§ 1. The precept concerning the honoring of parents is the first accompanied by a promise; the reward of that observance is longevity. Those who form minds, the sources of learning and wisdom and the most illustrious authors of virtues, come into the place of parents; therefore they too deserve the honor due to parents. Alexander both acknowledged and declared in a royal utterance that he owed no less to Aristotle than to Philip—indeed, more—because from Philip he had received the means to live, but from Aristotle the means to live well. The whole matter can be defined by these few words.
§ 2. Professors ought to consecrate the immense labors which they sustain to the public good and to divine glory, and not seek the enticements of a soft and quiet life or the vanities of honors. For although this is disgraceful in every office, in a candidate for wisdom it is certainly most disgraceful. For who could endure that the most laborious knowledge of the most beautiful and hidden things, and the very teaching of virtue, should serve the foulest and emptiest things? Those who lead others to the end and the highest good ought not themselves to fall away from the end and the highest good.
§ 3. Teachers ought to be honored not only by their pupils, but also by the pupils’ parents and by the state. By the parents, indeed, because they have chosen them for their children as other parents. They are no less compelled to render an account to God for the instruction of their pupils than parents are for their upbringing. The souls entrusted to them therefore reside with them, and they keep watch, destined to render an account for others.
In this matter the ingratitude of certain parents is proud and insulting toward masters, since they hold either the domestic tutors or the public professors of their sons in contempt. For they also teach their sons to rise against their teachers, and imbue them with a pernicious opinion. At length the calamity of the wretched household comes to this: after the son has accused his master, the father has believed him, and the mother has condemned the master, by that example the parents themselves are attacked in turn. For he who rushes against his master with an injurious foot does not honor his parents; nor is a father worthy of an obedient son when he has taught him to be ungrateful toward his master. Of all those who have set themselves against their masters and against discipline as men of contempt, I know not one over whom his mother has not wept.
An outstanding example of honoring a master is set before us in the most excellent emperor Theodosius. Concerning him Nicephorus writes in Book 17, chapter 23: “About the same time, the emperor, wishing to appoint a master of virtue over his children, found that Arsenius whose glory had traversed every land beneath the sun, and entrusted them to him. Having received them, Arsenius took the place both of a teacher in every discipline and of a father in a liberal education. For the emperor had admonished him not to conceive any fear from their imperial elevation, but rather to treat them as servants. Yet so far was Arsenius from doing this that, with remarkable modesty and moderation, he did rather the contrary. And when Theodosius once came upon them suddenly, he found the boys sitting in magnificent splendor, but Arsenius standing beside them as he taught.
“For this reason the emperor, angered, both stripped them of the insignia of princes and uttered that saying worthy of everlasting memory and truly imperial: if they were going to show themselves such that they would conform their morals and life to discipline and to the laws of God, he too would be ready to deliver the empire into their hands, adapted to the advantage and benefit of the citizens and subjects; but if not, he said that it was more advantageous for them to pass their life as private persons than to rule without learning and with danger.”
The prince and the state are also bound to attend them with public honor, for God himself wished them to be honored: “Those who have been learned shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who instruct many unto justice like stars unto perpetual eternities.” Moreover, they are engaged in an honorable and splendid function: teaching the liberal arts, philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence, and theology. If, therefore, they teach the most illustrious, useful, and altogether necessary things, and if they instruct kings themselves and governors themselves, the state cannot permit them to remain without honor unless it is itself either ignorant or contemptuous of what is right and honorable. Isocrates, in his letter to the prince of Mytilene, places learned professors in an exalted—that is, in their proper—place. He says first that good and just governors of states must be held in high esteem, and that the next place in dignity must be granted to learned men who can be an ornament and an aid to cities.
§ 4. By this law even princes and magnates, and even kings, are privately bound. For no majesty of a kingdom brings it about that honor is not to be rendered to parents and masters. It is a law of nature, and one inculcated again in the Mosaic tablets, that parents be honored; and under the name of parents are understood magistrates and teachers also, not
only those who begot us. The barbarous nations teach that the matter is so, for they venerate teachers beyond what can be expressed. Nicolaus Trigautius says in Book 1, chapter 8: “The Chinese venerate masters altogether more religiously than our people do; and although one man has subjected himself to another as a pupil for a single day in any science or art, throughout the whole of his life thereafter he calls him master and honors him as a master. For in every gathering he sits only at his side and honors him with magisterial titles and rites.”
The prince, therefore, will also honor teachers by hearing them, granting easy access, assenting to equitable requests, and pardoning an accused person at their request whenever this can be done without injury to the public peace.
Certainly, the greater the solicitude of the man who instructs a prince than of him who instructs a private person, the greater the gratitude which the prince owes to a faithful master. For although the teacher’s trouble is equal in either case, nevertheless the pride of powerful children burdens the former with greater disdain. He who teaches his own lord undergoes great labors at great peril.
§ 5. Those who hold a lesser magistracy in the state ought not to wonder if they observe public teachers sometimes placed before them. For although those magistrates have been endowed with power, nevertheless greater honor is frequently bestowed upon virtue and learning than upon a magistracy, because their excellence is greater than that of a power which governs under another’s auspices according to a fixed law. Moreover, they derive from masters and teachers the very ability to administer their part of public affairs rightly; nor should those who teach the science of governing be placed lower than those who use it. Third, in the end the acts of satraps and praetors are examined by the learned, and men abide by their judgment. Those learned men are therefore judges of judges; for either the judges themselves ought to be learned, or they ought to judge according to the opinion of learned men.
Formerly men were not readily admitted to magistracies, to the interpretation of laws, or to tribunals unless they brought testimonials of learning and certificates from academies. For judging is a royal function, which kings cannot entrust to the unskilled without committing a crime. For if the man whom they put in charge of affairs and command to end controversies needs another to preside over him, and if he is compelled to receive the wording of his sentence from another judge, is it not fitting that he should honor his author? That he should honor the man without whom he cannot maintain his own place, the man whom he has as the support of his dignity?
§ 6. States and kings formerly attended teachers of the disciplines with various and great honors.
The rewards which were customarily paid to professors of the arts are these.
The first and most common is that a salary be established from public funds, lest those who are, as it were, fathers of the fatherland—men from whom all derive the means to think well and live well—should be in need. It is the mark of a flourishing state that ample rewards are paid to professors of the disciplines. These are of three kinds. Some privately hire masters for themselves, as is now common in the courts of magnates; and such is the care taken over tutors. It is necessary that this be done among the Chinese, whose letters and characters are of such a kind that scarcely more than one person can be taught by one man at the same time, as Nicolaus Trigautius relates in Book 1.
Other payments are those which individuals contribute to a public professor. This custom existed at Rome in Augustine’s time; for he himself detests the fraud of pupils by which they cheated teachers of the agreed payment. Yet the fraud was not new, but already customary of old. The satirist cries:
All wish to know; no one wishes to pay the fee.
The third kind is the most honorable, and that ordinarily decreed in a well-ordered state: that professors be paid from the treasury. For in this way the studies of the poor are best provided for, and the freedom of the teacher is greater, since his fortunes do not depend upon the fraud of his pupils. For that saying of the sage Prodicus, who taught no one without payment,
χεὶρ χεῖρα νίπτει, δίδου τι, ἀπόλαβε,
“hand washes hand; give something and receive,” was as burdensome to the poor as it was disgraceful to wisdom, since greed was thereby censured. Yet the civil laws command that a guardian pay on behalf of his ward fees not as small as he can contrive, but in proportion to the means of the estate and the dignity of the ward’s birth. Certainly the senate of the Apostles rightly lives from the Gospel, and priests from the altar; why should not the liberal arts also support their own initiate?
The state, therefore, must provide for the pursuits of wisdom. For Philostratus does not rightly defend Protagoras on the ground that he taught for payment so that learning given without cost might not be considered cheap, and so that easy access to the greatest things might not lie open to contempt. For if public expenditure forestalls private expenses, greater authority is won for the teacher, since the studies of all are honored and sustained not only by expenditure but also by the approval of the magistrate.
Augustus therefore acted rightly. Although he had forbidden a salary to be granted from the treasury without his permission, he nevertheless permitted it on account of a liberal art. For he did not wish to incur guilt against wisdom, since he himself had cultivated those arts earnestly from boyhood and had exercised himself in camp every day by declaiming and reading. Vespasian established salaries of one hundred thousand sesterces for rhetoricians, and Antoninus ten thousand drachmas. Justinian most wickedly abolished them; for he abolished the stipends of the liberal arts in every city and, when the schools ceased, introduced rusticity and barbarism, as Zonaras teaches. Nor can he be defended on the ground that he enacted laws favorable to the liberal arts, since he altered them so many times and twisted them to his own advantage.
Far more nobly did a barbarian king, who was by then lord of Rome, write to the Senate. Cassiodorus in Book 9 relates that Athalaric wrote as follows: “We recognize that we have rightly referred the concerns of sons to the persons of fathers, so that they themselves ought to take thought for the advancement of those whose interest it is to perfect Roman studies. For it is not to be believed that you can be less solicitous about a source from which both adornment increases for your race and counsel comes to your assembly through continual reading. Recently, since our care for you is solicitous, we learned through the whispering of certain persons that the teachers of Roman eloquence do not possess the appointed rewards of their labor, and that by the huckstering of certain men it comes about that the sum assigned to the masters of schools appears to be diminished. Therefore, since it is manifest that reward nourishes the arts, we have judged it a crime that anything should be taken away from the teachers of adolescents, who ought rather to be summoned to glorious studies by an increase of their advantages.”
§ 7. Those stipends are never excessive. Knowledge of philosophy, medicine, law, and theology can never be requited by an equal remuneration, even if their professors
are adorned with kingdoms and provinces. Nero voluntarily heaped immense wealth upon his master. Nero himself says in Tacitus, Annals 14: “You have given me immeasurable gratitude and countless wealth, so that very often I turn the thought over within myself: where is that spirit content with modest things? Does such a spirit lay out gardens like these, walk through these suburban estates, and abound in such expanses of lands and such extensive interest?”
So great were the riches accumulated by the munificence of a prodigal prince that they could not fail to arouse envy and disparagement. “Slanderers,” says the same Tacitus, “assail Seneca with various accusations, alleging that he was still increasing wealth already immense and raised beyond the measure of a private person; that he was turning the pursuits of the citizens toward himself; and that in the charm of his gardens and the magnificence of his villas he was, as it were, surpassing the prince.”
But how much had Nero given Seneca? Tacitus, Book 13: “By what wisdom, by what precepts of the philosophers, had he amassed three hundred million sesterces within four years of royal friendship? At Rome wills and childless men were caught, as it were, by his hunting-net; Italy and the provinces were drained by his immense interest.”
I would not wish for this luxury, nor do I excuse Seneca; yet neither do I marvel at it, since actors and stage-players possessed greater wealth, and since Narcissus, Felix, and monsters of that kind acquired royal riches through disgraceful services. In our own times too we remember learned men enticed by great stipends.
Even the Persians, a martial race, practiced that munificence: they paid the prefect of the Magi four pounds of gold each month, according to Abdias of Babylon, Book 6. How royal is Artaxerxes’ letter to Hystanes, prefect of the Hellespont! “The fame of the art of Hippocrates the physician, descended from Aesculapius, has reached me. See to it, therefore, that you give him as much gold as he wishes, and other things which he needs, and send him to me; for he will be equal in honor to the highest men in Persia. And if there is any illustrious man in Europe, make him a friend of our house, sparing no money; for men, although powerful, do not readily find what they honorably desire. Farewell.”
§ 8. The second kind of honor was that princes were accustomed either to visit and hear them themselves or to summon them with a great manifestation of honor and kindness. There survive in Laertius, Book 9, letters from Darius to Heraclitus more courteous than might be expected from barbarian pride: “King Darius desires to be your hearer and to become a participant in Greek learning. Come, therefore, at once into my presence and royal house. For with me every honor and every private privilege will be available to you, together with solicitous daily observance, pleasing conversation, and a manner of life agreeable to your character.”
Dionysius, a savage and proud tyrant, summoned Plato in a ship adorned with fillets and received him upon the shore as he arrived in a chariot drawn by four white horses. He did this not from esteem for learning or virtue, but because he desired to win reputation from familiarity with the philosopher and to offer his subjects hope of a milder reign.
Pompey the Great, although not made more illustrious by that courtesy, was certainly praised more for it than for his three triumphs from as many parts of the world.
For, passing through Rhodes from Asia, he heard all the professors of the good arts; and when they had satisfied him most fully, he offered each of them a talent of gold. He also wished to visit Posidonius, the most noble philosopher. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2: “When he had seen and greeted him and attended him with honorable words, he said that he was grieved that he could not hear him. But Posidonius said, ‘Indeed you can, nor shall I allow pain of the body to cause so great a man to have come to me in vain.’ And so Pompey used to relate that Posidonius, while lying down, discoursed gravely and copiously on this very proposition: that nothing is good except what is honorable.”
Not only did Pompey visit him, but he lowered before him the laurelled fasces and the victorious insignia, and would not permit the door of a learned man, as though more sacred than his own command, to be struck by a lictor. You may marvel at this in Pompey: that he submitted himself to a philosopher, when his country could not reduce him to private station except by death. Without doubt Pompey perceived that there was something good in Posidonius more venerable than his own majesty, and the multitude of those who praised him agreed. Antigonus expressed this in words in a letter to Zeno, as found in Laertius, Book 7: “I think that in fortune and glory I surpass your life; but in the disciplines, liberal studies, and perfect happiness which you possess, I perceive that I am far surpassed by you. I have therefore determined to entreat you to come to me, persuading myself that you will by no means allow my prayers to be in vain. Do you therefore strive by every means that we may enjoy your companionship, knowing certainly that you will be the teacher not only of me but of all the Macedonians. For it is certain that he who educates the king of Macedonia also instructs his subjects in fortitude and probity. For whatever the leader has been like, such for the most part must the subjects become.”
§ 9. In the third place, it is customary for this honor to be bestowed upon masters and professors: those who are established in public functions not only desire to associate them with themselves, but are also bound to do so by the laws. Governors are commanded to incite with honor and the hope of rewards those whose prudence they consider necessary to themselves. They cannot despise those whose wisdom they see to be necessary to them. For in reality nature has so arranged matters that he who is strong
τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ,
in intellect and prudence, commands, while he who is inferior obeys. The ancients esteemed this so highly that Cicero judges Caelius the jurist to have been so proud that he preferred to be consulted by Caesar rather than gilded by him. For he who consults another acknowledges the other’s excellence; he who gilds him reproaches him with servile greed. Hence it also came about that the kings of the Persians were either themselves learned or were governed by learned men whom they called Magi.
§ 10. In favor of public teachers, many immunities were also granted to peoples and cities, or offenses were pardoned. Ptolemy, most courteously inviting and receiving the seventy translators and astonished at the miracle of their concordant translations, bestowed immense benefactions upon the Jews. Sulla spared Athens on account of the dead; for he judged it unworthy of a human being to destroy the dwelling-place of humanity. Alexander rebuilt for Aristotle his Stagira, which had been leveled to the ground. He granted Lampsacus to Anaximenes. For when he was besieging it and saw Anaximenes come forth, knowing that he would act as an intercessor, Alexander asserted on oath that he would not grant what Anaximenes sought. But Anaximenes said, “I ask that you destroy Lampsacus.” In this I do not know which I should admire more: the ingenuity of Anaximenes, who compelled the king to swear contrary to his own desire, or the spirit of Alexander, who thought that the prayers of a learned man could be repulsed only by putting an oath in their way, and who feared the prayers of one philosopher more than the walls and arms of his enemies. Augustus imitated Alexander, for he pardoned the Alexandrians on account of Areus, his teacher in philosophy. How different from him was the man who killed Seneca because Seneca was troublesome to his vices!
§ 11. It is established by the judgment of princes that many were adorned with civil honors,
solely by the prerogative of learning. Pharaoh raised up Joseph, Darius Daniel, Gratian Ausonius, and Antoninus Proculus; and, if ancient examples are pleasing, Achilles raised up his teacher Phoenix and judged him worthy to reign with him:
ἶσον ἐμοὶ βασίλευε καὶ ἥμισυ μείρεο τιμῆς.
Reign with equal right together with me, and receive half of the honor.
That was the private affection of magnates toward their own teachers; other emperors, in order to arouse studies, were munificent toward all. Theodosius and Valentinian numbered masters whose work had been approved among those who possessed the rank of vicar. The dignity of vicars was equal to that of counts and dukes; the laws permit them also the same rank of count. St. Basil applied himself greatly to this: that the sons of the Cappadocians should be instructed in the good arts and in morals, and when they had advanced in learning, he earnestly took care that they should be raised to great honors. Constantine likewise aroused minds by liberality and marks of honor.
§ 12. Antiquity also erected statues and columns, and sometimes even altars, to learning. The Romans placed a statue for Prohaeresius—“the queen of cities to the king of eloquence,” as Eunapius relates—but certainly with excessive ambition. The same Romans acted better when they made a statue for Pythagoras as for the wisest man in accordance with an oracle, as Plutarch relates in his Numa. For in doing the same for Alcibiades as though he were the bravest, they erred grievously. Mithridates, king of Pontus, did this for Plato with better right. But the honor of statues was afterwards communicated to more men, since Orbilius Pupillus was presented with one of marble, as Suetonius is our authority. Alexander had consecrated statues of Cicero and Virgil in his household shrine, as Lampridius relates. All Greece placed a golden statue of Gorgias of Leontini in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, while the rest were honored only with gilded statues. Valerius, Book 8, chapter 16.
The Crotoniates attended Pythagoras with great honors; after he died, they consecrated his house as a temple of Ceres, because they thought it unworthy that men unlike so wise a man should dwell beneath that roof. I marvel more that the Macedonians erected a monument to Euripides, since they were less cultivated in letters. The Spartans too acted contrary to their custom—for they were enemies of poetry and philosophy—when, after Thebes had been captured, they inscribed upon Pindar’s house:
Πινδάρου τοῦ μουσοποιοῦ τὴν στέγην μὴ καίετε.
Do not burn the poet’s house.
Alfonso, the great and learned king of Aragon, judged that even Cicero’s villa ought to be spared. For during the siege of Gaeta he prohibited stones and timber from being sought from it for artillery and engines, and declared that he preferred never to use artillery rather than violate the estate of so great an orator. The reason why so great an honor is rendered to such men is known, and Sigismund also gave it to certain men. For when some were indignant that he seemed to promote learned men too high, he answered that he rightly loved those whom nature had willed to excel.
Therefore, just as princes act foolishly when they readily dismiss prudent and energetic counselors or compel them to depart through the meagerness of their stipend—because they are soon eagerly summoned by greater princes—so they also sin in neglecting learned men, whom they understand for the first time to have departed with dishonor to their own province when it is reported to them that those men have come into esteem among others. For if, in the honorable arts—as Juvenal admonishes in Satire 3—
There is no place in the city, no recompense for labors; My property is less today than it was yesterday, and tomorrow The same will wear away something from the little that remains. We propose to go There where Daedalus put off his wearied wings.
For in truth, as he had recognized and inculcates in Satire 7:
Many have repented of a vain and barren chair, As the fate of Thrasymachus proves, and that of Secundus Carrinas; and him too you saw destitute, Athens, You who dared to confer nothing but cold hemlock.
The prince, therefore, the state, parents, and above all pupils owe honor to their teachers. Although they render it in great measure, they will never give as much as the teachers’ merits deserve. A greater sum of debts will remain in the account-books, a sum which will never be crossed out except by acknowledgment and love.
Gratian, son of Valentinian, is my witness. He wrote to Ausonius his teacher in these words: “When I alone was turning over with myself the question of the consuls to be created for the year—as you know me, as I ought to have done, and as I knew you wished—I referred my decision to God. Obeying his authority, I designated you consul, declared you consul, and named you first. I have sent you a palm-embroidered robe, in which the Divine Constantine our father is woven. I have paid what I owed, and I still owe what I have paid.”