292 



ON THE LITERARY EDUCATION 



well-known vein of wit and keen satire upon passers and passing events, or 

 listening to the declamations of sophists, and other noisy disputants. 



A few clubs of wits are occasionally to be met with in the present epoch 

 of the history of this people; and a few select assemblies for polite litera- 

 ture and elegant conversation : of which last the most remarkable, perhaps, 

 was that held at the house of the celebrated Aspasia : since it was attended 

 by Socrates and Alcibiades, as well as by almost every other scholar or phi- 

 losopher of reputation, and by all the most renowned a"rtists of the day. But 

 we meet with no public establishment for a general course of science like 

 that of the universities or the Institutions (as they called) of our own times, 

 excepting their schools, nor with any public library of much note, except that 

 of Pisistratus, wliich was carried away by Xerxes into Persia before the epoch 

 to which our attention is now directed commenced. 



Private libraries, however, were not uncommon, though seldom extensive. 

 Those of Aristotle, of Theophratus, and of Euclid, the founder of the school 

 of Megara, were perhaps the largest and most valuable. The art of printing 

 being unknown, books were rare, and copied with great difficulty and ex- 

 pense ; sometimes by individuals for their own benefit; but more generally 

 by professional transcribers, who formed a distinct trade. The great mass 

 of Athenians, moreover, though of exquisite taste and elegance, and cer- 

 tainly wealthier than most of the other Grecian states, seldom displayed those 

 splendid fortunes which were so common in Persia. A freehold of the value 

 of fifteen or twenty talents (about four or five thousand pounds sterling), 

 raised a man considerably above the middle ranks of life. The father of 

 Demosthenes was esteemed rich, the whole of whose property on his death 

 amounted to not more than fourteen talents, or £3150 sterling. Plato ap- 

 pears to have given a hundred minae, or j^375 for three small treatises by Phi- 

 lolaus.* But this was a costly purchase : for Aristotle bought the whole 

 library of Speusippus, small indeed, but select, for three talents, or £675. f 



Hence the trade of bookselling at Athens was generally upon a limited 

 scale, and usually engaged in by persons of but little property, whose stock 

 consisted mostly of books of mere amusement; a part of which, however, 

 was often sent to the adjacent countries, and sometimes as far as to the Greek 

 colonies on the coast of the Euxine.* 



In respect to books, and the possession of public libraries, Rome was far 

 more fortunate than Athens ; and 1 shall now hasten to a brief survey of its 

 literary and scientific character in what may be regarded as its most classical 

 and cultivated era ; not the Augustan age, which has usually been contem- 

 plated as such, but that which immediately preceded it, reaching from the 

 dictatorship of Sylla to the establishment of Augustus, and of course termi- 

 nating a few years before the birth of our Saviour. 



The Romans, who had hitherto devoted themselves altogether to arms and 

 agriculture, and who had even despised eloquence, and paid no attention to 

 the improvement of their native tongue, became attached to literature all of 

 a sudden. The Achseans were accused by the Roman people of having acted 

 hostilely towards them ; and a thousand of them were sent as deputies, or 

 rather as hostages, to plead their cause, and obtain the best terms they could 

 for their country before the senate of this aspiring republic. Contrary, how- 

 ever, to the engagement stipulated with them, they were not allowed to en- 

 ter upon their defence ; were scattered over different parts of the republic ; 

 forbidden to appear before the senate ; and detained, in a state of captivity, for 

 not less than seventeen years. For the most part these Achaeans were men 

 of taste and elegant accomplishments, and many of them were scholars of 

 profound and diversified erudition. Such, more especially, was Polybius, 

 who was soon introduced into public favour under the patronage of Scipio 

 ^Emilianus, and whose elegant Greek writings were now read and studied by 

 every one. The whole republic became enamoured of the various acquisi- 



* Diog. Laert. in Plat. lib. iii. sec. 9, viii. 85. t Diog. Laert. in Speus. lib. iv. sec. 5. Alil. Gfell. iii. 17- 

 J Xenoph. Exped. Cyr. lib. vii. p. 412. Travels of Anacharsis (Engl, vers.), iii. 130. 



