therefore, the prosecution of liberal studies, for such they were officially named, suitable buildings were erected in every populous centre. Architecturally, a state school comprised a handsome hall or lecture theatre, with class-rooms attached, the whole being surrounded essentially by a portico.[1] The extent and decorative elaboration of these edifices depended doubtless on their local or general importance. The greater institutions, as denoted by their being the resort of a large concourse of students, were liberally provided with the adornments of painting and statuary.[2] Objective instruc-*
- [Footnote: (or Sophists), and three Grammarians; the smallest recognized under
the scheme, five Physicians, three Rhetoricians, and three Grammarians; Pand., XXVII, i, 6; Hist. August. Ant. Pius, 11. Antonius Musa, physician to Augustus, seems to have been the first learned man to whom public honours were decreed at Rome, viz., a statue of brass on the recovery of the Emperor, 23 B.C.; Suetonius, August., 59, 81. He was even the cause of privileges being conferred on his profession generally; Dion Cass., liii, 30. Vespasian was the first to give regular salaries to Rhetoricians; he also gave handsome presents to poets, artists, and architects, and granted relief from public burdens to physicians and philosophers; Suetonius in Vita, 18; Pand., L, iv, 18(30). But the idea of remitting their taxes to learned men was old; Diogenes Laert., Pyrrho, 5. That of selling philosophers for slaves when they could not pay them, was also old; ibid., Xenocrates; Bion. Hadrian, called Graeculus from his pedantry, also did much for the cause of learning; Hist. August. in Vita, 1, 17, and commentators. The Athenaeum at Rome was his foundation, an educational college of which no details are known; Aurel. Victor, in Vita. Alexander Sev. went further than any of his predecessors in granting an allowance to poor students; Hist. August. in Vita, 44.]
- ↑ Cod. Theod., XV, i, 53, and Godefroy ad loc.
- ↑ Zacharias, De Opific., Mund., 40, et seq. (in Migne, S. G., lxxxv, 1011); See Hasaeus, De Acad. Beryt., etc. Halae Magd., 1716. The humblest school was adorned with figures of the Muses; Athenaeus, viii, 41; Diogenes Laert., Diog., 6. A lecture hall was generally called a "Theatre of the Muses"; Himerius, Or., xxii; Themistius, Or., xxi.
