Clarke - Higher Education in the Ancient World

M. L. CLARKE

Volume 92

First published in 1971

This edition first published in 2012

by Routledge

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1971 M. L. Clarke

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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-61517-4 (Set)

eISBN 13: 978-0-203-81617-2 (Set)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-68908-3 (Volume 92)

eISBN 13: 978-0-203-18131-7 (Volume 92)

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M. L. Clarke

Higher education in the
ancient world

Routledge & Kegan Paul London

First published 1971
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 6874 Carter Lane
London, EC4V 5EL

Printed in Great Britain
by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd,
Bungay, Suffolk

M. L. Clarke 1971
No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without
permission from the publisher,
except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism

ISBN o 7100 6916 2

Map

Sketch map of Athens showing the location of the philosophical schools.

page 56

First I must explain and justify my title. By higher education I mean all education above the primary or elementary stage. Some of this can perhaps hardly qualify as higher. Grammar, for instance, was normally studied at what one might call the preparatory school level; but it could be pursued further than that, and in view of its close relationship to rhetoric, which for many in the ancient world was the final stage of education, it seemed right to include it. The ancient world of my title is the world of Greece and Rome from the fourth century B.C. onwards. I have continued the story, though briefly and rather superficially, into what are generally thought of as the Middle Ages. So far as education is concerned the ancient world might well be said to have lasted until 1453 in Byzantium, and there is at least a case for maintaining that it lasted until then, or even later, in the West. Indeed, in some respects it lasted almost to the present day. There must be men alive whose fathers had an education not very different from that of the Roman Empire, who read at school little more than Homer, Virgil and Horace, and who learned their geometry from Euclid.

Some writers on ancient education are primarily concerned to draw lessons from it for the present day (Ancient Education and Today is the title of a work by a former headmaster and Professor of Education). This is a legitimate approach; no doubt one can draw stimulus and inspiration from the educational theory and practice of the best teachers of antiquity, and the past would hardly be worth studying if one could learn nothingfrom it. My approach, however, is rather different. I think of educational history as an important part of social and cultural history. Our culture and outlook on life depend to a large extent on what we have learned at school, and this was particularly true before the invention of printing facilitated the diffusion of knowledge and ideas outside the schools. My chief concern has therefore been to describe what was taught and how it was taught. I have not said much about educational theory; what Plato advocated in the Republic is not what the ordinary student experienced in the schoolroom.

If there are lessons to be learned from the educational system of antiquity they may not be those we wish to find there. Those who deplore early specialization or the neglect of science will find that these are features of education in the ancient world as much as, indeed more than, at the present day. Those who think that education should be relevant to modern conditions will find little support in ancient practice; Homer, the standard textbook of the Greek grammar schools, read in fifth-century Athens, Republican Rome and imperial Byzantium, was, it might be said, equally irrelevant to all these societies. Nor does the ancient world provide much support for what we call a classical education; Greek and Latin were not dead languages for the Greeks and Romans. What we do find, and what we may well envy, is a remarkable stability in education. The ancients were not constantly devising new syllabuses and trying new methods; they were content with the established textbooks and well-tried methods. The consequence was a strong and lasting cultural tradition which united educated men of different countries and different ages and was able to survive even the challenge of Christianity.

Previous general histories of Greek and Roman education may be said to have been superseded by H.-I. Marrou's Histoire de l ducation dans l antiquit, published in 1948 and translated into English in 1956 as A History of Education in Antiquity. If I have made some critical references to Marrou's work, this does not mean that I do not recognize the value of his lively and informative survey. Where I cover the same ground as he did I hope that I have been able to add something. In particular I have dealt in considerable detail with the teaching of the philosophers, on which there is a good deal ofevidence which Marrou did not use. For my brief section on Arab education I have had the benefit of the advice of Dr R. Walzer.

Translations except where otherwise stated are by the author.