§ 1. Eupolis, Timon, and others testify that the Academy, so called from the hero Academus, was in a suburb of Athens, six stadia from the Dipylon Gate. Caelius relates that the place was unhealthy and arid. And he excuses Plato, who chose it for studies, on the ground that, because he enjoyed an excessively prosperous condition of body, he wished by the inconveniences of the place to restrain that condition in its luxuriance. But since students have the greatest need of suitable health and air, and since Plato sought renown and attendance for his Academy, I cannot persuade myself that he wished to deter his disciples and drive anyone away by the unpleasantness of the school. For how few are there who would not prefer to be in good health rather than to learn? Or who would wish, for the sake of learning, to enter a pestilential house? Another cause, therefore, must be sought for his establishing in the Academy a school sacred to Pallas. I think it was this:
ἵν’ μὴ ἀναπολήσειεν ἡδονάς,
that he might not recall pleasures, a quiet place was sought, away from the crowds of sailors and from the luxury of the city gardens; for exercises of the mind rejoice in quiet and solitude. Nor was another place at hand or in Plato’s power. But concerning the healthfulness
and pleasantness of the Academy, we must think somewhat differently if we listen to Plutarch in the Life of Cimon. For Cimon made the arid place well-watered by conducting the purest waters to it, and planted it with a shady grove. There were three schools at Athens: the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Stoa. Aristotle’s walk was in the Lyceum; Zeno, the chief of the Stoics, taught in the portico; Plato’s was the Academy. It retained the name, so that all renowned schools founded with the immunities of monarchs are called academies. An academy consists of a multitude of teachers and learners, privileges, and what is, as it were, a state of learned men.
§ 2. The right to erect an academy belongs to the pontiff, the highest monarchs, and all states, so far as letters and the civil sciences are concerned. For as regards sacred law and theology, the power to teach them with authority must be sought from the supreme prelate of religion.
Saint Thomas, in his treatise Against Those Who Attack the Religious Life, refers that power to the pope, king, and prince.
As concerns princes, it belongs to them to determine what faculties they wish to be taught in their provinces and who may occupy themselves in them, and to grant privileges and immunities. Yet they cannot bring it about that those schools are regarded as academies in the kingdoms of other princes; if, however, the approval of the supreme pontiff is added, those schools too are held valid. It is of great importance that the highest chairs of teachers depend upon the highest authority.
First, a place suitable for students must be chosen. In it I require fineness and healthfulness of air; fertility, or easy approaches by which necessities can be imported; renown; and also well-mannered citizens.
Above all, a prince will esteem healthfulness of air. For it conduces both to intellects and to bodily health, and it also produces better and properly mannered inhabitants. I should therefore be unwilling for an academy to be established at Thebes in Boeotia, lest in the thick air more polished intellects too grow brutish; but rather in Attica itself, at Athens, the inventress of the arts, where there is
Ἑλλὰς τῆς Ἑλλάδος,
“the Greece of Greece,” where there is the common Museum of all Greece. For the gentler Muses cannot bear inhabitants of a harsh and uncultivated disposition.
No one fails to see that the fertility of the soil, or the convenience of rivers and harbors, is necessary so that food may be supplied to a great multitude. Otherwise students are exhausted by expense and the inhabitants are burdened.
From this it follows that academies must be established in renowned cities, or in cultivated towns near which there are rivers, marts, and a populous concourse. This was customary among the ancients. Athens,
τῶν λόγων ἑστία,
“the hearth of eloquence,” had the most acute citizens because of the temperateness of the climate, the convenience of the place, and attention to the best things. Cicero, For Flaccus; Eusebius, Book 10, chapter 2. And so it was most honorable to devote one’s labor to the liberal arts or to philosophy at Athens. Cicero, Book 1 of On Duties: “Although, my son Marcus, since you have now been hearing Cratippus for a year, and that at Athens, you ought to abound in the precepts and principles of philosophy because of the very great authority both of the teacher and of the city—the one of whom can increase you in knowledge and the other by examples—nevertheless, just as I, for my own benefit, have always joined Latin studies with Greek, and have done this not only in philosophy but also in the exercise of speaking, I think that you must do the same, so that you may be equal in command of both languages.”
And in Book 3: “You have undertaken, besides, the heavy burden both of Athens and of Cratippus. Since you have set out for them as though for a marketplace of the good arts, it is most shameful to return empty. Therefore, strive with as much exertion of mind as you can, contend with as much labor—if learning is labor rather than pleasure—and bring it about that you do so; and do not allow it to appear that, although everything has been supplied by us, you have failed yourself.”
In that very place Cicero did not consider it beneath his dignity if he himself also professed philosophy, as he testifies in Book 3. Leading Romans indeed used to journey there; Aulus Gellius, Book 1, chapter 2. In Jerome’s work addressed to Marcella, a distinguished orator is said to have reproached a certain man because he had learned Greek letters not at Athens but elsewhere. That distinction remained with the most renowned city for a long time. Nazianzen and Basil the Great studied there. But afterward both the glory of its studies and the city itself declined.
§ 3. Byzantium, nevertheless, transferred to itself a great part of the praise and renown of Athens. For the arts, following the majesty of the empire, placed their seat at Constantinople, to such a degree that Athens was now distinguished more by the shadow of its ancient name than by any present good. So Gregoras and Emperor Frederick to Nicholas V. Theodosius, Valentinian, and others assisted letters wonderfully. A royal house was also added, in which twelve of the most learned and select men were to dwell and answer those who consulted them; Zonaras, Book 3. Leo, because they opposed Iconoclasm, burned them together with the house and the books; and from that time studies languished in the imperial city, barbarism increased, and at last the harshest Turkish servitude was imposed. Bardas, Leo the Philosopher, his son Constantine, Constantine Ducas, Alexius Comnenus, and Andronicus the Logothete indeed attempted to restore the schools and studies to their former flower, but through schism, heresy, and wars all things fell.
§ 4. Nearly equal to the school of the Athenians in antiquity and renown was the Cranium, the phrontisterion of Corinth, in which even Dionysius, after being driven from his kingdom, taught letters as a mockery of fortune. That city was great and distinguished by two harbors, celebrated by the merchandise as well as the intellects of Europe and Asia. The sect of the Cynics especially flourished there, one in harmony with the most corrupt morals of the city. For the city, always infamous before, was in the time of Saint Paul, so to speak, a stable of shamelessness.
The school of the Rhodians was also most renowned, but mathematical study and the oratorical faculty especially flourished in it. This was not so only in the final times of the Romans, when the state was already tottering and tending toward monarchy; for Aristippus also discoursed there concerning mathematics, and when, shipwrecked, he saw the marks of learned work in the sand on the shore, he bade his companions be of good hope, because traces of men appeared there also. The Rhodians had Panaetius, Stratocles, Andronicus, Leonidas, Pisander, Eudemus, Dionysius Thrax, Apollonius, and, before these, the exiled Aeschines—all most learned men. It seems to me that Rhodes rivaled Athens because of the convenience of navigation and the pleasantness of the place, since the leading Romans sent their children there. Cicero had his son there, as well as his nephew, the son of Quintus. Nor were the Athenians ignorant of this, for many Athenians devoted themselves at Rhodes to the study of eloquence; Laertius, Book 4. I judge that this happened because of the city’s frequent disasters: Sulla’s siege and other misfortunes frightened away the professors of the arts. At Rome the studies of wisdom began late to be held in esteem, but were thereafter cultivated with great honor. Good letters and schools therefore flourished in the foremost cities. Among them the school of Berytus stands out; Berytus is the most renowned city of Phoenicia after Sidon, near the mouth of the river Lycus. Justinian
calls it most beautiful and grants it the same prerogative in letters as new and old Rome. “We will,” he says, “that these three volumes composed by us be delivered to students only in the imperial cities—Constantinople and Rome—and in the most beautiful city of the Berytians, which someone may rightly call the nurse of laws, because this was also established by earlier emperors; and not in other places which have not merited such a privilege from our ancestors. For we have heard that in the most splendid city of Alexandria, in that of the Caesareans, and in others certain unskilled men wander about and deliver adulterated teaching to their disciples. We repel them from this attempt under the following threat: if they dare hereafter to perpetrate this and to do it outside the imperial cities and the metropolis of the Berytians, they shall be punished with a fine of ten pounds of gold and shall be cast out of that city in which they do not teach laws but commit offenses against the laws.”
§ 5. The ancient and most renowned academy of all must not be omitted, which the Jews placed not in some desert but in the principal city, where the royal seat, the temple, and all the sacred institutions of the nation had been established. We owe its enlargement to Solomon, who discoursed from the cedar of Lebanon even to the hyssop which grows out of the wall. There were very many schools there, belonging to different sects and different nations. Josephus denies that philosophy and the Greek arts were taught there; indeed, he denies that this was lawful. But this must certainly be understood with qualification. For they rightly excluded that erring philosophy. If anyone today were to teach that pleasure is the highest good; if with the Academics he were to doubt all things; if with the Peripatetic school he were to assert the eternity of the world; or if he were to introduce Stoic fate, teachers of errors would rightly be proscribed by laws and punishments.
The other studies were by no means forbidden. They learned Hebrew grammar for understanding the sacred writings and Greek grammar for instructing proselytes; all were taught the divine and ancestral laws according to an established system. No one who has considered that the Egyptians learned these sciences from the descendants of Abraham, and the Greeks from the Egyptians, can be ignorant that eloquence, poetry or hymnody, logic, natural philosophy, and the mathematical disciplines were held in esteem and flourished among the Jews. The Essenes, detesting the Epicureanism of the Sadducees and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, established separate schools by the Asphaltite Lake, in which they also taught the liberal arts. There is no need to speak of the most renowned schools of Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Caesarea, and Nicomedia, since even Heliopolis, Carthage, and Cyrene had very well-equipped public schools.
Later generations imitated the ancients, who judged prudently concerning letters. Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Milan, Naples, Padua, Pisa, Zaragoza, Coimbra, Granada, Seville, Salamanca, Toledo, Valencia, Paris, Angers, Orléans, Bordeaux, Lyon, Poitiers, Reims, Toulouse, Leuven, Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Vienna, Prague, Erfurt, Cambridge, and Oxford have academies. I am not ignorant that in Germany especially there are sometimes public schools in smaller towns. But either their situation is most convenient and they have populous cities round about—as at Molsheim, where a year ago the Most Serene Leopold, Archduke of Austria and Bishop of Strasbourg and Passau, erected a new academy; and at Paderborn, where the Most Reverend Bishop and Most Illustrious Prince Theodor founded a public school for the ingenious and industrious Westphalian nation—or the place must possess some renown. This is attained not merely from a multitude of citizens but from the presence of princes and a court, and from the distinguished learning and splendor of the clergy. For no one can recall without laughter the vanity of Bion of Borysthenes, who, in order to acquire authority for his school, drew into it a crowd of sailors dressed in scholastic garments. How far he was from that philosophy which he taught!
I therefore demand an attendance of learned and honored men in academic cities. For this causes young men to imbibe civility and courtesy of manners together with letters. Next, the professors themselves, in the public eye, discharge the most difficult duty of teaching with greater diligence, dignity, and eagerness, and avoid before the eyes of magnates and censors those things which prudence counsels them to guard against. Finally, since honor nourishes the arts, and all academies distribute among their own members various degrees of dignities and honors, there is no esteem for those degrees except in great cities or before an assembly of princes and nobles.