of that class. Attica almost alone among the Greek States adopted anything approaching a liberal attitude toward the foreign-bom ; in Sparta, and generally elsewhere in Greece, they were looked upon with deep suspicion. As a result most of the foreign residents of Greece were to be found in Athens, or its neighboring port city (the Piraeus), attracted there by the hospitality of the people and the intellectual or commercial advantages of these cities. After Athens had become the center of world thought, many foreigners took up their residence in the city because of the importance of its intellectual life. Foreigners, though, they remained up to 509 B.C. (See page 40.) Only rarely before this date, and then only for some conspicuous act of patriotism, and by special vote of the citi- zens, was a foreigner admitted to citizenship. Unlike Rome, which received those of alien birth freely into its citizenship, and opened up to them large opportunities of every kind, the Greeks persist- ently refused to assimilate the foreign-bom. Regarding them- selves as a superior people, descended from the gods, they held themselves apart rather exclusively as above other peoples. This kept the blood pure, but, from the standpoint of world usefulness, it was a serious defect in Greek life.- Beneath both citizens and foreign residents was a great founda- tion mass of working slaves, who rendered all types of menial and intellectual services. Sailors, household servants, field workers, ^ Athens, however, permitted the children of foreigners to attend its schools, particularly in the later period of Athenian education. 2 "When I compare the customs of the Greeks with these (the Romans), I can find no reason to extol either those of the Spartans, or the Thebans, or even of the Athenians, who value themselves the most for their wisdom; all who, jealous of their nobihty and communicating to none or to very few the privileges of their cities . . . were so far from receiving any advantage from this haughtiness that they became the greatest sufferers by it." (Dionysius of Halicamassus, in his Roman Antiquities, book II, chap, xvii.) THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 21 clerks in shops and offices, accountants, and pedagogues were among the more common occupations of slaves in Greece. Many of these had been citizens and learned men of other City-States or countries, but had been carried off as captives in some war. This was a common prac- tice in the ancient world, slavery being the lot of alien conquered people almost without exception. The composition of Attica, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) is shown in Figure 4. The great number of slaves and foreigners is clearly seen, even though the citizenship had by this time been greatly extended. In Sparta and in other City-States somewhat similar conditions prevailed as to num- bers,^ but there the slaves (Helots) occupied a lower status than in Athens, being in reality serfs, tied to and being sold with the land, and having no rights which a citizen was bound to respect. Education, then, being only for the male children of citizens, and citizen- ship a degree to be attained to on the basis of education and training, let us next see in whafthat education consisted, and what were its most prominent characteristics and results. Fig. 4. Distribution of the Population of Athens and Attica, about 430 b;c. (After Gulick) II. EARLY EDUCATION IN GREECE Some form of education that would train the son of the citizen for participation in the religious observances and duties of a citi- zen of the State, and would prepare the State for defense against outward enemies, was everywhere in Greece recognized as a public necessity, though its provision, nature, and extent varied in the different City-States. We have clear information only as to Sparta and Athens, and will consider only these two as types. Sparta is interesting as representing the old Greek tribal training, ^ In Sparta the number of citizens was still less. At the time of the formulation of the Spartan constitution by Lycurgus (about 850 B.C.) there were but 9000 Spartan famiUes in the midst of 250,000 subject people. This disproportion in- creased rather than diminished in later centuries. 22 HISTORY OF EDUCATION from which Sparta never progressed. Many of the other Greek City-States probably maintained a system of training much like that of Sparta. ^ Such educational systems stand as undesirable examples of extreme state socialism, contributed little to our western civilization, and need not detain us long. It was Athens, and a few other City-States which followed her example, which presented the best of Greece and passed on to the modern world what was most valuable for civilization. I. Education in Sparta The people. The system of training which was maintained in. Sparta was in part a reflection of the character of the people, and in part a result of its geographical location. A warlike people by nature, the Spartans were for long regarded as the ablest fighters in Greece. Laconia, their home, was a plain surrounded by mountains. They represented but a small percentage of the total population, which they held in subjection to them by their mih- tary power. ^ The slaves (Helots) were often troublesome, and were held in check by many kinds of questionable practices. Education for citizenship with the Spartans meant education for usefulness in an intensely military State, where preparedness was a prerequisite to safety. Strength, courage, endurance, cunning, patriotism, and obedience were the virtues most highly prized, while the humane, literary, and artistic sentiments were ne- glected (R. i). Aristotle well expressed it when he said that " Sparta prepared and trained for war, and in peace rusted like a. sword in its scabbard." The educational system. At birth the child was examined by a council of elders (R. i), and if it did not appear to be a promising child it was exposed to die in the mountains. If kept, the mother had charge of the child until seven if a boy, and still longer if a girl. At the beginning of the eighth year, and until the boy reached the age of eighteen, he lived in a public barrack, where he was given little except physical drill and instruction in the Spar- tan virtues. His food and clothing were scant and his bed hard. Each older man was a teacher. Running, leaping, boxing, wres- tling, military music, mihtary drill, ball-playing, the use of the spear, fighting, stealing, and laconic speech and demeanor con- ^ The Austrian-Magyar combination, which held together and dominated the many tribes of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, is an analogous modern situa- tion, though on a much larger scale. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 23 stituted the course of study. From eighteen to twenty was spent in professional training for war, and frequently the youth was publicly whipped to develop his courage and endurance. For the next ten years — that is, until he was thirty years old — he was in the army at some frontier post. At thirty the young man was admitted to full citizenship and compelled to marry, though con- tinuing to live at the public barrack and spending his energies in training boys (R. i). Women and girls were given gymnastic training to make them strong and capable of bearing strong chil- dren. The family was virtually suppressed in the interests of defense and war.^ The intellectual training consisted chiefly in committing to memory the Laws of Lycurgus, learning a few selections from Homer, and listening to the conversation of the older men. As might naturally be supposed, Sparta contributed little of anything to art, literature, science, philosophy, or government. She left to the world some splendid examples of heroism, as for example the sacrifice of Leonidas and his Spartans to hold the pass at Thermopylae,^ and a warning example of the brutalizing effect on a people of excessive devotion to military training. It is a pleasure to turn from this dark picture to the wonderful (for the time) educational system that was gradually developed at Athens. 2. The old Athenian education Schools and teachers. Athenian education divides itself nat- urally into two divisions — the old Athenian training which pre- vailed up to about the time of the close of the Persian Wars (479 B.C.) and was an outgrowth of earlier tribal observances and practices, and later Athenian education, which characterized the ^ Two Greek poems illustrate the Spartan mother, who was said to admonish her sons to come back with their shields, or upon them. The first is: "Eight sons Daementa at Sparta's call Sent forth to fight: one tomb received them all. No tears she shed, but shouted, 'Victory! Sparta, I bore them but to die for thee.'" The second: "A Spartan, his companion slain, Alone from battle fled: His mother, kindhng with disdain That she had borne him, struck him dead; For courage and not birth alone In Sparta testifies a son." "Go, tell at Sparta, thou that passest by, That here, obedient to her laws, we lie." (Epitaph on the three hundred who fell at Thermopylae.) 24 HISTORY OF EDUCATION period of maximum greatness of Athens and afterward. We shall describe these briefly, in order. The state military socialism of Sparta made no headway in more democratic Attica. The citizens were too individualistic, and did their own thinking too well to permit the estabHshment of any such plan. While education was a necessity for citizen- ship, and the degree could not be obtained without it, the State nevertheless left every citizen free to make his own arrangements for the education of his sons, or to omit such education if he saw lit. Only instruction in reading, writing, music, and gymnastics were required. If family pride, and the sense of obligation of a parent and a citizen were not sufficient to force the father to edu- cate his son, the son was then by law freed from the necessity of supporting his father in his old age. The State supervised edu- cation, but did not establish it. The teachers were private teachers, and derived their livelihood from fees. These naturally varied much with the kind of teacher and the wealth of the parent, much as private lessons in music or dancing do to-day. As was common in antiquity, the teachers occupied but a low social position (R. 5), and only in the higher schools of Athens was their standing of any importance. Greek literature contains many passages which show the low social status of the schoolmaster. ^ Schools were open from dawn to dark. The school discipline was severe, the rod being freely used both in the school and in the home. There were no Saturday and Sunday holidays or long vacations, such as we know, but about ninety festival and other state holidays served to break the continuity of instruction (R. 3). The schoolrooms were provided by the teachers, and were wholly lacking in teaching equipment, in any modem sense of the term. However, but little was needed. The instruction was largely individual instruction, the boy com- ing, usually in charge of an old slave known as a pedagogue, to re- ceive or recite his lessons. The teaching process was essentially a telling and a leaming-by -heart procedure. For the earlier years there were two schools which boys at- ^ An Athenian saying, of a man who was missing, was: "Either he is dead or has become a schoolmaster." To call a man a schoolmaster was to abuse him, according to Epicurus. Demosthenes, in his attack on ^schines, ridicules him for the fact that his father was a schoolmaster in the lowest type of reading and writing school. "As a boy," he says, "you were reared in abject poverty, waiting with your father on the school, grinding the ink, sponging the benches, sweeping the room, and doing the duty of a menial rather thanl of a freeman's son." Lucian represents kings as being forced to maintain themseves in hell by teaching reading and writing. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 25 tended — the music and literary school, and a school for physical training. Boys probably spent part of the day at one school and part at the other, though this is not certain. They may have attended the two schools on alternate days. From sixteen to eighteen, if his parents were able, the boy attended a state-supported gymnasium, where an advanced type of physical train- ing was given. As this was preparatory for the next two years of army service, the gymnasia were supported by the State more as preparedness measures than as educa- tional institutions, though they partook of the nature of both. Early childhood. As at Sparta the in- fant was examined at birth, but the father, and not a council of citizens, decided whether or not it was to be ''exposed" or preserved. Three ceremonies, of ancient tribal origin, marked the recognition and acceptance of the child. The first took place five days after birth, when the child was carried around the family hearth by the nurse, followed by the household in procession. This ceremony, followed by a feast, was designed to place the child forever under the care of the family gods. On the tenth day the child was named by the father, who then formally recognized the child as his own and committed himself to its rearing and education. The third ceremony took place at the autumn family festival, when all chil- dren born during the preceding year were presented to the father's clansmen, who decided, by vote, whether or not the boy or girl was the legitimate and lawful child of Athenian parents. If approved, the child's name was entered on the registry of the clan, and he might then aspire to citizenship and inherit property from his parent (R. 4) . Up to the age of seven both boys and girls grew up together in the home, under the care of the nurse and mother, engaging in much the same games and sports as do children anywhere. From the first they were carefully disciplined for good behavior and for the establishment of self-control (R. 3). After the age of seven the boy and girl parted company in the matter of their education, the girl remaining closely secluded in the home (women and chil- FiG. V A Greek Boy 26 HISTORY OF EDUCATION dren were usually confined to the upper floor of the house) and being instructed in the household arts by her mother, while the boy went to different teachers for his education. Probably many girls learned to read and write from their mothers or nurses, and the daughters of well-to-do citizens learned to spin, weave, sew, and embroider. Music was also a common accomplishment of women. ^ The school of the grammatist. A Greek boy, unlike a mod- em school child, did not go to one teacher. Instead he had at least two teachers, and sometimes three. To the grammatist, who was doubtless an evolution from an earlier tribal scribe, he went to learn to read and write and count. The grammatist repre- sented the earliest or primary teacher. To the music teacher, who probably at first taught reading and writing also, he went for his instruction in music and literature. Finally, to the paliBstra he went for instruction in physical training (R. 3). Reading was taught by first learning the letters, then syllables, and finally words. ^ Plaques PYTANEYCNEOK^ MATFYEAANOAL;, A O E M <^ A ^T E ^;ife P' I I-fl F r E A if^TF ^A O E M ^ A ^. T t , - / -- r'^ rp. AA/1/' N^^ EMTH I C THJ A r'K '^A/^KP F7A< IT fj tsjf i^MMNCz-j;. TH I I F,; v^' of baked earth, on which the alphabet was written, like the more modem horn- book (see Figure 130), were frequently used."' The ease with which modern children leam to read was unknown in Greece . Reading was very dif- ficult to leam, as accentuation, punctuation, spacing between words, and small letters had not as yet been introduced. As a result the study required ' Women were not supposed to possess any of the privileges of citizenship, be- longing rather to the alien class. They lived secluded lives, were not supposed to take any part in pubHc affairs, and, if their husbands brought company to the house, they were expected to retire from view. In their attitude toward women the Greeks were an oriental rather than a modern or western people. ^ " We learn first the names of the elements of speech, which are called grammata; then their shape and functions; then the syllables and their affections; lastly, the parts of speech, and the piarticular mutations connected with each, as inflection, number, contraction, accents, position in the sentence; then we begin to read and write, at first in syllables and slowly, but when we have attained the necessary cer- tainty, easily and quickly." (Dionysiusof Halicarnassus, /)e C'ow/'o^. Verh.ca.\i 25.) ^ Fragments of a tile found in Attica have stamped upon them the syllables ar, bar, gar; er, ber, ger; etc. A bottle-shaped vase has also been found which, in addi- tion to the alphabet, contains pronouncing exercises as follows: bi-ba-bu-be zi-za-zu-ze pi-pa-pu-pe gi-ga-gn-ge mi-ma-niu-mr etc. Fig. 6. An Athenian Inscription A decree of the Council and Assembly, dating from about 450 B.C. Note the diffi- culty of trying to read, without any punc- tuation, and with only capital letters. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 27 Greek Writing-Materials Five Times Unity Thou Hun Te sands 4 red 8 much time,^ and much personal ingenuity had to be exercised in determining the meaning of a sentence. The inscription :shown in Figure 6 will illustrate the difficulties ciuite well. T'he Athenian accent, too, was hard to acquire. The pupil learned to write by first tracing, with the stylus, letters cut in wax tablets, and later by copy- ing exercises set for him by his teacher, using the wax tablet and writing on his knee. Still later the pupil learned to write with ink on papyrus or parchment, though, due to the cost of parchment in ancient times, this was not greatly used. Slates and paper were of course unknown in Greece. There was little need for arithmetic, and but little was taught. Arithmetic such as we teach would have been impossible with their cum- brous system of notation.^ Only the elements of counting were taught, the Greek using his fingers or a counting- board, such as is shown in Figure 8, to do his simple reckoning. Great importance of reading and literature. After the pupil had learned to read, much attention was given to accentuation and articulation, in or- der to secure beautiful reading. Still more, in reading or reciting, the parts were acted out. The Greeks were a nation of actors, and the recitations in the schools and the acting in the theaters gave plenty of opportunity for expression. There were no schoolbooks, as we know them. The master dictated and the pupils wrote down, or, not uncom- ^ "Learning to read must have been a difficult business in Hellas, for books were written only in capitals at this time. There were no spaces between the words, and no stops were inserted. Thus the reader had to exercise his ingenuity before he could arrive at the meaning of a sentence." (Freeman, K. J., Schools of Hellas, p. 87.) ^ The Greeks had no numbers, but only words for numbers, and used the letters of the Greek alphabet with accents over them to indicate the words they knew as numbers. Counting and bookkeeping would of course be very difficult with such a, system. Un its Fig. 8 A Greek Counting-Board Pebbles of different size or color were used for thousands, hun- dreds, tens, and units. Their position on the board gave them their values. The board now shows the total 15,379. 28 HISTORY OF EDUCATION monly, learned by heart what the master dictated. Ink and parchment were now used, the boy making his own schoolbooks. Homer was the first and the great reading book of the Greeks, the Iliad and the Odyssey being the Bible of the Greek people. Then followed Hesiod, Theognis, the Greek poets, and the fables of iEsop.^ Reading, declamation, and music were closely inter- related. To appeal to the emotions and to stir the will along moral and civic lines was a fundamental purpose of the instruc- tion (R. 5). A modern writer well characterizes the ancient instruction in literature in the following words: By making the works of the great poets of the Greek people the material cf their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the an- cient poetry of Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and char- acters, its accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its man- liness and pathos, its directness and simplicity, its piety and wisdom, its respect for law and order, combined with its admiration for personal initiative and worth, furnished, in the hands of a careful and genial teacher, a material for a complete education such as could not well be matched even in our own day. What instruction in ethics, politics, social life, and manly bearing could not find a fitting vehicle in the Homeric poems, not to speak of the geography, the grammar, the literary criticism, and the history which the comprehension of them involved? Into what a wholesome, unsentimental, free world did these poems introduce the imaginative Greek boy! What splendid ideals of manhood and womanhood did they hold up for his admiration and imitation ! From Hesiod he would learn all that he needed to know about his gods and their relation to him and his people. From the elegiac poets he would derive a fund of political and social wisdom, and an impetus to patriotism, which would go far to make him a good man and a good citizen. From the iambic poets he would learn to express with energy his indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and tyranny, w^hile from the lyric poets he would learn the language suit- able to every genial feeling and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or singing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his sense of poetic beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed ! With what a treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund of epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! How familiar he would be with the character and ideals of his nation, how deeply in sympathy with them! And all ^ "These poems, especially Homer, Hesiod, and Theognis, served at the same time for drill in language and for recitation, whereby on the one hand the memory was developed and the imagination strengthened, and on the other the heroic forms of antiquity and healthy primitive utterances regarding morality, and full of homely common sense, were deeply engraved on the young mind. Homer was regarded not merely as a poet, but as an inspired moral teacher, and great portions of his poems were learned by heart. The Iliad and the Odyssey were in truth the Bible of the Greeks." (Laurie, S. S., Pre-Christian Education, p. 258.) A Lesson in Music and Language Explanation: At the right is the paidagogos; he is seated, and turns his head to look at his pupil, who is standing before his master. The latter holds a writing-tablet and a stylus; he is perhaps correcting a task. At the left a pupil is taking a music lesson. On the wall are hung a roll of manuscript, a folded writing- tablet, a lyre, and an unknown cross-shaped object. A Lesson in Music and Poetry Ex planalion: At the right sits, cross-legged, the paidagogos, who has just brought in his pupil. The boy stands before the teacher of poetry and recites his lesson. The master, in a chair, holds in his hand a roll which he is unfolding, upon which we see Greek letters. Above these three figures we see on the wall a cup, a lyre, and a leather case of flutes. To the bag is attached the small box containing mouth- pieces of different kinds for the flutes. Farther on a pupil is receiving a lesson in music. The master and pupil are both seated on seats without backs. The master, with head erect, looks at the pupil who, bent over his lyre, seems absorbed in his playing. Above are hanging a basket, a lyre, and a cup. On the wall is an inscrip- tion in Greek. Fig. q. An Athenian School (From a cup discovered at Caere, signed by the painter Duris, and now in the Museum of Berlin) 30 HISTORY OF EDUCATION this was possible even before the introduction of letters. With this event a new era in education begins. The boy now not only learns and declaims his Homer, and sings his Simonides or Sappho; he learns also to write down their verses from dictation, and so at once to read and to write. This, indeed, was the way in which these two (to us) fundamental arts were acquired. As soon as the boy could trace with his finger in sand, or scratch with a stylus on wax, the forms of the letters, and combine them into syllables and words, he began to write poetry from his master's dictation. The writing-lesson of to-day was the reading, recitation, or singing-lesson of to-morrow. Every boy made his own reading book, and, if he found it illegible, and stumbled in reading, he had only himself to blame. The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, laid the greatest stress on reading well, reciting well, and singing well, and the youth who could not do all three was looked upon as uncultured. Nor could he hide his want of culture, since young men were continually called upon, both at home and at more or less public gatherings, to perform their part in the social entertain- ment. ^ The music school. The teacher in this school gradually separ- ated himself from the grammatist, and often the two were found in adjoining rooms in the same school. In his functions he suc- ceeded the wandering poet or minstrel of earlier times. Music teachers were common in all the City-States of Greece. To this teacher the boy went at first to recite his poetry, and after the thirteenth year for a special music course. The teacher was known as a citharist, and the instrument usually used was the seven-stringed lyre. This resembled somewhat our modern guitar. The flute was also used somewhat, but never grew into much favor, partly because it tended to excite rather than soothe, and partly because of the contortions of the face to which its playing gave rise. Rhythm, melody, and the feeling for measure and time were important in instruction, whose office was to soothe, purge, and harmonize man within and make him fit for moral instruction through the poetry with which their music was ever associated. Instead of being a distinct art, as with us, and taught by itself, music with the Greeks was always subsidiary to the expression of the spirit of their literature, and in aim it was for moral- training ends.- Both Aristotle and Plato advocate state ^ Davidson, Thos., Aristotle, pp. 73-75. 2 Plutarch later expressed well the Greek conception of musical education in these words: "Whoever be he that shall give his mind to the study of music in his youth, if he meet with a musical education proper for the forming and regulating his inclinations, he will be sure to applaud and embrace that which is noble and gen- erous, and to rebuke and blame the contrary, as well in other things as in what belongs to music. And by that means he will become clear from all reproachful actions, for now having reaped the noblest fruit of music, he may be of great use, THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 31 control of school music to insure sound moral results. Inferior as their music was to present-day music, it exerted an influence over their lives which it is difficult for an American teacher to appreci- ate. The first lessons taught the use of the instrument, and the sim- ple chants of the religious services were learned. As soon as the pupil knew how to play, the master taught him to render the works of the great lyric poets of Greece. Poetry and music to- ^ ' « ' The Singing Lesson The Literature Lesson The boy is singing, to the accompani- ment of a flute. On the wall hangs a bag of flutes. Fig. 10. Greek School Lessons The boy is reciting, while the teacher follows him on a roll of manuscript. gether thus formed a single art. At thirteen a special music course began which lasted until sixteen, but which only the sons of the more well-to-do citizens attended. Every boy, though, learned some music, not that he might be a musician, but that he might be musical and able to perform his part at social gatherings and participate in the religious services of the State. Profes- sional playing was left to slaves and foreigners, and was deemed unworthy a free man and a citizen. Professionalism in either music or athletics was regarded as disgraceful. The purpose of both activities was harmonious personal development, which the Greeks believed contributed to moral worth. The palaestra; gymnastics. Very unlike our modern educa- tion, fully one half of a boy's school life, from eight to sixteen, was given to sports and games in another school under different teach- not only to himself, but to the commonwealth; while music teaches him to abstain from everything that is indecent, both in word and deed, and to observe decorum, temperance, and regularity." (Monroe, Paul, History of Education, p. 92.) 32 HISTORY OF EDUCATION ers, known as the palcestra. The work began gradually, but by fifteen had taken precedence over other studies. As in music, harmonious physical development and moral ends were held to be of fundamental importance. The standards of success were far from our modern standards. To win the game was of little significance; the important thing was to do the part gracefully and, for the person concerned, well. To attain to a graceful and dignified carriage of the body, good physical health, perfect con- trol of the temper, and to develop quickness of perception, self- possession, ease, and skill in the games were the aims — not mere strength or athletic prowess (R. 2). Only a few were allowed to train for participation in the Olympian games. The work began with children's games, contests in running, and ball games of various kinds. Deportment — how to get up, walk, sit, and how to achieve easy manners — was taught by the mas- ters. After the pupils came to be a little older there was a definite course of study, which included, in succession: (i) leaping and jumping, for general bodily and lung development; (2) running contests, for agility and endurance; (3) throwing the discus,^ for arm exercise; (4) casting the javelin, for bodily poise and coordi- nation of movement, as well as for future use in hunting; (5) boxing and wrestling, for quickness, agility, endurance, and the control of the temper and passions. Swimming and dancing were also in- cluded for all, dancing being a slow and graceful movement of the body to music, to develop grace of motion and beauty of form, and to exercise the whole human being, body and soul. The minuet and some of our folk-dancing are our nearest approach to the Greek type of dancing, though still not like it. The modern part- ner dance was unknown in ancient Greece. The exercises were performed in classes, or in small groups. They took place in the open air, and on a dirt or sandy floor. They were accompanied by music — usually the flute, played by a paid performer. A number of teachers looked after the boys, examining them physically, supervising the exercises, directing the work, and giving various forms of instruction. The gymnasia! training, sixteen to eighteen. Up to this point the education provided was a private and a family affair. In the home and in the school the boy had now been trained to be a gen- tleman, to revere the gods, to be moral and upright according to Greek standards, and in addition he had been given that training 1 A flat circle of polished bronze, or other metal, eight or nine inches in diameter. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 33 in reading, writing, music, and athletic exercises that the State required parents to furnish. It is certain that many boys, whose parents could ill afford further expense for schooling, were allowed to quit the schools at from thirteen to fifteen. Those who ex- pected to become full citizens, however, and to be a part of the government and hold office, were required to continue until twenty years of age. Two years more were spent in schooling, largely athletic, and two years additional in military service. Of this additional training, if his parents chose and could afford it, the State now took control. Vl>r, i-r, „„, ^, ,,, „J}7y>^»i>iiu„„, ,,,,,„„,„>,> I ti 1,111} irmrrTm !).!,» t>»>n[^^ Fig. II. Ground-Plan of the Gymnasium AT Ephesos, in Asia Minor Explanation: A, B, C, pillared corridors, or portico; D, an open space, possibly a palaestra, evidently intended to supply the peristylium; E, a long, narrow hall used for games of ball; F, a large hall with seats; G, in which was suspended a sack tilled with chaff for the use of boxers; H, where the young men sprinkled themselves with dust; /, the cold bath; K, where the wrestling-master anointed the bodies of the contestants; L, the cooling-off room; M, the furnace-room; N, the vapor bath; O, the dry-sweating apartment; P, the hot bath; Q, Q' , rooms for games, for the keepers, or for other uses; R, R', covered stadia, for use in bad weather; S, S', S, S, S, rows of seats, look- ing upon T, the uncovered stadium; U, groves, with seats and walks among the trees; V, V, recessed seats for the use of philosophers, rhetoricians, and others. 34 HISTORY OV EDUCATION For the years from sixteen to eighteen the boy attended a state gymnasium, of which two were erected outside of Athens by the State, in groves of trees, in 590 B.C. Others were erected later in other parts of Greece. Figure 1 1 shows the ground plan of one of these gymnasia, and a study of the explanation of the plan will re- veal the nature of these establishments. The boy now had for teachers a number of gymnasts of ability. The old exercises of the palcBslra were continued, but running, wrestling, and boxing were much emphasized. The youth learned to run in armor, while wrestling and boxing became more severe. He also learned to ride a horse, to drive a chariot, to sing and dance in the public choruses, and to participate in the public state and religious processions. Still more, the youth now passed from the supervision of a fam- ily pedagogue to the supervision of the State. For the first time in his life he was now free to go where he desired about the city; to frequent the streets, market-place, and theater; to listen to debates and jury trials, and to witness the great games; and to mix with men in the streets and to mingle somewhat in public affairs. He saw little of girls, except his sisters, but formed deep friendships with other young men of his age.^ Aside from a re- quirement that he learn the laws of the State, his education during this period was entirely physical and civic. If he abused his lib- erty he was taken in hand by public officials charged with the supervision of public morals. He was, however, still regarded as a minor, and his father (or guardian) was held responsible for his public behavior. The citizen-cadet years, eighteen to twenty. The supervision of the State during the preceding two years had in a way been joint with that of his father; now the State took complete control. At the age of eighteen his father took him before the proper au- thorities of his district or ward in the city, and presented him as a candidate for citizenship. He was examined morally and physi- cally, and if sound, and if the records showed that he was the legitimate son of a citizen, his name was entered on the register of ^ "There were no home influences in Hellas. The men-folk lived out of doors. The young Athenian from his sixth year onward spent his whole day away from home, in the company of his contemporaries, at school or palaestra, or in the streets. When he came home there was no home life. His mother was a nonentity, living in the woman's apartments; he probably saw little of her. His real home was the palaestra, his companions his contemporaries and his paidagogos. He learned to disassociate himself from his family and associate himself with his fellow citizens. No doubt he lost much by this system, but. the solidarity of the State gained." (Freeman, K. J., Schools oj Hellas, p. 282.) THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 35 his ward as a prospective member of it (R. 4) . His long hair was now cut, he donned the black garb of the citizen, was presented to the people along with others at a public ceremony, was publicly armed with a spear and a shield, and then, proceeding to one of the shrines of the city, on a height overlooking it, he solemnly took the Ephebic oath : I will never disgrace these sacred arms, nor desert my companion in the ranks. I will fight for temples and public property, both alone and with many. I will transmit my fatherland, not only not less, but greater and better, than it was transmitted to me. I will obey the magistrates who may at any time be in power. I will observe both the existing laws and those which the people may unanimously hereafter make, and, if any person seek to annul the laws or to set them at naught, I will do my best to prevent him, and will defend them both alone and with many. I will honor the religion of my fathers. And I call to witness Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and Hegemone. He was now an Ephebos, or citizen-cadet, with still two years of severe training ahead of him before he could take up the full duties of citizenship. The first year he spent in and near Athens, learning to be a soldier. He did what recruits do almost every- where — drill, camp in the open, learn the army methods and dis- cipline, and march in public processions and take part in religious festivals. This first year was much like that of new troops in camp being worked into real soldiers. At the end of the year there was a public drill and inspection of the cadets, after which they were sent to the frontier. It was now his business to come to know his country thoroughly — its topography, roads, springs, seashores, and mountain passes. He also assisted in enforcing law and order throughout the country districts, as a sort of a state constabulary or rural police. At the end of this second year of practical train- ing the second examination was held, the cadet was now admitted to full citizenship, and passed to the ranks of a trained citizen in the reserve army of defense, as does a boy in Switzerland to-day (R. 4). Results under the old Greek system. Such was the educa- tional system which was in time evolved from the earlier tribal practices of the citizens of old Athens. If we consider Sparta as representing the earlier tribal education of the Greek peoples, we see how far the Athenians, due to their wonderful ability to make progress, were able to advance beyond this earlier type of prepa- ration for citizenship (R. 5). Not only did Athens surpass all 36 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Greece, but, for the first time in the history of the world, we find here, expressing itself in the education of the young, the modern, western, individualistic and democratic spirit, as opposed to the deadening caste and governmental systems of the East. Here first we find a free people living under pohtical conditions which favored liberty, culture, and intellectual growth, and using their liberty to advance the culture and the knowledge of the people (R. 6). Here also we find, for the first time, the thinkers of the State deeply concerned with the education of the youth of the State, and viewing education as a necessity to make life worth living and secure the State from dangers, both within and without. To pre- pare men by a severe but simple and honest training to fear the gods, to do honest work, to despise comfort and vice, to obey the laws, to respect their neighbors and themselves, and to reverence the wisdom of their race, was the aim of this old education. The schooling for citizenship was rigid, almost puritanical, but it pro- duced wonderful results, both in peace and in war.^ Men thus trained guided the destinies of Athens during some two centuries, and the despotism of the East as represented by Persia could not defeat them at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. The simple and effective curriculum. The simplicity of the curriculum was one of its marked features. In a manner seldom witnessed in the world's educational history, the Greeks used their religion, literature, government, and the natural activities of young men to impart an education of wonderful effectiveness.- The subjects we have valued so highly for training were to them unknown. They taught no arithmetic or grammar, no science, no drawing, no higher mathematics, and no foreign tongue. Music, the literature and religion of their own people, careful physical training, and instruction in the duties and practices of citizenship constituted the entire curriculum. ^ "No doubt the Athenian public was by no means so learned as we modems are; they were ignorant of many sciences, of much history, — in short of a thousand results of civilization which have since accrued. But in civilization itself, in mental power, in quickness of comprehension, in correctness of taste, in accuracy of judg- ment, no modern nation, however well instructed, has been able to equal by labored acquirements the inborn genius of the Greeks." (Mahaffy, J. P., Old Greek Education.) ^ The great institutions of the Greek City-State were in themselves highly educa- tive. The chief of these were: 1. The Assembly, where the laws were proposed, debated, and made. 2. The Juries, on which citizens sat and where the laws were applied. 3. The Theater, where the great masterpieces of Greek literature were performed. 4. The Olympian and other Games, which were great religious ceremonies of a literary as well as an athletic and artistic character, and to which Greeks from all over Hellas came. 5. The city life itself, among an inquisitive, imaginative, and disputatious people. THE OLD GREEK EDUCATION 37 It was an education by doing; not one of learning from books. That it was an attractive type of education there is abundant testimony by the Greeks themselves. We have not as yet come to value physical education as did the Greeks, nor are we nearly so successful in our moral education, despite the aid of the Chris- tian religion which they did not know. It was, to be sure, class education, and limited to but a small fraction of the total popu- lation. In it girls had no share. There were many features of Greek life, too, that are repugnant to modem conceptions. Yet, despite these limitations, the old education of Athens still stands as one of the most successful in its results of any system of edu- cation which has been evolved in the history of the world. Con- sidering its time and place in the history of the world and that it was a development for which there were nowhere any precedents, it represented a very wonderful evolution. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Why are imaginative ability and many-sided natures such valuable characteristics for any people? 2. Why is the ability to make progressive changes, possessed so markedly by the Athenian Greeks, an important personal or racial character- istic? 3. Are the Athenian characteristics, stated in the middle of page 19, charac- teristics capable of development by training, or are they" native, or both? 4. How do you explain the Greek failure to achieve political unity? 5. Would education for citizenship with us to-day possess the same defects as in ancient Greece? Why? Do we give an equivalent training? 6. Which is the better attitude for a nation to assume toward the foreigner — the Greek, or the American? Why? 7. Why does a state military sociaHsm, such as prevailed at Sparta, tend to produce a people of mediocre intellectual capacity? 8. How do you account for the Athenian State leaving literary and musical education to private initiative, but supporting state gymnasia? 9. Would the Athenian method of instruction have been possible had all children in the State been given an education? Why? 10. How did the education of an Athenian girl differ from that of a girl in the early American colonies? 11. Why did the Greek boy need three teachers, whereas the American boy is taught all and more by one primary teacher? 12. Contrast the Greek method of instruction in music, and the purposes of the instruction, with our own. 13. How could we incorporate into our school instruction some of the im- portant aspects of Greek instruction in music? 14. What do you think of the contentions of Aristotle and Plato that the State should control school music as a means of securing sound moral instruction? 15. Does the Greek idea that a harmonious personal development contrib- utes to moral worth appeal to you? Why? 38 HISTORY OF EDUCATION 1 6. Contrast the Greek ideal as to athletic training with the conception of athletics held by an average American schoolboy. 17. Contrast the education of a Greek boy at sixteen with that of an Ameri- can boy at the same age. 18. Contrast the emphasis placed on expression as a method in teaching in the schools of Athens and of the United States. 19. Do the needs of modern society and industrial hfe warrant the greater emphasis we place on learning from books, as opposed to the learning by doing of the Greeks? 20. Compare the compulsory-school period of the Greeks with our own. If we were to add some form of compulsory military training, for all youths between eighteen and twenty, and as a preparedness measure, would we approach still more nearly the Greek requirements? 21. Explain how the Athenian Greeks reconciled the idea of social service to the State with the idea of individual Hberty, through a form of education which developed personality. Compare this with our American ideal. 22. The Greek schoolboy had no long summer vacation, as do American children. Is there any special reason why we need it more than did they? 23. Do we believe that virtue can be taught in the way the Hellenic peoples did? Do we carry such a behef into practice? SELECTED RP:ADINGS In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are repro- duced: 1. Plutarch: Ancient Education in Sparta. 2. Plato: An Athenian Schoolboy's Life. 3. Lucian: An Athenian Schoolboy's Day. 4. Aristotle: Athenian Citizenship and the Ephebic Years. 5. Freeman: Sparta and Athens compared. 6. Thucydides: Athenian Education summarized. QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS 1. Describe and characterize the Laws which Lycurgus framed for Spartan training (i). 2. Describe and characterize the instruction of the Irens at Sparta. Com- pare with the training given among the best of the American Indian tribes (i). 3. Contrast the type of education given an Athenian and a Spartan boy, as to nature and purpose and character (i and 2). 4. What degree of State supervision of education is indicated by Plato (2)? By Freeman (5)? 5. Compare an Athenian school day as described by Lucian (3) with a school day in a modern Gary-type school. 6. Compare the Ephebic years of an Athenian youth (4) with those of a Spartan youth (i). 7. What were some of the chief defects of Athenian schools (5)? 8. What was the position of the State in the matter of the education of youth (5)? 9. What were the great merits of the Athenian educational and political system of training (6)? (For Supplemental References, see following chapter.) CHAPTER II LATER GREEK EDUCATION III. THE NEW GREEK EDUCATION Political events: The Golden Age of Greece. The Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) has long been considered one of the "decisive battles of the world." Had the despotism of the East triumphed here, and in the subsequent campaign that ended in the defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis (480 B.C.) and of the Persian army at Plataea (479 B.C.), the whole history of our western world would have been different. The result of the war with Persia was the triumph of this new western democratic civilization, prepared and schooled for great national emergencies by a severe but effec- tive training, over the uneducated hordes led to battle by the au- tocracy of the East. This was the first, but not the last, of the many battles which western democracy and civilization has had to fight to avoid being crushed by autocracy and despotism. "^ Marathon broke the dread spell of the Persian name and freed the more progressive Greeks to pursue their intellectual and political development. Above all it revealed the strength and power of the Athenians to themselves, and in the half century following the most wonderful political, literary, and artistic development the world had ever known ensued, and the highest products of Greek civili- zation were attained. Attica had braved everything for the com- mon cause of Greece, even to leaving Athens to be burned by the invader, and for the next fifty years she held the position of politi- cal as well as cultural preeminence among the Greek City-States. Athens now became the world center of wealth and refinement and the home of art and literature (R. 7), and her influence along cultural lines, due in part to her mastery of the sea and her grow- ing commerce, was now extended throughout the Mediterranean world. From 479 to 431 B.C. was the Golden Age of Greece, and '' dur- ing this short period Athens gave birth to more great men — poets, artists, statesmen, and philosophers — than all the world beside had produced ^ in any period of equal length." Then, ^ The culmination came in what is known as the Age of Pericles, who was the master mind at Athens from 459 to 431 B.C. During the fifth century B.C. such 40 HISTORY OF EDUCATION • largely as a result of the growing jealousy of military Sparta, came that cruel and vindictive civil strife, known as the Pelopon- nesian War, which desolated Greece, left Athens a wreck of her former self, permanently lowered the moral tone of the Greek peo- ple, and impaired beyond recovery the intellectual and artistic life of Hellas. For many centuries Athens continued to be a center of intellectual achievement, and to spread her culture throughout a new and a different world, but her power as a State had been im- paired forever by a revengeful war between those who should have been friends and allies in the cause of civilization. Transition from the old to the new. As early as 509 B.C. a new constitution had admitted all the free inhabitants of Attica to citizenship, and the result was a rapid increase in the prestige, property, and culture of Athens. Citizenship was now open to the commercial classes, and no longer restricted to a small, prop- erly born, and properly educated class. Wealth now became im- portant in giving leisure to the citizen, and was no longer looked down upon as it had been in the earlier period. After the Pelo- ponnesian War the predominance of Attica among the Greek States, the growth of commerce, the constant interchange of em- bassies, the travel overseas of Athenian citizens, and the presence of many foreigners in the State all alike led to a tolerance of new ideas and a criticism of old ones which before had been unknown. A leisure class now arose, and personal interest came to have a larger place than before, with a consequent change in the earlier conceptions as to the duty of the citizen to the State. Literature lost much of its earlier religious character, and the religious basis of morality ^ began to be replaced by that of reason. Philosophy was now called upon to furnish a practical guide for life to replace the old religious basis. A new philosophy in which '' man was the measure of all things" arose, and its teachers came to have large followings. The old search for an explanation of the world of matter ^ was now replaced by an attempt to explain the world of ideas and emotions, with a resulting evolution of the sciences of names as Themistocles and Pericles in government, Phidias and Myron in art, Herodotus and Thucydides in historical narrative, ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in tragic drama, and Aristophanes in comedy, graced Athens. ^ With the Greeks, morality and the future life never had any connection. 2 The early Greek philosophers tried to explain the physical world about them by trying to discover what they called the "first principle," from which all else had been derived. Thales (c. 624-548 B.C.), the father of Greek science, had concluded that water was the original source of all matter; Anaximenes (c. 588-524 B.C.), that air was the first principle; Heraclites (c. 525-475 B.C.), fire; and Pythagoras (c. 580- 500 B.C.), number. LATER GREEK EDUCATION 41 philosophy, ethics, and logic. It was a period of great intellectual as well as political change and expansion, and in consequence the old education, which had answered well the needs of a primitive and isolated community, now found itself but poorly adapted to meet the larger needs of the new cosmopolitan State. '^ The result was a material change in the old education to adapt it to the needs of the new Athens, now become the intellectual center of the civilized world. Changes in the old education. A number of changes in the character of the old education were now gradually- introduced. The rigid drill of the earlier period began to be replaced by an easier and a more pleasurable type of training. Gymnastics for personal enjoyment began to replace drill for the service of the State, and was much less rigid in type. The old authors, who had rendered important service in the education of youth, began to be replaced by more modern writers, with a distinct loss of the earlier religious and moral force. New musical instruments, giving a softer and more pleasurable effect, took the place of the seven- stringed lyre, and complicated music replaced the simple Doric airs of the earlier period. Education became much more indi- vidual, literary, and theoretical. Geometry and drawing were introduced as new studies. Grammar and rhetoric began to be studied, discussion was introduced, and a certain glibness of speech began to be prized. The citizen-cadet years, from sixteen to twenty, formerly devoted to rather rigorous physical training, were now changed to school work of an intellectual type. New teachers; the Sophists. New teachers, known as Sophists, who professed to be able to train men for a political career," began to offer a more practical course designed to prepare boys for the ^ "There was now demanded ability to discuss all sorts of social, political, eco- nomic, and scientific or metaphysical questions; to argue in public in the market- place or in the law courts; to declaim in a formal manner on almost any topic; to amuse or even instruct the populace upon topics of interest or questions of the day; to take part in the many diplomatic embassies and political missions of the times — the ability, in fact, to shine in a democratic society much Hke our own and to con- trol the votes and command the approval of an intelligent populace where the function of printing-press, telegraph, railroad, and all modern means of communica- tion were performed through public speech and private discourse, and where the legal, ecclesiastical, and other professional classes of teachers did not exist." (Mon- roe, Paul, History of Education, pp. log-io.) 2 The importance of a political career in the new Athens will be better under- stood if we remember that the influence on public opinion to-day exerted by the pulpit, bar, public platform, press, and scholar was then concentrated in the public speaker, and that the careers now open to promising youths in science, industry, commerce, politics, and government were then concentrated in the political career. It must also be remembered that the Greeks had always been a nation of speakers, both the content and the form of the address being important. 42 HISTORY OF EDUCATION newer type of state service. These in time drew many Ephebes into their private schools, where the chief studies were on the content, form, and practical use of the Greek language. Rhetoric and grammar before long became the master studies of this new period, as they were felt to prepare boys better for the new politi- cal and intellectual life of Hellas than did the older type of train- ing. In the schools of the Sophists boys now spent their time in forming phrases, choosing words, examining grammatical struc- ture, and learning how to secure rhetorical effect. Many of these new teachers made most extravagant claims for their instruction (R. 8) and drew much ridicule from the champions of the older type of education, but within a century they had thoroughly es- tablished themselves, and had permanently changed the character of the earlier Greek education. By 350 B.C. we find that Greek school education had been differentiated into three divisions, as follows: I. Primary education, covering the years from seven or eight to thirteen, and embracing reading, writing, arithmetic, and chant- ing. The teacher of this school came to be known as a gram- matist. 2.. Secondary education, covering the years from thirteen to sixteen, and embracing geometry, drawing, and a special music course. Later on some grammar and rhetoric were introduced into this school. The teacher of this school came to be known as a gram- maticus. 3. Higher or university education, covering the years after sixteen. The flood of individualism. This period of artistic and intel- lectual brilliancy of Greece following the Peloponnesian War marked the beginning of the end of Greece politically. The war was a blow to the strength of Greece from which the different States never recovered. Greece was bled white by this needless civil strife. The tendencies toward individualism in education were symptomatic of tendencies in all forms of social and political life. The philosophers — Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle — proposed ideal remedies for the evils of the State,\but in vain. The ^ old ideal of citizenship died out. Service to the State be- ^ Each of these philosophers proposed an ideal educational system designed to remedy the evils of the State. Xenophon (c. 410-362 B.C.), in his Cyropcedia, pur- porting to describe the education of Cyrus of Persia, proposed a Spartan modifica- tion of the old Athenian system. Plato (429-348 B.C.), in his Republic, proposed an aristocratic socialism as a means of securing individual virtue and state justice. He first presents the super-civic man, an ideal destined for great usefulness among the Christians later on. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), in his Ethics, and in his Politics, out- lined an ideal state and a system of education for it. LATER CxREEK EDUCATION 43 came purely subordinate to personal pleasure and advancement. Irreverence and a scofi&ng attitude became ruling tendencies. Family morality decayed. The State in time became corrupt and nerveless. Finally, in 338 B.C., Philip of Macedon became master of Greece, and annexed it to the world empire which he and his son Alexander created. Still later, in 146 B.C., the new world power to the west, Rome, conquered Greece and made of it a Roman province. Though dead politically, there now occurred the unusual spec- tacle of "captive Greece taking captive her rude conqueror," and spreading Greek art, literature, philosophy, science, and Greek ideas throughout the Mediterranean world. It was the Greek higher learning that now became predominant and exerted such great influence on the future of our world civilization. It remains now to trace briefly the development and spread of this higher learning, and to point out how thoroughly it modified the thinking of the future. New schools ; Socrates. In the beginning each Sophist teacher was a free lance, and taught what he would and in the manner he thought best. Many of them made extraordinary efforts to attract students and win popular approval and fees. Plato repre- sents the Sophist Protagoras as saying, with reference to a youth ambitious for success in political life, "If he comes to me he will learn that which he comes to learn." At first the instruction was largely individual, but later classes were organized. Isocrates, who lived from 393 to 338 B.C., organized the instruction for the first time into a well-graded sequence of studies, with definite aims and work (R. 8). He shifted the emphasis in instruction from training for success in argumentation, to training to think clearly and to express ideas properly. His pupils were unusually success- ful, and his school did much to add to the fame of Athens as an intellectual center. From his work sprang a large number of so- called Rhetorical Schools, much like our better private schools and academies, offering to those Ephebes who could aff'ord to attend a very good preparation for participation in the public life of the period. In contrast with the , Sophists, a series of schools of philosophy also arose in Athens. These in a way were the outgrowth of the work of Socrates. Accepting the Sophists' dictum that "man is the measure of all things," he tried to turn youths froin the baser individualism of the Sophists of his day to the larger general 44 HISTORY OF EDUCATION truths which measure the Hfe of a true man. In particular he tried to show that the greatest of all arts — the art of Hving a good life — called for correct individual thinking and a knowledge of the right. ''Know thyself" was his great guiding principle. His emphasis was on the problems of everyday morality. Frankly accepting the change from the old education as a change that could not be avoided, he sought to formulate a new basis for edu- cation in personal morality and virtue, and as a substitute for the old training for service to the State. He taught by conversation, engaging men in argument as he met them in the street, and show- ing to them their ignorance (R. 9). Even in Athens, where free speech 'was enjoyed more than anywhere else in the world at that time, such a shrewd questioner would naturally make enemies, and in 399 B.C. at the age of seventy-one, he was con- demned to death by the Athenian popu- lace on the charge of impiety and corrupt- ing the youth of Athens. Socrates' greatest disciple was a citizen of wealth by the name of Plato, who had abandoned a political career for the charms of philosophy, and to him we owe our chief information as to the work and aims of Socrates. In 386 B.C. he founded the Academy, where he passed almost forty years in lecturing and writing. His school, which formed a model for others, consisted of a union of teachers and students who possessed in common a chapel, library, lecture-rooms, and living- rooms. Philosophy, mathematics, and science were taught, and women as well as men were admitted. Other schools of importance in Athens were the Lyceum, founded in 335 B.C. by a foreign-bom pupil of Plato's by the name of Aristotle, who did a remarkable work in organizing the known knowledge of his time; ^ the school of the Stoics, founded by Zeno in 308 B.C. ; and the school of the Epicureans, founded by Epicurus in 306 B.C. Each of these schools offered a philosophical solution 1 "It is beyond all conception what that man espied, saw, beheld, remarked, observed." (Goethe.) "One of the richest and most comprehensive geniuses that has ever appeared — a man beside whom no age has an equal to place." (Hegel.) "Aristotle, Nature's private secretary, dipping his pen in intellect." (Eusebius.) Fig. 12 Socrates (469-399 b.c.) (After a marble bust in the Vatican Gallery, at Rome) LATER CREEK EDUCATION 45 of the problem of life, and Plato and Aristotle wrote treatises on education as well. Each school evolved into a form of religious brotherhood which perpetuated the organization after the death of the master. In time these became largely schools for expound- ing the philosophy of the founder. The- University of Athens. Coincident with the founding of these schools and the political events we have previously recorded, certain further changes in Athenian education were taking place. The character of the changes in the education before the age of sixteen we have described. As a result in part of the development of the schools of the Sophists, which were in themselves only SOPHISTS 5th C. B.C. PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS 386-306 B.C. RHETORICAL SCHOOLS 4th and 3rd Cs. B.C. UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS About 200 B.C. Fig. 13. Evolution of the Greek University attempts to meet fundamental changes in Athenian Hfe, the edu- cation of youths after sixteen tended to become literary, rather than physical and military. The Ephebic period of service (from eighteen to twenty) was at first reduced from two years to one, and after the Macedonian conquest, in 338 B.C., when there was no longer an Athenian State to serve or protect, the entire period of training was made optional. The Ephebic corps was now opened to foreigners, and in time became merely a fashionable semi-military group. Instead of the military training, attendance at the lectures of the philosophical schools was now required, and attendance at the rhetorical schools was optional. Later the philosophical schools were granted public support by the Athe- nian Assembly, professorships were created over which the Assem- bly exercised supervision, the rhetorical and philosophical schools were gradually merged, the study years were extended from two to six, or seven, a form of university Ufe as regards both students and 46 HISTORY OF EDUCATION professors was developed, and what has since been termed "The University of Athens" was evolved. Figure 13 shows how this evolution took place. As Athens lost in political power her citizens turned their atten- tion to making their city a center of world learning. This may be said to have been accomphshed by 200 B.C. Though Greece had long since become a Macedonian province, and was soon to pass under the control of Rome, the so-called University of Athens was widely known and much frequented for the next three hundred years, and continued in existence until finally closed, as a center of pagan thought, by the edict of the Roman- Christian Emperor, Justinian, in 529 a.d. Though reduced to the rank of a Roman provincial town, Athens long continued to be a city of letters and a center of philosophic and scientific instruction. Spread and influence of Greek higher education. Alexander the Great rendered a very important service in uniting the west- em Orient and the eastern Mediterranean into a common world empire, and in establishing therein a common language, literature, philosophy, a common interest, and a common body of scientific knowledge and law. It was his hope to create a new empire, in which the distinction between European and Asiatic should pass away. No less than seventy cities were established with a view to holding his empire together. These served to spread Hellenic culture. Greek schools, Greek theaters, Greek baths, and Greek institutions of every type were to be found in practically all of them, and the Greek tongue was heard in them all. With Alex- ander the Great the history of Greek life, culture, and learning merges into that of the history of the ancient world. Everywhere throughout the new empire Greek philosophers and scientists, architects and artists, merchants and colonists, followed behind the Macedonian armies, spreading Greek civilization and becom- ing the teachers of an enlarged world. ^ '' Greek cities stretched from the Nile to the Indus, and dotted the shores of the Black and the Caspian seas. The Greek language, once the tongue of a petty people, grew to be a universal language of culture, spoken even by barbarian lips, and the art, the science, the literature, the principles of politics and philosophy, developed in isolation ^ "As Alexander passed conquering through Asia, he restored to the East, as garnered grain, that Greek civilization whose seeds had long ago been received from the East. Each conqueror in turn, the Macedonian and the Roman bowed before conquered Greece and learnt lessons at her feet." (Butcher, S. H., Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 43.) LATER GREEK EDUCATION 47 by the Greek mind, henceforth became the heritage of many nations." ^ Greek universities were established at Pergamum and Tarsus in Asia Minor; at Rhodes on the island of that name in the ALgean; and at the newly founded city of Alexandria in Egypt. Antioch, in Syria, became another im- FiG. 14 The Greek University World portant center of Greek influ- ence and learning. A large library was developed at Pergamum. and it was here that writing on prepared skins of animals-' was be- gun, from which the term ''parchment " (originally " per- gament") comes. It was also at Pergamum that Galen (born c. 130 A.D.) organized what was then known of medical science, and his work remained 'the standard treatise for more than a thousand years. Rhodes became a famous center for instruction in oratory. During Roman days many eminent men, among whom were Cassius, Caesar, and Cicero, studied oratory here. Mingling of Orient and Occident at Alexandria. The most famous of all these Greek institutions, however, was the Univer- sity of Alexandria, which gradually sapped Athens as a center of learning and became the intellectual capital of the world. The greatest library of manuscripts the world had ever known was collected together here.^ It is said to have numbered over 700,000 volumes. These included Greek, Jewish, Egyptian, and Oriental works. In connection with the library was the museum, where men of letters and investigators were supported at royal expense. These two constituted an institution so like a university that it has been given that name. Alexandria became not only a ^ Webster, D. H., Ancient History, p. 302. 2 Previous to this, paper had been made from the papyrus plant, but Egypt, having forbidden its export, necessity again became the mother of invention. ' With this exception, never before the Italian Renaissance was there such interest in collecting books. Almost every book written in antiquity was gathered here, and the library at Alexandria became the British Museum or the BibHotheque Nationale of the ancient world. Every book entering Egypt was required to be brought to this library. 48 HISTORY OF EDUCATION great center of learning, but, still more important, the chief min- gling place for Greek, Jew, Egyptian, Roman, and Oriental, and here Greek philosophy, Hebrew and Christian religion, and Ori- ental faith and philosophy met and mixed. It was this mingled civilization and culture, all tinged through and through with the Greek, with which the Romans came in contact as they pushed their conquering armies into the eastern Mediterranean (R. lo). Character of Alexandrian Learning. The great advances in knowledge made at Alexandria were in mathematics, geography, and science. The method of scientific investigation worked out b}^ Aristotle at Athens was introduced and used. Instead of spec- ulating as to phenomena and causes, as had been the earlier Greek practice, observation and experiment now became the rule. UNKNOWN LAND Fig. 15. The Known World about 150 a.d. A map by Ptolemy, geographer and astronomer at Alexandria. Compare this with the map on page 4, and note the progress in geographical discovery which had been made during the intervening centuries. Euclid (c. 323-283 B.C.) opened a school at Alexandria as early as 300 B.C., and there worked out the geometry which is still used in our schools. Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), who studied under Euclid, made many important discoveries and advances in me- chanics and physics. Eratosthenes (226-196 B.C.), librarian at Alexandria, is famous as a geographer ^ and astronomer, and made ^ He founded the science of geography. Before his time Greek students had concluded that the world was round, instead of flat, as stated in the Homeric poems. By careful measurements he determined its size, within a few thousand miles of its actual circumference, and predicted that one might sail from Spain to the Indie§ along the same parallel of latitude. LATER GREEK EDUCATION 49 some studies in geology as well. Ptolemy (b. ?; d. 168 A. d.) here completed his Mechanism of the Heavens {Syntaxis) in 138 a.d., and this became the standard astronomy in Europe for nearly fif- teen hundred years, while his geography was used in the schools until well into the fifteenth century. The map of the known world, shown in Figure 15, was made by him. Hipparcus, the Newton of the Greeks, studied the heavens both at Alexandria and Rhodes, and counted the stars and arranged them in constel- lations. Many advances also were made in the study of medicine, the Alexandrian schools having charts, models, and dissecting rooms for the study of the human body. The functions of the brain, nerves, and heart were worked out there. Except in science and mathematics, though, the creative ability of the earlier Greeks was now largely absent. Research, organi- zation, and comment upon what had previously been done rather was the rule. Still much important work was done here. Books were collected, copied, and preserved, and texts were edited and purified from errors. Here grammar, criticism, prosody, and mythology were first developed into sciences. The study of archaeology was begun, and the first dictionaries were made. The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was begun for the benefit of the Alexandrian Jews who had forgotten their mother tongue, this being the origin of the famous Septuagint ^ version of the Old Testament. It is owing to these Alexandrian scholars, also, that we now possess the theory of Greek accents, and have good texts of Homer and other Greek writers. Alexandria sapped in turn. In 30 B.C. Alexandria, too, came under Roman rule and was, in turn, gradually sapped by Rome. Greek influence continued, but the interest became largely philo- sophical. Ultimately Alexandria became the seat of a metaphys- ical school of Christian theology, and the scene of bitter religious controversies. In 330 a.d., Constantinople was founded on the site of the earlier Byzantium, and soon thereafter Greek scholars transferred their interest to it and made it a new center of Greek learning. There Greek science, literature, and philosophy were preserved for ten centuries, and later handed back to a Europe just awakening from the long intellectual night of the Middle Ages. In 640 A.D. Alexandria was taken by the Mohammedans, and the university ceased to exist. The great library was de- stroyed, furnishing, it is said, "fuel sufficient for four thousand ^ From the tradition that seventy scholars labored on it. 50 HISTORY OF EDUCATION public baths for a period of six months," and Greek learning was extinguished in the western world. Our debt to Hellas. As a poHtical power the Greek States left the world nothing of importance. As a people they were too in- dividualistic, and seemed to have a strange inability to unite for pohtical purposes. To the new power slowly forming to the west- ward — Rome — was left the important task, which the Greek people were never able to accomplish, of uniting civilization into one political whole. The world conquest that Greece made was intellectual. As a result, her contribution to civilization was artistic, literary, philosophical, and scientific, but not political. The Athenian Greeks were a highly artistic and imaginative rather than a practical people. They spent their energy on other matters than government and conquest. As a result the world will be forever indebted to them for an art and a literature of incomparable beauty and richness which still charms mankind ; a philosophy which deeply influenced the early Christian religion, and has ever since tinged the thinking of the western world; and for many important beginnings in scientific knowledge which were lost for ages to a world that had no interest in or use for science. So deeply has our whole western civilization been tinctured by Greek thought that one enthusiastic writer has exclaimed, — ''Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." ^ (R. ii.) In education proper the old Athenian education offers us many lessons of importance that we of to-day may well heed. In the emphasis they placed on moral worth, education of the body as well as the mind, and moderation in all things, they were much ahead of us. Their schools became a type for the cities of the entire Mediterranean world, being found from the Black Sea south to the Persian Gulf and westward to Spain. When Rome became a world empire the Greek school system was adopted, and in modi- fied form became dominant in Rome and throughout the prov- inces, while the universities of the Greek cities for long furnished the highest form of education for ambitious Roman youths. In this way Greek influence was spread throughout the Mediter- ranean world. The higher learning of the Greeks, preserved first at Athens and Alexandria, and later at Constantinople, was finally handed back to the western world at the time of the Italian Revival of Learning, after Europe had in part recovered from the effects of the barbarian deluge which followed the downfall of Rome. ^ Henry Sumner Maine. LATER GREEK EDUCATION 51 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Try to picture what might have been the result for western civiHzation had the small and newly-developed democratic civilization of Greece been crushed by the Persians at the time they overran the Greek peninsula. 2. Do periods of great political, commercial, and intellectual expansion usually subject old systems of morality and education to severe strain? Illustrate. 3. Why was the change in the type of Athenian education during the Ephebic years a natural and even a necessary one for the new Athens? 4. Do you understand that the system of training before the Ephebic years was also seriously changed, or was the change largely a re-shaping and extension of the education of youths after sixteen? 5. Were the Sophists a good addition to the Athenian instructing force, or not? Why? 6. How may a State establish a corrective for such a flood of individualism as overwhelmed Greece, and still allow individual educational initiative and progress? 7. Do we as a nation face danger from the flood of individualism we have encouraged in the past? How is our problem like and unlike that of Athens after the Peloponnesian War? 8. What is the place in Greek life and thought of the ideal treatises on edu- cation written by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, after the flood of individualism had set in? 9. In what ways was the conquest of Alexander good for world civilization? 10. Of what importance is it, in the history of our western civihzation, that Greek thought had so thoroughly permeated the eastern Mediterranean world before Roman armies conquered the region? 11. Picture for yourself the great intellectual advances of the Greeks by contrasting the tribal preparedness-type of education of the early Greek States and the learning possessed by the scholars of the University at Alexandria. 12. Compare the spread of Greek language and knowledge throughout the eastern Mediterranean world, following the conquests of Alexander, with the spread of the English language and ideas as to government throughout the modern world. SELECTED READINGS In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are repro- duced: 7. Wilkins: Athens in the Time of Pericles. 8. Isocrates: The Instruction of the Sophists. 9. Xenophon: An Example of Socratic Teaching. 10. Draper: The Schools of Alexandria. 11. Butcher: What we Owe to Greece. QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS 1. Characterize the many educational influences of Athens, as pictured by Wilkins (7). 2. Were the evils of the Sophist teachers, which Isocrates points out (8), natural ones? Compare with teachers of vocal training to-day. 52 HISTORY OF EDUCATION 3. What would be necessary for the proper training of one for eloquence? Could any Sophist teacher have trained any one? 4. Would it be possible to-day for any one city to become such a center of the world's intellectual life as did Alexandria (10)? Why? 5. Could the Socratic method (9) be applied to instruction in psychology, ethics, history, and science equally well? Why? To what class of sub- jects is the Socratic quiz applicable? 6. How do you account for the fact that the wonderful promise of Alexan- drian science was not fulfilled? 7. State our debt to the Greeks (11). SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES The most important references are indicated by an * * Bevan, J. O. University Life in Olden Time. * Butcher, S. H. Some Aspects of the Greek Genius. * Davidson, Thos. Aristotle, and Ancient Educational Ideals. * Freeman, K. J. Schools of Hellas. Gulick, C. B. The Life of the Ancient Greeks. * Kingsley, Chas. Alexandria and her Schools. Laurie, S. S. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education. * Mahaffy, J. P. Old Greek Education. Sandys, J. E. History of Classical Scholarship, vol. i. Walden, John W. H. The Universities of Ancient Greece. Wilkins, A. S. National Education in Greece in the Fourth Century, B.C. CHAPTER III THE EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME I. THE ROMANS AND THEIR MISSION Development of the Roman State. About the time that the Hellenes, in the City-States of the Greek peninsula, had brought their civilization to its Golden Age, another branch of the great Aryan race, which had previously settled in the Italian peninsula, had begun the creation of a new civilization there which was destined to become extended and powerful. At the beginning of Growth of Rome up to .201 B.C. At 509 B.C. At end of Latin War. 338 B.C. By 264 B.C. By 201 B.C. Fig. 1 6. The Early Peoples of Italy, and the Extension of the Roman Power In 509 B.C. Attica opened her citizenship to all free inhabitants, and half a century later the Golden Age of Greece was in full swing. By 338 B.C. Greece's glory had departed. Philip of Macedon had become master, and its political freedom was over. By 264 B.C. the center of Greek life and thought had been transferred to Alexandria, and Rome's great expansion had begun. 54 HISTORY OF EDUCATION recorded history we find a number of tribes of this branch of the Aryan race settled in different parts of Italy, as is shown in Figure 1 6. Slowly, but gradually, the smallest of these divisions, the Latins, extended its rule over the other tribes, and finally over the Greek settlements to the south and the Gauls to the north, so that by 201 B.C. the entire Italian peninsula had become subject to the City-State government at Rome. By a wise policy of tolerance, patience, conciliation, and assim- ilation the Latins gradually became the masters of all Italy. Un- Hke the Greek City-States, Rome seemed to possess a natural genius for the art of government. Upon the people she con- quered she bestowed the great gift of Roman citizenship, and she attached them to her by granting local government to their towns and by interfering as little as possible with their local manners, speech, habits, and institutions. By founding colonies among them and by building excellent military roads to them, she insured her rule, and by kindly and generous treatment she bound the different Italian peoples ever closer and closer to the central government at Rome. By a most wonderful un- derstanding of the psychology of other peoples, new in the world before the work of Rome, and not seen again until the work of the English in the nineteenth cen- tury, Rome gradually assimilated the peoples of the Italian peninsula and in time amalgamated them into a single Roman race. In speech, customs, manners, and finally in blood she Romanized the different tribes and brought them under her leadership. Later this same process was extended to Spain, Gaul, and even to far-off Britain. A concrete, practical people. The Roman people were a con- crete, practical, constructive nation of farmers and herdsmen (R. 14), merchants and soldiers, governors and executives. The whole of the early struggle of the Latins to extend their rule and absorb the other tribes of the peninsula called for practical rulers — warriors who were at the same time constructive statesmen and executives who possessed power and insight, energy, and Fig. 17 The Principal Roman Roads EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 55 personality. The long struggle for political and social rights/ carried on by the common people (plebeians) with the ruling class (patricians), tended early to shape their government along rough but practical lines, ^ and to elevate law and orderly procedure among the people. The later extension of the Empire to include many distant lands — how vast the Roman Empire finally be- came may be seen from the map on the following page — called still more for a combination of force, leadership, tolerance, pa- tience, executive power, and insight into the psychology of subject people to hold such a vast empire together. Only a great, creative people, working along very practical lines, could have used and used so well the opportunity which came to Rome ^ to create a great world empire. The great mission of Rome. Had Rome tried to impose her rule and her ways and her mode of thought on her subject people, and to reduce them to complete subjection to her, as the modern German and Austrian Empires, for example, tried to do with the peoples who came under their control, the Roman Empire could never have been created, and what would have saved civilization ^ This struggle of the common people (plebeians) for an equal place with the ruling class {patricians) before the law, in religious matters, and in politics, covered two and a half centuries, the old restrictions being broken down but gradually. The most important steps in the process were: 509 B.C. Magistrates forbidden to scourge or execute a Roman citizen without giving him a chance to appeal to the people in their popular assembly. This " right of appeal" was regarded as the Magna Charta of Roman liberty. 494 B.C. Plebeian soldiers granted officers of their own (Tribunes) to protect them against patrician cruelty and injustice. 451-449 B.C. Laws must be written — Code commission appointed. Result, the Laws of the Twelve Tables (R. 12); these mark the beginning of the great Roman legal system. 445 B.C. Intermarriage between the two orders legalized. 367 B.C. Right to hold office granted, and one of the Consuls elected each year to be a plebeian. 250 B.C. By this date the distinctions between the two orders had disappeared; patricians and plebeians intermarried and formed one compact body of citizens in the Roman State. 2 "The scholar who compares carefully the Greek constitutions with the Roman will undoubtedly consider the former to be finer and more finished specimens of political work. The imperfect and incomplete character which the Roman consti- tution presents, at almost any point of its history, the number of institutions it exhibits which appear to be temporary expedients merely, are necessary results of its method of growth to meet demands as they rose from time to time; they are evidence, indeed, of its highly practical character." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 2d ed., p. 20.) * The same opportunity came to Athens after the Persian Wars and to Sparta after the Peloponnesian War, but neither possessed the creative power along polit- ical and governmental lines, or the tolerance for the ideas and feelings of subject peoples, to accomplish anything permanent. Rome succeeded where previous States had failed because of her larger insight, tolerance, patience, and constructive power. Fig. 1 8. The Great Extent of the Roman Empire The map shows the Roman Empire as it was by the end of the first century a.d., and the tribes shown beyond the frontier are as they were at the beginning of the fourth century a.d. It was 2500 miles, air line, from the eastern end of the Black Sea to the western coasts of Spain, 1400 miles from Rome to Palestine, and iioo miles from Rome to northern Britain. To maintain order in this vast area Rome depended on the loyalty of her subjects, the strength of her armies, her military roads, and a messenger service by horse, yet throughout this vast area she imposed her law and a unified government for centuries. EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 57 from complete destruction during the period of the barbarian invasions is hard to see. Instead, Rome treated her subjects as her friends, and not as conquered peoples; led them to see that their interests were identical with hers; gave them large local inde- pendence and freedom in government, under her strong control of general affairs ; opened up her citizenship ^ and the line of pro- motion in the State to her provincials; ^ and won them to the peace and good order which she everywhere imposed by the ad- vantages she offered through a common language, common law, common coinage, common commercial arrangements, common state service, and the common treatment of all citizens of every race.'^ In consequence, the provincial was willingly absorbed into the common Roman race ^ — absorbed in dress, manners, religion, poHtical and legal institutions, family names, and, most impor- tant of all, in language. As a result, race pride and the native tongues very largely disappeared, and Latin became the spoken language of all except the lower classes throughout the whole of the Western Empire. Only in the eastern Mediterranean, where the Hellenic tongue and the Hellenic civilization still dominated, did the Latin language make but little headway, and here Rome had the good sense not to try to impose her speech or her culture. Instead she absorbed the culture of the East, while the East ac- cepted in return the Roman government and Roman law, and Latin in time became the language of the courts and of govern- ment. Having stated thus briefly the most prominent characteristics of the Roman people, and indicated their great work for civiliza- tion, let us turn back and trace the development of such educa- ^ Caesar extended Roman citizenship to certain communities in Gaul and in Sicily, and began the further extension of the process of assimilation by taking the con- quered provincial into citizenship in the Empire. This was carried on and extended by. succeeding Emperors until finally, in 212 a.d., Roman citizenship was extended to all free-born inhabitants in all the provinces. 2 For example, Balbus, a Spaniard, was Consul in Rome forty years before the Christian era, and another Spaniard, Nerva, had become Emperor before the close of the first century a.d. Many commanders in the army and governors in the provinces were provincials by birth. ^ Roman citizenship was much more than a mere name. A Roman citizen could not be maltreated or punished without a legal trial before a Roman court. If ac- cused in a capital case he could always protect himself from what he considered an unjust decision by an "appeal to Caesar"; that is, to the Emperor at Rome. The protection of law was always extended to his property and himself, wherever in the Roman Empire he might live or travel. ^ Both literature and inscriptions testify abundantly to the affectionate regard in which Roman rule was held. The rule may have been far from perfect, judged from a modern point of view, but it was so much better and so much more orderly than anything that had gone before that it was accepted in all quarters. 58 HISTORY OF EDUCATION tional system as existed among them, see in what it consisted, how it modified the Hfe and habits of thinking of the Roman peo- ple, and what educational organization or traditions Rome passed on to western civilization. II. THE PERIOD OF HOME EDUCATION The early Romans and their training. In the early history of the Romans there were no schools, and it was not until about 300 B.C. that even primary schools began to develop. What edu- cation was needed was imparted in the home or in the field and in the camp, and was of a very simple type. Certain virtues were demanded — modesty, firmness, prudence, piety, courage, seri- ousness, and regard for duty — and these were instilled both by precept and example. Each home was a center of the religious life, and of civic virtue and authority. In it the father was a high priest, with power of life and death over wife and children. He alone conversed with the gods and prepared the sacrifices. The wife and mother, however, held a high place in the home and in the training of the children, the marriage tie being regarded as very sacred. She also occupied a respected position in society, and was complete mistress of the house (R. 17). The religion of the city was an outgrowth of that of the home. Virtue, courage, duty, justice — these became the great civic vir- tues. Their religion, both family and state, lacked the beauty and stately ceremonial of the Greeks, lacked that lofty faith and aspiration after virtue that characterized the Hebrew and the later Christian faith, was singularly wanting in awe and mystery, and was formal and mechanical and practical ^ in character, but it exercised a great influence on these early peoples and on their conceptions of their duty to the State. The father trained the son for the practical duties of a man ^ Every house was protected from the evil spirits of the outside world by Janus, and had its sacred fire presided over by Vesta. Every house had its protecting Lares. The cupboard where the food was stored was blest by and under the charge of the Penates. The daily worship of these household deities took place at the family meal, the father offering a little food and a Httle wine at the sacred hearth, livery house father, too, had his guardian Genius, whose festival was celebrated on the master's birthday. In a similar fashion the State had its temples, its sacred fire and votive offerings, and various divinities ruled the elements and sent or withheld success. Almost every activity in life was presided over by some deity, whom it was necessary to propitiate before engaging in it. Davidson says, with reference to the practical nature of their religion, that "V/hile the Athenians rejoiced before their gods, the Romans kept a debtor and creditor account v/ith theirs, and were very anxious that the balance should be on the right side." EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 59 Fig. 19. a Roman Father instructing his son (From a Roman Sarcophagus) and a citizen; the mother trained the daughter to become a good housekeeper, wife, and mother. MoraHty, character, obedience to parents and to the State, and whole-hearted service were em- phasized. The boy's father taught him to read, write, and count. Stories of those who had done great deeds for the State were told, and martial songs were learned and sung. After 450 B.C. every boy had to learn the Laws of the Twelve Tables (R. 12), and be able to explain their meaning (R. 13). As the boy grew older he fol- lowed his father in the fields and in the public place and listened to the con- versation of men.^ If the son of a pa- trician he naturally learned much more from his father, by reason of his larger knowledge and larger contact with men of affairs and public business, than if he were the son of a plebeian. Through games as a boy, and later in the exercises of the fields and the camps, the boy gained what physical training he received.- Education by doing. It was largely an education by doing, as was that of the old Greek period, though entirely different in character. Either by apprenticeship to the soldier, farmer, or statesman, or by participation in the activities of a citizen, was the training needed imparted. Its purpose was to produce good fathers, citizens, and soldiers.^ Its ideals were found in the real and practical needs of a small State, where the ability to care for one's self was a neecssary virtue. To be healthy and strong, to ^ "Among our ancestors," says Pliny, "one learned not only through the ears, but through the eyes. The young, in observing the elders, learned what they would soon have to do themselves, and what they would one day teach to their successor." - Such careful physical training as was given in a Greek palastra and gymnasium would have been regarded by the Romans as most effeminate. Unlike the (Greeks, who strove for a harmonious bodily development, the Romans exercised for useful- ness in war. Cicero exclaims, with reference to Greek gymnasial training: "What an absurd system of training youth is exhibited in their gymnasia! What a frivo- lous preparation for the labors and hazards of war!" 3 Macaulay, in his Horatius, describes the results of the education of this early period as follows: "Then none were for the party, But all were for the State; And the rich man loved the poor, And the poor man loved the great. Then lands were fairly portioned . And spoils were fairly sold; For the Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old," 60 HISTORY OF EDUCATION reverence the gods and the institutions of the State, to obey his parents and the laws, to be proud of his family connections and his ancestors, to be brave and efficient in war, to know how to farm or to manage a business, were the aims and ends of this early train- ing. It produced a nation of citizens who willingly subordinated themselves to the interests of the State, ^ a nation of warriors who brought all Italy under their rule, a calculating, practical people who believed themselves destined to become the conquerors and rulers of the world, and a reserved and proud race, trained to govern and to do business, but not possessed of lofty ideals or large enthusiasms in life (Rs. 15, 16). III. THE TRANSITION TO SCHOOL PIDUCATION Beginnings of school education. Up to about 3C0 B.C. educa- tion had been entirely in the home, and in the activities of the fields and the State. It was a period of personal valor and stern civic virtue, in a rather primitive type of society, as yet but little in contact with the outside world, and little need of any other type of training had been felt. By the end of the third century B.C., the influence of contact with the Greek cities of southern Italy and Sicily (Magna Croecia), and the influence of the extensive con- quests of Alexander the Great in the eastern Mediterranean (334- 323 B.C.), had begun to be felt in Italy. By that time Greek had become the language of commerce and diplomacy throughout the Mediterranean, and Greek scholars and tradesmen had begun to frequent Rome. By 303 B.C. it seems certain that a few private teachers had set up primary schools at Rome to supplement the home training, and had begun the introduction of the pedagogue as a fashionable adjunct to attract attention to their schools. These schools, however, were only a fad at first, and were patron- ized only by a few of the wealthy citizens. Up to about 250 B.C., at least, Roman education remained substantially as it had been in the preceding centuries. Reading, writing, declamation, chanting, and the Laws of the Twelve Tables still constituted the subject-matter of instruction, and the old virtues continued to be emphasized. By the middle of the third century B.C. Rome had expanded its ^ "The Romans," says the historian, Wilhelm Ihne, "were distinguished from all other nations, not only by the extre^ne earnestness and precision with which they conceived their law and worked out the consequences of its fundamental principles, but by the good sense which made them submit to the law, once established, as an absolute necessity of political health and strength. It was this severity in thinking and acting which, more than any other cause, made Rome great and powerful." EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 6l rule to include nearly all the Italian peninsula (see Figure i6), and was transforming itself politically from a little rural City- State into an Empire, with large world relationships. A knowl- edge of Greek now came to be demanded both for diplomatic and for business reasons, and the need of a larger culture, to corre- spond with the increased importance of the State, began to be felt by the wealthier and better-educated classes. Greek scholars, brought in as captured slaves from the Greek colonies of southern Italy, soon began to be extensively employed as teachers and as secretaries. About 233 B.C., Li\ ius Andronicus, who had been brought to Rome as a slave when Tarentum, one of the Greek cities of south- ern Italy, was captured,^ and who later had obtained his freedom, made a translation of the Odyssey into Latin, and became a teacher of Latin and Greek at Rome. This had a wonderful effect in developing schools and a literary atmosphere at Rome. The Odyssey at once became the great school textbook, in time sup- planting the Twelve Tables, and literary and school education now rapidly developed. The Latin language became crystallized in form, and other Greek works were soon translated. The be- ginnings of a native Latin literature were now made. Greek higher schools were opened, many Greek teachers and slaves offered instruction, and the Hellenic scheme of culture, as it had previously developed in Attica, soon became the fashion at Rome. Changes in national ideals. The second century B.C. was even more a period of rapid change in all phases and. aspects of Roman hfe. During this century Rome became a world empire, annexing Spain, Carthage, Illyria, and Greece, and during the century that followed she subjugated northern Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Gaul to the Elbe and the Danube (see Figure 18). Rome soon became mistress of the whole Mediterranean world. Her ships plied the seas, her armies and governors ruled the land. The introduction of wealth, luxuries, and slaves from the new prov- inces, which followed their capture, soon had a very demoralizing influence upon the people. Private and public religion and moral- ity rapidly declined; religion came to be an empty ceremonial; ^ The lot of a captive in war, everywhere throughout the ancient world, was to be taken and sold as a slave by his captors. Many educated Greeks were thus taken in the capture of Greek cities in southern Italy and sold as slaves in Rome. These were let out by their masters as teachers of the new learning. Even the thrifty Cato, who vigorously opposed the new learning on principle, was not averse to per- mitting his educated Greek slaves to conduct schools and thus add to his private fortune. 62 HISTORY OF EDUCATION divorce became common; wealth and influence ruled the State; slaves became very cheap and abundant, and were used for almost every type of service. From a land of farmers of small farms, sturdy and self-supporting, who lived simply, reared large fam- ilies, feared the gods, respected the State, and made an honest living, it became a land of great estates and wealthy men, and the self-respecting peasantry were transformed into soldiers for foreign wars, or joined the rabble in the streets of Rome.^ Wealth became the great desideratum, and the great avenue to this was through the public service, either as army commanders and gov- ernors, or as public men who could sway the multitude and com- mand votes and influence. Manifestly the old type of education was not intended to meet such needs, and now in Rome, as pre- viously in Athens, a complete transformation in the system of training for the young took place. The imaginative and creative Athenians, when confronted by a great change in national ideals, evolved a new type of education adapted to the new needs of the time; the unimaginative and practical Romans merely adopted that which the Athenians had created. The Hellenization of Rome. The result was the Hellenization of the intellectual life of Rome, making complete the Helleniza- tion of the Mediterranean world. After the fall of Greece, in 146 B.C., a great influx of educated Greeks took place. As the Latin poet Horace expressed it: Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror, And brought the arts to Latium. So completely did the Greek educational system seem to meet the needs of the changed Roman State that at first the Greek schools were adopted bodily — Greek language, pedagogue, higher schools of rhetoric and philosophy, and all — and the schools were in reality Greek schools but slightly modified to meet the needs of Rome. Gymnasia were erected, and wealthy Romans, as well as youths, began to spend their leisure in studying Greek and in trying to learn gymnastic exercises. In time the national pride and practical sense of the Romans ^ These men had little choice otherwise. Grain from Spain and Africa became so cheap that a farmer could not raise enough on his small farm to pay his taxes and support his family, so he was obliged to sell his land to men who turned it into large cattle and sheep ranches. He would not emigrate to the provinces, as Englishmen have done to Canada and Australia, but instead went to the cities, where he led a hand-to-mouth existence in a type of tenement house. It was from such sources that the Roman mob, demanding free grain and entertainment in return for its votes, was made up. EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 63 led them to open so-called "culture schools" of their own, mod- eled after the Greek. The Latin language then replaced the Greek as the vehicle of instruction, though Greek was still studied extensively, and Rome began the development of a system of private-school instruction possessing some elements that were native to Roman life and Roman needs. Struggle against, and final victory. That this great change in national ideals and in educational practice was accepted without protest should not be imagined. Plutarch and other writers appealed to the family as the center for all true education. Cato the elder, who died in 149 B.C., labored hard to stem the Hellenic tide. He wrote the first Roman book on education, in part to show what education a good citi- zen needed as an orator, husbandman, jurist, and warrior, and in part as a pro- test against Hellenic innovations. In 167 B.C., the first library was founded in Rome, with books brought from Greece by the conqueror Paulus Emilius. In 161 B.C., the Roman Senate directed the Praetor to see "that no philosophers or rhetoricians be suffered in Rome" (R. 20 a), but the edict could not be enforced. In 92 B.C., the Censors issued an edict ex- pressing their disapproval of such schools (R. 20 b). By 100 B.C., the Hellenic victory was complete, and the Graeco-Roman school system had taken form. In 27 B.C., Rome ceased to be a Republic and became an Empire, and under the Emperors the professors of the new learning were encouraged and protected, higher schools were established in the provinces, literature and philosophy were opened as possible careers, and the Greek lan- guage, literature, and learning were spread, under Roman imperial protection, to every corner of the then civilized world. This vic- tory of Hellenic thought and learning at Rome, viewed in the light of the future history of the civilization of the world, was an event of large importance. IV. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM AS FINALLY ESTABLISHED The ludus, or primary school. The elementary school, known as the Indus, or ludus liter arum, the teacher of which was known Fig. 20. Cato the Elder (234-148 B.C.) 64 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Fig. 21. Roman Writing-Materials Inkstand, pen, letter, box of manuscripts, wax tablets, stylus. as a ludi magister, was the beginning or primary school of the scheme as finally evolved. This corresponded to the school of the Athenian grammatist, and like it the instruction consisted of reading, writing, and counting. These schools were open to both sexes, but were chiefly frequented by boys. They were entered at the age of seven, sometimes six, and covered the period up to twelve. Reading and writing were taught by much the same methods as in the Greek schools, and approximately the same writing materials were used. Something of the same difficulty was experienced also in mas- tering the reading art (R. 2i). Dionysius of Ha- licarnassus, a Greek his- torian who lived in Rome for twenty-two years, during the first century B.C., has left us a clear description of the Roman method of teaching reading: When we learned to read was it not necessary at first to know the name of the letters, their shape, their value in syllables, their differ- ences, then the words and their case, their quantity long or short, their accent, and the rest? Arrived at this point we began to read and write, slowly at first and syllable by syllable. Some time afterwards, the forms being sufficiently engraved on our memory, we read more cursorily, in the elementary book, then in all sorts of books, finally with incredible quickness and without making any mistake. Writing seems rather to have followed reading, and, as in the Greek schools, the pupils copied down from dictation and made their own books {dictatd) . Literature received no such emphasis in the elementary schools of Rome as in those of the Greeks, and the palcBstra of the Greeks was not reproduced at Rome. Due in part to the practical character of the Roman people, to the established habit of keeping careful household accounts, to the difficulties of their system of calculation,^ to the practice ^ Arithmetic was not easy for the Romans, partly because they had no figure or other sign for zero, partly because they used a decimal system for counting and a duodecimal for their money, and partly because the Roman system of notation EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 65 of finger reckoning, and to the vast commercial and financial interests that the Romans formed throughout the world which they conquered, arithmetic became a subject of fundamental importance in their schools, and much time was given to securing perfection in calculation and finger reckoning.^ Hence it occu- pied a place of large importance in the primary school. An abacus or counting- board was used, similar to the one shown in Figure 22, and Horace mentions a bag of stones {calculi) as a part of a school- boy's equipment. The ludi magister. The ludi magister at Rome held a position even less enviable than that held by the grammatist at Athens. "The starveling Greek," who was glad to barter his knowledge for the certainty of a good dinner, was sneered at by many Roman writers. Many slaves were engaged in this type of instruction, bringing in fees for their owners. It was not regarded as of importance that the teachers of these schools be of high grade. The establishment of and attenda.nce at these primary schools was wholly volun- tary, and the children in them probably represented but a small percentage of those of school age in the total population. These schools became quite common in the Italian cities, and in time were found in the provincial cities of the Empire as well. They remained, however, entirely private-adven- (I, V, X, L, C. D, M) did not adapt itself to quick calculation. Try, for example, these simple sums: Add: CCLVII Subtract: LXVIII CIX XXXIV • • • • • • • M C X I c X 1 • • • • • • • • • • • • 0 • • • • • • • • • • • • • Fig. 22. a Roman Counting-Board Pebbles were used, those nearest the numbered di- viding partition being counted. Each pebble above-, when moved downward counted five of those in the same division below. The board now shows 8,760,254. Multiply: CXXV XII Divide: XII ICXXXII 1 Finger reckoning (whence digits) with the Romans attained a prominence probably never reached with any other people. Bills and accounts were reckoned up on the fingers, in the presence of the patron. Eighteen positions of the fingers of the left hand stood for the nine units and the nine tens, and eighteen positions of the fingers of the right hand stood for the nine hundreds and the nine thousands. For larger sums, such as ten thousand and more, various parts of the body were touched. Any one who betrayed, according to Quintilian, "by an uncertain or awkward movement of his fingers, a want of confidence in his calculations," was thought to be but imperfectly trained in arithmetic. 66 HISTORY OF EDUCATION ture undertakings, the State doing nothing toward encouraging their estabUshment, supervising the instruction in them, or requiring attendance at them. They were in no sense free schools, nor were the prices for instruction fixed, as in our private schools of to-day. Instead, the pupil made a present to the master, usu- ally at some understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the liberality of their pupils.^ The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was nearly always an old or infirm slave of the family. The schools were held anywhere ■ — in a portico (see Figure 23), in a shed or booth in front of a house, in a store, or in a recessed Fig. 2$. A Roman Primary School {Ludus) (From a fresco found at Herculaneum) This shows a school held in a portico of a house. corner shut in by curtains. A chair for the master, benches for the pupils, an outer room for cloaks and for the pedagogues to wait in, and a bundle of rods {ferula) constituted the necessary equipment. The pupils brought with them boxes containing ^ There was much complaint that parents were slow with their fees, and at times forgot them entirely if the boy did not turn out well. Finally, in the reign of Diocletian (284-305 a.d.), in an effort to reheve the distress of schoolmasters, prices were legally fixed at approximately the equivalent of $1.20 per month per pupil for teaching reading and $1.80 for arithmetic, measured in money values of a decade ago. These were regarded as "hard times prices." EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 67 writing-materials, book-rolls, and reckoning-stones. Schools began early in the morning, pupils in winter going with lanterns to their tasks. There was much flogging of children, and in Martial we find an angry epigram which he addressed to a school- master who disturbed his sleep (R. 23 a). The secondary schools. Secondary or Latin grammar schools, under a grammaticus, and covering instruction from the age of twelve to sixteen, had become clearly differentiated from the primary schools under a ludi magister by the time of the death of Cato, 148 B.C. At first this higher instruction began in the form of private tutors, probably in the homes of the wealthy, and Greek was the language taught. By the beginning of the first century B.C., however, Latin secondary schools began to arise, and in time these too spread to all the important cities of the Empire. Attendance at them was wholly voluntary, and was confined entirely to the children of the well-to-do classes. The teachers were Greeks, or Latins who had been trained by the Greeks. Each teacher taught as he wished, but the schools throughout the Empire came to be much the same in character. The course of study consisted chiefly of instruction in grammar and literature, the purpose being to secure such a mastery of the Latin language and Greek and Latin literatures as might be most helpful in giving that broader culture now recognized as the mark of an educated man, and in preparing the young Roman to take up the life of an orator and public official (R. 24). Both Greek and Latin secondary schools were in existence, and Quintilian, the foremost Roman writer on educational practice, recommends attendance at the Greek school first. Grammar was studied first, and was intended to develop cor- rectness in the use of speech. With its careful study of words, phonetic changes, drill on inflections, and practice in composing and paragraphing, this made a strong appeal to the practical Roman and became a favorite study. Literature followed, and was intended to develop an appreciation for literary style, elevate thought, expand one's knowledge, and, by memorization and repetition, to train the powers of expression. The method prac- ticed was much as follows : The selection was carefully read first by the teacher, and then by the pupils.^ After the reading the ^ "Reading aloud, with careful attention to pronunciation, accent, quantity, and expression, formed an, important part of the training in literature of a Latin youth. Correct reading of Latin was a much more diificult art, as practiced, than 68 HISTORY OF EDUCATION selection was gone over again and the historical, geographical, and mythological allusions were carefully explained by the teacher.^ The text was next critically examined, to point out where and how it might be improved and its expressions strength- ened, and much paraphrasing of it was engaged in. Finally the study of the selection was rounded out by a judgment — that is, a critical estimate of the work, a characterization of the author's style, and a resume of his chief merits and defects. The founda- tions were here laid for Grammar and Rhetoric as the great studies of the Middle Ages. Homer and Neander were the favorite authors in Greek, and Vergil, Horace, Sallust, and Livy in Latin, with much use of iEsop's Fables for work in composition. The pupils made their own books from dictation, though in later years educated slave labor became so cheap that the copying and sale of books was organized into a business at Rome, and it was possible for the children of wealthy parents to own their own books. Grammar, composition, elocution, ethics, history,, mythology, and geography were all comprehended in the instruction in grammar and litera- ture in the secondary schools. A little music was added at times, to help the pupil intone his reading and declamation. A little geometry and astronomy were also included, for their practical applications. The athletic exercises of the Greeks were rejected, as contributing to immorality and being a waste of time and strength. In a sense these schools were finishing schools for Roman youths who went to any school at all, much as are our high schools of to-day for the great bulk of American children. The schools were better housed than those of the ludi, and the masters were of a better quality and received larger fees. Like the elementary schools, the State exercised no supervision or con- trol over these schools or the teachers or pupils in them. is the reading of English, as all of us well know who learned properly to intone our ''Arma virumqtie cano, Trojce qui primus ah oris Ilaliam, falo profugus, Lavinaqtie venii." The lack of use of small letters and spacing between the words (R. 21), as well as poor punctuat'on, also added to the difficulty. ^ A nonsensical minuteness was followed here, and many trivialities were empha- sized. Juvenal tells us, in his Seventh Satire, written about 130 a.d., that " a teacher was expected to read all histories and know all authors as well as his finger ends. That, if questioned, he should be able to tell the name of Anchises' nurse, and the name and native land of the stepmother of Anchemotus — tell how many years Ancestes lived — how many flagons of wine the Sicilian king gave to the Phrygians." This reminds us of some of the dissected study of English and Latin until recently given in our colleges and high schools. EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 69 The schools of rhetoric. Up to this point the schools estab- lished had been for practical and useful information (the primary schools) or cultural (the grammar or secondary schools). On top of these a higher and professional type of school was next devel- oped, to train youths in rhetoric and oratory, preparatory to the great professions of law and pubhc hfe at Rome.^ These schools were direct descendants of the Greek rhetorical schools, which evolved from the schools of the Sophists. Suetonius ^ tells us that: Rhetoric, also, as well as grammar, was not introduced amongst us till a late period, and with still more difficulty, inasmuch as we find that, at times, the practice of it was even prohibited. ^ . . . However, by slow degrees, rhetoric manifested itself to be a useful and honorable study, and many persons devoted themselves to it both as a means of defense and of acquiring a reputation. In consequence, public favor was so much attracted to the study of rhetoric that a vast number of professional and learned men devoted themselves to it; and it flour- ished to such a degree that some of them raised themselves by it to the rank of senators and to the highest offices. These schools, the teachers of which were known as rhetors, fur- nished a type of education representing a sort of collegiate educa- tion for the period. They were oratorical in purpose, because the orator had become the Roman ideal of a well-educated man (R. 24). During the life of the Republic the orator found many opportunities for the constructive use of his ability, and all young men ambitious to enter law or politics found the training of these schools a necessary prerequisite. They were attended for two or three years by boys over sixteen, but only the wealthier and more aristocratic families could afford to send their boys to them. In addition to oratorical and some legal training, these schools included a further linguistic and literary training, some mathe- ^ Quintilian well states the aim of this higher education when he says that "the man who can duly sustain his character as a citizen, who is qualified for the manage- ment of public and private affairs, and who can govern communities by his counsels, settle them by means of laws, and improve them by judicial enactments, can cer- tainly be nothing else but an orator." 2 In his Lives of Eminent Grammarians and Rhetoricians, chap. i. Suetonius lived from 75 to 160 A.D., and was an advocate at Rome and private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian. * There was a general dread of Greek higher learning on the part of the older Romans, and this found expression in many ways. Among these was an edict of the Senate, in i6i B.C., directing the Praetor to see that "no philosophers or rhetori- cians be' suffered at Rome" (R. 20), a decree which could not be enforced, and the edict of the Censors, in 92 B.C. (R. 20), expressing their disapproval of the Latin schools of rhetoric, 70 HISTORY OF EDUCATION matical and scientific knowledge, and even some philosophy. The famous "Seven Liberal Arts" of the Middle Ages — Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectic; Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy — all seem to have been included in the instruction of thes6 schools.^ The great studies, though, were the first three Fig. 24. A Roman School of Rhetoric This picture, which has been drawn from a description, shows a much better t>T3e of school than that of the ludi. and some Law, Music being studied largely to help with gestures and to train the voice, Geometry to aid in settling lawsuits re- lating to land. Dialectic (logic) to aid in detecting fallacies, and Astronomy to understand the movements of the heavenly bodies and the references of literary writers.^ There was much work in debate and in the declamation of ethical and political material, the fine distinctions in Roman Law and Ethics were brought out,*^ and there was much drill in preparing and delivering speeches and much attention given to the factors involved in the preparation and delivery of a successful oration (R. 25). 1 These seven studies became the famous studies of tlie church schools of the Middle Ages, with Grammar as the greatest and most important study (see chap, vri; R. 74). The curriculum of the Middle Ages was a direct inheritance from Rome. ■ 2 See Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, book i, chap, x, 22, 37, and 46. This chap- ter is devoted largely to a description of the use of these studies. •'' Sample questions which were debated to bring out the fine distinctions in Roman Law and Ethics were : (c) Was a slave about whose neck a master had hung the leather or golden token (worn by free youths only), in order to smuggle him past the boundary, freed when he reached Roman soil wearing this insignia of freedom? (b) If a stranger buys a prospective clraught of fishes and the fisherman draws up a casket of jewels, does the stranger own the jewels? EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 71 These schools became very popular as institutions of higher learning, and continued so even after the later Emperors, by seizing the power of the State, had taken away the inspiration that comes from a love of freedom and had thus deprived the rhetorical art of practical value. The work of the schools then became highly stilted and artificial in character, and oratory then came to be cultivated largely as a fine art.^ Men educated in these schools came to boast that they could speak with equal effectiveness on either side of any question, and the art came to depend on the use of many and big words and on the manners of the stage. Such ideals naturally destroyed the value of these schools, and stopped intellectual progress so far as they con- tributed to it. Much was done by the later Emperors to encourage these schools, and they too came to exist in almost every provincial city in the Empire. Often they were supported by the cities in which they were located. The Emperor Vespasian, about 75 a.d. began the practice of paying, from the Imperial Treasury, the sala- ries of grammarians and rhetoricians - at Rome. Antoninus Pius, who ruled as Emperor from 138 to 161 a.d., extended payment to the provinces, gave to these teachers the privileges of the sena- torial class, and a certain number in each city were exempted from payment of taxes, support of soldiers, and obligations to military service. Other Emperors extended these special privileges (R. 26) which became the basis for the special rights afterwards granted to the Christian clergy (R. 38) and, still later, to teachers in the universities (Rs. 101-04). University learning. Roman youths desiring still further training could now journey to the eastward and attend the Greek universities (see Figure 14). A few did so, much as American students in the middle of the nineteenth century went to Germany for higher study. Athens and Rhodes were most favored. Bru- tus, Horace, and Cicero, among others, studied at Athens; Caesar, ^ In the later centuries of the Empire, people went to hear a man who could orate or declaim, as people now do to hear a great political orator, a revivalist preacher, or a popular actor or singer. A form of amusement for distinguished travelers pass- ing through a city was to have some one orate before them. "This power of using words for mere pleasurable effect," says Professor Dill, in his Roman Socieiy in the Last Century of the Western Empire, "on the most trivial or the most extravagantly absurd themes, was for many ages, in both West and East, esteemed the highest proof of talent and cultivation." - Each Greek rhetorician in Rome was given one hundred sestertia (about $4000) yearly from the Imperial Treasury, Quintilian probably being one of the first to receive a state salary. 72 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Cicero, and Cassius at Rhodes. Later Alexandria was in favor. In a library founded in the Temple of Peace by Vespasian (ruled 69 to 79 A.D.) the University at Rome had its origin, and in time this developed into an institution with professors in law, medicine, architecture, mathematics and mechanics, and grammar and rhetoric in both the Latin and Greek languages. In this many youths from provincial cities came to study. The lines of instruc- tion represented nothing, however, in the way of scientific investi- gation or creative thought; the instruction was formal and dog- matic, being largely a further elaboration of what had previously been well done by the Greeks. Nature of the educational system developed. Such was the educational system which was finally evolved to meet the new cultural needs of the Roman Empire. In all its foundation elements it was Greek. Hav- ing borrowed — conquered one might almost say — Greek re- ligion, philosophy, literature, and learning, the Romans naturally borrowed also the school system that had been evolved to impart this culture. Never before or since has any people adapted so completely to their own needs the system of educational training evolved by another. To the Greek basis some distinctively Ro- man elements were added to adapt it better to the peculiar needs of their own people, while on the other hand many of the finer Greek character- istics were omitted entirely. Having once adopted the Greek plan, the constructive Roman mind organized it into a system superior to the original, but in so doing formalized it more than the Greeks had ever done (R. 19). That the system afforded an opportunity to wealthy Romans to obtain for their children some understanding and appreciation of the culture of the Greek world with which their Empire was 2 u > 1 (Greek Universities) University of Rome (Professor) Law Medicine Architecture Mathematics Grammar Rhetoric s s v .2 V 0 u Schools of Rhetoric (Rhetor) Grammar Rhetoric Dialectic Law s u (8 "0 c 0 Latin Grammar Schools (Grammaticus) Grammar and Literature e 0 tt B c u E Ludi, or Primary- Schools (iLuii m^ister) Readi4ig Writing ReckoninfiT Fig. 25. The Roman Voluntary Educational System, as finally EVOLVED EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME ']2> now in contact, and answered fairly well the preparatory needs along political and governmental lines of those Romans who could afford to educate their boys for such careers, can hardly be doubted (R. 22). Roman writers on education, especially Cicero (R. 24) and QuintiHan (R. 25), give us abundant testimony as to the value and usefulness of the system evolved in the training of orators and men for the public service. In the provinces, too, we know that the schools were very useful in inculcating Roman traditions and in helping the Romans to assimilate the sons of local princes and leaders.^ During the days of the Republic the schools were naturally more useful than after the establishment of the Empire, and especially after the later Emperors had stamped out many of the political and civic liberties for the enjoyment of which the schools prepared. On the other hand, the schools reached but a small, selected class of youths, trained for only the political career, and cannot be considered as ever having been general or as having educated any more than a small percentage of the future citizens of the State. Many of the important lines of activity in which the Romans engaged, and which to-day are regarded as monuments to theii' constructive skill and practical genius, such as architectural achievements, the building of roads and aqueducts, the many skilled trades, and the large commercial undertakings, these schools did nothing to prepare youths for. The State, unlike Athens, never required education of any one, did not make what was offered a prepara- tion for citizenship, and made no attempt to regulate either teachers or instruction until late in the history of the Empire. Education at Rome was from the first purely a private-adventure affair, most nearly analogous with us to instruction in music and dancing. Those who found the education offered of any value could take it and pay for it; those who did not could let it alone. A few did the former, the great mass of the Romans the latter. For the great slave class that developed at Rome there was, of course, no education at all. Results on Roman life and government. Still, out of this pri- vate and tuition system of schools many capable political leaders and executives came — men who exercised great influence on the ^ "He [Claudius] was also attentive to provide a liberal education for the sons of their chieftains; . . . and his attempts were attended with such success that they, who lately disdained to make use of the Roman language, were now ambitious of becoming eloquent. Hence the Roman habit began to be held in honor, and the toga was fpequently worn." Tacitus's Account of Britain, Agricola, chap. 21. 74 HISTORY OF EDUCATION history of the State, fought out her poHtical battles, organized and directed her government at home and in the provinces, and helped build up that great scheme of government and law and order which was Rome's most significant contribution to future civilization.^ It was in this direction, and in practical and con- structive work along engineering and architectural lines, that Rome excelled. The Roman genius for government and law and order and constructive undertakings must be classed, in impor- tance for the future of civilization in the world, along with the ability of Greece in literature and philosophy and art. 'Tf," says Professor Adams, "as is sometimes said, that in the course of history there is no literature which rivals the Greek except the English, it is perhaps even more true that the Anglo-Saxon is the only race which can be placed beside the Romans in creative power and in politics." The conquest of the known world by this practical and constructive people could not have otherwise than decisively influenced the whole course of human history, and, coming at the time in world affairs that it did, the influence on all future civilization of the work of Rome has been profound. The great political fact which, dominated all the Middle Ages, and shaped the religion and government and civilization of the time, was the fact that the Roman Empire had been and had done its work so well. V. ROME'S CONTRIBUTION TO CIVILIZATION Greece and Rome contrasted. The contrast between the Greeks and the Romans is marked in almost every particular. The Greeks were an imaginative, subjective, artistic, and idealistic people, with little administrative ability and few practical ten- dencies. The Romans, on the other hand, were an unimagina- tive, concrete, practical, and constructive nation. Greece made its great contribution to world civilization in Hterature and phil- osophy and art; Rome in law and order and government. The Greeks hved a Kfe of aesthetic enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art, and their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was intellectual and artistic; to the Romans the aesthetic and the ^ England offers us the nearest modern analogy. This was one of the last of the great European, nations to establish popular education, but for centuries previous thereto the great private, tuition, grammar schools of England — Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, and others — together with the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, prepared a succession of leaders for the State — men who have steered England's destinies at home and abroad and made her a great world power. EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 75 beautiful made little appeal, and their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was utilitarian. The Greeks worshiped "the beautiful and the good," and tried to enjoy life rationally and nobly, while the Romans worshiped force and effectiveness, and lived by rule and authority. The Greeks thought in personal terms of government and virtue and happiness, while the Romans thought in general terms of law and duty, and their happiness was rather in present denial for future gain than in any immediate enjoyment. As a result the Romans developed no great scholarly or literary atmosphere, as the Greeks had done at Athens. They built up no great speculative philosophies, and framed no great theories of government. Even their literature was, in part, an imitation of the Greek, though possessing many elements of native strength and beauty. They were a people who knew how to accomplish results rather than to speculate about means and ends. Useful- ness and effectiveness were with them the criteria of the worth of any idea or project. They subdued and annexed an empire, they gave law and order to a primitive world, they civilized and Roman- ized barbarian tribes, they built roads connecting all parts of their Empire that were the best the world had ever known, their aque- ducts and bridges were wonders of engineering skill, their public buildings and monuments still excite admiration and envy, in many of the skilled trades they developed tools and processes of large future usefulness, and their agriculture was the best the world had known up to that time. They were strong where the Greeks were weak, and weak where the Greeks were strong. By reason of this difference the two peoples supplemented one another well in the work of laying the foundations upon which our modern civilization has been built. Greece created the intellectual and aesthetic ideals and the culture for our life, while Rome developed the political institutions under which ideals may be realized and culture may be enjoyed. From the Greeks and Hebrews our modern life has drawn its great inspirations and its ideals for life, while from the Romans we have derived our ideals as to government and obedience to law. One may say that the Romans as a people specialized in government, law, order, and constructive practical undertakings, and bequeathed to posterity a wonderful inheritance in governmental forms, legal codes, com- mercial processes, and engineering undertakings, while the Greeks left to us a philosophy, Hteraturc, art, and a world culture which 76 HISTORY OF EDUCATION the civilized world will never cease to enjoy. The Greeks were an imaginative, impulsive, and a joyous people; the Romans sedate, severe, and superior to the Greeks in persistence and moral force. The Greeks were ever young; the Romans were always grown and serious men. Rome's great contribution. Rome's great contribution, then, was along the lines just indicated. To this, the school system which became established in the Roman State contributed only indirectly and .but little. The unification of the ancient world into one Empire, with a common body of traditions, practices, coinage, speech, and law, which made the triumph of Christianity possible; the formulation of a body of law ^ which barbarian tribes accepted, which was studied throughout the Middle Ages, which formed the basis of the legal system of the mediaeval Church, and which has largely influenced modern practice; the development of a language from which many modern tongues have been de- rived, and which has modified all western languages; and the perfection of an alphabet which has become the common property of all nations whose civilization has been derived from the Greek and Roman — these constitute the chief contributions of Rome to modern civilization. Roman city government, too, had been established throughout all the provincial cities, and this remained after the Empire had passed away. The municipal corporation, with its charter of rights, has ever since been a fixed idea in the western world. Roman law, organized into a compact code, and studied in the law schools of the Middle Ages, has rriodified our modern ideas and practices to a degree we scarcely realize. It was accepted by the German rulers as a permanent thing after they had over- run the Empire, and it remained as the law of the courts wherever Roman subjects were tried. Preserved and codified at Constanti- nople under Justinian in the sixth century, and re-introduced into western Europe when the study of law was revived in the newly founded universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, ^ This grew up, as all law grows, by enacted laws and decisions of the courts, and in time came to be an enormous body of law. Lacking the printed law books and indices of to-day, to obtain a knowledge of Roman law became a formidable task. Finally the practical Roman mind codified it, and reduced it to system and order. The Theodosian Code, of 438 a.d., and the Justinian Code, of 528 and 534 a.d., were the final results. These codes were compact, capable of duplication with relative ease, and later became the standard textbooks throughout the Middle Ages. The great importance of these codifications may be appreciated when we know that almost all the original laws and decisions from which they were compiled have been lost. EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 11 Roman law has greatly modified all modern legal practices and has become the basis of the legal systems of a number of modern states.^ Of all the Roman contributions to mod- ern civilization perhaps the one that most completely permeates all our modern life is their alphabet and speech. Figure 26 shows how our modern alphabet goes back to the old Roman, which they obtained from the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and which the Greeks obtained from the still earlier Phcenicians. This alphabet has be- come the common property of almost all the civilized world.'- In speech, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian tongues go back directly to the Latin, and these are the tongues of Mexico and South America as well. The English language, which is spoken throughout a large part of the civ- ilized world, and by two thirds of its inhab- itants, has also received so many additions from Romanic sources that we to-day scarcely utter a sentence without using some word once used by the citizens of ancient Rome. Among the smaller but nevertheless important contributions which we owe to Rome, and which were passed on to med- iaeval and modern Europe, should be men- 1 The Romanic countries — France, Spain, Italy — have drawn their law most completely from the Jus- tinian Code. Due to Spanish and French occupation of parts of x\merica, Roman legal ideas also entered here, the Louisiana Code of 1824 being Roman in law and technical expressions and spirit, though English in language. Spanish and Portuguese settlement of the South American continent has carried Roman law there. 2 The Roman alphabet is the alphabet of all North and South x\merica, Australia, Africa, and all of Europe except Russia, Greece, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and a few minor Slavic and Teutonic peoples. Even in Germany and Austria, Roman letters were rapidlysu- perseding the more difficult German letters in the print- ing of papers and books for the better-educated classes before the Great War. In India, Siam, China, and Japan, Roman letters are also being increasingly used. c eg c' .5 0 c 8 73 c RJ E 0 a ■D odern Rom nglish, etc. a. 0 0 5uj 0 ^ / A A 51 ^ ^ B B » > c D D D X) ^ >^ E E a- Y ^ F F C G 05 ^H BH H H "0 I 1 1 1 J 2 \ K K K k I u PL L \a\ Al M M m ^ /v N N m 0 0 0 0 0 0 r PP P "^ 9 9 9Q Q a q PR R R % vV ^3 ^S S s T T T T U w Y V V w 5? X X X Y K ?) z z 3 Fig. 26. Origin or Our Alphabet The German type, like the so-called Old English (see Fig. 45), illustrates the corruption of letter forms through the copying of manuscripts during the Middle Ages. 78 HISTORY OF EDUCATION tioned certain practical knowledge in agriculture and the me- chanic arts; many inventions and acquired skills in the arts and trades; an organized sea and land trade and commerce; cleared and improved lands, good houses, roads and bridges; great ar- chitectural and engineering remains, scattered all through the provinces; the beginnings of the transformation of the slave into the serf, from which the great body of freemen of modern Europe later were evolved; and certain educational conceptions and prac- tices which later profoundly influenced educational methods and procedure. How large these contributions were we shall appreciate better as we proceed with our history. Of the negative contributions, the most dangerous has been the idea of the rule of one imperial government, which has inspired the autocratic governments of modern Europe to try to imitate the world-wide rule of Imperial Rome. The way paved for Christianity. It was the great civilizing and unifying work of the Roman State that paved the way for the next great contribution to the foundations of the structure of our modern civilization — the contribution of Christianity. Had Italy never been consolidated; had the barbarian tribes to the north never been conquered and Romanized; had Spain and Africa and the eastern Mediterranean never known the rule of Rome; had the Latin language never become the speech of the then civilized peoples; had Roman armies never imposed law and order throughout an unruly world; had Roman governors and courts never established common rights and security; had Roman municipal government never come to be the common type in the cities of the provinces; had Roman schools in the provincial cities never trained the foreign citizen in Roman ways and to think Roman thoughts; had Rome never established free trade and intercourse throughout her Empire; had Rome never devel- oped processes and skills in agriculture and the creative arts; had there been no Roman roads and common coinage; and had Rome not done dozens of other important things to unify and civilize Europe and reduce it to law and order, it is hard to imagine the chaos that would have resulted when the Empire gave way to the barbarian hordes which finally overwhelmed it. Where we should have been to-day in the upward march of civilization, without the work of Rome, it is impossible to say. EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 79 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Contrast the Romans as a colonizing power with the modern Germans. The EngHsh. The French. 2. At what period in our national development did home education with us occupy substantially the same place as it did in Rome before 300 B.C.? In what respects was the education given boys and girls similar? Dif- ferent? 3. What was the most marked advance over the Greeks in the early Roman training? 4. Contrast the education of the Athenian, Spartan, and Roman boy, during the early period in each State. 5. To what extent does early Roman education indicate the importance of the parent and of study of biography in the education of the young? 6. Was the change in character of the education of Roman youths, after the expansion of the Roman State and the establishment of world con- tacts, preventable, or was it a necessary evolution? Why? Have we ever experienced similar changes? 7. As a State increases in importance and enlarges its world contacts, is a correspondingly longer training and enlarged culture necessary at home? 8. What idea do you get as to the extent to which the Latinized Odyssey was read from the fact that the Latin language was crystallized in form shortly after the translation was made? 9. What does the rapid adoption of the Greek educational system, and the later evolution of a native educational system out of it, indicate as to the nature of Roman expansion? 10. Was the introduction of the Greek pedagogue as a fashionable adjunct natural? Why? 11. Why is a period of very rapid expansion in a State Ukely to be demoraliz- ing? How may the demoralization incident to such expansion be antici- pated and minimized? 12. Why does the coming of large landed estates introduce important social problems? Have we the beginnings of a social problem of this type? What correctives have we that Rome did not have? 13. State the economic changes which hastened the introduction of a new type of higher training at Rome. 14. Was the Hellenization of Rome which ensued a good thing? Why? 15. How do you account for Rome not developing a state school system in the period of great national need and change, instead of leaving the matter to private initiative? Do you understand that any large percent- age of youths in the Roman State ever attended any school? 16. Why do older people usually oppose changes in school work manifestly needed to meet changing national demands? 17. Compare the difficulties met with in learning to read Greek and Latin. Either and English. 18. How do you account for the much smaller emphasis on literature and music in the elementary instruction at Rome than at Athens? How for the much larger emphasis on formal grammar in the secondary schools at Rome? 19. What subjects of study as we now know them were included in the Roman study of grammar and rhetoric? 20. How do you explain the greater emphasis placed by the Romans on secondary education than on elementary education? 21. What particular Roman need did the higher schools of oratory and rhetoric supply? 8o HISTORY OF EDUCATION 22. What does the exclusive devotion of these schools to such studies indi- cate as to professional opportunities at Rome? 23. How do you account for the continuance of these schools in favor, and for the aid and encouragement they received from the later Emperors, when the very nature of the Empire in large part destroyed the careers for which they trained? 24. Compare Rome and the United States in their attitudes toward foreign- born peoples. SELECTED READINGS In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are repro- duced: 12. The Laws of the Twelve Tables. 13. Cicero: Importance of the Twelve Tables in Education. 14. Schreiber: A Roman Farmer's Calendar. 15. Polybius: The Roman Character. 16. Mommsen: The Grave and Severe Character of the Earlier Romans. 17. Epitaph: The Education of Girls. 18. Marcus Aurelius: The Old Roman Education described. 19. Tacitus: The Old and the New Education contrasted. 20. Suetonius: Attempts to Prohibit the Introduction of Greek Higher Learning. {a) Decree of the Roman Senate, 161 B.C. {h) Decree of the Censor, 92 B.C. 21. Vergil: Difficulty experienced in Learning to Read. 22. Horace: The Education given by a Father. 23. Martial: The Ludi Magister. {a) To the Master of a Noisy School. (6) To a Schoolmaster. 24. Cicero: Oratory the Aim of Education. 25. QuintiHan: On Oratory. 26. Constantine: Privileges granted to Physicians and Teachers. QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS 1. Give reasons why the Laws of the Twelve Tables (12) were considered of such fundamental importance (13) in the education of the early Roman boy? How do you explain their being supplanted later by the Latinized Odyssey? 2. What does the Farmer's Calendar (14) reveal as to the character of Roman life? 3. Contrast the Roman character (15, 16) with that of the Athenian. 4. Compare the education of a Roman matron, as revealed by the epitaph (17), with that of a girl in later American colonial times. 5. After reading Marcus Aurelius (18) and Tacitus (19), what is your judg- ment as to the relative merits of the old and the new education: {a) as a means of training youths? {h) as adapted to the changed conditions of Imperial Rome? 6. How do you account for the attempts of the conservative officials of the State to prohibit the introduction of Greek higher schools (20 a-b) proving so unsuccessful? 7. Compare the difficulties involved in learning to read Greek (Fig. 6) and Latin (21). Either and English. 8. What type of higher educational advantages does the selection from EDUCATION AND WORK OF ROME 8 1 Horace (22) indicate as prevailing in Roman cities? Compare with present-day advanced education. 9. What do Martial's Epigrams to the Roman schoolmasters (23 a-b) indi- cate as to the nature of the schools, school discipHne, and social status of the Roman primary teacher? 10. Do the selections from Cicero (24) and Quintilian (25) satisfy you that oratory was a sufficiently broad idea for the higher education of youths under the Empire? Why? 11. What does the decree of Constantine (26) indicate as to the social status of the higher teachers under the Empire? SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES Abbott, F. F. Society and Politics in Ancient Rome. * Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages. Anderson, L. F. "Some Facts regarding Vocational Education among the Greeks and Romans"; in School Review] vol. 20, pp. 191-201. * Clarke, Geo. Education of Children at Rome. * Dill, Sam'l. Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire. * Laurie, S. S. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Educatiofi. Mahaffy, J. P. The Silver Age of the Greek World. Ross, C. F. "The Strength and Weakness of Roman Education"; in School and Society, vol. 6, pp. 457-63. Sandys, J. E. History of Classical Scholarship, vol. i. Thorndike, Lynn. History of Mediceval Europe. Westermann, W. L. Vocational Training in Antiquity; in School Review, vol. 22, pp. 601-10. CHAPTER IV THE RISE AND CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY I. THE RISE AND VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY Religions in the Roman world. As was stated in the preceding chapter (p. 58), the Roman state reHgion was an outgrowth of the religion of the home. Just as there had been a number of fireside deities, who were supposed to preside over the different activities of the home, so there were many state deities who were supposed to preside over the different activities of the State. In addition, the Romans exhibited toward the religions of all other peoples that same tolerance and willingness to borrow which they exhibited in so many other matters. Certain Greek deities were taken over and temples erected to them in Rome, and new deities, to guard over such functions as health, fortune, peace, concord, sowing, reaping, etc., were established.^ Extreme tolerance also was shown toward the special religions of other peoples who had been brought within the Empire, and certain oriental divinities had even been admitted and given their place in Rome. Like many other features of Roman life, their religion was essentially of a practical nature, dealing with the affairs of every- day life, and having little or no relation to personal morality.- It promised no rewards or punishments or hopes for a future life, but rather, by uniting all citizens in a common reverence and fear of certain deities, helped to unify the Empire and hold it together. After the death of Augustus (14 a.d.), the Roman Senate deified the Emperor and enrolled his name among the gods, and Emperor worship was added to their ceremonies. This naturally spread rapidly throughout the Empire, tended to unite all classes in ^ The Farmer's Calendar, given in the accompanying Book of Readings (R. 14), illustrates very well the gods and sacrifices for one phase of Roman life. Petronius. in his Satires, says, "Our country is so full of divinities that it is much easier to find a god than a man." - "The chief objects of pagan religion were to foretell the future, lo explain the universe, to avert calamity, and to obtain the assistance of the gods. They con- tained no instruments of moral teaching analogous to our institution of preaching, or to the moral preparation for the reception of the sacrament, or to confession, or to the reading of the Bible, or to religious education, or to united prayer for spiritual benefits. To make men virtuous was no more the function of the priest than of the physician." (Lecky, W. F. H., History of European Morals, chap, iv.) CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 83 allegiance to the central government at Rome, and seemed to form the basis for a universal religion for a universal empire. Feeling of need for something more. As an educated class arose in Rome, this mixture of diverse divinities failed to satisfy ; the Roman religion, made up as it was of state and parental duties and precautions, lost with them its force; and the religious cere- monies of the home and the State lost for them their meaning. The mechanical repetition of prayers and sacrifices made no appeal to the emotions or to the moral nature of individuals, and offered no spiritual joy or consolation as to a life beyond. The educated Greeks before had had this same feeling, and had in- dulged in much speculation as to the moral nature of man. Many educated Romans now turned to the Greek philosophers for some more philosophical explanation of the great mystery of life and death . Of all the philosophies developed in the philosophical schools of Athens, the one that made the deepest appeal to the practical Roman mind was that of the Stoics, founded by Zeno, 308 B.C. Virtue, claimed the Stoics, consists in so living that one's life is in accordance with that Universal Reason which rules the world. Riches, position, fame, success — these count for but little. He who trains himself to be above grief, hope, joy, fear, and the ills of life — be he slave or peasant or king — may be happy because he is virtuous. Reason, rather than the feelings, is the proper rule of life. The Stoics also preached the brotherhood of man, and to a degree expressed a humble reliance on a providence which con- trolled affairs. This philosophy in a way met the need for a religion among the better-educated Romans, and made consider- able headway during the early days of the Empire.^ While serv- ing as a sort of religion for those capable of embracing it, it was too intellectual to reach more than a few, and was not adapted to become a universal religion for all sorts and conditions of men. What was needed was a new moral philosophy or rehgion that would touch all mankind. To do this it must appeal to the emo- tions more than to the intellect. Such a religion was at this time taking shape and gathering force and strength in a remote corner of the Empire. ^ Seneca (4-65 a.d.), the tutor of the Emperor Nero, and the Greek freedman Epictetus (d. 100 a.d.) both expounded Stoicism at Rome during the first Christian century, and the Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 a.d.) repre- sents one of the finest expositions of the application of this philosophy to the problems of human life. 84 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Where this new religion arose. Far to the eastern end of the Mediterranean there had long lived a branch of the Semitic race, which had developed a national character and made a contribu- tion of first importance to the religious thought of the world. These were the Hebrew people who, leaving Egypt about 1500 B.C., in the Exodus, had come to inhabit the land of Canaan, south of Phoenicia and east and north of Egypt. From a wander- ing, pastoral people they had gradually changed to a settled, agricultural people, and had begun the development of a regular State. Unwilling, however, to bear the burdens of a political State, and objecting to taxation, a standing army, and forced labor for the State, the nationality which promised at one time fell to pieces, and the land was overrun by hostile neighbors and the people put under the yoke. After a sad and tempestuous history, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D., the inhabitants were sold into slavery and dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. These people developed no great State, and made no contribu- tions to government or science or art. Their contribution was along religious lines, and so magnificent and uplifting is their religious literature that it is certain to last for all time. Alone among all eastern people they early evolved the idea of one omnipotent God. The religion that they developed declared man to be the child of God, erected personal morality and service to God as the rule of life, and asserted a life beyond the grave. It was about these ideas that the whole energy of the people concentrated, and religion became the central thought of their lives. This religion, unlike the other religions of the Mediter- ranean world, emphasized duty to God, service, personal moral- ity, chastity, honesty, and truth as its essential elements. The Law of Moses became the law of the land. Woman was elevated to a new place in the life of the ancient world. ^ Children became sacred in the eyes of the people. Their literary contribution, the Old Testament — written by a series of patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets, and priests — pictures, often in sublime language, the various migrations, deliverances, calamities, and religious hopes, aspirations, and experiences of this Chosen People. The unity of this people. Just before their country was over- run and they were carried captive to Babylon, in 588 B.C., the 1 See Proverbs, xxxi, for a good statement of the ancient Hebrew ideal of woman- hood. CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 85 Pentateuch ^ had been reduced to writing and made an authori- tative code of laws for the people. This served as a bond of union among them during the exile, and after their return to Palestine, in 538 B.C., the study and observance of this law became the most important duty of their lives. The synagogue was established in every village for its exposition, where twice on every Sabbath day the people were to gather to hear the law ex- pounded. A race of Scribes^ or scripture scholars, also arose to teach the law^, as well as means for educating additional scribes. They were to interpret the law, and to apply it to the daily lives of the people. As the law was a combination of religious, cere- monial, civil, and sanitary law, these scribes became both teach- ers and judges for the people. In time they became the deposi- taries of all learning, superseded the priesthood, and became the leaders (rabbins, whence rabbi) of the people. " The voice of the rabbi is the voice of God," says the Talmud, a collection of Hebrew customs and traditions, with comments and interpreta- tions, written by the rabbis after 70 B.C. By most Jews this is held to be next in sacredness to the Old Testament (R. 27). Realizing, after the return from captivity, that the future existence of the Hebrew people would depend, not upon their military strength, but upon their moral unity, and that this must be based upon the careful training of each child in the traditions of his fathers, the leaders of the people began the evolution of a religious school system to meet the national need. Realizing, too, that parents could not be depended upon in all cases to pro- vide this instruction, the leaders provided it and made it com- pulsory. Great open-air Bible classes were organized at first, and these were gradually extended to all the villages of the coun- try. Elementary schools were developed later and attached to the synagogues, and finally, in 64 a.d., the high priest, Joshua ben Gamala, ordered the establishment of an elementary school in every village, made attendance compulsory for all male children, and provided for a combined type of religious and household instruction at home for all girls. Reading, writing, counting, the history of the Chosen People, the poetry of the Psalms, the Law of the Pentateuch, and a part of the Talmud constituted the subject-matter of instruction. The instruction was largely oral, ^ This collective term is applied to the first five books of the Old Testament, and includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books form a wonderful collection of the historical and legal material relating to the wan- derings and experiences and practices of the people. 86 HISTORY OF EDUCATION and learning by heart was the common teaching plan. The child was taught the Law of his fathers, trained to make hoHness a rule of his life and to subordinate his will to that of the one God, and commanded to revere his teachers (R. 27) and uphold the tradi- tions of his people. After the destruction of Jerusalem (70 a.d.) and the scatter- ment of the people, the school instruction was naturally more or less disrupted, but in one way or another the Hebrew people have ever since managed to keep up the training of rabbis and the instruction of the young in the Law and the traditions of their people, and as a consequence of this instruction we have to-day the interesting result of a homogeneous people who, for over eighteen centuries, have had no national existence, and who have been scattered and persecuted as have no other people. History offers us no better example of the salvation of a people by means of the compulsory education of all. The new Christian faith. It was into this Hebrew race that Jesus was born,^ and there he lived, learned, taught, made his disciples, and was crucified. Building on the old Hebrew moral law and the importance of the personal life, Jesus made his appeal to the individual, and sought the moral regeneration of society through the moral regeneration of individual men and women. This idea of individuality and of personal souls worth saving was a new idea in a world where the submergence of the individual in the State had everywhere up to that time been the rule. Even the Hebrews, in their great desire to perpetuate their race and faith, had suppressed and absorbed the individual in their religious State. The teachings of Jesus, on the other hand, with their ehiphasis on charity, sympathy, self-sacrifice, and the brother- hood of all men, tended to obliterate nationality, while the emphasis they gave to the future life, for which life here was but a preparation, tended to subordinate the interests of the State and withdraw the concern of men from worldly affairs. In a series of simple sermons, Jesus set forth the basis of this new faith which he, and after him his disciples, offered to the world. At the time of his crucifixion his disciples numbered scarcely one hundred persons. For some years after his death his disciples * Chapter i of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew gives, in detail (1-16), the genealogy of Jesus, concluding with the following verse: "17. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations." CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 87 remained in Jerusalem, preaching that he was the Messiah or Christ, whom the Hebrew people had long expected, and making converts to the idea. Later in Samaria, Damascus, and Antioch they made additional converts among the Jews. Up to this point the Christians had been careful to keep up all the old Jewish customs, and it was even doubted at first whether any but Jews could properly be admitted to the new faith. A new convert, Saul of Tarsus, a Jew who had studied in the Greek university there and who afterwards became the Apostle Paul, did much to open the new faith to the Gentiles, as the men of other nations were known. Speaking Greek, and being versed in Greek phi- losophy, and especially Stoicism, he gave thirty years of most effective service to the establishment of Christian churches ^ in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece (R. 29), and Italy (R. 28). His work was so important that he has often been called the, second founder of the Christian Church. The challenge of Christianity. Into a Roman world that had already passed the zenith of its greatness came this new Christian faith, challenging almost everything for which the Roman world had stood. In place of Roman citizenship and service to the State as the purpose of life, the Christians set up the importance of the life to come. Instead of pleasure and happiness and the satisfaction of the senses as personal ends, the Christians preached denial of all these things for the greater joy of a future life. In a society built on a huge basis of slavery and filled with social classes, the Christians proclaimed the equality of all men before God. To a nation in which family life had become corrupt, infidelity and divorce common, and infanticide a prevailing prac- tice, the Christians proclaimed the sacredness of the marriage tie and the family Hfe, and the exposure of infants as simple murder. In place of the subjection of the individual to the State, the Christians demanded the subjection of the individual only to God. In place of a union of State and religion, the Christians demanded the complete separation of the two and the subordination of the State to the Church. Unlike all other religions that Rome had absorbed, the Christians refused to be accepted on any other than exclusive terms. The worship of all other gods the Chris- tians held to be sinful idol- worship, a deadly sin in the eyes of God, ^ To many of these churches he wrote a series of epistles. These constitute a little more than one fourth of the New Testament. See accompanying Book of Readings (or Romans, i, 1-17) for the introductory part of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. 88 HISTORY OF EDUCATION and they were willing to give up their lives rather than perform the simplest rite of what they termed pagan worship (R. 28) . To the deified Emperor the Christians naturally could not bend the knee (Rs. 30 b, 31 a-b, 34). At first the new faith attracted but little attention from any- body of education or influence. Its converts were few during the first century, and these largely from among the lowest social classes in the Empire. Workmen and slaves, and women rather than men, constituted the large majority of the early converts to the new faith. The character of its missionaries ^ also was against it, and its challenge of almost all that characterized the higher social and governmental life of Rome was certain to make its progress difficult, and in time to awaken powerful opposition ^ to it. Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, its progress was relatively rapid. The victory of Christianity. By the close of the first century there were Christian churches throughout most of Judea and Asia Minor, and in parts of Greece and Macedonia. During the second century other churches were established in Asia Minor, in Greece, and along the Black Sea, and at a few places in Italy and France; and before four centuries had elapsed from the cruci- fixion Christian churches had been established throughout almost all the Roman world. This is well shown by the map on the oppo- site page. The message of hope that Christianity had to offer to all; the simplicity of its organization and teachings; the great appeal which it made to the emotional side of human life; the hope of a future life of reward for the burdens of this which it extended to all who were weary and heavy laden ; the positiveness of con viction of its apostles and followers; and the completeness with which it satisfied the religious need and longings of the time, first among the poor and among women and later among educated men — all helped the new faith to win its way. The unity in government that Rome had everywhere established; ^ the Roman ^ "Its missionaries were Jews, a turbulent race, not to be assimilated, and as much despised and hated by pagan Rome as by the mediaeval Christians. Wherever it attracted any notice, therefore, it seems to have been regarded as some rebel fac- tion of the Jews, gone mad upon some obscure point of the national superstition — an outcast sect of an outcast race." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, p. 39.) 2 "Starting from an insignificant province, from a despised race, proclaimed by a mere handful of ignorant workmen, demanding self-control and renunciation be- fore unheard of, certain to arouse in time powerful enemies in the highly cultivated and critical society which it attacked, the odds against it were tremendous." {Ibid., p. 41.) 3 "It is not easy to imagine how, in the face of an Asia Minor, a Greece, an Italy Fig. 27. The Growth of Christianity to the End of the Fourth Century 90 HISTORY OF EDUCATION peace {pax Romano) that Rome had everywhere imposed; the spread of the Greek and Latin languages and ideas throughout the Mediterranean world; the right of freedom of travel and speech enjoyed by a Roman citizen, and of which Saint Paul and others on their travels took advantage; ^ the scatterment of Jews throughout the Empire, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. — all these elements also helped. That Christianity made its headway unmolested must not be supposed. While at first the tendency of educated Romans and of the government was to ignore or tolerate it, its challenge was so direct and provocative that this attitude could not long continue. Under the Emperor Claudius (41-54 a.d.) "all the Jews who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chres tus" were unsuccessfully ordered banished from Rome. In the reign of the Emperor Nero, in 64 a.d., many horrible tortures were inflicted on this as yet small sect. It was not, however, till later, when the continued refusal of the Christians to offer sacri- fices to the Emperor brought them under the law as disloyal (R. 30 a) subjects, that they began to be much punished for their faith (R. 31 a-b). The times were bad and were going from bad to worse, and the feelings of many were that the adverse condi- tions in the Empire — war, famine, floods, pestilence, and bar- barian inroads — were due to the neglect of the old state religion and to the tolerance extended the vast organized defiance of the law by the Christians. In the first century they had been largely ignored. In the second, in some places, they were punished. In the third century, impelled by the calamities of the State and the urging of those who would restore the national religion to its earlier position, the Emperors were gradually driven to a series of heavy persecutions of the sect (R. 30 a). But it had now be- come too late. The blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the Church (R. 35). The last great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, in 303 (R. 33), ended in virtual failure. In 311 the Emperor Galerius placed Christianity on a plane of split up into a hundred small republics; of a Gaul, a Spain, an Africa, an Egypt, in possession of their old national institutions, the apostles could have succeeded, or even how their project could have been started. The unity of the Empire was a condition precedent of all religious proselytism on a grand scale if it was to place itself above the nationalities." (Renan, E., Hibbert Lectures, 18S0; Influence of Rome on the Christian Church.) ^ In Acts XXV, 1-12, it is recorded that the Apostle Paul, accused by the Jews and virtually on trial for his life before the provincial governor Festus, fell back on his Roman citizenship and successfully "appealed to Cassar." (See footnote 3, page 57.) CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 91 equality with other forms of worship (R. 36). In 313 Constan- tine made it in part the official religion of the State, ^ and ordered freedom of worship for all. He and succeeding Emperors gradu- ally extended to the Christian clergy a long list of important privileges (R. 38) and exemptions,^ analogous to those formerly enjoyed by the teachers of rhetoric under the Empire (R. 26), and likewise began the policy, so liberally followed later, of en- dowing the Church. In 391 the Emperor Theodosius forbade all pagan worship, thus making the victory of Christianity complete. In less than four centuries from the birth of its founder the Christian faith had won control of the great Empire in which it originated. In 529 the Emperor Justinian ordered the closing of all pagan schools, and the University of Athens, which had re- mained the center of pagan thought after the success of Christian- ity, closed its doors. The victory was now complete. The contribution of Christianity. We have now before us the third great contribution upon which our modern civilization has been built. To the great contributions of Greece and Rome, which we have previously studied, there now was added, and added at a most opportune time, the contribution of Christianity. In taking the Jewish idea of one God and freeing it from the nar- row tribal limitations to which it had before been subject, Chris- tianity made possible its general acceptance, first in the Roman world, and later in the Mohammedan world. ^ With this was introduced the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and his love for man, the equality before God of all men and of the two sexes, and the sacredness of each individual in the eyes of the Father. An entirely new conception of the individual was proclaimed to the world, and an entirely new ethical code was promulgated. The duty of all to make their lives conform to these new conceptions was asserted. These ideas imparted to ancient society a new ^ "The miracle of miracles, greater than dried-up seas and cloven rocks, greater than the dead rising again to life, was when the Augustus on his throne, Pontiff of the gods of Rome, himself a god to the subjects of Rome, bent himself to become the worshiper of a crucified provincial of his Empire." (Freeman, E. A., Periods of European History, p. 67.) ^ In 319 and 326 the clergy were exempted from all public burdens, and only the poor were to be admitted to the clergy. In 343 the clergy were exempted "from public burdens and from every disquietude of civil office." In 377 all clergy were exempted from personal taxes. (See R. 38.) ^ From the Roman world the idea has spread, through the Greek Catholic Church, to Greece, parts of the Balkans, and Russia; through the Roman Catholic Church to all western Europe and the two Americas; and through the Protestant churches which sprang fropi the Roman Catholic by secession, and the Mohammedan faith, to include almost all the world. Only among uncivilized tribes and in Asia do we find any great number of fundamentally different religious conceptions. 92 HISTORY OF EDUCATION hopefulness and a new energy which were not only of great importance in dealing with the downfall of civilization and the deluge of barbarism which were impending, but which have been of prime importance during all succeeding centuries. In time the church organization which was developed gradually absorbed all other forms of government, and became virtually the State during the long period of darkness known as the Middle Ages. It remains now to sketch briefly how the Church organized itself and becam.e powerful enough to perform its great task dur- ing the Middle Ages, what educational agencies it developed, and to what extent these were useful. II. EDUCATIONAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH Schooling of the early Church; catechumenal instruction. The early churches were bound together by no formal bond of union, and felt little need for such. It was the belief of many that Christ would soon return and the world would end, hence there was little necessity for organization. There was also almost no system of belief. An acknowledgment of God as the Father, a repentance for past sins, a godly life, and a desire to be saved were about all that was expected of any one.^ The chief concern was the moral regeneration of society through the moral regeneration of converts. To accomplish this, in face of the practices of Roman society, a process of instruction and a period of probation for those wishing to join the faith soon became necessary. Jews, pagans, and the children of believers were thereafter alike sub- jected to this before full acceptance into the Church. At stated times during the week the probationers met for instruction in morality and in the psalmody of the Church (R. 39). These two subjects constituted almost the entire instruction, the period of probation covering two or three years. The teachers were merely the older and abler members of the congregation. This personal instruction became common everywhere in the early Church, and the training was known as catechumenal, that is, rudimentary, instruction. Two sets of catechumenal lectures have survived, which give an idea as to the nature of the instruc- tion. They cover the essentials of church practice and the reh- ^ Paul to the Romans (x, 9) stated the fundamentals of belief as follows: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 93 gious life (Rs. 39, 40). It was dropped entirely in the conversion of the barbarian tribes. This instruction, and the preaching of the elders (presbyters, who later evolved into priests), constituted the formal schooling of the early converts to Christianity in Italy and the East. Such instruction was never known in England, and but little in Gaul. The life in the Church made a moral and emotional, rather than an intellectual appeal. In fact the early Christians felt but httle need for the type of intellectual education provided by the Roman schools, and the character of the educated society about them, as they saw it, did not make them wish for the so-called pagan learning. Even if the parents of converts wished to pro- vide additional educational advantages for their children, what could they do? A modern author states well the predicament of such Christian parents, when he says: All the schools were pagan. Not only were all the ceremonies of the official faith — and more especially the festivals of Minerva, who was the patroness of masters and pupils — celebrated at regular intervals in the schools, but the children were taught reading out of books saturated with the old mythology. There the Christian child made his first acquaintance with the deities of Olympus. He ran the danger of imbibing ideas entirely contrary to those which he had received at home. The fables he had learned to detest in his own home were explained, elucidated, and held up to his admiration every day by his masters. Was it right to put him thus into two schools of thought? What could be done that he might be educated, like every one else, and yet not run the risk of losing his faith? ^ Catechetical schools. After Christianity had begun to make converts among the more serious-minded and better-educated citizens of the Roman Empire, the need for more than rudimen- tary instruction in the principles of the church life began to be felt. Especially was this the case in the places where Christian workers came in contact with the best scholars of the Hellenic learning, and particularly at Alexandria, Athens, and the cities of Asia Minor. The speculative Greek would not be satisfied with the simple, unorganized faith of the early Christians. He wanted to understand it as a system of thought, and asked many questions that were hard to answer. To meet the critical inquiry of learned Greeks, it became desirable that the clergy of the Church, in the East at least, should be equipped with a training similar to that of their critics. As a result there was finally ^ M. Boissier. La Fin du Paganlsme, vol. i, p. 200. 94 HISTORY OF EDUCATION evolved, first at Alexandria, and later at other places in the Empire, training schools for the leaders of the Church. These came to be known as catechetical schools, from their oral questioning method of instruction, and this term was later applied to elementary religious instruction (whence catechism) throughout western Europe. Pantaeus, a converted Greek Stoic, who became head of the catechumenal instruction at Alexandria, in 179 a.d., brought to the training of future Christian leaders the strength of Greek learning and Greek philosophic thought. He and his successors, Clement and Origen, developed here an important school of Christian theology where Greek learning was used to interpret the Scriptures and train leaders for the service of the Church. Similar schools were opened at Antioch, Edessa, Nisi- bis, and Caesarea (See Map, p. 47), and these developed into a rudimentary form of theological schools for the education of the eastern Christian clergy. In these schools Christian faith and doctrine were formulated into a sort of system, the whole being tinctured through and through with Greek philosophic thought. Out of these schools came some of the great Fathers of the early Church ; men who strove to uphold the pagan learning and recon- cile Christianity and Greek philosophic thinking.^ Rejection of pagan learning in the West. In the West, where the leaders of the Church came from the less philosophic and more practical Roman stock, and where the contact with a deca- dent society wakened a greater reaction, the tendency was to reject the Hellenic learning, and to depend more upon emotional faith and the enforcement of a moral life. By the close of the third century the hostility to the pagan schools and to the Hel- lenic learning had here become pronounced (R. 41). Even the Fathers of the Latin Church, the greatest of whom had been ' Justin Martyr (io5?-i67), a former Greek teacher and philosopher, continued to follow his profession, wear his Greek philosopher's garb, and held that the teach- ings of Christianity were already contained in Greek philosophy, and that Plato and Socrates were Christians before the coming of the Christian faith. Clement (c. i6o-c. 215), the successor of Pantaeus as head of the catechetical school at Alexandria, held to the harmony of the Gospels with philosophy, and that "Plato was Moses Atticized." Origen (c. 185-c. 254), a pupil and successor of Clement, and the most learned of all the eaxXy Christian Fathers, labored to harmonize the Christian faith with Greek learning and philosophy, and did much to formulate the dogmas of the early Church. Saint Basil (331-379) tried to allay the rising prejudice against pagan learning, and to show the helpfulness to the Christian life of the Greek Hterature and phi- losophy. Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-c. 390) was filled with indignation and protested loudly at the closing of the pagan schools to Christians by the edict of the Emperor JuUan, in 362, CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 95 teachers of oratory or rhetoric in Roman schools before their conversion/ gradually came to reject the pagan learning as unde- sirable for Christians and in a large degree as a robbery from God. Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, hopes that God may forgive him for having enjoyed Vergil. Jerome's dream ^ was known and quoted throughout the Middle Ages. Tertullian, in his Prescrip- tion against Heresies, exclaims: What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? . . . Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition. Gregory the Great, Pope of the Church from 590 to 604, and who had been well educated as a youth in the surviving Roman - type schools, turned bitterly against the whole of pagan learning. 'T am strongly of the opinion," he says, ''that it is an indignity that the words of the oracle of Heaven should be restrained by the rules of Donatus" (grammar). In a letter to the Bishop of Vienne he berates him for giving instruction in grammar, con- cluding with — "the praise of Christ cannot lie in one mouth with the praise of Jupiter. Consider yourself what a crime it is for bishops to recite what would be improper for religiously- minded laymen." As a result Hellenic learning declined rapidly in importance in the West as the Church attained supremacy, and finally, in 401, the Council of Carthage, largely at the instigation of Saint Augus- tine, forbade the clergy to read any pagan author. In time Greek learning largely died out in the West, and was for a time almost entirely lost. Even the Greek language was forgotten, and was not known again in the West for nearly a thousand years. ^ The Church perfects a strong organization. As was previously stated (p. 92), but little need was felt during the first two centu- 1 Tertnllian (c. 150-230) had been well educated in Greek literature and phi- losophy, and had attained distinction as a lawyer. Samt Jerome (c. 340-420) was saturated with pagan learning, but later advised against it. Saint Augustine (354- 430) , the master mind among the Latin Fathers, was for years a teacher of oratory and rhetoric in Roman schools, and had written part of an encyclopaedia on the liberal arts before his conversion. Many others who became prominent in the Western Church had in their earher Hfe been teachers in the Roman higher schools. 2 Dreaming that he had died and gone to Heaven, he was asked, "Who art thou? " On replying, "A Christian," he heard the awful judgment, "It is false: thou art no Christian; thou art a Ciceronian; where the treasure is, there the heart is also." ^ The knowledge of Greek remained alive longer in Ireland than anywhere else in the western world, being known there as late as the seventh century. Greek was also preserved in parts of Spain for two centuries after it had died out in Italy. 96 HISTORY OF EDUCATION ries for a system of belief or church government. As the expected return of Christ did not take place, and as the need for a formula- tion of belief and a system of government began to be felt, the next step was the development of these features. The system of belief and the ceremonials of worship finally evolved are more the products of Greek thought and practices of the East, while the form of organization and government is derived more from Roman sources. In the second century the Old Testament was translated into Greek at Alexandria, and the "Apostles' Creed" was formulated. During the third century the writings deemed sacred were organized into the New Testament, also in Greek. In 325 the first General Council of the Church was held at Nicjea, in Asia Minor. It formulated the Nicene Creed (R. 42), and twenty canons or laws for the government of the Church. A second General Council, held at Constantinople in 381, revised the Nicene Creed and adopted additional canons. The great organizing genius of the western branch of the Church was Saint Augustine (354- 430). He gave to the Western or Latin Church, then beginning to take on its separate existence, the body of doctrine needed to enable it to put into shape the things for which it stood. The system of theology evolved before the separation of the eastern and western branches of the Church was not so finished and so finely speculative as that of the Greek branch, but was more prac- tical, more clearly legal, and more systematically organized. The influence of Rome was strong also in the organization of the system of government finally adopted for the Church. There being no other model, the Roman governmental system was copied. The bishop of a city corresponded to the Roman municipal officials; the archbishop of a territory to the governor of a province; and the patriarch to the ruler of a division of the Empire. As Rome had been a uni- versal Empire, and as the city of Rome had been the chief gov- erning city,^ the idea of a universal Church was natural and the ^ In the West there was no other great city than Rome. At the period of its maximum greatness, in the first century B.C., it was a city of approximately 450,000 people. Fig. 28. A Bishop Seventh Century (Santo Venanzio, Rome) CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 97 supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was gradually asserted and determined.^ A State within a State. There was thus developed in the West, as it were a State within a State. That is, within the Roman Empire, with its Emperor, provincial governors, and municipal officials, governing the people and drawing their power from the Roman Senate and imperial authority, there was also gradually developed another State, consisting of those who had accepted the Christian faith, and who rendered their chief allegiance, through priest, bishop, and archbishop, to a central head of the Church who owed allegiance to no earthly ruler. That Christian- ity, viewed from the governmental point of view, was a serious element of weakness in the Roman State and helped its downfall, there can be no question. In the eastern part of the Empire the Church was always much more closely identified with the State. Fortunately for civilization, before the Roman Empire had fallen and the impending barbarian deluge had descended, the Christian Church had succeeded in formulating a unifying belief and a form of government capable of commanding respect and of enforcing authority, and was fast taking over the power of the State itself. The cathedral or episcopal schools. The first churches through- out the Empire were in the cities, and made their early converts there. ^ Gradually these important cities evolved into the resi- dences of a supervising priest or bishop, the territory became known as a bishopric, and the church as a cathedral church. In time, also, some of the outlying territory was organized into par- ishes, and churches were established in these. These were made tributary to and placed under the direction of the bishop of the large central city. To supply clergy for these outlying parishes came to be one of the functions of the bishop, and, to insure prop- erly trained clergy and to provide for promotions in the clerical ranks, schools of a rudimentary type were established in connec- tion with the cathedral churches. These came to be known as cathedral, or episcopal schools. At first they were probably under the immediate charge of the bishop, but later, as his functions 1 After many struggles and conflicts between the Bishops of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome, the Bishop of Rome was finally recognized by the second great Church Council, held at Constantinople in 381, as the head of the entire Church (Canon 3), corresponding to the Emperor on the political side of the dying Empire. The separation of the eastern and western churches was rapid after this time. (See Map, p. 103.) 2 The word pagan as applied to unbeliever illustrates this progress of the Church, being derived from the Latin paganus, meaning countryman, villager, rustic. 98 HISTORY OF EDUCATION increased, the school was placed under a special teacher, known as a Scholasticus, or Magister Scholarum, who directed the cathe- dral school, assisted the bishop, and trained the future clergy. As the pagan secondary schools died out, these cathedral schools, together with the monastic schools which were later founded, gradually replaced the pagan schools as the important educational institutions of the western world. In these two types of schools the religious leaders of the early Middle Ages were trained. The monastic organization. In the early days of Christianity, it will be remembered (p. 87), the Christian convert held himself apart from the wicked world all about him, and had little to do with the society or the government of his time. He regarded the Church as having no relationship to the State. As the Church grew stronger, however, and became a State within a State, the Christian took a larger and larger part in the world around him, and in time came to be distinguished from other men by his pro- fession of the Christian religion rather than by any other mark. Many of the early bishops were men of great political sagacity, fully capable of realizing to the full the political opportunities, afforded by their position, to strengthen the power of the Church. It was the work of men of this type that created the temporal power of the Church, and made of it an institution capable of commanding respect and enforcing its decisions. To some of the early Christians this life did not appeal. To them holiness was associated with a complete withdrawal from contact with this sinful world and all its activities. Some betook themselves to the desert, others to the forests or mountains, and others shut themselves up alone that they might be undisturbed in their religious meditations. To such devoted souls monasti- cism, a scheme of living brought into the Christian world from the East, made a strong appeal. It provided that such men should live together in brotherhoods, renouncing the world, taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and devoting their lives to hard labor and the mortification of the flesh that the soul might be exalted and made beautiful. The members lived alone in individual cells, but came together for meals, prayer, and religious service. As early as 330 a monastery had been organized on the island of Tebernae, in the Nile. About 350 Saint Basil introduced mo- nasticism into Asia Minor, where it flourished greatly. In 370 the Basilian order was founded. The monastic idea was soon trans- CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 99 ferred to the West, a monastery being established at Rome prob- ably as early as 340. The monastery of Saint Victor, at Mar- seilles, was founded by Cassian in 404, and this type of monastery and monastic rule was introduced into Gaul, about 415. The monastery of Lerins (off Cannes, in southern France) was estab- Hshed in 405. During the fifth century a rapid extension of mo- nastic foundations took place in western Europe, particularly along Fig, 29. A Benedictine Monk, Abbot, and Abbess (From a thirteenth-century manuscript) the valleys of the Rhone and the Loire in Gaul. In 529 Saint Benedict, a Roman of wealth who fled from the corruption of his city, founded the monastery of Monte Cassino, south of Rome, and established a form of government, or rule of daily life, which was gradually adopted by nearly all the monasteries of the West. In time Europe came to be dotted with thousands of these estab- lishments, many of which were large and expensive institutions both to found and to maintain.^ By the time the barbarian inva- sions were in full swing monasticism had become an established institution of the Christian Church. Nunneries for women also were established early. A letter from Saint Jerome to Marcella, a Roman matron, in 382, in which he says that " no high-born lady at Rome had made profession of the monastic life ... or had ventured . . . publicly to call herself a nun," would seem to imply that such institutions had already been established in Rome. ^ See the accompanying Book of Readings for a drawing and detailed explanation of the monastery of Saint Gall, in Switzerland (R. 69). This was one of the most important monasteries of the Middle Ages. 100 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Monastic schools. Poverty, chastity, obedience, labor, and religious devotion were the essential features of a monastic life. The Rule of Saint Benedict (R. 43) organized in a practical way the efforts of those who took the vows. In a series of seventy- three rules which he laid down, covering all phases of monastic life, the most important from the standpoint of posterity was the forty-eighth, prescribing at least seven hours of daily labor and two hours of reading "for all able to bear the load." From that part of the rule requiring regular manual labor the monks became the most expert farmers and craftsmen of the early Middle Ages, while to the requirement of daily reading we owe in large part the devel- opment of the school and the preservation of learning in the West during the long intellectual night of the mediaeval period (R. 44). Into these monastic institutions the oblati, that is, those who wished to become monks, were received as early as the age of twelve, and occasionally earlier (R. 53 a) . The final vows (R. 53 b) could not be taken until eighteen, so during this period the novice was taught to work and to read and write, given instruction in church music, and taught to calculate the church festivals and to do simple reckoning. In time some condensed and carefully edited compendium of the elements of classical learning was also studied, and still later a more elaborate type of instruction was developed in some of the monasteries. This, however, belongs to a later division of this history, and further description of church and monastic education will be deferred until we study the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The education of girls. Aside from the general instruction in the practices of the church and home instruction in the work of a woman, there was but little provision made for the education of girls not desiring to join a convent or nunnery. A few, however, obtained a limited amount of intellectual training. The letter of Saint Jerome to the Roman lady Paula (R. 45), regarding the education of her daughter, is a very important document in the history of early Christian education for girls. Dating from 403, it outlines the type of training a young girl should be given who was to be properly educated in Christian faith and properly con- secrated to God. What he outlined was education for nunneries, a number of which had been founded in the East and a few in the West. In the West these institutions later experienced an exten- sive development, and offered the chief opportunity for any intel- lectual education for women during the whole of the Middle Ages. CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY loi III. WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH What the Church brought to the Middle Ages. From a small and purely spiritual organization, devoting its energies to exhorta- tion and to the moral regeneration of mankind, and without creed or form of government, as the Christian Church was in the first two centuries of its development, we have traced the organization of a body of doctrine, the perfection of a strong system of church government, and the development of a very limited educational system designed merely to train leaders for its service. We have also shown how it added to its early ecclesiastical organization a strong governmental organization, became a State within a State, and gradually came to direct the State itself. It was thus ready, when the virtual separation of the Roman Empire into an eastern and western division took place, in 395, and when the western division finally fell before the barbarian onslaughts, to take up in a way the work of the State, force the barbarian hordes to acknowledge its power, and begin the process of civilizing these new tribes and building up once more a civilization in the western world. In addition to its spiritual and political power, the Church also had developed, in its catechumenal instruction and in the cathedral and monastic schools, a very meager form of an educa- tional system for the training of its future leaders and servants. A great change had now taken place in the nature of education as a preparation for life, and intellectual education, in the sense that it was known and understood in Greece and Rome, was not to be known again in the western world for almost a thousand years. The distinguishing characteristic of the centuries which follow, up to the Revival of Learning, are, first, a struggle against very adverse odds to prevent civilization from disappearing entirely, and later a struggle to build up new foundations upon which world civilization might begin once more where it had left off in Greece and Rome. The three great contributions from the ancient world. Thus, before the Middle Ages began, the three great contributions of the ancient world which were to form the. foundations of our future western civilization had been made. Greece gave the world an art and a philosophy and a literature of great charm and beauty, the most advanced intellectual and aesthetic ideas that civilization has inherited, and developed an educational system of wonderful effectiveness — one that in its higher development I02 HISTORY OF EDUCATION in time took captive the entire Mediterranean world and pro- foundly modified all later thinking. Rome was the organizing and legal genius of the ancient world, as Greece was the literary and philosophical. To Rome we are especially indebted for our conceptions of law, order, and government, and for the abiHty to make practical and carry into effect the ideals of other peoples. To the Hebrews we are indebted for the world's loftiest concep- tions of God, religious faith, and moral responsibility, and to Christianity and the Church we are indebted for making these ideas universal in the Roman Empire and forcing them on a barbaric world. All these great foundations of our western civilization have not come down to us directly. The hostility to pagan learning that developed on the part of the Latin Fathers; the establishment of an eastern capital for the Empire at Constantinople, in 328; the virtual division of the Empire into an East and West, in 395 ; and the final division of the Christian Church into a Western Latin and an Eastern Greek Church, which was gradually effected, finally drove Greek philosophy and learning and the Greek lan- guage from the western world. Greek was not to be known again in the West for hundreds of years. Fortunately the Eastern Church was more tolerant of pagan learning than was the West- ern, and was better able to withstand conquest by barbarian tribes. In consequence what the Greeks had done was preserved at Constantinople until Europe had once more become sufficiently civilized and tolerant to understand and appreciate it. Hellenic learning was then handed back to western Europe, first through the medium of the Saracens, and then in that great Revival of Learning which we know as the Renaissance. Of the Latin liter- ature and learning much was lost, and much was preserved almost by accident in the monasteries of mediaeval Europe. Even the Church itself was seriously deflected from its earlier purpose and teachings during the long period of barbarism and general igno- rance through which it passed, and only in modern times has it tried to come back to the spirit of the teachings of its founder. The future story. For the long period of intellectual stagnation which now followed, the educational story is briefly told. But little formal education was needed, and that of but one main type. It was only after the Church had won its victory over the bar- barian hordes, and had built up the foundations upon which a new civilization could be developed, that education in any broad Fig. 30. Showing the Final Division of the Empire and the Church The map also shows conditions as they were in Europe at the end of the fourth century a.d. Syria, Egypt, Africa, and a portion of Asia Minor were overwhelmed by the Saracens in the seventh century and became Mohammedan, but Constanti- nople held out until 1453. The eastern division eventually gave rise to the Greek Catholic Church of Greece, the Balkans, and Russia, while the western division became the Roman Catholic Church of western Europe. At Constantinople Greek learning was preserved until the West was again ready to receive it. The Eastern Empire for a time retained control of Sicily and southern Italy (the old Magna Grcpcia), but eventually these were absorbed by western or Latin Christianity. 104 HISTORY OF EDUCATION and liberal sense was again needed. This required nearly a thou- sand years of laborious and painful effort. Then, when schools again became possible and learning again began to be demanded, education had to begin again with the few at the top, and the contributions of Greece and Rome had to be recovered and put into usable form as a basis upon which to build. It is only very recently that it has become possible to extend education to all. In Part II we shall next trace briefly the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and the reawakening, and in Part III we shall, among other things, point out the deep and lasting influence of the work of these ancient civilizations on our modern educa- tional thoughts and practices. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Point out the many advantages of a universal religion for such a univer- sal Empire as Rome developed, and the advantages of Emperor worship for such an Empire. 2. What do modern nations have that is much akin to Emperor worship? 3. Explain why Stoicism made such an appeal to the better-educated classes at Rome. 4. Why is an emotional faith better adapted to the mass of people than an intellectual one? 5. Explain how the Hebrew scribes, administering such a mixed body of laws, naturally came to be both teachers and judges for the people. 6. Illustrate how the Hebrew tradition that the moral and spiritual unity of a people is stronger than armed force has been shown to be true in history. 7. What great lessons may we draw from the work of the Hebrews in main- taining a national unity through compulsory education? 8. Why was Jesus' idea as to the importance of the individual destined to make such slow headway in the world? What is the status of the idea to-day (a) in China? (b) in Germany? (c) in England? (d) in the United States? Is the idea necessarily opposed to nationality or even to a strong state government? 9. Show how the political Church, itself the State, was the natural outcome during the Middle Ages of the teachings of the early Christians as to the relationship of Church and State. 10. Is it to be wondered that the Romans were finall}^ led to persecute "the vast organized defiance of law by the Christians"? 11. Show how the Christian idea of the equality and responsibility of all gave the citizen a new place in the State. 12. State the reasons for the gradually increasing lack of sympathy and understanding between the eastern and western Fathers of the Church, and which finally led to the division of the Church. 13. Explain what is meant by "a State within a State" as applied to the Church of the third and fourth centuries. Did this prove to be a good thing for the future of civilization? Why? 14. Would Rome probably have been better able to withstand the barbarian invasions if Christianity had not arisen, or not? Wh} ? CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY 105 15. Show how the Christian attitude toward pagan learning tended to stop schools and destroy the accumulated learning. 16. What was the effect of the Christian attitude toward the care of the body, on scientific and medical knowledge, and on education? Was the Chris- tian or the pagan attitude more nearly Hke that of modern times? 17. Why did the emphasis on form of behef, in the third and fourth centuries, come to supersede the emphasis on personal virtues and simple faith of the first and second centuries? 18. Compare the work of the Sunday School of to-day with the catechumenal instruction of the early Christians. SELECTED READINGS In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are repro- duced: 27. The Talmud: Educational Maxims from. 28. Saint Paul: Epistle to the Romans. 29. Saint Paul: Epistle to the Athenians. 30. The Crimes of the Christians. {a) Mincius Felix: The Roman Point of View. {b) Tertullian: The Christian Point of View. 31. Persecution of the Christians as Disloyal Subjects of the Empire. {a) Pliny to Trajan. {h) Trajan to Pliny. 32. Tertullian: Effect of the Persecutions. 33. Eusubius: Edicts of Diocletian against the Christians. 34. Workman: Certificate of having Sacrificed to the Pagan Gods. 35. Kingsley: The Empire and Christianity in Conflict. 36. Lactantius: The Edict of Toleration by Galcrius. 37. Theodosian Code: The Faith of Catholic Christians. 38. Theodosian Code: Privileges and Immunities granted the Clergy. 39. Apostohc Constitutions: How the Catechumens are to be instructed. 40. Leach: Catechumenal Schools of the Early Church. 41. Apostolic Constitutions: Christians should abstain from all Heathen Books. 42. The Nicene Creed of 325 a.d. 43. Saint Benedict: Extracts from the Rule of. 44. Lanfranc: Enforcing Lenten Reading in the Monasteries. 45. Saint Jerome: Letter on the Education of Girls. QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS 1. Characterize the type of education to be provided and the status of the teacher, as shown in the selections from the Talmud (27). Compare with Rome. With Athens. 2. Characterize the attitude of Saint Paul toward the Romans (28). Does his description of Athens (29) tally with the description of the Athenians given in the text? 3. Was it possible for the Roman and the Christian to understand one another, thinking as they did in such different terms (30 a-b)? 4. Considering Pliny and Trajan (31 a-b) as Roman officials, with the Roman point of view, and taking into account the time in the history of world civilization, would you say that they were quite tolerant of rebels within the State? io6 HISTORY OF EDUCATION 5. Compare the privileges and immunities granted the clergy (38) with the privileges previously given by Constantine to physicians and teachers 6. Characterize the irrepressible conflict as pictured by Kingsley (35). Name a few other somewhat similar conflicts in v/orld history. 7. Outline the type of instruction for catechumens as directed in the Apostolic Constitutions (39). 8. What would have been the efi"ect of the continued rejection of secular books called for in the Apostohc Constitutions (41)? 9. What was the governmental advantage of the adoption of the Nicene Creed (42)? 10. Why did the rule of Saint Benedict (43) requiring readings and study lead to the copying and preservation of manuscripts? 11. What does the selection from Lanfranc (44) indicate as to the state of monastic learning? 12. Was there anything pedagogically sound about the letter of Saint Jerome (45) on the education of girls? Discuss. SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES * Dill, Sam'l. Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire. Fisher, Geo. P. Beginnings of Christianity. * Fisher, Geo. P. History of the Christian Church. * Hatch, Edw. Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, (Hibbert Lectures, 1888.) Hodgson, Geraldine. Primitive Church Education. Kretzmann, P. E. Education among the Jews. MacCabe, Joseph. Saint Augustine. * Monro, D. C. and Sellery, G. E. Mediceval- Civilization. * Swift, F. H. Education in Ancient Israel to jo a.d. Taylor, H. O. Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages. Wishart, A. W. Short History of Monks and Monasticism. PART II THE MEDIAEVAL WORLD • THE DELUCxE OF BARBARISM THE MEDI/FAAL. STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REESTABLISH CIVILIZATION CHAPTER V NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE The weakened Empire. Though the first and second centuries A.D. have often been called one of the happiest ages in all human history, due to a succession of good Emperors and peace and quiet throughout the Roman world/ the reign of the last of the good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius (161-180 a.d.), may be regarded as clearly marking a turning-point in the history of Roman society. Before his reign Rome was ascendant, prosperous, powerful; during his reign the Empire was beset by many difficulties — pestilence, floods, famine, troubles with the Christians, and heavy German inroads — to which it had not before been accus- tomed; and after his reign the Empire was distinctly on the defensive and the decline. Though the elements contributing to this change in national destiny had their origin in the changes in the character of the national life at least two centuries earlier, it was not until now that the Empire began to feel seriously the effects of these changes in a lowered vitality and a weakened power of resistance. The virtues of the citizens of the early days of the Republic, trained according to the old ideas, had gradually given way in the face of the vices and corruption which beset and sapped the life of the upper and ruHng classes in the later Empire. The failure of Rome to put its provincial government on any honest and efficient civil-service basis, the failure of the State to estabHsh and direct an educational system capable of serving as a correc- ^ The period from the reign of Augustus Caesar through that of Marcus Aurelius (31 B.C.-192 A.D.) was known as "the good Roman peace." No other large section of the western world has ever known such unbroken peace and prosperity for so long a time. Piracy ceased upon the seas, and trade and commerce flourished. The cities and the great middle class in the population were prosperous. Travel was safe and common, and men traveled both for business and pleasure. The Christian State within a State had not yet taken form. Literature and learning flourished. The law became milder. The rights of the accused became better recognized. A certain broad humanity pervaded the administration of both law and government. There was much private charity. Hospitals were established. Women were given greater freedom, larger intellectual advantages, and a better position in the home than they were to know again until the nineteenth century. It was the Golden Age of the Empire. Toward the close of the period the Christian Father, TertuUian, wrote: " Every day the world becomes more beautiful, more wealthy, more splendid. No corner remains inaccessible. . . . Recent deserts bloom. . . . Forests give way to tilled acres. . . . Everywhere are houses, people, cities. Everywhere there is life." no HISTORY OF EDUCATION tive of dangerous national tendencies, the lack of a guiding na- tional faith, the gradual admission of so many Germans into the Empire, the great extent and demoralizing influence of slavery ^ — all contributed to that loss of national strength and resisting power which was now becoming increasingly evident. Other contributing elements of importance were the almost complete obliteration of the peasantry by the creation of great landed estates and cattle ranches worked by slaves, in place of the small farms of earlier days; the increase of the poor in the cities, and the declining birth-rate; the in- troduction of large numbers of barbarians as farmers and sol- diers ; and the demoralization of the city rabble by political lead- ers in need of votes. Captured slaves performed almost every service, and a lavish display of wealth on the part of a few came to be a characteristic feature of city life.^ The great middle, com- mercial, and professional classes were still prosperous and con- tented, but luxury, imported vices, slavery, political corrup- tion, and new ideals ^ had grad- ually sapped the old national vitality and destroyed the resisting power of the State in the face of a great national calamity. Rome now stood, much like ^ Slavery in Rome came to be much more demoralizing than ever was the case in the United States. Instead of an ignorant people of an inferior race, the Roman slave was often the superior of his master — the unfortunate captive in an unsuccess- ful war against an oppressor. The holding of such educated and intelligent people in slavery was far more degrading to a ruling people than would have been the case had their slaves been ignorant and of inferior racial stock. - The Roman State had come to be essentially a collection of cities. Rome, Alexandria, Antioch. Corinth, Carthage, Ephesus, and Lyons were great cities, judged even by present-day standards, throbbing with varied industries and a strong intellectual life. In addition there were hundreds of other cities scattered all over the Empire, each with its own municipal life, while on the frontier were stock- aded villages serving as centers of trade with the barbarian tribes beyond. ^ Chief among the new ideals that sapped the old Roman strength must be men- tioned the new Christian religion, with its doctrine of other-worldliness and its sys- tem of government not responsible to the Empire. Another influence was the rise of a super-civic philosophy, derived chiefly from the writings of Plato (see footnote i, page 42), which held that certain men could be above the State and yet by their wisdom in part direct it. The two influences combined to undermine the resisting strength of the State. Fig. 31. a Bodyguard of Germans A relief from the Column of Marcus Aurelius, at Rome, erected to celebrate his victories over the Marcomanni, and other German tribes. NEW PEOPLES IN THE EiMPIRE in the shell of a fine old tree, apparently in good condition, but in reahty ready to fall before the blast because it had been allowed to become rotten at the heart. Sooner or later the boundaries of the Empire, which had held against the pressure from without for so long, were destined to be broken and the barbarian deluge from the north and east would pour over the Empire. The boundaries of the Empire are broken. While temporary extensions of territory had at times been made beyond the Rhine and the Danube, these rivers had finally come to be the established boundaries of the Empire on the north, and behind these rivers the Teutonic barbarians, or Germani, as the Romans called them, had by force been kept. To do even this the Romans had been obliged to admit bands of Germans into the Empire, and had taken them into the Roman army as "allies," making use of their great love for fighting to hold other German tribes in check. In i66 A.D. the plague, brought back by soldiers returning from the East, carried off approximately half the population of Italy. This same year the Marcomanni (see Figure i8), a former friendly tribe, invaded the Empire as far as the head of the Adriatic Sea, and it required thirteen years of warfare to put them back behind the Danube. Even this was accomplished only by the aid of friendly German tribes. From this time on the Empire was more or less on- the defensive, with the barbarian tribes to the north casting increasingly longing eyes toward " a place in the sun" and the rich plunder that lay to the south, and frequently breaking over the boundaries. Rome, though, was still strong enough to put them back again. In 275 A.D., after a five years' struggle, the Eastern Emperor gave the province of Dacia, to the south of the Danube, to the Visigoths, in an effort to buy them off from further invasion and warfare. This eased the pressure for another century. In 378 A.D., now pressed on by the terrible Huns from behind, the Visi- goths, as a body, invaded the Eastern Empire, and in the Battle of Adrianople, near Constantinople, defeated the Roman army, slew the Roman Emperor, definitely broke the boundaries of the Empire, and they and the Ostrogoths now moved southward and settled in Moesia and Thrace. The Germans at Adrianople learned that they could beat the Roman legions, and from this time on it was they, and not the Romans, who named the terms of ransom and the price of peace. A few years later, under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Greece, then turned westward 112 HISTORY OF EDUCATION through Illyria to the valley of the Po, in northern Italy, which they reached in the year 400. In 410 the great calamity came when they captured and sacked Rome. The effect produced on the Roman world by the fall of the Eternal City, as the news of the almost incredible disaster penetrated to the remote provinces, was profound (R. 48). For eight hundred years Rome had not Fig. 32. The German Migrations The barriers of the Empire along the Rhine and the Danube now are broken down. Take a pencil and trace the route followed by each of these peoples. been touched by foreign hands, and now it had been captured and plundered by barbarian hordes. It seemed to many as though the end of the world were approaching. The Visigoths now turned west once more, carrying with them the beautiful sister of the Emperor as a captive bride of the chief, and finally settled in Spain and southern Gaul, which provinces were thenceforth lost to Rome. This was the first of the great permanent inroads into the Empire, and from now on Roman resistance seemed powerless to stop the flood. A period of tribal movements. The Hunnish pressure also started the Vandals and Suevi, and within fifty years they had been able to move across Germany, France, and Spain, plunder- ing the cities on their way. Finally they crossed to the northern NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE 113 coast of Africa, where they became noted as the great sea pirates of the Mediterranean. In 455 they crossed back to Italy, and Rome was sacked for the second time by barbarian hordes. The Huns, under the leadership of Attila, the so-called "Scourge of God," now moved in and ravaged Gaul (451) and northern Italy (452), and then, at the intercession of the Roman Pope Leo, were induced by a ransom price to return to the lower Danube, where they have since remained. In 476 the barbarian soldiers of the Empire, tired of camp life and demanding land on which they too might settle, rose in revolt, displaced the last of the Western Emperors, and elevated Odovacar, a tribesman from the north, as ruler in his stead. The Western Roman Empire was now at an end. In 493 Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, became king of Italy. Between 443 and 485 the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes left their earlier homes in what is now Denmark and northwestern Ger- many, and overran eastern and southern Britain. In 486 the Franks, a great nation living along the lower Rhine, began to move, and within two generations had overrun almost all of Gaul. In 586 the Lombards invaded and settled the valleys of northern Italy, displacing the Ostrogoths there. Slavic tribes now moved into the Eastern Empire — Serbs and Bulgars — and settled in Moesia and Thrace. Southeastern Europe thus became Slavic- Greek, as western Europe had become Teutonic-Latin. Figure 32 shows the results of these different migrations up to about 500 A.D. Europe to be Teutonic-Latin. In the seventh century another great wave of people, of a different racial stock and religion — Semitic and Mohammedan — starting from Arabia and along the shores of the Red Sea, swept rapidly through Egypt and Africa and across into Spain and France. For a time it looked as though they might overrun all western Europe and bring the German ' tribes under subjection. Fortunately they were definitely stopped and decisively defeated by the Franks, in the great Battle of Tours, in 732. They also overran Syria and Persia, but were held in check in Asia Minor by the Eastern Empire, which did not completely succumb to barbarian inroads until Constantinople was taken by the Turks, in 1453. The importance of the result, to the future of our western civili- zation, of this battle in the West can hardly be overestimated. The future of European government, law, education, and civiliza- 114 HISTORY OF EDUCATION tion was settled on that Saturday afternoon in October, on the battle plains of Tours. ^ It was a struggle for mastery and domin- ion between the Aryan and Semitic races, between the Christian and Mohammedan religions, between the forces representing order on the one side and destruction on the other, and between races destined to succeed to the civilization of Greece and Rome and a race representing oriental despotism and static conditions. Fig. ss- The Known World in 800 'This map shows the great extent of the Mohammedan conquests. The part marked as "European Heathen" was added to Christianity within the next few centuries, and became a part of our Latin-Teutonic or western civiUzation. Driven back across the Pyrenees by the Franks, these people settled in Spain; later developed there, for a short period, a for- ^ Not only was the future of western European civilization settled there, but that of North and South America as well. Had Saracenic civilization come to dominate Europe, the Koran might have been taught to-day in the theological schools of Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and Valparaiso, and the Christian religion been the possession only of the Greek and Russian churches, while our literature and philosophy and civilization would have been tinctured, through and through, with oriental ideas and Mohammedan conceptions. NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE T15 the-time remarkable civilization, but one that only slightly influ- enced the current of European development; and then disappeared as a force in our western development and progress. We shall meet them again a little later, but only for a little while, and then they concern our western development no more. Our interest from now on lies with the Teutonic-Latin peoples of western Europe, for it is through them that our western civili- zation has been worked out and has come down to us. Who these invaders were. A long-continued series of tribal migrations, unsurpassed before in history, had brought a large number of new peoples within the boundaries of the old Empire. They finally came so fast that they could not have been assim- ilated even in the best days of Rome, and now the assimilative and digestive powers of Rome were gone. Tall, huge of limb, white-skinned, flaxen-haired, with fierce blue eyes, and clad in skins and rude cloths, they seemed like giants to the short, small, dark-skinned people of the Italian peninsula. Quarrelsome; delighting in fighting and gambling; given to drunkenness and gluttonous eating; possessed of a rude polytheistic religion in which Woden, the war god, held the first place, and Valhalla was a heaven for those killed in battle ; living in rude villages in the forest, and maintaining them- selves by hunting and fishing — it is not to be wondered that Rome dreaded the coming of these forest barbarians (R. 46). The tribes nearest the Rhine and the Danube had taken on a little civilization from long contact with the Romans, but those farther away were savage and unorganized (Rs. 46, 47). In general they represented a degree of civili- zation not particularly different from that of the better American Indians in our colonial period,^ though possessing a much larger ability to learn. The "two terrible centuries" which brought these new peoples into the ^ It is hard for us to imagine what happened, for the Indians we know to-day represent a much higher grade of civiHzation than did the German invaders. If we could imagine the United States overrun by the Indians of a hundred and fift>- years ago, as the German tribes overran the Roman Empire, and becoming the rulers of a people superior to them in numbers and intellect, we should have some- thing analogous to the Roman situation. Fig. 34. A German War Chief Restored, and rather idealized (From the Muse*" d'Artillerie at Paris) ii6 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Fig. 35. Romans destroying a German Village (From the Column of Marcus Aurelius, at Rome) Note the circular huts of reeds, without windows, and with but a single door. Empire were marked by unspeakable disorder and frightful de- struction. It was the most complete catastrophe that had ever befallen civilized society. They settle down within the Empire. Finally, after a period of wandering and plundering, each of these new peoples settled down within the Em- pire as rulers over the numerically larger na- tive Roman popula- tion, and slowly began to turn from hunting to a rude type of farming. For three or four centuries after the invasions ceased, though, Europe pre- sented a dreary spec- tacle of ignorance, lawlessness, and vio- lence. Force reigned where law and order had once been supreme. Work largely ceased, because there was no security for the results of labor. The Roman schools gradually died out, in part because of pagan hostility (all pagan schools were closed by imperial edict in 529 a.d.), and in part because they no longer ministered to any real need. The church and the monastery schools alone remained, the instruction in these was meager indeed, and they served almost entirely the special needs of the priestly and monastic classes. The Latin language was corrupted and modified into spoken dialects, and the written language died out except with the monks and the clergy. Even here it became greatly corrupted. Art perished, and science disappeared. The former Roman skill in handicrafts was largely lost. Roads and bridges were left without repair. Commerce and intercourse almost ceased. The cities decayed, and many were entirely destroyed (R. 49). The new ruling class was ignorant — few could read or write their names — and they cared little for the learning of Greece and Rome. Much of what was excellent in the ancient civilizations died out because these new peoples were as yet too ignorant to understand or use it, and what was preserved was due to the work of others than themselves. It was with such people and on such NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE 117 a basis that it was necessary for whatever constructive forces still remained to begin again the task of building up new foundations for a future European civilization. This was the work of centu- ries, and during the period the lamp of learning almost went out. Barbarian and Roman in contact. Civilization was saved from almost complete destruction chiefly by reason of the long and sub- stantial work which Rome had done in organizing and governing and unifying the Empire; by the relatively slow and gradual coming of the different tribes; and by the thorough organization of the governing side of the Christian Church, which had been effected before the Empire was finally overrun and Roman govern- ment ceased. In unifying the government of the Empire and establishing a common law, language, and traditions, and in early beginning the process of receiving barbarians into the Empire and educating them in her ways and her schools,^ Rome rendered the western world a service of inestimable importance and one which did much to prepare the way for the reception and assimil- ation of the invaders.- In the cities, which remained Roman in spirit even after their rulers had changed, and where the Roman population greatly preponderated even after the invaders had come, some of the old culture and handicrafts were kept up, and in the cities of southern Europe the municipal form of city govern- ment was retained. Roman law still applied to trials of Roman citizens, and many Roman governmental forms passed over to the invader chiefly because he knew no other. The old Roman population for long continued to furnish the clergy, and these, because of their ability to read and write, also became the secre- taries and advisers of their rude Teutonic overlords. In one capacity or another they persuaded the leaders of the tribes to adopt, not only Christianity, but many of the customs and prac- tices of the old civilization as well. These various influences ^ As allies, citizens, soldiers, colonists, and slaves the Germans had long been filtering into the Roman world, and the Roman world was in part Germanized before the barriers were broken. These German-Romans helped to assimilate the Germans who came later, much as Italian-Americans in the United States help to receive and assimilate new Italians when they come. 2 "The historical importance of the mere fact that it was an organic unity which Rome established, and not simply a collection of fragments artificially held together by mihtary force, that the civilized world was made, as it were, one nation, cannot be overstated. ... It was a union, not in externals merely, but in every department of thought and action; and it was so thorough, and the Gaul became so completely a Roman, that when the Roman government disappeared he had no idea of being anything else than a Roman. ... It was because of this that, despite the fall of Rome, Roman institutions were perpetual." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 2d ed., p. 30.) Ii8 HISTORY OF EDUCATION helped to assimilate and educate the newcomers, and to save something of the old civilization for the future. Being strong, sturdy, and full of youthful energy, and with a large capacity for learning, the civilizing process, though long and difficult, was easier than it might otherwise have been, and because of their strength and vigor these new races in time infused new life and energy into every land from Spain to eastern Europe (R. 50). The most powerful force with which the barbarians came in contact, though, and the one which did most to reduce them to civilization, was the Christian Church. Organized, as we have seen, after the Roman governmental model, and as a State within a State, the Church gained in strength as the Roman government grew weaker, and was ready to assume governmental authority when Rome could no longer exert it. The barbarians here en- countered an organization stronger than force and greater than kings, ^ which they must either accept and make terms with or absolutely destroy. As all the tribes, though heathen, possessed some form of spirit or nature worship or heathen gods, which served as a basis for understanding the appeal of the Church, the result was the ultimate victory, and the Christianizing, in name at least, of all the barbarian tribes. This was the first step in the long process of civilizing and educating them. The impress of Christianity upon them. The importance of the services rendered by bishops, priests, and monks during what are known as the Dark Ages can hardly be overestimated. In the face of might they upheld the right of the Church and its representatives to command obedience and respect.^ The Chris- tian priest gradually forced the barbarian chief to do his will, though at times he refused to be awed into submission, murdered the priest, and sacked the sacred edifice. That the Church lost much of its early purity of worship, and adopted many practices fitted to the needs of the time, but not consistent with real reli- gion, there can be no question. In time the Church gained much from the mixture of these new peoples among the old, as they infused new vigor and energy into the blood of the old races, but 1 A Germanic king, when he feared no Roman general or emperor, could usually be made to stand in awe when a Christian priest or bishop appealed to Heaven and the saints, and threatened him with eternal hell-fire if he did not do his bidding. 2 The Church, it must be remembered, maintained its separate system of govern- ment and kept up the old forms of the Roman law. It had also its courts and its exemptions for the clergy, and these it forced the barbarians to respect. During half a dozen centuries it was the chief force that made life tolerable for myriads of men and women, and almost the only force upholding any semblance of humane ideals. NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE 119 the immediate effect was quite otherwise. The Church itself was paganized, but the barbarians were in time Christianized. Priests and missionaries went among the heathen tribes and labored for their conversion. Of course the leaders were sought out first, and often the conversion of a chieftain was made by first converting his wife. After the chieftain had been won the minor leaders in time followed. The lesson of the cross was pro- claimed, and the softening and restraining influences of the Chris- tian faith were exerted on the barbarian. It was, however, a long and weary road to re- store even a semblance of the order and respect for life and property which had prevailed under Roman rule. One of the most interesting of all the conversions was that made by the Bishop Ulphilas (c. 313-383) among the Visi- goths, before they moved westward from their original home north of the Danube, in what is now southwestern Russia. Ulphilas was made bishop and sent among them in 343, and spent the re- mainder of his life in laboring with them. He devised an alphabet for them, based on the Greek, and gave them a written language into which he translated for them the Bible, or rather large por- tions of it. In the translation he omitted the two books of ,. „ - ^ (S^lh) Fig. 36. A Page of the Gothic Gospels (reduced) One of the treasures of the library of the University of Upsala, in Sweden, is a man- uscript of this translation by Bishop Ulphilas. Greek letters, with a few Runic signs were used to represent Gothic sounds. The word "rune" comes from a Gothic word meaning "mystery." To the primitive Germans it seemed a mysterious thing that a series of marks could express thought. Kings and the two Samuels, that the people might not find in them a further stimulus to their great warlike activity. Christianity had been carried early to Great Britain by Roman missionaries, and in 440 Saint Patrick converted the Irish. In 563 Saint Columba crossed to Scotland, founded the monastery I20 HISTORY OF EDUCATION at lona, and began the conversion of the Scots. After the Angles and Saxons and Jutes had overrun eastern and southern Britain there was a period of several generations during which this por- tion of the island was given over to Teutonic heathenism. In 597 Saint Augustine, "the Apostle to the EngKsh," landed in Kent and began the conversion of the people, that year succeeding in converting Ethelbert, King of Kent. In 626 Edwin, King of Northumbria, was converted, and in 635 the English of Wessex accepted Christianity. The English at once became strong sup- porters of the Christian faith, and in 878 they forced the invading Danes to accept Christianity as one of the conditions of the Peace of Wedmore. (See Map, Figure 42.) In 496 Clovis, King of the Franks, and three thousand of his followers were baptized, following a vow and a victory in battle; ^ in 587 Recarred, King of the Goths in Spain, was won over; and in 681 the South Saxons accepted Christianity. The Germans of Bavaria and Thuringia were finally won over by about 740. Charlemagne repeatedly forced the northern Saxons • to accept Christianity, between 772 and 804, when the final submission of this German tribe took place. Finally, in the tenth century, Rollo, Duke of the Normans, was won (912); Boleslav II, King of the Bohemians, in 967; and the Hungarians in 972. In the tenth century the Slavs were converted to the Eastern or Greek type of Christianity, and Poland, Norway, and Sweden to the Western or Roman type. The last people to be converted were the Prus- sians, a half-Slavic tribe inhabiting East Prussia and Lithuania, along the eastern Baltic, who were not brought to accept Chris- tianity, in name, until near the middle of the thirteenth century, though efforts were begun with them as early as 900. As late as 1230 they were still offering human sacrifices to their heathen gods to secure their favor, but soon after this date they were forced to a nominal acceptance of Christianity as a result of conquest by the "Teutonic Knights." It was thus a thousand years after its foundation before Europe had accepted in name the Christian faith. To change a nominal acceptance to some semblance of a reality has been the work of the succeeding centu- ries. ^ Clotilda, wife of the heathen Clovis, was a Burgundian princess and a devout Christian, who had long tried to persuade her husband to accept her faith. In 496, during a tjattle with the Alemanni, near the present city of Strassburg, Clovis vowed that if the God of Clotilda would give him victory, he would do as she desired. The Alemanni were crushed, and he and three thousand of his chiefs were at once baptized. NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE 121 Work of the Church during the Middle Ages. Everywhere throughout the old Empire, and far into the forest depths of barbarian lands, went bishops, priests, and missionaries, and there parishes were organized, rude churches arose, and the process of educating the fighting tribesmen in the ways of civil- ized Hfe was carried out. It was not by schools of learning, but by faith and ceremonial that the Church educated and guided her children into the type she approved. Schools for other than monks and clergy for a time were not needed, and such practically died out. The Church and its offices took the place of education and exercised a wholesome and restraining influence over both young and old throughout the long period of the Middle Ages. These the Church in time taught the barbarian to respect. The great educational work of the Church during this period of in- security and ignorance has seldom been better stated than in the following words by Draper: Of the great ecclesiastics, many had risen from the humblest ranks of society, and these men, true to their democratic instincts, were often found to be the inflexible supporters of right against might. Eventu- ally coming to be the depositaries of the knowledge that then existed, they opposed intellect to brute force, in many instances successfully, and by the example of the organization of the Church, which was essentially republican, they shoM^ed how representative systems may be introduced into the State. Nor was it over communities and nations that the Church displayed her chief power. Never in the world before was there such a system. From her central seat at Rome, her all- seeing eye, like that of Providence itself, could equally take in a hemi- sphere at a glance, or examine the private life of any individual. Her boundless influences enveloped kings in their palaces, and relieved the beggar at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too insignificant, or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities, every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled at his funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of his life at her confessionals, and punished his faults by her penances. In his hour of sickness and trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him, by her exquisite litanies and prayers, to place his reliance on God, or strengthening him for the trials of life by the example of the holy and just. Her prayers had an efficacy to give repose to the souls of his dead. When, even to his friends, his lifeless body had become an offense, in the name of God she received it into her consecrated ground, and under her shadow he rested till the great reckoning-day. From little better than a slave she raised his wife to be his equal, and, forbidding him to have more than one, met her recom- pense for those noble deeds in a firm friend at every fireside. Dis- countenancing all impure love, she put round that fireside the children 122 HISTORY OF EDUCATION of one mother, and made that mother little less than sacred in their eyes. In ages of lawlessness and rapine, among people but a step above savages, she vindicated the inviolability of her precincts against the hand of power, and made her temples a refuge and sanctuary for the despairing and oppressed. Truly she was the shadow of a great rock in many a weary land.^ The civilizing work of the monasteries. No less important than the Church and its clergy was the work of the monasteries and their monks in building up a basis for a new civilization. These, too, were founded all over Europe. To make a map of western Europe showing the monasteries established by 800 a.d. would be to cover the map with a series of dots.^ The importance of their work is better understood when we remember that the Germans had never lived in cities, and did not settle in them on entering the Empire. The monasteries, too, were seldom estab- lished in towns. Their sites were in the river valleys and in the forests (R. 69), and the monks became the pioneers in clearing the land and preparing the way for agriculture and civilization. Not infrequently a swamp was taken and drained. The Middle- Age period was essentially a period of settlemelit of the land and of agricultural development, and the monks lived on the land and among a people just passing through the earliest stages of settled and civiHzed life. In a way the inheritors of the agricul- tural and handicraft knowledge of the Romans, the monks be- came the most skillful artisans and farmers to be found, and from them these arts in time reached the developing peasantry around them. Their work and services have been well summed up by the same author just quoted, as follows : It was mainly by the monasteries that to the peasant class of Europe was pointed out the way of civilization. The devotions and charities; the austerities of the brethren; their abstemious meal; their meager clothing, the cheapest of the country in which they lived ; their shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the sight of sinful objects; the long staff in their hands; their naked feet and legs; their passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a watch on his brother; the prohibitions ' Draper, John W., Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. 11, pp. 145-46. 2 The extent of the Benedictine order alone may be seen from the Benedictine statement that "Pope John XXII, who died in 1334, after an exact inquiry,, found that, since the first rise of the order, there had been of it 24 popes, near 200 cardinals, 7000 archbishops, 15,000 bishops, 15,000 abbots of renown, above 4000 saints, and upwards of 37,000 monasteries. There had been likewise, of this order, 20 emperors, 10 empresses, 47 kings and above 50 queens, 20 sons of emperors and 48 sons of kings, about 100 princesses and davighters of kings and emperors, besides dukes, marquises, earls, countesses, etc., innumerable." From this it may be inferred how fully the Church was the State during the long period of the Middle Ages. NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE 123 against eating outside of the wall of the monastery, which had its own mill, its own bakehouse, and whatever was needed in an abstemious domestic economy (Figure 38) ; their silent hospitality to the wayfarer, who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the lands around their buildings turned from a wilderness into a garden, and, above all, labor exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and celibacy, forever, in the eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation from the world and a sacrifice to heaven — these were the things that arrested the attention of the barbarians of Europe, and led them on to civilization. ^ The problem faced by the Middle Ages. That the lamp of learning burned low during this period of assimilation is no cause for wonder. Recovery from such a deluge of barbarism on a weakened society is not easy. In fact the recovery was a long and slow process, occupying nearly the whole of a thousand years. The problem which faced the Church, as the sole surviving force capable of exerting any constructive influence, was that of chang- ing the barbarism and anarchy of the sixth century, with its low standards of living and lack of humane ideals, into the intelligent, progressive civilization of the fifteenth century. This was the work of the Middle Ages, and largely the work of the Christian Church. It was not a period of progress, but one of assimilation, so that a common western civilization might in time be developed out of the diverse and hostile elements mixed together by the rude force of circumstances. The enfeebled Roman race was to be reinvigorated by mixture with the youthful and vigorous Germans (R. 50); to the institutions of ancient society were to be added certain social and political institutions of the Germanic peoples; all were to be brought under the rule of a common Christian Church; and finally, when these people had become sufficiently civilized and educated to enable them to understand and appre- ciate, ''nearly every achievement of the Greeks and the Romans in thought, science, law, and the practical arts" was to be recov- ered and made a part of our western civilization. In this chapter we have dealt largely with the great fundamen- tal movements which have so deeply influenced the course of human history. In the chapters which immediately follow we shall tell how learning was preserved during the period and what facilities for education actually existed; trace the more important efforts made to reestablish schools and learning; and finally describe the culmination of the process of absorbing and educating ^ Draper, John W., Intdkctml Development of Europe, vol. i, p, 437. 124 HISTORY OF EDUCATION the Germans in the civilization they had conquered that came in the great period of recovery of the ancient learning and civiliza- tion — the age of the Renaissance. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Do the peculiar problems of assimilation of the foreign-born, revealed to us by the World War, put us in a somewhat similar position to Rome under the Empire as relates to the need of a guiding national faith? 2. Outline how Rome might have been helped and strengthened by a national school system under state control. 3. Outline how our state school systems could be made much more effective as national instruments by the infusion into their instruction of a strong national faith. 4. Try to picture the results upon our civilization had western Europe become Mohammedan. 5. The movement of new peoples into the Roman Empire was much slower than has been the immigration of foreign peoples into the United States, since 1840. Why the difference in assimilative power? 6. How do you think the Roman provinces and Italy, after the tribes from the North had settled down within the Empire, compared with Mexico after the years of revolution with peons and brigands in control? With Russia, after the destruction wrought by the Bolshevists? 7. Explain the importance of the long civilizing and educating work of Rome among the German tribes, in preparing the means for the preserva- tion of Roman institutions after the downfall of the Roman govern- ment. 8. What does the fact that Roman institutions and Roman thinking con- tinued and profoundly modified mediaeval life indicate as to the nature of Roman government and the Roman power of assimilation? 9. Though Rome never instituted a state school system, was there not after all large educational work done by the government through its intelligent administration? 10. Show how the breakdown of Roman government and Roman institutions was naturally more complete in Gaul than in northern Italy, and more complete in northern than in central or southern Italy, and hence how Roman civilization was naturally preserved in larger measure in the cities of Italy than elsewhere. 11. Show how the Christian Church, too, could not have completely dis- pensed with Roman letters and Roman civilization, had it desired to do so, but was forced of necessity to preserve and pass on important portions of the civilization of Rome. 12. What do you think would have been the effect on the future of civiliza- tion had the barbarian tribes overrun Spain, Italy, and Greece during the Age of Pericles? 13. What modern analogies do we have to the civilizing work of the monks and clergy during the Middle Ages? 14. Picture the work of the monasteries in handing on to western Europe the arts and handicrafts and skilled occupations of Rome. Cite some examples. 15. What civilizing problem, somewhat comparable to that of barbarian Europe, have we faced in our national history? Why have we been able to obtain results so much more rapidly? NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE 125 SELECTED READINGS In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are repro- duced: 46. Caesar: The Hunting Germans and their Fighting Ways. 47. Tacitus: The Germans and their Domestic Habits. 48. Dill : Effect on the Roman World of the News of the Sacking of Rome by Alaric. 49. Giry and Reville: Fate of the Old Roman Towns. 50. Kingsley: The Invaders, and what they brought. 51. General Form for a Grant of Immunity to a Bishop. 52. Charlemagne: Powers and Immunities granted to the Monastery of Saint Marcellus. QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS 1. State the differences in character ' Caesar observes (46) between the Gauls to the west of the Rhine and the Germans to the east. 2. What German characteristics that Tacitus describes (47) would prove good additions to Roman life? 3. Do the emotions of Saint Jerome on hearing of the sacking of Rome (48) reveal anything as to the extent to which the Roman had become a Churchman and the Churchman a Roman? Illustrate. 4. Is it probable that a quarter-century of Bolsheviki rule in Russia would produce results comparable to those described by Giry and Reville (49) ? 5. Is Kingsley right in stating (50) that the best elements of all the modern European peoples came from the barbarian invaders? State what seem to you to be the important contributions of barbarian invader, Roman, and Churchman. 6. Do the grants of privileges and immunities shown in the general form (51) and the specific form (52) seem to follow naturally from the earlier grants to physicians and teachers (26) and to the clergy (38)? Point out the relationship. SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES * Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages. Church, R. W. The Beginnings of the Middle Ages. Kingsley, Chas. The Roman and Tenton. * Thorndike, Lynn. 'History of Mcdiceval Europe. CHAPTER VI EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES ^ I. CONDITION AND PRESERVATION OF LEARNING The low intellectual level. As was stated in the preceding chapter, the lamp of learning burned low throughout the most of western Europe during the period of assimilation and partial civilization of the barbarian tribes. The western portion of the Roman Empire had been overrun, and rude Germanic chieftains were establishing, by the law of might, new kingdoms on the ruins of the old. The Germanic tribes had no intellectual Hfe of their own to contribute, and no intellectual tastes to be ministered unto. With the destruction of cities and towns and country villas, with their artistic and literary collections, much that repre- sented the old culture was obliterated,^ and books became more and more scarce.^ The destruction was gradual, but by the be- ginning of the seventh century the loss had become great. The Roman schools also gradually died out as the need for an educa- tion which prepared for government and gave a knowledge of Roman law passed away, and the type of education approved by the Church was left in complete control of the field. As the security and leisure needed for study disappeared, and as the only use for learning was now in the service of the Church, education became limited to the narrow lines which ofTered such preparation and to the few who needed it. Amid the ruins of the ancient civili- zation the Church stood as the only conservative and regenera- tive force, and naturally what learning remained passed into its hands and under its control. The result of all these influences and happenings was that by ^ From the sixth to the twelfth centuries. 2 The story which has come down to us of the German warrior who, on beinj^ shown into an anteroom, saw some ducks swimming in the floor and dashed his battle-axe at them to see if they were real, thus ruining the beautiful mosaic, is typical of the time. 3 During the period of Rome's greatness the publishing business became an important one. Manuscripts were copied in numbers by trained writers, and books were officially pubhshed. Botli public and private libraries became common, men of wealth often having large libraries. These were found in the provincial towns as well as in the large Italian cities, and in country villas as well as in town houses. By the beginning of the eighth century books had become so scarce that monas- teries guarded their treasures with great care (R. 65), and books weie borrowed from long distances that copies might be made. PRESERVATION OF LEARNING 127 the beginning of the seventh century Christian Europe had reached a very low intellectual level, and during the seventh and eighth centuries conditions grew worse instead of better. Only in England and Ireland, as will be pointed out a little later, and in a few Italian cities, was there anything of consequence of the old Roman learning preserved. On the Continent there was little general learning, even among the clergy (R. 64 a). Many of the priests were woefully ignorant, ^ and the Latin writings of the time contain many inaccuracies and corruptions which reveal the low standard of learning even among the better educated of the clerical class. The Church itself was seriously affected by the prevailing ignorance of the period, and incorporated into its sys- tem of government and worship many barbarous customs and practices of which it was a long time in ridding itself. So great had become the ignorance and superstition of the time, among priests, monks, and the people; so much had religion taken on the worship of saints and relics and shrines; and so much had the Church developed the sensuous and symbolic, that religion had in reality become a crude polytheism instead of the simple monotheistic faith of the early Church. Along scientific Hues especially the loss was very great. Scientific ideas as to natu- ral phenomena disappeared, and crude and childish ideas as to natural forces came to prevail. As if barbarian chiefs and rob- ber bands were not enough, popular imagination peopled the world with demons, goblins, and dragons, and all sorts of super- stitions and supernatural happenings were recorded. Intercom- munication largely ceased; trade and commerce died out; the accumulated wealth of the past was destroyed; and the old knowledge of the known world became badly distorted, as is evidenced by the many crude mediaeval maps. (See Figure 46.) The only scholarship of the time, if such it might be called, was the little needed by the Church to provide for and maintain its government and worship. Almost everything that we to-day mean by civilization in that age was found within the protecting walls of monastery or church, and these institutions were at first too busy building up the foundations upon which a future culture might rest to spend much time in preserving learning, much less in advancing it. ^ Charlemagne (King of Frankland, 771-814), for example, found it necessary to order that priests and monks must show themselves capable of changing the wording of the masses for the living and the dead, as circumstances required, from singular to plural, or from masculine to feminine. 128 HISTORY OF EDUCATION The monasteries develop schools. In this age of perpetual law- lessness and disorder the one opportunity for a life of repose and scholarly contemplation lay in the monasteries. Here the rule of might and force was absent (R. 52), and the timid, the devout, Fig. 37. A Typical Monastery of Southern Europe and the studiously inclined here found a refuge from the turbu- lence and brutality of a rude civilization. The early monasteries, and especially the monastery of Saint Victor, at Marseilles, founded by Cassian in 404, had represented a culmination of the western feeling of antagonism to all ancient learning, but with the founding of Monte Cassino by Saint Benedict, in 529 a.d., and the promulgation of the Benedictine rule (R. 43), a more liberal attitude was shown. ^ This rule was adopted generally by the monasteries throughout what is now Italy, Spain, France, Ger- many, and England, and the Benedictine became the type for the monks of the early Middle Ages. To this order we are largely indebted for the copying of books and the preservation of learning throughout the mediaeval period. The 48th rule of Saint Benedict, it will be remembered (R. 43), had imposed reading and study as a part of the daily duty of every monk, but had said nothing about schools. Subsequent regulations issued by superiors had aimed at the better enforce- ment of this rule (R. 44) , that the monks might lead devout lives and know the Bible and the sacred writings of the Church. Im- posed at first as a matter of education and discipline for the. monks, this rule ultimately led to the establishment of schools and the ^ Longfellow's poem Monte Cassino is interesting reading here. Of Benedict he says: "He founded here his Convent and his Rule Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer; The pen became a clarion, and his school Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air." PRESERVATION OF LEARNING 129 development of a system of monastic instruction. As youths were received at an early age ^ into the monasteries to prepare for a monastic hfe, it was necessary that they be taught to read if they were later to use the sacred books. This led to the duty of instructing novices, which marks the beginning of monastic in- struction for those within the walls. As books were scarce and at the same time necessary, and the only way to get new ones was to copy from old ones, the monasteries were soon led to take up the work once carried on by the publishing houses of ancient Rome, and in much the same way. This made writing necessary, and the novices had to be instructed carefully in this, as well as in reading.- The chants and music of the Church called for in- struction of the novices in music, and the ceFebration of Easter and the fast and festival days of the Church called for some rudi- mentary instruction in numbers and calculation. Out of these needs rose the monastery school, the copying of manuscripts, and the preservation of books. Due to their greater security and quiet the monasteries became the leading teaching institutions of the early part of the Middle-Age period, and those who wished their children trained for the service of the Church gave them to the monasteries (R. 53 a). The develop- ment of the monastic schools was largely voluntary, though from an early date bishops and rulers began urging the monasteries to open schools for boys in connection with their houses, and schools became in time a regular feature of the monastic organization. From schools only for those intending to take the vows (oblati), the instruction was gradually opened, after the ninth century, to others (externi) not intending to take the vows, and what came to be known as "outer" monastic schools were in time developed. The monasteries became the preservers of learning. Another need developed the copying of pagan books, and incidentally the preservation of some of the best of Roman literature. The lan- guage of the Church very naturally was Latin, as it was a direct descendant of Roman life, governmental organization, citizenship, and education. The writings of the Fathers of the Western Church had all been in Latin, and in the fourth century the Bible ^ Sometimes as early as eleven to twelve years of age. The novitiate course was two years, but as the vows could not be taken before eighteen, the course of instruc- tion often covered six to eight years. 2 To teach a novice to copy accurately a manuscript book was quite a different thing from the teaching of writing to-day, It was more nearly comparable to present-day instruction in lettering in a college engineering course, as it called for a degree of workmanship and accuracy not required in ordinary writing. £U2:ft Fig. 38. Bird's-Eye View of a Mediaeval Monastery (From an engraving by Viollet-Ie-Duc, dated 17 18, of the Cistercian Abbey of Citeaux, in France) This monastery was founded in the forests of what is now northeastern France, in 1 198 A.D., and was the first of a reformed Benedictine order, known as Cister- cians. For an explanation of the monastery, see the opposite page. PRESERVATION OF LEARNING 131 had been translated from the Greek into the Latin. This edition, known as the Vulgate ^ Bible, became the standard for western Europe for ten centuries to come. The German tribes which had invaded the Empire had no written languages of their own, and their spoken dialects differed much from the Latin speech of those whom they had conquered. Latin was thus the language of all those of education, ^nd naturally continued as the language of the Church and the monastery for both speech and writing. All books were, of course, written in Latin. Under the rude influences and the general ignorance of the period, though, the language was easily and rapidly corrupted, and it becam.e necessary for the monasteries and the churches to have good models of Latin prose and verse to refer to. These were best found in the old Latin literary authors — particularly Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil. To have these, due to the great destruction of old books which had taken place during the inter- vening centuries, it was necessary to copy these authors,- as well as the Psalter, the Missal,^ the sacred books, and the writings of ^ The Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible made by Saint Jerome, at the close of the fourth century. The Old Testament he translated mostly from the Hebrew and Chaldaic, and the New Testament he revised from the older Latin ver- sions. This is the only version of the Scriptures which the Roman CathoUc Church admits as authentic. 2 Letters from one monastery to another, and from one country to another, beg- ging the loan of some ancient book, have been preserved in numbers. I>upus, Abbot of Ferrieres in France, for example, wrote to Rome in 855. and addressing himself to the Pope in person, requested a complete copy of Cicero's De Oratore, which he desired. ^ The Missal is a book containing the service of the mass for the entire year. The Psalter the book of Psalms. Explanation of the Monastery opposite : The cross, by the roadside, indicates the entrance gate. Passing through the orchards and fields, the traveler reached the outer gate-house. At the almonry (C) food and drink were given out;. on the second floor rooms for the night could be had; in the little chapel {D) prayers could be said ; and in the stable (F) the traveler's horse could be cared for for the night. An inner gate through (£) opened into an inner court, around which were the barns, chicken-yards, cow-sheds, etc. The Abbot lived at //. G was a dormitory for the lay brothers who did the heavy work of the monastery, and who entered the church (A'') at the rear through a special doorway {S). All of these buildings were considered as outside the monastery proper. Inside were the great church (N), with the library (P) in the rear. Seven scriptoria are shown on the side of the library building. M was the large dormitory for the monks, and R the infirmary for old and sick brothers. / was the kitchen, K was the dining-hall (refectory), and L the stairs to the upper dormitory rooms. C and E are two cloisters with corridors on the four sides, somewhat similar to the cloisters shown for the monastery on Plate i. The copying of books often took place in these cloisters, though a scriptorium was usually found under the library, the library proper, as in Plate 2, being on the second floor (P) and reached by a winding stair. A wall surrounded the monastery grounds, and a stream of running water passed through them. 132 HISTORY OF EDUCATION the Fathers of the Church (Rs. 55, 56). It thus happened that the monasteries unintentionally began to preserve and use the ancient Roman books, and from using them at first as models for style, an interest in their contents was later awakened. While many of the monasteries remained as farming, charitable, and ascetic institutions almost exclusively, and were never noted for their educational work, a small but increasing number gradually accumulated libraries and became celebrated for their Hterary activity and for the character of their instruction. The monas- teries thus in time became the storehouses of learning, the pub- Hshing houses of the Middle Ages (Rs. 54, 55, 56), teaching institutions of first importance, and centers of literary activity and religious thought, as well as centers for agricultural develop- ment, work in the arts and crafts, and Christian hospitality. Many developed into large and important institutions (R. 69). The copying of manuscripts.^ The work of the more important monasteries and the monastic churches in copying books was ^ service to learning of large future significance. While many of the books copied were for the promotion of the religious service, such as Missals and Psalters (R. 55), and many others were tales of saints and wearisome comments on the sacred writings, a few were old classical texts representing the best of Roman liter- ary work. A few monastic chronicles and histories of importance were composed by the brothers, and also preserved for us by the copying process. The production of a single book was a task of large proportions, and explains in part the small number of volumes the monasteries accumulated. After the raids of the Mohammedans across Egypt, in the seventh century, the supply of Egyptian papyrus stopped because of the interruption of communications, and the only writing material during the Middle Ages was the skin of sheep or goats or calves. Sheepskins were chiefly used, and a book of size might require a hundred or more skins. These were first soaked in limewater to loosen the hair, then scraped clean of hair and flesh, and then carefully stretched on board frames to dry. After they had dried they were again scraped with sharp knives to secure an even thickness, and then rubbed smooth with pumice and chalk. When finished, the clean, shin- ing, cream-colored skin was known as vellum,- or parchment. ^ From manu scriptum, meaning written by hand. 2 So expensive of time and effort was the production of books by this method PRESERVATION OF LEARNING 133 This was next cut into pages of the desired size and arranged ready for writing. The larger pieces were used for large books, such as are shown in Plate 2, and the remnants to produce small books. The inks, too, had to be prepared, and the pages ruled. The main writing was done with black, but the page was fre- quently bordered with red, gold, or some other bright color, while many beautiful illustrations were inserted by artistic monks. Sometimes an initial letter was beautifully embellished, as is shown in Figure 39; sometimes illustrations were introduced in the body of the page, of which Figures 39 and 40 are types; and sometimes a colored illustration was painted on a sheet of vellum and inserted in the book. Figure 44 represents such an illustrated page in an old manuscript. Fi- nally, when completed, the let- tered and illustrated parchment sheets were arranged in order, sewed together with a deerskin or pigskin string, bound together between oaken boards and covered with pigskin, properly lettered in gold, fitted with metal corners and clasps (R. 57), as shown in Plate 2, and often chained to their bookrack in the library with heavy iron chains as well. (See Figure 71 and Plate 2.) Still further to protect the volume from theft, an anathema against the thief was usually lettered in the volume (R. 58). Such was the painfully slow method of producing and multi- plying books before the advent of printing, and in days when skill in copying manuscripts was not particularly common, even among the monks. It required from a few months to a year or more to produce a few copies, depending on the size and nature of the work, whereas to-day, with printing-presses, five thousand that many of the manuscripts now extant were written crosswise on sheets from which the previous writing had been largely erased by chemical or mechanical means. How many valuable ancient manuscripts v/ere lost in this manner no one knows. Fortunately the practice was not common until after the thirteenth cen- tury, when the rise of the universities and the spread of learning made new demands for skins for writing purposes, Fig. 3Q. Initial Letter prOiM AN Old Manuscript This shows the beautiful work done by some of the nuns and monks in "illuminating!' the books they copied. This was done in colors by a nun, who pictured her own work in this initial letter L. 134 HISTORY OF EDUCATION copies of such a book as this can be printed and bound in a few days. The scriptorium. An important part of the material equip- ment of many monasteries, in consequence, came to be a scripto- rium, or writing-room, where the copying of manuscripts could take place undisturbed. In some monasteries one general room was provided, though it was customary to have a number of small rooms at the side of the Hbrary. In the monastery shown in Figure 38, seven small rooms for this purpose are shown built out on one side of the library. Sometimes individual cells along a corridor were provided. The advantage of the single room in which a number of monks worked came when an edition of eight or ten copies of a book was to be prepared. One monk could then dictate, while eight or ten others care- fully printed on the skins be- fore them what was dictated by the reader.^ Figure 40 shows a monk at work, though here he is copying from a book before him. After an edition of eight or ten copies of a book had been prepared and bound, the extra copies were sent to Fig. 40. A Monk in a Scriptorium (From an illuminated picture in a manu- script in the Royal Library at Brussels) This picture shows the beautiful work done in "illuminating" manuscript books by mediaeval writers. Each copy was a work of art. This represents a better type of scriptorium than is usually shown. neighboring and sometimes distant monasteries, sometimes in exchange for other books, and sometimes as gifts to brothers who had longed to read the work ^ That the printing was not always carefully done is shown by the constant need, throughout the Middle Ages, of correct copies for comparison. The following injunction of the Abbot Alcuin to the monks at Tours, given at the beginning of the ninth century, is illustrative of the need for care in copying: "Her^ let the scribes sit who copy out the words of the Divine Law, and likewise the hallowed sayings of Holy Fathers. Let them beware of interspersing their own frivolities in the words they copy, nor let a trifler's hand make mistakes through haste. Let them earnestly seek out for themselves correctly written books to tran- scribe, that the flying pen may speed along the right path. Let them distinguish the proper sense by colons and commas, and set the points, each one in its due place, and let not him who reads the words to them either read falsely or pause suddenly. It is a noble work to write out holy books, nor shall the scribe fail of his due reward. Writing books is better than planting vines, for he who plants a vine serves his belly, but he who writes a book serves his soul," PRESERVATION OF LEARNING 135 (R. 55) . New monasteries were provided with the beginnings of a library in this way, and churches were supplied with Missals, Psalters, and other books needed for their services. The writing- room, or rooms, came to be a very important place in those monasteries noted for their literary activity. West gives an interesting description of the scriptorium at Tours, where the learned English monk, Alcuin, was Abbot from 796 to 804, and which at the time was the principal book-writing monastery in Frankland. Describing Alcuin's labors to secure books to send to other monasteries in Charlemagne's kingdom, he says: We can almost reconstruct the scene. In the intervals between the hours of prayer and the observance of the round of cloister life, come hours for the copying of books under the presiding genius of Alcuin. The young monks file into the scriptorium, and one of them is given the precious parchment volume containing a work of Bede or Isidore or Augustine, or else some portion of the Latin Scriptures, or even a heathen author. He reads slowly and clearly at a measured rate while all the others seated at their desks take down his words, and thus per- haps a score of copies are made at once. Alcuin's observant eye watches each in turn, and his correcting hand points out the mistakes in ortho- graphy and punctuation. The master of Charles the Great, in that true humility that is the charm of his whole behavior, makes himself the writing-master of his monks, stooping to the drudgery of faithfully and gently correcting their many puerile mistakes, and all for the love of studies and the love of Christ. Under such guidance, and deeply impressed by the fact that in the copying of a few books they were saving learning and knowledge from perishing, and thereby offering a service most acceptable to God, the copying in the scriptorium went on in sobriety from day to day. Thus were produced those improved copies of books which mark the beginning of a new age in the conserving and transmission of learning. Alcuin's anxiety in this regard was not undue; for the few monasteries where books could be accurately tran- scribed were as necessary for publication in that time as are the great publishing houses to-day.^ Monastic collections. Despite the important work done by a few of the monasteries in preserving and advancing learning, large collections of books were unknown before the Revival of Learning, in the fourteenth century. The process of book production in itself was very slow, and many of the volumes produced were later lost through fire, or pillage by new invaders. During the early days of wood construction a number of monastic and church libraries were burned by accident. In the pillaging of the Danes and Northmen on the coasts of England and northern France, ^ West, A. F., Alcuin, pp. 72-73. 136 HISTORY OF EDUCATION Fig. 41. Charlemagne's Empire, and the Important Monasteries OF the Time Charlemagne's empire at his death is shaded darker than other parts of the map in the ninth and tenth centuries, a number of important monastic collections there were lost. In Italy the Lombards destroyed some collections in their sixth-century invasion, and the Saracens burned some in southern Italy in the ninth. Monte Cassino, among other monasteries, was destroyed by both the Lombards and the Saracens. From a number of extant catalogues of old monastic libraries we know that, even as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a library of from two to three hundred volumes was large. ^ The catalogues show that most of these ^ The largest monastic library on the Continent was Fulda, which speciahzed in the copying of manuscripts. In 1561 it had 774 volumes. In England the largest collections were at Canterbury, which in the fourteenth century possessed 698 vol- umes, and at Peterborough, which had 344 volumes at about the same time. The library of Croyland, also in England, burned in 109 1, at that time contained approx- imately 700 volumes. These represented the largest collections in Europe. PRESERVATION OF LP:ARNING 137 were books of a religious nature, being monastic chronicles, man- uals of devotion, comments on the Scriptures, Hves of miracle- working saints, and books of a similar nature (Rs. 55, 56). A few were commentaries on the ancient learning, or mediaeval text- books on the great subjects of study of the time (R. 60). A still smaller number were copies of old classical literary works, and of the utmost value (R. 57) . The convents and their schools. The early part of the Middle Ages also witnessed a remarkable development of convents for women, these receiving a special development in Germanic lands. Filled with the same aggressive spirit as the men, but softened somewhat by Christianity, many women of high station among the German tribes founded convents and developed institutions of much renown. This provided a rather superior class of women as organizers and directors, and a conventual life continued, throughout the entire Middle Ages, to attract an excellent class of women. This will be understood when it is remembered that a conventual life offered to women of intellectual ability and schol- arly tastes the one opportunity for an education and a life of learning. The convents, too, were much earlier and much more extensively opened for instruction to those not intending to take the vows than was the case with the monasteries, and, in conse- quence, it became a common practice throughout the Middle Ages, just as it is to-day among Catholic families, to send girls to the convent for education and for training in manners and religion. Many well-trained women were produced in the convents of Europe in the period from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries. The instruction consisted of reading, writing, and copying Latin, as in the monasteries, as well as music, weaving and spin- ning, and needlework. Weaving and spinning had an obvious utilitarian purpose, and needlework, in addition to necessary sewing, was especially useful in the production of altar-cloths and sacred vestments. The copying and illuminating of manuscripts, music, and embroidering made a special appeal to women (R. 56), and some of the most beautifully copied and illuminated manu- scripts of the mediaeval period are products of their skill. ^ Their contribution to music and art, as it influenced the life of the time, ^ The H or t us Delicarum oi the Abbess Herrard, of the convent of Hohenburg, in Alsace, was a famous illustration of artistic workmanship. This was an attempt to embody, in encyclopaedic form, the knowledge of her time. The manuscript was embellished with hundreds of beautiful pictures, and was long preserved as a wonderful exhibition of mediaeval skill. It was lost to civilization, along with many other treasures, when the Prussians bombarded Strassburg, in 1870. 138 HISTORY OF EDUCATION was also large. The convent schools reached their highest devel- opment about the middle of the thirteenth century, after which they began to decline in importance. Learning in Ireland and Britain. As was stated earher in this chapter, the one part of western Europe where something of the old learning was retained during this period was in Ireland, and in those parts of England which had not been overrun by the Germanic tribes. Christian civilization and monastic life had been introduced into Ireland probably as early as 425 A.D., and probably by monastic missionaries from Lerins and Saint Victor (see Figure 41). Saint Patrick preached Christianity to the Irish, about 440 A.D., and during the fifth and sixth centuries churches and monasteries were founded in such numbers over Ireland that the land has been said to have been dotted all over with churches, monasteries, and schools. Saint Patrick had been educated in the old Roman schools, probably at Tours when it was still an important Roman provincial city. Other early missionaries had had similar training, and these, not sharing the antipathy to pagan learning of the early Italian church fathers, had carried Greek and Latin languages and learning to Ireland. Here it flourished so well, largely due to the island being spared from invasion, that Ireland remained a center for instruction in Greek long after it had virtually disappeared elsewhere in western Christendom. So much was this the case, says Sandys, in his History of Classical Scholarship, ''that if any one knew Greek it was assumed that he must have come from Ireland." In 565 A.D., Saint Columba, an eminent Irish scholar and reli- gious leader, crossed over to what is now southwestern Scotland, founded there the monastery of lona, and began the conversion of the Picts. Saint Augustine landed in Kent in 597, and had begun the conversion of the Angles and Saxons and Jutes who had settled in southeastern Britain, while shortly afterwards the Irish monks from lona began the conversion of the people of the north of Britain. The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded about 635 A.D., and soon became an important center of religious and classical learning in the north. Irish and English monks also crossed in numbers to northern Frankland, and labored for the conversion of the Franks and Saxons. In 664 A.D., at a council held at Whitby, the Irish Church in England and the Roman Church were united, and a great enthu- siasm for religion and learning swept over the island. In 670, PRESERVATION OF LEARNING 139 Theodore of Tarsus and the Abbot Hadrian, whom Bede, the scholar and historian of the early English Church, describes as men "instructed in secular and divine literature both Greek and Latin" (R. 59 a), arrived in England from southern Italy and began their work of instructing pupils in Greek and Latin (R. 59 b). Both taught at Canterbury, and raised the cathedral school there to high rank. In 674 the monastery at Wearmouth was founded, and in 682 its companion Yarrow. These were endowed with books from Rome and Vienne, and soon became famous for the instruction they provided. It was at the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Yarrow that the Venerable Bede (673-735), whose Ecclesiastical History of England gives us our chief picture of education in Britain in his time' was educated and remained as a lifelong student.^ As a result of all these efforts a number of northern monasteries, as well as a few of the cathedral schools, early became famous for their libraries, scholars, and learning. This culture in Ireland and Britain was of a much higher standard than that obtaining on the Continent at the time, because the classical inheritance there had been less cor- rupted. The cathedral school at York. One of the schools which early attained fame was the cathedral school at York, in northern Eng- land. This had, by the middle of the eighth century, come to possess for the time a large library, and contained most of the important Latin authors and textbooks then known (R. 61). In this school, under the scholasticus ^Elbert, was trained a youth by the name of Alcuin, bom in or near York, about 735 a.d. In a poem describing the school (R. 60), he gives a good portrayal of the instruction he received, telling how the learned ^Elbert '^ moistened thirsty hearts with diverse streams of teaching and the varied dews of learning," and sorted out "youths of conspicu- ous intelligence" to whom he gave special attention. Alcuin afterward succeeded ^Elbert as scholasticus, and was widely known as a gifted teacher. Well aware of the precarious condition of learning amid such a rude and uncouth society, he handed on to his pupils the learning he had received, and imbued them with ^ He there "enjoyed advantages which could not perhaps have been found any- where else in Europe at the time — perfect access to all the existing sources of learn- ing inthe West. Nowhere else could he acquire at once the Irish, the Roman, the Gallician, and the Canterbury learning; the accumulated stores of books which Benedict (founder and abbot) had bought at Rome and at Vienne; or the disciplinary instruction drawn from the monasteries on the Continent, as well as from Irish mis- sionaries." (Bishop Stubbs, Dictionary of Christian Biography, article on Bede.) 140 HISTORY OF EDUCATION something of his own love for it and his anxiety for its preserva- tion and advancement. It was this Alcuin who was soon to give a new impetus to the development of schools and the preservation of learning in Frankland. Charlemagne and Alcuin. In 768 there came to the throne as king of the great Frankish nation one of the most distinguished and capable rulers of all time — a man who would have been a commanding personality in any age or land. His ancestors had developed a great kingdom, and it was his grandfather who had defeated the Saracens at Tours (p. 113) and driven them back over the Pyrenees into Spain. This man Charlemagne easily stands out as one of the greatest figures of all history. For five hundred years before and after him there is no ruler who matched him in insight, force, or executive capacity. He is particularly the dominating figure of mediaeval times. Bom in an age of law- lessness and disorder, he used every effort to civilize and rule as intelligently as possible the great Frankish kingdom. Wars he waged to civilize and Christianize the Saxon tribes of northern Germany, to reduce the Lombards of northern Italy to order, and to extend the boundaries of the Frankish nation. At his death, in 814, his kingdom had succeeded to most of the western posses- sions of the old Roman Empire, including all of what to-day com- prises France, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, large portions of what is now western Germany and northern Italy, and portions of northern Spain. (See Figure 41.) Realizing better than did his bishops and abbots the need for educational facilities for the nobles and clergy, he early turned his attention to securing teachers capable of giving the needed instruction. These, though, were scarce and hard to obtain. After two unsuccessful efforts to obtain a master scholar to be- come, as it were, his minister of education, he finally succeeded in drawing to his court perhaps the greatest scholar and teacher in all England. At Parma, in northern Italy, Charlemagne met Alcuin, in 781, and invited him to leave York for Frankland. After obtaining the consent of his archbishop and king, Alcuin accepted, and arrived, with three assistants, at Charlemagne's court, in 782, to take up the work of educational propaganda in Frankland. The plight in which he found learning was most deplorable, presenting a marked contrast to conditions in England. Learning had been almost obliterated during the two centuries of wild dis- Ho •i^H 5 (4 mediaeval erchant. churches, 1 in resid a c < w -a (4 rt g 0--5 in H ■2'5-^ S H r/i ankland? g. Explain how Latin came naturally to be the language of the Church, and of scholarship in western Europe throughout all the Middle Ages. 10. After reading the story of the migrations, and of the fight to save some vestiges of the old civilization, try to picture what would have been the result had Rome not built up an Empire, and had Christianity not arisen and conquered. SELECTED READINGS In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are repro- duced: 53. Migne: Forms used in connection with monastery life: {a) Form for ofifering a Child to a Monastery. {h) The Monastic Vow. {c) Letter of Honorable Dismissal from a Monastery. 54. Abbot Heriman: The Copying of Books at a Monastery. 55. Othlonus: Work of a Monk in writing and copying Books. 56. A Monk: Work of a Nun in copying Books. 57. Symonds: Scarcity and Cost of Books. 58. Clark: Anathemas to protect Books from Theft. 59. Bede: On Education in Early England. {a) The Learning of Theodore. ih) Theodore's Work for the English Churches. (c) How Albinus succeeded Abbot Hadrian. 60. Alcuin: Description of the School at York. 61. Alcuin: Catalogue of the Cathedral Library at York. 62. Alcuin: Specimens of the Palace School Instruction. 63. Charlemagne: Letter sending out a Collection of Sermons. 64. Charlemagne: General Proclamations as to Education. {a) The Proclamation of 787 a.d. {h) General Admonition of 78g a.d. (c) Order as to Learning of 802 a.d. 65. Alcuin: Letter to Charlemagne as to Books and Learning. • 66. King Alfred: State of Learning in England in his Time. 67. Asser: Alfred obtains Scholars from Abroad. 68. Asser: Education of the Son of King Alfred. 69. Ninth-Century Plan of the Monastery at Saint Gall. QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS Point out the similarity between : (a) The form for offering a child to a monastery and the monastic vow (53 a-b), and a modern court form for renouncing or adopting a child. {b) The letter of dismissal from a monastery (53 c), and the modern letter of honorable dismissal of a student from a college or normal school. PRESERVATION OF LEARNING 149 2. Compare the type of books copied by the Abbot of Saint Martins (55) and those copied by the nun at Wessebrunn (56). 3. Was the evolution of the school-teacher out of the copyist at Ratisbon (55)' by a speciahzation of labor, analogous to the process in more modern times? 4. Explain the mediaeval belief in the effectiveness to protect books from theft of such anathemas as are reproduced in 58. 5. What do the selections from Bede (59 a-c) indicate as to the preservation of the old learning in the cities of southern Italy? What as to the condition of learning and teaching in England in Bede's day? 6. What is the status of education indicated by the selections from Alcuin, on the cathedral school at York (60) and the palace school instruction of Pepin (62)? 7. What was the condition of learning among the higher clergy and monks as shown by Charlemagne's proclamations (64)? 8. What was the extent of the destruction wrought by the Danes in Eng- land, as indicated by King Alfred's Introduction to Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care (66), and his efforts to obtain scholars from abroad (67)? 9. What was the character of the education King Alfred provided for his son (68)? 10. Study out the plan of the monastery of Saint Gall (69), and enumerate the various activities of such a center. SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES * Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages. * Clark, J. W. Libraries in the Mediceval and Renaissance Period. * Cutts, Edw. L. Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages. * Eckenstein, Lina. Women under Monasticism. Leach, A. F. The Schools of MedicBval England. Munro, D. C. and Sellery, G; E. Medieval Civilization. Montalembert, Count de. The Monks of the West. Taylor, H. O. Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages. Thorndike, Lynn. History of MedicFval Europe. West, A. F. Alcuin, and the Rise of Christian Schools. * Wishart, A. W. Short History of Monks and Monasticism. CHAPTER VII EDUCATION DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES II. SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED AND INSTRUCTION PROVIDED I. Elementary instruction and schools Monastic and conventual schools. In the preceding chapters we found that, by the tenth century, the monasteries had devel- oped both inner monastic schools for those intending to take the vows (oblati) , and outer monastic schools for those not so intend- ing (externi). The distinction in name was due to the fact that the ohlati were from the first considered as belonging to the brotherhood, participating in the religious services and helping the monks at their work. The others were not so admitted, and in all monasteries of any size a separate building, outside the main portion of the monastery (see Figure 38), was provided for the Fig. 43. An Outer Monastic School (After an old wood engraving) outer school. A similar classification of instruction had been evolved for the convents. The instruction in the inner school was meager, and in the outer school probably even more so. Reading, writing, music, simple reckoning, religious observances, and rules of conduct constituted the range of instruction. Reading was taught by the alphabet method, as among the Romans, and writing by the SCHOOLS AND INSTRUCTION PROVIDED 151 use of wax tablets and the stylus. Much attention was given to Latin pronunciation, as had been the practice at Rome. As Latin by this time had practically ceased to be a living tongue, outside the Church and perhaps in Central Italy, the difficul- ties of instruction were largely increased. The Psalter, or book of Latin psalms, was the first reading book, and this was memo- rized rather than read. Copy-books, usually wax, with copies expressing some s'criptural injunction, were used. Music, being of so much importance in the church services, received much time and attention. In arithmetic, counting and finger reck- oning, after the Roman plan, was taught. Latin was used in conversation as much as possible, some of the old lesson books much resembling conversation books of to-day in the modem languages (R. 75). Special attention seems to have been given to teaching rules of conduct to the ohlati,^ and much corporal punishment was used to facihtate learning. Up to the eleventh century this instruction, meager as it was, constituted the whole of the preparatory training necessary for the study of theology and a career in the Church. In the convents similar schools were developed, though, as stated in the last chapter, much more atten- tion was given to the education of those not intending to take the vows. Song and parish schools. In the cathedral churches, and other larger non-cathedral churches, the musical part of the service was very important, and to secure boys for the choir and for other church services these churches organized what came to be known as song schools (R. 70) . In these a number of promising boys were trained in the same studies and in much the same way as were boys in the monastery schools, except that much more attention was given to the musical instruction. The students in these schools were placed under the precentor (choir director) of the cathedral, or other large church, the scholasticus confining his attention to the higher or more literary instruction provided. The boys usually were given board, lodging, and instruction in return for their services as choristers. As the parish churches in the diocese also came to need boys for their services, parish schools of a similar nature were in time organized in connection ^ Anderson tells of a monastic student's notebook on conduct which has been preserved, and which "prescribes that the young man is to kneel when answering the Abbot, not to take a seat unasked, not to loll against the wall, nor fidget with things within reach. He is not to scratch himself, nor cross his legs like a tailor. He is to wash his hands bef-^re meals, keep his knife sharp and clean, not to seize upon vegetables, and not to use his spoon in the common dish." 152 HISTORY OF EDUCATION with them. It was out of this need, and by a very slow and gradual evolution, that the parish school in western Europe was developed later on. Chantry schools. Still another type- of elementary school, which did not arise until near the latter part of the period under consideration in this chapter, but which will be enumerated here as descriptive of a type which later became very common, came through wills, and the schools came to be known as chantry schools, or stipendary schools. Men, in dying, who felt themselves particu- larly in need of assistance for their misdeeds on earth, would leave a sum of money to a church to endow a priest, or sometimes two, who were to chant masses each day for the repose of their souls. Sometimes the property was left to endow a priest to say mass in honor of some special saint, and frequently of the Virgin Mary. As such priests usually felt the need for some other occu- pation, some of them began voluntarily to teach the elements of religion and learning to selected boys, and in time it became com- mon for those leaving money for the prayers to stipulate in the will that the priest should also teach a school. Usually a very elementary type of school was provided, where the children were taught to know the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Salutation to the Virgin, certain psalms, to sign themselves rightly with the sign of the cross, and perhaps to read and write (Latin). Some- times, on the contrary, and especially was this the case later on in England, a grammar school was ordered maintained. After the twelfth century this type of foundation (R. 73) became quite common. 2. Advanced instruction Cathedral and higher monastic schools. As the song schools developed the cathedral schools were of course freed from the necessity of teaching reading and writing, and could then develop more advanced instruction. This they did, as did many of the monasteries, and to these advanced schools those who felt the need for more training went. As grammar was, throughout all the early part of the Middle Ages, the first and most important subject of instruction, the advanced schools came to be known as grammar schools, as well as cathedral or episcopal schools (R. 72). The cathedral churches and monasteries of England and France early became celebrated for the high character of their instruction (R. 71) and the type of scholars they produced. All SCHOOLS AND INSTRUCTION PROVIDED 153 these schools, though, suffered a serious set-back during the period of the Danish and Norman invasions, many being totally destroyed. On the continent, due to the greater deluge of barbarism and the more unsettled condition of society, more difficulty was experienced in getting cathedral schools established, as the fol- lowing decree of the Lateran Church Council of 826 indicates: Complaints have been made that in some places no masters nor endowment for a grammar school is found. Therefore all bishops shall bestow all care and diligence, both for their subjects and for other places in which it shall be found necessary, to establish masters and teachers who shall assiduously teach grammar schools and the princi- ples of the liberal arts, because in these chiefly the commandments of God are manifest and declared. These two types of advanced schools — the cathedral or epis- copal and the monastic — formed what might be called the secon- dary-school system of the early Middle Ages (Rs. 70, 71). They were for at least six hundred years the only advanced teaching institutions in western Europe, and out of one or the other of these two types of advanced schools came practically all those who attained to leadership in the service of the Church in either of its two great branches. Still more, out of the impetus given to advanced study by the more important of these schools, the uni- versities of a later period developed; and numerous private gifts of lands and money were made to establish grammar schools to supplement the work done by the cathedral and other large church schools. The Seven Liberal Arts. The advanced studies which were offered in the more important monastery and cathedral schools comprised what came to be known as The Seven Liberal Arts ^ of the Middle Ages. The knowledge contained in these studies, taught as the advanced instruction of the period, represents the amount of secular learning which was intentionally preserved by the Church from neglect and destruction during the period of the barbarian deluges and the reconstruction of society. These Seven Liberal Arts were comprised of two divisions, known as: I. The Trivium: (i) Grammar; (2) Rhetoric; (3) Dialectic (Logic). II. The Quadrivium: (4) Arithmetic; (5) Geometry; (6) Astron- omy; (7) Music. ^ This expression came into common use in the fifth century, when the Christian writers summarized the ancient learning under these seven headings or studies, following earlier Greek and Roman classifications. (See p. 70). mNIVM?PHILQSOPHIg Fig. 44. The MEDiiEVAL System of Education summarized Allegorical representation of the progress and degrees of education, from an illumi- nated picture in the 1508 (Basel) edition of the Margarita Philosophica of Greg- ory de Reisch. The youth, having mastered the Hornbook (ABC's) and the rudiments of learning (reading, writing, and the beginnings of music and numbers), advances toward the temple of knowledge. Wisdom is about to place the key in the lock of the door of the temple. On the door is written the word congrnitas, signifying Grammar. (" Gramaire first hath for to teche to speke upon congruite.") On the first and second floors of the temple he studies the Grammar of Donatus, and of Priscian. and at the first stage at the left on the third floor he studies the Logic of Aristotle, followed by the Rhe- toric and Poetry of TuUy, thus completing the Trivium. The Arithmetic of Boe- thius also appears on the third floor. On the fourth floor he completes the studies of the Quadrmum, taking in order the Music of Pythagoras, Euclid's Geometry, and Ptolemy's Astronomy. The student now advances to the study of Philosophy, studying successively Physics, Seneca's Morals, and the Theology (or Metaphysics) of Peter Lombard, the last being the goal toward which all has been directed. SCHOOLS AND INSTRUCTION PROVIDED 155 Beyond these came Ethics or Metaphysics, and the greatest of all studies. Theology. This last represented the one professional study of the whole middle-age period, and was the goal toward which all the preceding studies had tended. This mediaeval sys- tem of education is well summarized in the drawing given on the opposite page, taken from an illuminated picture inserted in a ■famous mediaeval manuscript, recopied at Basle, Switzerland, in 1508. Not all these studies were taught in every monastery or cathe- dral school. Many of the lesser monasteries and schools offered instruction chiefly in grammar, and only a little of the studies beyond. Others emphasized the Trivium, and taught perhaps only a little of the second group. Only a few taught the full range of mediaeval learning, and these were regarded as the great schools of the times (R. 71). Rhabanus Maurus (776-865), one of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, Abbot for years at Fulda, and a mediaeval textbook writer of importance, has left us a good description of each of the Seven Liberal Arts studies as they were developed in his day, and their use in the Christian scheme of education (R. 74). I. THE TRIVIUM Of the three studies forming the Trivium, grammar always came first as the basal subject. No uniformity existed for the other two. I. Grammar. The foundation and source of all the Liberal Arts was grammar, it being, according to Maurus, "the science which teaches us to explain the poets and historians, and the art which qualifies us to speak and write correctly" (R. 74 a). In the introduction to an improved Latin grammar,^ published about 1 1 19, grammar is defined as ''The doorkeeper of all the other sciences, the apt expurgatrix of the stammering tongue, the serv- ant of logic, the mistress of rhetoric, the interpreter of theology, the rehef of medicine, and the praiseworthy foundation of the whole quadrivium." Figure 45, 'from one of the earliest books printed in English, also emphasizes the great importance of grammar with the words: ' Wythout whiche science (s)ycherly alle other sciences in especial ben of lytyl recomme(d)." In addition to grammar in the sense we know the study to-day, ^ The Docirinale, by Alexander de Villa Die. This was in rhyme, and became immensely popular. It was the favorite text until the fifteenth century. 156 HISTORY OF EDUCATION <5 grammar in the old Roman and mediaeval mind also included much of what we know as the analytical side of the study of liter- ature, such as comparison, analysis, versification, prosody, word _ rffof ^e S9 fete;