Education in the later Roman Empire
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The dominant fact is the extraordinary continuity of the methods of Roman education throughout such a long succession of centuries. Whatever the profound transformations in the Roman world politically, economically, and socially, the same educational institutions, the same pedagogical methods, the same curricula were perpetuated without great change for 1,000 years in Greek and six or seven centuries in Roman territory. At most, a few nuances of change need be noted. There was a measure of increasing intervention by the central government, but this was primarily to remind the municipalities of their educational duties, to fix the remuneration of teachers, and to supervise their selection. Only higher education received direct attention: in 425 ce, Theodosius II created an institute of higher education in the new capital of Constantinople and endowed it with 31 chairs for the teaching of letters, rhetoric (both Greek and Latin), philosophy, and law. Another innovation was that the exuberant growth of the bureaucratic apparatus under the later empire favoured the rise of one branch of technical education, that of stenography.
The only evolution of any notable extent involves the use of Greek and Latin. There had never been more than a few Greeks who learned Latin, even though the growing machinery of administration and the increasing clientele drawn to the law schools of Beirut and Constantinople tended to increase the numerical size of this tiny minority. On the other hand, in Latin territory, late antiquity exhibited a general recession in the use of Greek. Although the ideal remained unchanged and high culture always proposed to be bilingual, most people generally knew Greek less and less well. This retrogression need not be interpreted solely as a phenomenon of decadence: it had also a positive aspect, being an effect of the development of Latin culture itself. The richness and worth of the Latin classics explain why the youth of the West had less time than formerly to devote to the study of the Greek authors. Virgil and Cicero had replaced Homer and Demosthenes, just as in modern Europe the ancient languages have retreated before the progress of the national languages and literatures. Hence, in the later empire there appeared specialists in intercultural relations and translations from Greek into Latin. In the 4th and particularly in the 5th century, medical education in Latin became possible, thanks to the appearance of a whole medical (and veterinary) literature consisting essentially of translations of Greek manuals. It was the same with philosophy: resuming Cicero’s enterprise at a distance of more than five centuries, Boethius (c. 480–524) in his turn sought with his manuals and his translations to make the study of that discipline available in Latin. Although the misfortunes of Italy in the 6th century—including the Lombardian invasion—did not permit this hope to be realized, the work of Boethius later nourished the medieval renaissance of philosophic thought.
Nothing better demonstrates the prestige and the allure of Classical culture than the attitude taken toward it by the Christians. This new religion could have organized an original system of education analogous to that of the rabbinical school—that is, one in which children learned through study of the Holy Scriptures—but it did not do so. Usually, Christians were content to have both their special religious education provided by the church and the family and their Classical instruction received in the schools and shared with the pagans. Thus, they maintained the tradition of the empire after it had become Christian. Certainly, in their view, the education dispensed by these schools must have presented many dangers, inasmuch as Classical culture was bound up with its pagan past (at the beginning of the 3rd century the profession of schoolteacher was among those that disqualified one from baptism); but the utility of Classical culture was so evident that they considered it necessary to send their children to these same schools in which they barred themselves from teaching. From Tertullian to St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, Christian scholars were ever mindful of the dangers presented by the study of the classics, the idolatry and immorality that they promoted; nevertheless, they sought to show how the Christian could make good use of them.
With the passage of time and the general conversion of Roman society and particularly of its ruling class, Christianity, overcoming its reserve, completely assimilated and took over Classical education. In the 4th century Christians were occupying teaching positions at all levels—from schoolmasters and grammarians to the highest chairs of eloquence. In his treatise De doctrina Christiana (426), St. Augustine formulated the theory of this new Christian culture: being a religion of the Book, Christianity required a certain level of literacy and literary understanding; the explication of the Bible required the methods of the grammarian; preaching a new field of action required rhetoric; theology required the equipment of philosophy. The synthesis of Christianity and Classical education had become so intimate that, when the “barbarian” invasions swept away the traditional school along with many other imperial and Roman institutions, the church, needing a literary culture for the education of its clergy, kept alive the cultural tradition that Rome had received from the Hellenistic world.
Henri-Irénée Marrou James BowenEducation in Persian, Byzantine, early Russian, and Islamic civilizations
Ancient Persia
The ancient Persian empire began when Cyrus II the Great initiated his conquests in 559 bce. Three elements dominated this ancient Persian civilization: (1) a rigorous and challenging physical environment, (2) the activist and positive Zoroastrian religion and ethics, and (3) a militant, expansionist people. These elements developed in the Persians an adventurous personality mingled with intense national feelings.
In the early period (559–330 bce), known as the Achaemenian period for the ancestor of Cyrus and his successors, education was sustained by Zoroastrian ethics and the requirements of a military society and aimed at serving the needs of four social classes: priests, warriors, tillers of the soil, and merchants. Three principles sustained Zoroastrian ethics: the development of good thoughts, of good words, and of good actions. Achaemenian Zoroastrian education stressed strong family ties and community feelings, acceptance of imperial authority, religious indoctrination, and military discipline.
Education was a private enterprise. Formative education was carried on in the home and continued after the age of seven in court schools for children of the upper classes. Secondary and higher education included training in law to prepare for government service, as well as medicine, arithmetic, geography, music, and astronomy. There were also special military schools.
In 330 bce Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great, and native Persian or Zoroastrian education was largely eclipsed by Hellenistic education. Greek practices continued during the Parthian empire (247 bce–224 ce), founded by seminomadic conquerors from the Caspian steppes. Thus, truly Persian influences were not restored until the appearance of a new, more sophisticated and reform-minded dynasty, the Sāsānians, in the 3rd century ce. In what has been called the neo-Persian empire of the Sāsānians (224–651 ce), the Achaemenian social structure and education were revived and further developed and modified. Zoroastrian ethics, though more advanced than during the Achaemenian period, emphasized similar moral principles but with new stress upon the necessity for labour (particularly agriculture), upon the sanctity of marriage and family devotion, and upon the cultivation of respect for law and of intellectualism—all giving to education a strong moral, social, and national foundation. The subject matter of basic education included physical and military exercises, reading (Pahlavi alphabet), writing (on wooden tablets), arithmetic, and the fine arts.
The greatest achievement of Sāsānian education was in higher education, particularly as it developed in the Academy of Gondēshāpūr. There Zoroastrian culture, Indian and Greek sciences, Alexandrian-Syrian thought, medical training, theology, philosophy, and other disciplines developed to a high degree, making Gondēshāpūr the most advanced academic centre of learning in the later period of Sāsānian civilization. Students from various parts of the world came to the academy, which advanced, among other subjects, Zoroastrian, Greek, and Indian philosophies; Persian, Hellenic, and Indian astronomy; Zoroastrian ethics, theology, and religion; law, government, and finance; and various branches of medicine. It was partly through the Academy of Gondēshāpūr that important elements of Classical Greek and Roman learning reached the Muslims during the 8th and 9th centuries ce and through them, in Latin translations of Arabic works, the Schoolmen of western Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries.
Mehdi K. NakosteenThe Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean area after the loss of the western provinces to Germanic kingdoms in the 5th century. Although it lost some of its eastern lands to the Muslims in the 7th century, it lasted until Constantinople—the new capital founded by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great in 330—fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The empire was seriously weakened in 1204 when, as a result of the Fourth Crusade, its lands were partitioned and Constantinople captured, but until then it had remained a powerful centralized state, with a common Christian faith, an efficient administration, and a shared Greek culture. This culture, already Christianized in the 4th and 5th centuries, was maintained and transmitted by an educational system that was inherited from the Greco-Roman past and based on the study and imitation of Classical Greek literature.
Stages of education
There were three stages of education. The basic skills of reading and writing were taught by the elementary-school master, or grammatistes, whose pupils generally ranged from 6 or 7 to 10 years of age. The secondary-school master, or grammatikos, supervised the study and appreciation of Classical literature and of literary Greek—from which the spoken Greek of everyday life differed more and more in the course of time—and Latin (until the 6th century). His pupils ranged in age from 10 to 15 or 16. Next, the rhetorician, or rhētor, taught pupils how to express themselves with clarity, elegance, and persuasiveness, in imitation of Classical models. Speaking style was deemed more important than content or original thinking. An optional fourth stage was provided by the teacher of philosophy, who introduced pupils to some of the topics of ancient philosophy, often by reading and discussing works of Plato or Aristotle. Rhetoric and philosophy formed the main content of higher education.
Elementary education was widely available throughout most of the empire’s existence, not only in towns but occasionally in the countryside as well. Literacy was therefore much more widespread than in western Europe, at least until the 12th century. Secondary education was confined to the larger cities. Pupils desiring higher education almost always had to go to Constantinople, which became the cultural centre of the empire after the loss to the Muslim Arabs of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the 7th century. Monasteries sometimes had schools in which young novices were educated, but they did not teach lay pupils. Girls did not normally attend schools, but the daughters of the upper classes were often educated by private tutors. Many women were literate, and some—such as the hymnographer Kasia (9th century) and the historian-princess Anna Comnena (1083–c. 1153)—were recognized as writers of distinction.
Elementary education
Elementary-school pupils were taught to read and write individual letters first, then syllables, and finally short texts, often passages from the Psalms. They probably also learned simple arithmetic at this stage. Teachers had a humble social status and depended on the fees paid by parents for their livelihood. They usually held classes in their own homes or on church porches but were sometimes employed as private tutors by wealthy households. They had no assistants and used no textbooks. Teaching methods emphasized memorization and copying exercises, reinforced by rewards and punishments.
Secondary education
The secondary-school teacher taught the grammar and vocabulary of Classical and ecclesiastical Greek literature from the Hellenistic and Roman periods and explained the elements of Classical mythology and history that were necessary for the study of a limited selection of ancient Greek texts, mainly poetry, beginning with Homer. The most commonly used textbook was the brief grammar by Dionysius Thrax; numerous and repetitive later commentaries on the book were also frequently used. From the 9th century on, these books were sometimes supplemented with the Canons of Theognostos, a collection of brief rules of orthography and grammar. The grammatikos might also make use of anonymous texts dating from late antiquity, which offered word-by-word grammatical explanations of Homer’s Iliad, or of similar texts on the Psalms by Georgius Choiroboscos (early 9th century). Pupils would not normally possess copies of these textbooks, since handwritten books were very expensive, but would learn the rules by rote from their teacher’s dictation. Beginning in the 11th century, much use was made in secondary education of schedē (literally, “sketches” or “improvisations”), short prose texts that often ended in a few lines of verse. These were specially written by a teacher to illustrate points of grammar or style. From the early 14th century on, much use was also made of erotemata, systematic collections of questions and answers on grammar that the pupil learned by heart.
Secondary schools often had more than one teacher, and the older pupils were often expected to help teach their juniors. Schools of this kind had little institutional continuity, however. The most lasting schools were those conducted in churches.
Higher education
The rhetorician’s textbooks included systematic handbooks of the art of rhetoric, model texts with detailed commentaries, and specimens of oratory by Classical or post-Classical Greek writers and by Church Fathers, in particular Gregory of Nazianzus. Many Byzantine handbooks of rhetoric survive from all periods. They are often anonymous and always derivative, mostly based directly or indirectly on the treatises of Hermogenes of Tarsus (late 2nd century ce). There is little innovation in the theory of rhetoric they expound. After studying models, pupils went on to compose and deliver speeches on various general topics.
Until the early 6th century there was a flourishing school of Neoplatonic philosophy in Athens, but it was repressed or abolished in 529 because of the active paganism of its professors. A similar but Christian school in Alexandria survived until the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640. For the next five centuries, philosophical teaching seems to have been limited to simple surveys of Aristotle’s logic. In the 11th century, however, there was a renewal of interest in the Greek philosophical tradition, and many commentaries on works of Aristotle were composed, evidently for use in teaching. In the early 15th century the philosopher George Gemistos Plethon revived interest in Plato, who until then had been neglected for Aristotle. All philosophical teaching in the Byzantine world was concerned with the explanation of texts rather than with the analysis of problems.
Because higher education provided learned and articulate personnel for the sophisticated bureaucracies of state and church, it was often supported and controlled officially, although private education always existed as well. There were officially appointed teachers in Constantinople in the 4th century, and in 425 the emperor Theodosius II established professorships of Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. However, these probably did not survive the great crisis of the Arab and Slav invasions of the 7th century. In the 9th century, the School of Magnaura—an institution of higher learning—was founded by imperial decree. In the 11th century, Constantine IX established new schools of philosophy and law at the Capitol School in Constantinople. Both survived until the 12th century, when the school under the control of the patriarch of Constantinople—with teachers of grammar, rhetoric, and biblical studies—gained predominance. After the interval of Western rule in Constantinople (1204–61), both emperors and patriarchs gave sporadic support to higher education in the capital. As the power, wealth, and territory of the empire were eroded in the 14th and 15th centuries, the church became the principal and ultimately the only patron of higher education.
Professional education
Teaching of such professional subjects as medicine, law, and architecture was largely a matter of apprenticeship, although at various times there was some imperially supported or institutionalized teaching.
Strangely, there is little sign of systematic teaching of theology, apart from that given by the professors of biblical studies in the 12th-century patriarchal school. Studious reading of works by the Church Fathers was the principal path to theological knowledge in Byzantium, both for clergy and for laymen. Nonetheless, religious orthodoxy—or faith—was Byzantium’s greatest strength. It held the empire together for more than 1,000 years against eastern invaders. Faith was also the Byzantine culture’s chief limitation, choking originality in the sciences and the practical arts. But within this limitation it preserved the literature, science, and philosophy of Classical Greece in recopied texts, some of which escaped the plunders of the Crusaders and were carried to southern Italy, restoring Greek learning there. Combined with the treasures of Classical learning that reached Europe through the Muslims, this Byzantine heritage helped to initiate the beginnings of the European Renaissance.
Mehdi K. Nakosteen Robert Browning