THIRD CENTURY.
37
Greek boys, and Virgil to the Roman. They were moved to different schools, according to their proficiency. The porticos of temples were common places for schools.* In an ancient bas-relief, published by Winkleman, the education of two cbildreii of rank is represented; one about twelve years old holds a double tablet, long, and fastened by a hinge. The master, half naked, like the ancient philosophers, holds a roll, (volumen) and is addressing the child. Some of the table-books† most have been large; for in Plautus, a schoolboy, seventeen years old, is represented as breaking his master's head.
There was one particular street in Rome, or rather part of a street, in which the booksellers chiefly lived. In the porticos of the Greek and Roman temples, goods were sold, and business transacted, and, for the same reason, we may suppose, that books were sold there also.
Tliat which is now understood by the term "the learning of antiquity," prevailed in the states of Greece and Rome, from a period of about six hundred years before the Christian era, till about four hundred years after it. During this thousand years there lived many distinguished moralists, reasoners on the nature and destiny of man, orators, sculptors,and historians, with others remarkable for the refinement of their ideas and a certain degree of knowledge of the arts. But during this period learning was confined entirely to the higher classes; those in a humble condition being generally slaves, and an employment in war and rapine their principal occupation.
This era of learned antiquity ceased at the fall of the Roman empire and the incursion of the barbarians. All that it has bequeathed to modern times consists in some Greek and Latin (Roman) writers, chiefly poets and historians, which were collected together, with great difficulty, during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Besides these literary remnants, little more is left to betoken the existence of a former age of refinement, than the ruins of temples, theatres, aqueducts,houses, and sculptured figures, in modern Greece and Turkey and some parts of Italy.
"One cannot but reflect on that grand revolution which took place when language, till then limited to its proper organ, had its representation in the work of the hand. Now that a man of mean estate can have a library of more intrinsic value than that of Cicero, when the sentiments of past ages are as familiar as those of the present, and the knowledge of different empires is transmitted and common to all, we cannot expect to have our sages followed, as of old, by their five thousand scholars. Nations will not now record their acts by building pyramids, or consecrating temples and raising statues, once the only means of perpetuating great deeds or extraordinary virtues. It is in vain that our artists complain that patronage is withheld; for the ingenuity of the hand has at length subdued the arts of design — printing has made all other records barbarous, and great men build for themselves a 'living monument.' " — Bell on the Hand.
STATE OF LITERATURE SINCE THE CHRISTLAN ERA.
"The admirable invention of printing enables the artist to make a thousand copies from the original manuscript in far less time and with less expense, than it would cost to make half a dozen such copies with the pen. From the period of this glorious discovery, knowledge of every kind might be said to be brought out of the cloisters and universities, when it was known only to a few scholars, into the broad light of day, where its treasures were accessible to all men." — Sir Walter Scott.
110. The most extensive and splendid of the libraries at Rome, was the Ulpian, founded by Trajan: it is believed that, at the suggestion of Fliny the younger, this emperor commanded all the books that were found in the conquered cities to be placed in its library. Most of the principal cities throughout the Roman empire, at this time, bad public libraries.
190. The Capitoline library at Rome, was destroyed by lightning, in the reign of Commodus. Lucius Aurelius Commodus, was strangled at Rome, Dec. 31, 192.
260. Of the extent and value of the manufacturers in Alexandria, and of the wealth derived from them, we may form some idea from an anecdote of Firmus. This person, the friend and ally of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, a wealthy merchant, or rather manufacturer of paper and glue, in Alexandria, broke into that city about this period, at the head of a furious multitude, "assumed the imperial purple, coined money, published edicts, and raised an army, which he boasted he could maintain from the sole profits of his manufactures."
For at least 300 years before Christ, papyrus was exported in large quantities from Egypt; but the time when the manufacture of it was lost, or superseded, is not known.
276, Sep. 25. The emperor Tacitus is elected after an interregnum of eight months. He ordered that ten copies of his kinsman's History should be placed in the Roman libraries. The manuscript was discovered in Westphalia.
The history of the third century mentions the library of the younger Gordian, consisting of
- Shakspeare mentions the custom of parish schools
lieing held in the porch, or In a room above the church.
t Table books continued in use so late as the fourteenth century, and even later, as Chaucer evidently describes one in the Sumpner*s Tale.
His felaw bad a staf tipped with horn,
A pair of tables, all of ivory.
And a pointel (style) ypoUshed fetisly (neatly).
And wrote always the names, as he stood,
OfaQ folk that yave hem any good. (v. S3 97.;
