Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

866 29. education in the roman empire
then went to Berytus to study law, and on completion of his studies
returned to his native city and established himself as rhetor and scholasticus
(teacher of rhetoric and law).
From the Life of Severus, written by Zacharius Scholasticus, we learn something
of the lively student life in Alexandria and Berytus. 32 There was still
tension between Christian and pagan students, and many conversions to
Christianity. 33 In Berytus a kind of witch-hunt was organized by Christian
students, directed against possessors of books on magic – the possession of
which by this time was illegal – and denunciations and house searches were
frequent. 34 There were booksellers’ stalls in the Royal Stoa in Alexandria
which were frequented by students, and books seem to have been readily
available. When Zacharias Scholasticus moved from Alexandria to Berytus
he took with him many books by the fourth-century Fathers. 35 In the law
school at Berytus, and possibly also in Athens and Alexandria, teaching went
on every day except on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. 36 Some Christian
students met in reading circles at weekends to read and discuss patristic texts,
including St Basil’s Address to Young Men on the Value of Greek Literature. 37
Little useful can be said about philosophical teaching in the Latin west
after 425. Augustine, Boethius and Cassiodorus were not primarily teachers.
The gradual disappearance of knowledge of Greek in the west from
the early fourth century, in spite of a brief and probably somewhat
superficial revival in the reign of Theoderic, meant that contact was inexorably
lost with the development of Neoplatonist thought in Athens and
Alexandria. Such scholars as there were in the west pondered on commentaries
rather than on original texts. We hear of teachers of philosophy in
various regions of the Latin west, even as far afield as Gaul. Sidonius
Apollinaris recalls the philosophers who taught in Arles, but it is not clear
whether he is referring to formal teaching or to discussion in a circle of
intellectually inclined friends. If there were real teachers, their teaching did
not go beyond an elementary school tradition. Justinian’s arrangements
after the reconquest of Africa and Italy made provision for publicly funded
teachers of grammar and rhetoric, but not of philosophy. The broad
stream of classical philosophy had been reduced to a meagre trickle. As for
the Ostrogothic king Theodahad, who claimed to be a Platonic philosopher,
the less said the better.
The early Christian church had often shown some hostility to traditional
classical culture as preserved and transmitted by grammarians, rhetoricians
and philosophers. Not only was it founded on the study of overtly pagan
texts, but it was closely associated with the predominantly pagan establishment.
But the spread of Christianity in the fourth century among the urban
32 Kugener (1907) 46, 91–2. 33 Kugener (1907) 43. 34 Kugener (1907) 64–70.
35 Kugener (1907) 48. 36 Kugener (1907) 52. 37 Kugener (1907) 53–4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008