430 Anecdotes of Public Schools and Literary Establishments. (Dec.1, 
schcols of Greete, where Plato, Zeno, 
Aristotle, Aristippus, were the schoulmus- 
ters. The latter was theVoltaire of Greece: 
many females of celebrity attended his 
school. ‘To Pisistratus we owe the foun- 
dation of public libraries; for it was he 
who first opened his own to the ‘public. 
The library of Apellicon preserved the 
books of Aristotle. 
In the time of Alexander, the firse 
botanical gardens, and the first cabinet of 
natural history, appeared in Greece. One 
of the Ptolemies, his successor at Alex- 
andria, caused the reappearance of Ezypt 
on the literary stage; he founded there a 
museum, and the library of the Bruchion, 
which contained at first 100,000 volumes, 
and was encreased to the number of 
700,000, of which $00,000 were deposited 
in Rachotis, a subarb of Alexandria. 
Sicily was but a part of Greece, and 
had her own public schools (whose pro- 
fessors received salaries from the govern- 
ment), at the time when Charondas was 
the legislator of Catania. Ctesias, of 
Leontium (now Leontini), taught rhetoric 
to his countrymen. There were schools 
at Messina and at Himera (now Termini), 
which produced the famous Epicharmus, 
inventor of the modern comedy. 
Music was publicly taught in Sicily, and 
throughout the kingdom of Naples. The 
modern Encyclopedists have their pro- 
totypes among the Greeks of Sicily; for 
such were Docearchus, of Messina, and 
Gorgias, of Leontium, of whom the for- 
mer wrote a Treatise on Geography (one 
art of which yet remains to us), and the 
atter, Orations, which have come down 
to us in ruins, 
' The Prytanea were places of instruc- 
tion supported by government, of which 
there were twelve or fifteen in Greece and 
the colonies. The word museum is found 
among the Greek writers, as signifying a 
collection of things relative to the Fine 
Arts, and a place where literature was 
taught ;* there was an_ establish- 
ment of this kind at Athens, at Sta- 
gira (the birth-place of Aristotle), and at 
Troezene. Strabo mentions one at Alex- 
andria also, where mathematicians, philo- 
sophers, rhetoricians, and poets, were 
maintained and honoured. He applies to 
it, indiscriminately, the terms museum 
and college. 
From Greece we immediately pass 
over to Rome, which had its schools at 
the beginning of the fourth century, 
after the building of the city.. Dionysius, 
* Athen, et Cas, in'Athen. |. 
of Halicarnassus, relates that Appius Clau- 
dius, the Decemvir, saw the daughter of 
Lucius Virginius, for the first time, while’ 
she was readingin a school, If any cre 
dit is to be given to this passage, we must 
conclude that Rome, so decried for har- 
barity and ignorance, contained schools, 
not only for their men, but for their wo- 
men also. They confined them, how- 
éver, tu the rudiments of instruction; for 
the spirit of their government, and seve- 
rity of their manners, did not adinit of 
a more extensive system of education, 
Rhetoricians and sophists dared to 
open new schools, in which they pre- 
tended to establish new methods of in- 
struction ; but the Romans did not suffer 
it, looking upon it as a dangerous inno- 
vation. A state yet in its infancy, sure 
rounded with powerful enemies, was 
obliged to be circumspect and distrust- 
ful; and the decree of Domitius A.no- 
barbus and L. Licinius Crassus, the cen 
sors, shut up the schools. : 
The Romans, at the same time they 
adopted the Greek philosophy, intro- 
duced all the different systems of the 
Greek philosophers; but their sectaries 
had no rendezvous for the purpose of 
public disputation. Some pretend that 
Stigidius Figulus held a school of Pytha- 
gorean philosophy, and that Antiochus, 
of Ascalon, taught in public the dogmas 
of Plato. We have no certain informa- 
tion as to the existence of these schools; 
all we know is that it was the fashion 
among the Romans to adhere nominally 
to certain sects; that M. Brutus called 
himself a Platonist; that Cato, of Utica, 
was a Zenonist; Crassus, a Peripa- 
tetic; and Pomponius Atticus, an Epi- 
curean, 
Under the government of ‘Augustus 
schools multiplied, and grammar was 
more generally professed than it had 
ever been in Greece, where all the 
schools confined themselves to the teach- 
ing of philosophy in’ general, or of the 
art of declamation and gymnastic exer~ 
cises. Cremona, Padua, Milan, Man- 
tua, had their seminaries of learning. 
The temples, the basilica, the theatres; 
resounded with the lessons of rhetori- 
cians, grammarians and philosophers of 
the day; they recited compositions, de- 
claimed, and held disputations. ‘The 
scholars were, very eager to dispute, in 
order to receive the acclamations and - 
plaudits of the people; and this acquired 
them the name of Scoliasta. patra 
Under the reign of Vespasian, pro- _ 
fessors were paid out of the public trea- 
sury j 
a 
