ATHENS

It has been my desire, were I able, to bring 25

before the reader what Athens may have been,

viewed as what we have since called a University;

and to do this, not with any purpose of writing

a panegyric on a heathen city, or of denying

its many deformities, or of concealing what was

morally base in what was intellectually great, but

just the contrary, of representing as they really 5

were; so far, that is, as to enable him to see what

a University is, in the very constitution of society

and in its own idea, what is its nature and object,

and what its needs of aid and support external to

itself to complete that nature and to secure that 10

object.

So now let us fancy our Scythian, or Armenian,

or African, or Italian, or Gallic student, after

tossing on the Saronic waves, which would be his

more ordinary course to Athens, at last casting 15

anchor at Piræus. He is of any condition or rank

of life you please, and may be made to order,

from a prince to a peasant. Perhaps he is some

Cleanthes, who has been a boxer in the public

games. How did it ever cross his brain to betake 20

himself to Athens in search of wisdom? or, if he

came thither by accident, how did the love of it

ever touch his heart? But so it was, to Athens he

came with three drachms in his girdle, and he got

his livelihood by drawing water, carrying loads, 25

and the like servile occupations. He attached

himself, of all philosophers, to Zeno the

Stoic,--to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most haughty

of speculators; and out of his daily earnings the

poor scholar brought his master the daily sum of 30

an obolus, in payment for attending his lectures.

Such progress did he make, that on Zeno's death

he actually was his successor in his school; and,

if my memory does not play me false, he is the

author of a hymn to the Supreme Being, which is

one of the noblest effusions of the kind in classical 5

poetry. Yet, even when he was the head of a

school, he continued in his illiberal toil as if he

had been a monk; and, it is said, that once, when

the wind took his pallium, and blew it aside, he

was discovered to have no other garment at 10

all--something like the German student who came up

to Heidelberg with nothing upon him but a great

coat and a pair of pistols.

Or it is another disciple of the Porch--Stoic

by nature, earlier than by profession--who is 15

entering the city; but in what different fashion

he comes! It is no other than Marcus, Emperor

of Rome and philosopher. Professors long since

were summoned from Athens for his service, when

he was a youth, and now he comes, after his 20

victories in the battlefield, to make his

acknowledgments at the end of life, to the city of wisdom, and

to submit himself to an initiation into the

Eleusinian mysteries.

Or it is a young man of great promise as an 25

orator, were it not for his weakness of chest, which

renders it necessary that he should acquire the art

of speaking without over-exertion, and should

adopt a delivery sufficient for the display of his

rhetorical talents on the one hand, yet merciful 30

to his physical resources on the other. He is

called Cicero; he will stop but a short time, and

will pass over to Asia Minor and its cities, before

he returns to continue a career which will render

his name immortal; and he will like his short

sojourn at Athens so well, that he will take good 5

care to send his son thither at an earlier age than

he visited it himself.

But see where comes from Alexandria (for we

need not be very solicitous about anachronisms),

a young man from twenty to twenty-two, who 10

has narrowly escaped drowning on his voyage,

and is to remain at Athens as many as eight or

ten years, yet in the course of that time will not

learn a line of Latin, thinking it enough to

become accomplished in Greek composition, and in 15

that he will succeed. He is a grave person, and

difficult to make out; some say he is a Christian,

something or other in the Christian line his father

is for certain. His name is Gregory, he is by

country a Cappadocian, and will in time become 20

preëminently a theologian, and one of the

principal Doctors of the Greek Church.

Or it is one Horace, a youth of low stature and

black hair, whose father has given him an

education at Rome above his rank in life, and now is 25

sending him to finish it at Athens; he is said to

have a turn for poetry: a hero he is not, and it

were well if he knew it; but he is caught by the

enthusiasm of the hour, and goes off campaigning

with Brutus and Cassius, and will leave his shield 30

behind him on the field of Philippi.

Or it is a mere boy of fifteen: his name

Eunapius; though the voyage was not long, sea

sickness, or confinement, or bad living on board the

vessel, threw him into a fever, and, when the

passengers landed in the evening at Piræus, he 5

could not stand. His countrymen who

accompanied him, took him up among them and carried

him to the house of the great teacher of the day,

Proæresius, who was a friend of the captain's,

and whose fame it was which drew the 10

enthusiastic youth to Athens. His companions

understand the sort of place they are in, and, with the

license of academic students, they break into the

philosopher's house, though he appears to have

retired for the night, and proceed to make 15

themselves free of it, with an absence of ceremony,

which is only not impudence, because Proæresius

takes it so easily. Strange introduction for our

stranger to a seat of learning, but not out of

keeping with Athens; for what could you expect of a 20

place where there was a mob of youths and not

even the pretense of control; where the poorer

lived any how, and got on as they could, and the

teachers themselves had no protection from the

humors and caprices of the students who filled 25

their lecture halls? However, as to this

Eunapius, Proæresius took a fancy to the boy, and told

him curious stories about Athenian life. He

himself had come up to the University with one

Hephæstion, and they were even worse off than 30

Cleanthes the Stoic; for they had only one cloak

between them, and nothing whatever besides,

except some old bedding; so when Proæresius

went abroad, Hephæstion lay in bed, and

practiced himself in oratory; and then Hephæstion

put on the cloak, and Proæresius crept under the 5

coverlet. At another time there was so fierce

a feud between what would be called "town and

gown" in an English University, that the

Professors did not dare lecture in public, for fear of

ill treatment. 10

But a freshman like Eunapius soon got

experience for himself of the ways and manners

prevalent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardly

entered the city, when he was caught hold of by

a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to 15

practice on his awkwardness and his ignorance.

At first sight one wonders at their childishness;

but the like conduct obtained in the mediæval

Universities; and not many months have passed

away since the journals have told us of sober 20

Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations,

and to the anxieties of money making, pelting

each other with snowballs on their own sacred

territory, and defying the magistracy, when they

would interfere with their privileges of 25

becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to

something or other in human nature. Meanwhile,

there stands the newcomer, surrounded by a circle

of his new associates, who forthwith proceed to

frighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him, 30

to the extent of their wit. Some address him with

mock politeness, others with fierceness; and so

they conduct him in solemn procession across the

Agora to the Baths; and as they approach, they

dance about him like madmen. But this was to

be the end of his trial, for the Bath was a sort of 5

initiation; he thereupon received the pallium, or

University gown, and was suffered by his

tormentors to depart in peace. One alone is

recorded as having been exempted from this

persecution; it was a youth graver and loftier than 10

even St. Gregory himself: but it was not from his

force of character, but at the instance of Gregory,

that he escaped. Gregory was his bosom friend,

and was ready in Athens to shelter him when

he came. It was another Saint and Doctor; the 15

great Basil, then, (it would appear,) as Gregory,

but a catechumen of the Church.

But to return to our freshman. His troubles

are not at an end, though he has got his gown

upon him. Where is he to lodge? whom is he 20

to attend? He finds himself seized, before he

well knows where he is, by another party of men

or three or four parties at once, like foreign

porters at a landing, who seize on the baggage of the

perplexed stranger, and thrust half a dozen cards 25

into his unwilling hands. Our youth is plied by

the hangers-on of professor this, or sophist that,

each of whom wishes the fame or the profit of

having a houseful. We will say that he escapes

from their hands,--but then he will have to 30

choose for himself where he will put up; and, to

tell the truth, with all the praise I have already

given, and the praise I shall have to give, to

the city of mind, nevertheless, between ourselves,

the brick and wood which formed it, the actual

tenements, where flesh and blood had to lodge 5

(always excepting the mansions of great men of

the place), do not seem to have been much better

than those of Greek or Turkish towns, which are

at this moment a topic of interest and ridicule

in the public prints. A lively picture has lately 10

been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, says the

writer,[41] a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses

found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety

old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless

structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls, 15

which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or

river-sides can supply; tumble them down on the

declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces

between house and house, thus accidentally

determined, be understood to form streets, winding of 20

course for no reason, and with no meaning, up and

down the town; the roadway always narrow, the

breadth never uniform, the separate houses

bulging or retiring below, as circumstances may have

determined, and leaning forward till they meet 25

overhead--and you have a good idea of

Gallipoli. I question whether this picture would

not nearly correspond to the special seat of the

Muses in ancient times. Learned writers assure

us distinctly that the houses of Athens were for 30

the most part small and mean; that the streets

were crooked and narrow; that the upper stories

projected over the roadway; and that staircases,

balustrades, and doors that opened outwards

obstructed it--a remarkable coincidence of 5

description. I do not doubt at all, though

history is silent, that that roadway was jolting to

carriages, and all but impassable; and that it

was traversed by drains, as freely as any Turkish

town now. Athens seems in these respects to 10

have been below the average cities of its time.

"A stranger," says an ancient, "might doubt, on

the sudden view, if really he saw Athens."

[41] Mr. Russell's Letters in the _Times_ newspaper (1854).

I grant all this, and much more, if you will;

but, recollect, Athens was the home of the 15

intellectual and beautiful; not of low mechanical

contrivances and material organization. Why

stop within your lodgings counting the rents in

your wall or the holes in your tiling, when nature

and art call you away? You must put up with 20

such a chamber, and a table, and a stool, and a

sleeping board, anywhere else in the three

continents; one place does not differ from another

indoors; your magalia in Africa, or your grottoes

in Syria are not perfection. I suppose you did 25

not come to Athens to swarm up a ladder, or to

grope about a closet: you came to see and to

hear, what hear and see you could not elsewhere.

What food for the intellect is it possible to

procure indoors, that you stay there looking about 30

you? do you think to read there? where are your

books? do you expect to purchase books at

Athens--you are much out in your calculations.

True it is, we at this day, who live in the

nineteenth century, have the books of Greece as a

perpetual memorial; and copies there have been, 5

since the time that they were written; but you

need not go to Athens to procure them, nor would

you find them in Athens. Strange to say, strange

to the nineteenth century, that in the age of Plato

and Thucydides, there was not, it is said, a 10

bookshop in the whole place; nor was the book trade

in existence till the very time of Augustus.

Libraries, I suspect, were the bright invention of

Attalus or the Ptolemies;[42] I doubt whether

Athens had a library till the reign of Hadrian. 15

It was what the student gazed on, what he heard,

what he caught by the magic of sympathy, not

what he read, which was the education furnished

by Athens.

[42] I do not go into controversy on the subject, for which the

reader must have recourse to Lipsius, Morhof, Boeckh, Bekker, etc.;

and this of course applies to whatever historical matter I

introduce, or shall introduce.

He leaves his narrow lodging early in the 20

morning; and not till night, if even then, will he

return. It is but a crib or kennel, in which

he sleeps when the weather is inclement or the

ground damp; in no respect a home. And he

goes out of doors, not to read the day's 25

newspaper, or to buy the gay shilling volume, but to

imbibe the invisible atmosphere of genius, and

to learn by heart the oral traditions of taste.

Out he goes; and, leaving the tumble-down

town behind him, he mounts the Acropolis to

the right, or he turns to the Areopagus on the left.

He goes to the Parthenon to study the sculptures 5

of Phidias; to the temple of the Dioscuri to see

the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed take

our Sophocles or Æschylus out of our coat pocket;

but, if our sojourner at Athens would understand

how a tragic poet can write, he must betake 10

himself to the theater on the south, and see and

hear the drama literally in action. Or let him go

westward to the Agora, and there he will hear

Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes

haranguing. He goes farther west still, along the 15

shade of those noble planes, which Cimon has

planted there; and he looks around him at the

statues and porticoes and vestibules, each by

itself a work of genius and skill, enough to be the

making of another city. He passes through the 20

city gate, and then he is at the famous Ceramicus;

here are the tombs of the mighty dead; and here,

we will suppose, is Pericles himself, the most

elevated, the most thrilling of orators, converting a

funeral oration over the slain into a philosophical 25

panegyric of the living.

Onwards he proceeds still; and now he has

come to that still more celebrated Academe,

which has bestowed its own name on Universities

down to this day; and there he sees a sight which 30

will be graven on his memory till he dies. Many

are the beauties of the place, the groves, and the

statues, and the temple, and the stream of the

Cephissus flowing by; many are the lessons

which will be taught him day after day by teacher

or by companion; but his eye is just now arrested 5

by one object; it is the very presence of Plato.

He does not hear a word that he says; he does

not care to hear; he asks neither for discourse

nor disputation; what he sees is a whole,

complete in itself, not to be increased by addition, and 10

greater than anything else. It will be a point in

the history of his life; a stay for his memory to

rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of

union with men of like mind, ever afterwards.

Such is the spell which the living man exerts on 15

his fellows, for good or for evil. How nature

impels us to lean upon others, making virtue, or

genius, or name, the qualification for our doing

so! A Spaniard is said to have traveled to Italy,

simply to see Livy; he had his fill of gazing, and 20

then went back again home. Had our young

stranger got nothing by his voyage but the sight

of the breathing and moving Plato, had he

entered no lecture room to hear, no gymnasium to

converse, he had got some measure of education, 25

and something to tell of to his grandchildren.

But Plato is not the only sage, nor the sight of

him the only lesson to be learned in this

wonderful suburb. It is the region and the realm

of philosophy. Colleges were the inventions of 30

many centuries later; and they imply a sort of

cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely

natural to an Athenian. It was the boast of the

philosophic statesman of Athens, that his

countrymen achieved by the mere force of nature and

the love of the noble and the great, what other 5

people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all

who came among them were submitted to the

same method of education. We have traced our

student on his wanderings from the Acropolis to

the Sacred Way; and now he is in the region of 10

the schools. No awful arch, no window of

many-colored lights marks the seats of learning there

or elsewhere; philosophy lives out of doors. No

close atmosphere oppresses the brain or inflames

the eyelid; no long session stiffens the limbs. 15

Epicurus is reclining in his garden; Zeno looks

like a divinity in his porch; the restless Aristotle,

on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism

to Plato, is walking his pupils off their legs in his

Lyceum by the Ilyssus. Our student has 20

determined on entering himself as a disciple of

Theophrastus, a teacher of marvelous popularity, who

has brought together two thousand pupils from

all parts of the world. He himself is of Lesbos;

for masters, as well as students, come hither from 25

all regions of the earth--as befits a University.

How could Athens have collected hearers in such

numbers, unless she had selected teachers of such

power? it was the range of territory, which the

notion of a University implies, which furnished 30

both the quantity of the one and the quality of

the other. Anaxagoras was from Ionia, Carneades

from Africa, Zeno from Cyprus, Protagoras from

Thrace, and Gorgias from Sicily. Andromachus

was a Syrian, Proæresius an Armenian, Hilarius

a Bithynian, Philiscus a Thessalian, Hadrian a 5

Syrian. Rome is celebrated for her liberality in

civil matters; Athens was as liberal in

intellectual. There was no narrow jealousy, directed

against a Professor, because he was not an

Athenian; genius and talent were the qualifications; 10

and to bring them to Athens, was to do homage

to it as a University. There was a brotherhood

and a citizenship of mind.

Mind came first, and was the foundation of the

academical polity; but it soon brought along with 15

it, and gathered round itself, the gifts of fortune

and the prizes of life. As time went on, wisdom

was not always sentenced to the bare cloak of

Cleanthes; but, beginning in rags, it ended in

fine linen. The Professors became honorable 20

and rich; and the students ranged themselves

under their names, and were proud of calling

themselves their countrymen. The University

was divided into four great nations, as the

mediæval antiquarian would style them; and in the 25

middle of the fourth century, Proæresius was the

leader or proctor of the Attic, Hephæstion of

the Oriental, Epiphanius of the Arabic, and

Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors

were both patrons of clients, and hosts and 30

_proxeni_ of strangers and visitors, as well as masters

of the schools: and the Cappadocian, Syrian,

or Sicilian youth who came to one or other of

them, would be encouraged to study by his

protection, and to aspire by his example.

Even Plato, when the schools of Athens were 5

not a hundred years old, was in circumstances

to enjoy the _otium cum dignitate_. He had a villa

out at Heraclea; and he left his patrimony to

his school, in whose hands it remained, not only

safe, but fructifying, a marvelous phenomenon in 10

tumultuous Greece, for the long space of eight

hundred years. Epicurus too had the property

of the Gardens where he lectured; and these too

became the property of his sect. But in Roman

times the chairs of grammar, rhetoric, politics, 15

and the four philosophies were handsomely

endowed by the State; some of the Professors

were themselves statesmen or high functionaries,

and brought to their favorite study senatorial

rank or Asiatic opulence. 20

Patrons such as these can compensate to the

freshman, in whom we have interested ourselves,

for the poorness of his lodging and the turbulence

of his companions. In everything there is a

better side and a worse; in every place a 25

disreputable set and a respectable, and the one is

hardly known at all to the other. Men come

away from the same University at this day, with

contradictory impressions and contradictory

statements, according to the society they have found 30

there; if you believe the one, nothing goes on

there as it should be: if you believe the other,

nothing goes on as it should _not_. Virtue,

however, and decency are at least in the minority

everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud or

disadvantage; and this being the case, it is so 5

much gain whenever an Herodes Atticus is found,

to throw the influence of wealth and station on

the side even of a decorous philosophy. A

consular man, and the heir of an ample fortune, this

Herod was content to devote his life to a 10

professorship, and his fortune to the patronage of

literature. He gave the sophist Polemo about

eight thousand pounds, as the sum is calculated,

for three declamations. He built at Athens a

stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white 15

marble, and capable of admitting the whole

population. His theater, erected to the memory of

his wife, was made of cedar wood curiously carved.

He had two villas, one at Marathon, the place of

his birth, about ten miles from Athens, the other 20

at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and thither

he drew to him the _élite_, and at times the whole

body of the students. Long arcades, groves of

trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and

recruited the summer visitor. Never was so 25

brilliant a lecture room as his evening

banqueting hall; highly connected students from Rome

mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece

or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the

nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, 30

met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable

to his deserts. Herod was noted for his

repartees; and we have instances on record of

his setting down, according to the emergency,

both the one and the other.

A higher line, though a rarer one, was that 5

allotted to the youthful Basil. He was one of

those men who seem by a sort of fascination to

draw others around them even without wishing

it. One might have deemed that his gravity and

his reserve would have kept them at a distance; 10

but, almost in spite of himself, he was the center

of a knot of youths, who, pagans as most of them

were, used Athens honestly for the purpose for

which they professed to seek it; and, disappointed

and displeased with the place himself, he seems 15

nevertheless to have been the means of their

profiting by its advantages. One of these was

Sophronius, who afterwards held a high office in

the State: Eusebius was another, at that time

the bosom friend of Sophronius, and afterwards 20

a Bishop. Celsus too is named, who afterwards

was raised to the government of Cilicia by the

Emperor Julian. Julian himself, in the sequel of

unhappy memory, was then at Athens, and known

at least to St. Gregory. Another Julian is also 25

mentioned, who was afterwards commissioner of

the land tax. Here we have a glimpse of the better

kind of society among the students of Athens; and

it is to the credit of the parties composing it,

that such young men as Gregory and Basil, men 30

as intimately connected with Christianity, as they

were well known in the world, should hold so high

a place in their esteem and love. When the two

saints were departing, their companions came

around them with the hope of changing their

purpose. Basil persevered; but Gregory relented, 5

and turned back to Athens for a season.