us emphasize the hope that they would grow to orderly and pious manhood; and, with all their large tolerance of Non-conformist systems, the rulers had no scruple in prescribing the religion of the State. The creeds of Paganism were too wide and too elastic to cause anxiety to any tender conscience, and the votaries of Syrian gods could join without misgiving in the ritual of Hellenic worship. Even to the last days of the heathen world, Athens was the stronghold of religious feeling. Old associations lingered round its venerable walls, and linked themselves to great historic names, as in our modern Oxford, till those even owned the glamour of the ancient city, whose reason had rebelled against its outworn dogmas. We may read, therefore, of a long round of special times, like the holy seasons and the saints' days of our modern calendars, which were all of interest to the young men at college, not as holidays from earnest work, but as days of ceremonial observance. At some they walked in military guise, like Hungarian students at the Stephansfest, marching through the streets of Pesth with their swords buckled to their sides; at some they moved in slow procession with their lighted torches, like an academic club of Germany; at other times they joined in a thanksgiving service or State prayers for a victory won centuries before, like that of Marathon, engaging in mimic contests to revive the excitement of the past; while, in honor of the triumphs won upon the sea at Salamis, they raced over the waters, and made processions with their boats, as in later ages on the Isis or the Cam. In most of these, as on other State occasions, they wore the same official dress which distinguished them from all besides. To put the gown on,' or, as we should say, 'to be a gownsman,' was the phrase which stood for being a member of the college; and the gown, too, was of black, as commonly among ourselves.

But Philostratus tells us, by the way, that a change was made from black to white at the prompting of Herodes Atticus, the munificent and learned subject of the Antonines, who was for many years the presiding genius of the University of Athens. The fragment of an inscription lately found curiously confirms and supplements the writer's statement. Herodes, it would seem, did not only introduce the more auspicious color, but defrayed himself the expenses of the charge, and is represented in the contemporary document as saying, 'While I am living you shall never want white robes.' Some may possibly remember the attempt made nearly twenty years ago to introduce a seemlier form of gown for use among the Commoners of Oxford; but no Herodes Oxoniensis volunteered to meet the objection of expense, and so make the change easier for slender purses.

The members of the college are spoken of as 'friends' and 'messmates;' and it is probable that some form of conventual life prevailed among them, without which the drill and supervision, which are constantly implied in the inscriptions, could scarcely have been enforced by the officials. But we know nothing of any public buildings for their use save the gymnasia, which in all Greek towns were the centers of educa.

tional routine, and of which there were several well known at Athens. Drawing, as they did, their name from the bodily exercises for which they had been first provided, and serving in this respect for men as well as boys, they were used also for the culture of the mind. Public lecturers of every kind resorted to them, philosophy sought to gain a hearing in their halls, and rival systems even took their names from buildings such as these, where they catered for the intellect, while trainers a few yards off were drilling the body in the laws of healthy work. One such especially, the Diogeneum, served as a center of stirring college life. The president, who had the charge of it, is one of the officials often mentioned. Here probably they had a college library, as also certainly in another called the Ptolemæum. In such gymnasia a variety of trainers were employed to call out the physical powers in the full energy of of balanced life. Here the youths qualified themselves as marksmen in the use of the javelin and the bow, and a separate instructor was appointed in each case. Here, too, they were practiced in the drill which was to fit them for their grand parades, at which the public would look on, and the Chief Minister of State preside. Athletic sports of every kind found in such scenes a natural home. They were encouraged, almost prescribed in this case, by the government, which showed a lively interest in what was done. Here, too, the students fell into their ranks as volunteers, and marched out to form an escort for some distinguished stranger who fathored Athens with a visit. Or they formed themselves into a guard of honor, and kept order in the sittings of the National Assemblies, listening meantime to the course of the debates, and gaining betimes an insight into the business of public life, and a personal acquain tance with the prominent statesmen of the day. But they had their livelier spectacles at times. They went to the theater to see the play together, and there they had, we read, their proper places kept for them in a sort of undergraduates' gallery.

They had their lectures also to attend, in their own gymnasia, or in other buildings of the kind; for they were not allowed to slight the chances of intellectual progress in the eager love of races, sports, and volunteering. Some sort of certificate of attendance at the courses was seemingly required.

But in this respect, at least, the college did not try to monopolize the education of its students. It had, indeed, its own tutors or instructors, but they were kept for humbler drill; it did not even for a long time keep an organist or choir-master of its own; it sent its students out for teaching in philosophy and rhetoric and grammar, or, in a word, for all the larger and more liberal studies. Nor did it favor any special set of tenets to the exclusion of the rest. It encouraged impartially all the schools of higher thought. One document which we possess speaks approvingly of the young men's attendance in the lecture hall of a professor who expounded seemingly the Stoic system, but it goes on to note that they were present also at the courses given by Platonists and Aris

totelians alike. The context even would imply that they went together in a body, attended by their Head, and listened to the lectures of all the professors; or, as the inscriptions more than once record, of all the philosophers who taught their theories in public. The college had no fear, it seems, of critical inquiry and free thought, though it may, perhaps, have overtasked the receptive powers of its students. One only of the great historic systems was ignored, perhaps as likely to be pushed too far by inexperienced minds to some extreme of dangerous license, or rank impatience of control. No mention is ever made of the theories of Epicurus, which were judged, probably, unfit for the youths who were still 'in statu pupillari.' The appetite for knowledge thus excited could be ill satisfied with a few months of lectures; but, though the discipline so far described lasted only for a year, there was nothing to prevent them from carrying on their interest in high thought. As students unattached, they might linger for years round the same lecture halls, busy themselves with the same unsolved problems, and in their turn hold conferences on great occasions, or aspire to fill some public Chair of Morals or Philology.

The term, indeed, was far too short for such a multifarious training, which was at once gymnastic, martial, intellectual, and moral; but many even in those days were reluctant, it would seem, to postpone the active work of life in the interests of higher culture.

As it is, the names of the old families figure most upon the registers; for there were other forms of outlay, besides the expenditure of valuable time, to deter the less opulent of the middle classes. We read nothing indeed of college dues, or of the sums paid for battels by the students; and more than once the authorities are praised in the inscriptions for lowering, if not remitting altogether, certain charges. It is possible that the expense was partly met by a grant of public money, or by some form of endowment; and the mention that recurs of the sacrifices in the memory of past benefactors seems to point to this conclusion, while it reminds us of the Bidding Prayer in which we hear the names of the pious founders of old time. But of the accounts, which were to be audited each year in public by some officials of the State, it is most likely that the payments of the young men themselves formed an important item.

Nor did their expenses end with those for board or for tuition. Each must pay his quota to provide a hundred volumes yearly for the college library, which was stored, as we have seen, in a gymnasium. Their piety must be attested by liberal offerings to the Mother of the Gods and Dionysus, and sometimes, too, to other powers. Nor was it left to them to give at their free will; but a decree is quoted which defined the amount to be expended, somewhat as a few years back at Oxford the chapel offertory was charged in college battels. Each generation left behind it year by year the pieces of gold and silver plate which, duly emblazoned doubtless with their names, were stored up-not in the college buttery, but in the treasury of some temple. Four costly goblets of the

kind, we read in one inscription, were presented by the students of a single year.

The Rectors, too, who did their duty, must receive some sort of testimonial, and have their bronze or marble statues presented to them by their grateful pupils, as men accept their pictures nowadays. It became at last a customary thing, to be mentioned in the record of each year; and therefore the honor was but trifling, though the cost was real, and the omission was a slight.

Then, again, there was the cost of their uniforms and arms, which must be of the gayest on parade, when they were playing at the soldier's trade. The wealthier among the members, we are told, were encouraged by the authorities to show their public feeling in promoting common interests, and so, doubtless, spent their money freely to give éclat to their games or their processions. The office of Gymnasiarch especially is recorded as the privilege of men of means who fostered the athletic sports; and, if not in that respect, at least in others, may remind us of the captain of a modern cricket club, or of a college eight.

Something, too, there is which reads as if there had been sconces or fines imposed by the members of each other, in support of social rules or codes of honor; but these were looked on with disfavor from above, as likely to cause jars in the harmony of friendly intercourse; and one rector, at least, put them down.

At length the year drew to its close, and with it the restraints of discipline; but one ordeal still remained to try them. There is no new thing under the sun, and we find that there were examinations, even in old times, at Athens. Plutarch tells us, by the way, that the mayor on one occasion came to the gymnasium to examine the Ephebi 'who studied literature and geometry, rhetoric and music.' The ceremony ended with a public dinner, to which all the college tutors were invited, as well as lecturers and men of learning; but the guests, we read, were not so orderly in their behavior as might have been expected. At the end of Term, the town council was expected to attend, and hear the posers do their work; or, as we should say in modern language, the stu dent sat for examination in the Senate-house. There was, probably, no paper work required, but only an oral apposition; it may be even that the phrase chiefly refers to some manual exercises or parade, more than to tests of intellectual progress. For we do not hear of any class lists; or, rather, those we have, and they are full enough, contain the names only of the prizemen in the races and athletic sports, and do not deal with the cultivation of the mind.

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In any case, they do not seem to have hurt themselves with their hard reading the records insist upon the perfect health enjoyed by all the youths, as fully as if we had the extracts of a sanitary report. They were models, too, of good behavior, those pattern students of old time, if we may trust the complimentary language of the marbles. They went to lectures steadily, and listened quietly to what was told them, and never

rioted about the streets, or fell out in their cups like vulgar fellows in a drunken brawl, nor failed to do what their authorities enjoined, but 'were quite faultless all the long year through.'

We may naturally ask who were the guardians of a discipline so perfect as to seem more fitly lodged in some cloister of Utopia.

The Head of the college held the title of Cosmetes, or of rector, and was assisted or replaced at times by a subrector; for so custom, though not law, required, since one at least declined to have a formal deputy, and preferred the assistance of his son. There were also various instructors, too low in rank to be like tutors, though for convenience we may call them by that name. The Rector, appointed only for a year by popular election, was no merely honorary head, but took an important part in the real work of education. He was sometimes clothed with priestly functions; was, as we should say, in Holy Orders; and never failed, so we are often told, to be present at religious service. He went to lectures even with the men, attending sometimes all the public courses with exemplary diligence. But that was not enough. He must go to drill with them at their volunteering; must visit, at their head, the watch-towers and outposts on the frontier, where the Ephebi had been posted in old days; he must look on at their gymnastic feats, and see that they were kept in proper training and were very careful to avoid all coarse and indecorous language; and he must even take some part, as starter, or as judge perhaps, in their boat-races.

He must be a man of substance to play his part becomingly, for there were expenses which he could not well avoid. He often bore the cost himself of the religious services of his own college, paying for the victims for the sacrifice. He subscribed toward the silver plate which was the customary offering, and in other ways lightened the burdens on the students. When the outer wall of their gymnasium fell into ruins, the Rector of the day rebuilt it at his own expense; and though he thank fully accepted from his pupils the complimentary present of his statue, yet he did not forget to pay for it himself.

Some, however, of the work of supervision devolved upon the Sophronistæ, or the proctors, who were charged specially with the moral guidance of the youths, and to whose constant watchfulness the orderly behavior often spoken of was largely due. The tutors, or instructors, were specialized, as we have seen, to definite work; each was told off to deal with a single set of muscles, or some physical aptitude or grace, and therefore they scarcely rose above the rank of trainers, or of fencing or dancing-masters. At first appointed by each rector only for a year, they gradually obtained a longer hold upon their places, till they gained a sort of vested right, and held their offices for life.

The Rector had his accounts at last to pass before official auditors appointed by the State, That done with credit, he might return to private life after one year of responsible routine; but he was seldom allowed to lay down office without some mark of honor, if he had done his duty