for the institutions of their ancestors had probably
disposed them to find much political
wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient
custom, continued, without interruption,
from the earliest period of those societies, to
the times in which they had arrived at a considerable
degree of refinement. Music and
dancing are the great amusements of almost
all barbarous nations, and the great accomplishments
which are supposed to fit any man
for entertaining his society. It is so at this
day among the negroes on the coast of Africa.
It was so among the ancient Celtes, among
the ancient Scandinavians, and, as we may
learn from Homer, among the ancient Greeks,
in the times preceding the Trojan war. When
the Greek tribes had formed themselves into
little republics, it was natural that the study
of those accomplishments should for a long
time make a part of the public and common
education of the people.
The masters who instructed the young people,
either in music or in military exercises,
do not seem to have been paid, or even appointed
by the state, either in Rome or even
at Athens, the Greek republic of whose laws
and customs we are the best informed. The
state required that every free citizen should fit
himself for defending it in war, and should
upon that account, learn his military exercises.
But it left him to learn them of such
masters as he could find; and it seems to have
advanced nothing for this purpose, but a public
field or place of exercise, in which he should
practise and perform them.
In the early ages, both of the Greek and
Roman republics, the other parts of education
seem to have consisted in learning to read,
write, and account, according to the arithmetic
of the times. These accomplishments the
richer citizens seem frequently to have acquired
at home, by the assistance of some domestic
pedagogue, who was, generally, either a
slave or a freedman; and the poorer citizens
in the schools of such masters as made a trade
of teaching for hire. Such parts of education,
however, were abandoned altogether to
the care of the parents or guardians of each
individual. It does not appear that the state
ever assumed any inspection or direction of
them. By a law of Solon, indeed, the children
were acquitted from maintaining those parents
who had neglected to instruct them in
some profitable trade or business.
In the progress of refinement, when philosophy
and rhetoric came into fashion, the better
sort of people used to send their children
to the schools of philosophers and rhetoricians,
in order to be instructed in these fashionable
sciences. But those schools were not supported
by the public. They were, for a long time,
barely tolerated by it. The demand for philosophy
and rhetoric was, for a long time, so
small, that the first professed teachers of either
could not find constant employment in any
one city, but were obliged to travel about from
place to place. In this manner lived Zeno of
Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and many
others. As the demand increased, the schools,
both of philosophy and rhetoric, became stationary,
first in Athens, and afterwards in several
other cities. The state, however, seems
never to have encouraged them further, than
by assigning to some of them a particular
place to teach in, which was sometimes done,
too, by private donors. The state seems to
have assigned the Academy to Plato, the Lyceum
to Aristotle, and the Portico to Zeno of
Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus
bequeathed his gardens to his own
school. Till about the time of Marcus Antoninus,
however, no teacher appears to have
had any salary from the public, or to have had
any other emoluments, but what arose from
the honoraries or fees of his scholars. The
bounty which that philosophical emperor, as
we learn from Lucian, bestowed upon one of
the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted no
longer than his own life. There was nothing
equivalent to the privileges of graduation;
and to have attended any of those schools was
not necessary, in order to be permitted to
practise any particular trade or profession. If
the opinion of their own utility could not
draw scholars to them, the law neither forced
anybody to go to them, nor rewarded anybody
for having gone to them. The teachers had
no jurisdiction over their pupils, nor any other
authority besides that natural authority which
superior virtue and abilities never fail to procure
from young people towards those who
are entrusted with any part of their education.
At Rome, the study of the civil law made
a part of the education, not of the greater
part of the citizens, but of some particular
families. The young people, however, who
wished to acquire knowledge in the law, had
no public school to go to, and had no other
method of studying it, than by frequenting
the company of such of their relations and
friends as were supposed to understand it.
It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, that
though the laws of the twelve tables were
many of them copied from those of some ancient
Greek republics, yet law never seems
to have grown up to be a science in any republic
of ancient Greece. In Rome it became
a science very early, and gave a considerable
degree of illustration to those citizens
who had the reputation of understanding
it. In the republics of ancient Greece, particularly
in Athens, the ordinary courts of
justice consisted of numerous, and therefore
disorderly, bodies of people, who frequently
decided almost at random, or as clamour,
faction, and party-spirit, happened to determine.
The ignominy of an unjust decision,
when it was to be divided among five hundred,
a thousand, or fifteen hundred people (for