IV. It now remains for us to glance at the more protracted training of those who had resolved to devote their lives to some particular sphere of activity. Aspirants for the position of professor of the liberal arts, or who wished to utilize their acquirements in a political career, would continue and extend their studies on the lines above indicated; but those who intended to follow the professions of law or physic, or engage in practice of art proper, had to direct their energies into new channels.
1. As the administration of the Empire was almost monopolized by the members of the legal profession, it may be inferred that the throng of youths intent on becoming lawyers fully equalled in number the students of every other calling. Hence we find that not only were schools of law established in every city of importance, notably Constantinople, Alexandria, and Caesarea, but that a provincial town of minor rank obtained a unique celebrity through the teaching of jurisprudence. Berytus, on the Syrian coast, in the province of Phoenicia, with an academic history of several centuries[1] at this date, had attained to that position; and
- [Footnote: CP. and extending clearly to philosophers the immunities granted to
others professors; Cod. Theod., XIII, iii, 16; XIV, ix, 3; Cod., X, lii, 14, etc. We are continually reminded that Socrates brought down the sophists of his time from star-gazing and speculation as to the origin of things to the ethics of common life. Thence arose a succession of dialogues in which Utopian republics were discussed, where wives should be in common so that everybody might be the supposititious brother, etc., of every one else. A more harmonious community could not be engendered by such a device; cf. Herodotus, iv, 104.]
- ↑ See the elogium of Berytus in Nonnus, Dionysiacs, xli. From 389, etc., Hasacus (op. cit.) thinks that the school was founded by Augustus after the battle of Actium, but it is first distinctly noted as flourishing c. 231; Gregory Thaum., Panegyric. in Origen, 1, 5 (in Migne, S. G., 1051).
