day.[1] The laws of poetical metre were taught as a leading branch of the subject; and a familiarity with literature was promoted by reading the best authors, especially Homer.[2] The copious Latin grammarian Priscian flourished at Constantinople under Anastasius, and his monumental work in eighteen books is still extant.[3]
2. In the province of dialectics it was sought to instill the art of reasoning correctly into the mind of the pupil. Thus he was introduced to the elementary principles of logic; the categories, or the modes of regarding and classifying phenomena, were explained to him; and he was exercised in the practice of accurate deduction according to the various forms of the syllogism.
3. Without a practical acquaintance with the art of rhetoric it was considered that no one could pretend to occupy any desirable position in the civil service of the Empire.[4] This course was the extension and application of the two previous ones of grammar and logic, upon which it was based. The rules of composition and the arts of argument, which the ingenuity of the Greeks had unravelled and defined under a hundred apposite names, were exemplified to the student,[5]
- ↑ See Priscian, Partitiones, xii, Vers. Aen., etc.
- ↑ After Rome had produced good writers, such as Virgil, Horace, Livy, etc., they were added to the course of literature in the West; Quintilian, i, 8; x.
- ↑ There is some obscurity about his date, which suggests that he was a centenarian. Ordericus Vit. says he died in 425; cf. Cassiodorus, De Orthograph., 12, etc.
- ↑ "One father," says Chrysostom, "points out to his son how some one of low birth by learning eloquence obtained promotion to high office, won a rich wife, and became possessed of wealth with a fine house, etc., or how another through a mastery of Latin achieved a great position at Court"; Adv. Oppug. Vit. Mon., iii, 5 (in Migne, i, 357).
- ↑ The details of teaching are presented most circumstantially in the rhetorical catechism of Fortunatianus (c. 450).
