* 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 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 16. 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.

[Illustration: FIG. 16. 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.]

[Illustration: FIG. 17. THE PRINCIPAL ROMAN ROADS]

By a wise policy of tolerance, patience, conciliation, and assimilation

the Latins gradually became the masters of all Italy. Unlike the Greek

City-States, Rome seemed to possess a natural genius for the art of

government. Upon the people she conquered 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 understanding 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 century, 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 concrete, 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 personality. The long struggle for political and social

rights, [1] carried on by the common people (_plebeians_) with the ruling

class (_patricians_), tended early to shape their government along rough

but practical lines, [2] 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 became may be seen from the map

on the following page--called still more for a combination of force,

leadership, tolerance, patience, 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 [3]

[Illustration: FIG. 18. 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 1100 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.]

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 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 independence and

freedom in government, under her strong control of general affairs; opened

up her citizenship [4] and the line of promotion in the State to her

provincials; [5] and won them to the peace and good order which she

everywhere imposed by the advantages 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. [6] In consequence, the provincial was willingly absorbed into the

common Roman race [7]--absorbed in dress, manners, religion, political and

legal institutions, family names, and, most important 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 accepted in

return the Roman government and Roman law, and Latin in time became the

language of the courts and of government.

Having stated thus briefly the most prominent characteristics of the Roman

people, and indicated their great work for civilization, let us turn back

and trace the development of such educational system as existed among

them, see in what it consisted, how it modified the life and habits of

thinking of the Roman people, 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 education 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, seriousness, 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 virtues. 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

[8] 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 and a

citizen; the mother trained the daughter to become a good housekeeper,

wife, and mother. Morality, character, obedience to parents and to the

State, and whole-hearted service were emphasized. 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

followed his father in the fields and in the public place and listened to

the conversation of men. [9] If the son of a patrician 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. [10]

[Illustration: FIG. 19. A ROMAN FATHER INSTRUCTING HIS SON

(From a Roman Sarcophagus)]

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. [11] 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 necessary virtue. To be healthy

and strong, to 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 training. It

produced a nation of citizens who willingly subordinated themselves to the

interests of the State, [12] 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 EDUCATION

BEGINNINGS OF SCHOOL EDUCATION. Up to about 300 B.C. education 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 Graecia_), and the influence

of the extensive conquests 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 patronized 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 rule to

include nearly all the Italian peninsula (see Figure 16), and was

transforming itself politically from a little rural City-State into an

Empire, with large world relationships. A knowledge of Greek now came to

be demanded both for diplomatic and for business reasons, and the need of

a larger culture, to correspond 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., Livius Andronicus, who had been brought to Rome as a slave

when Tarentum, one of the Greek cities of southern Italy, was captured,

[13] 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

supplanting 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 beginnings 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 life. 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 provinces, which followed

their capture, soon had a very demoralizing influence upon the people.

Private and public religion and morality rapidly declined; religion came

to be an empty ceremonial; 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 families,

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. [14] Wealth became the great desideratum, and the

great avenue to this was through the public service, either as army

commanders and governors, or as public men who could sway the multitude

and command votes and influence. Manifestly the old type of education was

not intended to meet such needs, and now in Rome, as previously 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 Hellenization 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 led them to

open so-called "culture schools" of their own, modeled 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.

[Illustration: FIG. 20. CATO THE ELDER (234-149 B.C.)]

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 citizen needed as an

orator, husbandman, jurist, and warrior, and in part as a protest 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 expressing 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 language,

literature, and learning were spread, under Roman imperial protection, to

every corner of the then civilized world. This victory 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 _ludus_,

or _ludus literarum_, the teacher of which was known 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 mastering the

reading art (R. 21). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian 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

differences, 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.

[Illustration: FIG. 21. ROMAN WRITING-MATERIALS.

Inkstand, pen, letter, box of manuscripts, wax tablets, stylus.]

Writing seems rather to have followed reading, and, as in the Greek

schools, the pupils copied down from dictation and made their own books

(_dictata_). Literature received no such emphasis in the elementary

schools of Rome as in those of the Greeks, and the _palaestra_ 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, [15] to the practice 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. [16]

Hence it occupied 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 schoolboy's

equipment.

[Illustration: FIG. 22. A ROMAN COUNTING-BOARD.

Pebbles were used, those nearest the numbered dividing 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.]

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 attendance at these primary schools was

wholly voluntary, 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-adventure undertakings, the State doing nothing toward

encouraging their establishment, 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, usually at some

understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the

liberality of their pupils. [17] The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was

nearly always an old or infirm slave of the family.

[Illustration: FIG. 23. A ROMAN PRIMARY SCHOOL(_Ludus_)

(From a fresco found at Herculaneum). This shows a school held in a

portico of a house.]

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 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 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 schoolmaster 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, 149 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 correctness 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

practiced was much as follows: The selection was carefully read first by

the teacher, and then by the pupils. [18] After the reading the selection

was gone over again and the historical, geographical, and mythological

allusions were carefully explained by the teacher. [19] The text was next

critically examined, to point out where and how it might be improved and

its expressions strengthened, 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 foundations were

here laid for Grammar and Rhetoric as the great studies of the Middle

Ages.

Homer and Menander were the favorite authors in Greek, and Vergil, Horace,

Sallust, and Livy in Latin, with much use of _Aesop'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 literature 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 control over these schools or the teachers or pupils in

them.

THE SCHOOLS OF RHETORIC. Up to this point the schools established 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 developed, to train youths in

rhetoric and oratory, preparatory to the great professions of law and

public life at Rome. [20] These schools were direct descendants of the

Greek rhetorical schools, which evolved from the schools of the Sophists.

Suetonius [21] 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. [22] ...

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 flourished 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_, furnished a

type of education representing a sort of collegiate education 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 mathematical 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 these schools. [23] The great studies, though, were the

first three and some Law, Music being studied largely to help with

gestures and to train the voice, Geometry to aid in settling lawsuits

relating 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. [24] 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, [25] 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).

[Illustration: FIG. 24. A ROMAN SCHOOL OF RHETORIC.

This picture, which has been drawn from a description, shows a much better

type of school than that of the _ludi_.]

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. [26] 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 contributed 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 salaries of grammarians and rhetoricians [27] 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

senatorial 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. Brutus, Horace, and Cicero, among others, studied at

Athens; Caesar, 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 instruction represented nothing, however, in

the way of scientific investigation or creative thought; the instruction

was formal and dogmatic, 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. Having

borrowed--conquered one might almost say--Greek religion, 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 Roman 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

characteristics 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).

[Illustration: FIG. 25. THE ROMAN VOLUNTARY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, AS FINALLY

EVOLVED]

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 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 Quintilian (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. [28]

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 their 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 preparation 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 private and

tuition system of schools many capable political leaders and executives

came--men who exercised great influence on the history of the State,

fought out her political 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. [29] It was in this direction, and in

practical and constructive 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 importance for the future of

civilization in the world, along with the ability of Greece in literature

and philosophy and art. "If," 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 tendencies. The Romans, on the other hand, were

an unimaginative, concrete, practical, and constructive nation. Greece

made its great contribution to world civilization in literature and

philosophy and art; Rome in law and order and government. The Greeks lived

a life 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 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. Usefulness 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 Romanized

barbarian tribes, they built roads connecting all parts of their Empire

that were the best the world had ever known, their aqueducts 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, commercial processes, and engineering

undertakings, while the Greeks left to us a philosophy, literature, art,

and a world culture which 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 [30] 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 derived, 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 modified 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 overrun the Empire,

and it remained as the law of the courts wherever Roman subjects were

tried. Preserved and codified at Constantinople 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, Roman law has greatly modified all modern legal

practices and has become the basis of the legal systems of a number of

modern states. [31]

[Illustration: FIG. 26. ORIGIN OF 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.]

Of all the Roman contributions to modern 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 Phoenicians. This

alphabet has become the common property of almost all the civilized world.

[32] 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 civilized world, and by one third of its inhabitants, 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 mediaeval and modern Europe, should be

mentioned certain practical knowledge in agriculture and the mechanic

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 architectural 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 practices 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 developed 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.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Contrast the Romans as a colonizing power with the modern Germans. The

English. 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? Different?

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 contacts,

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 likely to be

demoralizing? How may the demoralization incident to such expansion be

anticipated 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 percentage

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?

22. What does the exclusive devotion of these schools to such studies

indicate 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

reproduced:

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.

(b) 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.

(b) To a Schoolmaster.

24. Cicero: Oratory the Aim of Education.

25. Quintilian: 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

judgment as to the relative merits of the old and the new education: (_a_)

as a means of training youths? (_b_) 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

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) indicate

as to the nature of the schools, school discipline, 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 Education_.

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 Mediaeval 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 religion 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. [1] 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 everyday life, and having

little or no relation to personal morality. [2] 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 allegiance to the central government at Rome, and seemed to

form the basis for a universal religion for a universal empire.

FEELING THE 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 ceremonies 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

indulged 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 controlled affairs. This

philosophy in a way met the need for a religion among the better-educated

Romans, and made considerable headway during the early days of the Empire.

[3] While serving 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 religion that would touch all

mankind. To do this it must appeal to the emotions 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.

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 contribution 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 wandering,

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 contributions 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 Mediterranean world,

emphasized duty to God, service, personal morality, 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.

[4] 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 overrun and they

were carried captive to Babylon, in 588 B.C., the Pentateuch [5] had been

reduced to writing and made an authoritative 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 expounded. 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, ceremonial, civil, and sanitary law, these

scribes became both teachers and judges for the people. In time they

became the depositaries 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 interpretations, 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 provide this instruction, the leaders provided it and made it

compulsory. Great open-air Bible classes were organized at first, and

these were gradually extended to all the villages of the country.

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, and

learning by heart was the common teaching plan. The child was taught the

Law of his fathers, trained to make holiness 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 traditions of his people.

After the destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) and the scatterment 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,

[6] 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 emphasis on charity,

sympathy, self-sacrifice, and the brotherhood 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 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 philosophy, and especially Stoicism, he gave thirty

years of most effective service to the establishment of Christian churches

[7] 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 practice, the Christians

proclaimed the sacredness of the marriage tie and the family life, 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 Christians held to be

sinful idol-worship, a deadly sin in the eyes of God, 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 anybody 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 [8] 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

[9] 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 crucifixion Christian churches had been established throughout almost

all the Roman world. This is well shown by the map on the opposite 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 conviction 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 that Rome had

everywhere established; [10] the Roman peace (_pax Romana_) 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; [11] the scatterment of Jews throughout the

Empire, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.--all these elements

also helped.

[ILLUSTRATION: FIG. 27. THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE END OF THE

FOURTH CENTURY]

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 Chrestus" 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 sacrifices 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 conditions in the Empire--war, famine, floods, pestilence, and

barbarian 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 become 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 equality with other forms of worship (R.

36). In 313 Constantine made it in part the official religion of the State

[12] and ordered freedom of worship for all. He and succeeding Emperors

gradually extended to the Christian clergy a long list of important

privileges (R. 38) and exemptions, [13] 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 endowing 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

remained the center of pagan thought after the success of Christianity,

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 narrow tribal limitations to which it had before been subject,

Christianity made possible its general acceptance, first in the Roman

world, and later in the Mohammedan world. [14] 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

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

became powerful enough to perform its great task during 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. [15] 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 subjected 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 instruction. They cover the essentials of

church practice and the religious 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 little 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 provide 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? [16]

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 rudimentary 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 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. Pantaenus, 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,

Nisibis, and Caesarea (See Map, p. 89), 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 reconcile Christianity and Greek philosophic thinking. [17]

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 decadent 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 Hellenic

learning had here become pronounced (R. 41). Even the Fathers of the Latin

Church, the greatest of whom had been teachers of oratory or rhetoric in

Roman schools before their conversion, [18] gradually came to reject the

pagan learning as undesirable 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 [19] was known

and quoted throughout the Middle Ages. Tertullian, in his _Prescription

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. "I 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, concluding 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 Augustine, 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. [20]

THE CHURCH PERFECTS A STRONG ORGANIZATION. As was previously stated (p.

92), but little need was felt during the first two centuries for a system

of belief or church government. As the expected return of Christ did not

take place, and as the need for a formulation 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

Nicaea, 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.

[Illustration: FIG. 28. A BISHOP

Seventh Century (Santo Venanzio, Rome)]

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 practical, 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 universal Empire, and as the city of Rome

had been the chief governing city, [21] the idea of a universal Church was

natural and the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome was gradually asserted and

determined. [22]

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 Christianity, 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 throughout the

Empire were in the cities, and made their early converts there. [23]

Gradually these important cities evolved into the residences 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 parishes, 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 properly trained clergy and to provide for promotions in

the clerical ranks, schools of a rudimentary type were established in

connection 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 increased, the

school was placed under a special teacher, known as a _Scholasticus_, or

_Magister Scholarum_, who directed the cathedral 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

profession 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

monasticism, 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 monasticism into Asia Minor,

where it flourished greatly. In 370 the Basilian order was founded. The

monastic idea was soon transferred to the West, a monastery being

established at Rome probably as early as 340. The monastery of Saint

Victor, at Marseilles, 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 established in

405. During the fifth century a rapid extension of monastic foundations

took place in western Europe, particularly along the valleys of the Rhone

and the Loire in Gaul.

[Illustration: FIG. 29. A BENEDICTINE MONK, ABBOT, AND ABBESS

(From a thirteenth-century manuscript)]

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 establishments, many of

which were large and expensive institutions both to found and to maintain.

[24] By the time the barbarian invasions 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.

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

development 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

consecrated 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 extensive development, and offered

the chief opportunity for any intellectual education for women during the

whole of the Middle Ages.

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 exhortation 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 educational 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 in time

took captive the entire Mediterranean world and profoundly 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 out conceptions of law, order, and government, and

for the ability to make practical and carry into effect the ideals of

other peoples. To the Hebrews we are indebted for the world's loftiest

conceptions 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

language 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 Western, 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 literature 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 ignorance through which it passed, and only in

modern times has it tried to come back to the spirit of the teachings of

its founder.

[Illustration: 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 Constantinople 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 Graecia_), but eventually

these were absorbed by western or Latin Christianity.]

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 barbarian hordes, and had built up the

foundations upon which a new civilization could be developed, that

education in any broad and liberal sense was again needed. This required

nearly a thousand 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 educational thoughts and practices.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Point out the many advantages of a universal religion for such a

universal 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

maintaining 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 finally 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? Why?

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

Christian or the pagan attitude more nearly like that of modern times?

17. Why did the emphasis on form of belief, 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

reproduced:

27. The Talmud: Educational Maxims from.

28. Saint Paul: Epistle to the Romans.

29. Saint Paul: To the Athenians.

30. The Crimes of the Christians.

(a) Minucius 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.

(b) Trajan to Pliny.

32. Tertullian: Effect of the Persecutions.

33. Eusebius: 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 Galerius.

37. Theodosian Code: The Faith of Catholic Christians.

38. Theodosian Code: Privileges and Immunities granted the Clergy.

39. Apostolic 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?

5. Compare the privileges and immunities granted the clergy (38) with the

privileges previously given by Constantine to physicians and teachers

(26).

6. Characterize the irrepressible conflict as pictured by Kingsley (35).

Name a few other somewhat similar conflicts in world history.

7. Outline the type of instruction for catechumens as directed in the

Apostolic Constitutions (39).

8. What would have been the effect of the continued rejection of secular

books called for in the Apostolic 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. _Mediaeval Civilization_.

* Swift, F. H. _Education in Ancient Israel to 70 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 DELUGE OF BARBARISM

THE MEDIAEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REËSTABLISH 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, [1] 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 accustomed; 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

ruling 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 establish and direct an educational system capable

of serving as a corrective of dangerous national tendencies, the lack of a

guiding national faith, the gradual admission of so many Germans into the

Empire, the great extent and demoralizing influence of slavery [2]--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 introduction of large numbers of

barbarians as farmers and soldiers; and the demoralization of the city

rabble by political leaders 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. [3] The great middle,

commercial, and professional classes were still prosperous and contented,

but luxury, imported vices, slavery, political corruption, and new ideals

[4] had gradually 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 the shell of a fine old tree, apparently in good

condition, but in reality 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.

[Illustration: 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.]

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 166 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 18), 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 Visigoths, 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 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 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.

[Illustration: 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.]

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, plundering the cities on their way.

Finally they crossed to the northern 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 Germany, 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 civilization,

of this battle in the West can hardly be overestimated. The future of

European government, law, education, and civilization was settled on that

Saturday afternoon in October, on the battle plains of Tours. [5] It was a

struggle for mastery and dominion 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.

[Illustration: FIG. 33. 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

civilization.]

Driven back across the Pyrenees by the Franks, these people settled in

Spain; later developed there, for a short period, a for-the-time

remarkable civilization, but one that only slightly influenced 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 civilization 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 assimilated 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 themselves

by hunting and fishing--it is not to be wondered that Rome dreaded the

coming of these forest barbarians (R. 46).

[Illustration: FIG 34. A GERMAN WAR CHIEF

Restored, and rather idealized (From the Musée d'Artillerie at Paris)]

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 civilization not particularly different from that of the better

American Indians in our colonial period, [6] though possessing a much

larger ability to learn. The "two terrible centuries" which brought these

new peoples into the Empire were marked by unspeakable disorder and

frightful destruction. It was the most complete catastrophe that had ever

befallen civilized society.

[Illustration: 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.]

THEY SETTLE DOWN WITHIN THE EMPIRE. Finally, after a period of wandering

and plundering, each of these new peoples settled down within the Empire

as rulers over the numerically larger native Roman population, and slowly

began to turn from hunting to a rude type of farming. For three or four

centuries after the invasions ceased, though, Europe presented a dreary

spectacle of ignorance, lawlessness, and violence. 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 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

centuries, and during the period the lamp of learning almost went out.