learnt once more how to use the engine, the practice of which had been disused for years; and in all other matters have conducted themselves with all propriety, and have provided all that was required for the religious services of their own gymnasia-to show the wish of the Senate and the People to honour them for their merits and obedience to the laws and to their Rector, in their first year of adult life, the Senate is agreed to instruct the Presidents of the next assembly following, to lay before the People for approval the Resolution of the Senate to pass an honorary vote in praise of the Ephebi of last year, and to present them with a golden crown for their constant piety and discipline and public spirit, and to compliment their Tutors, their trainer Timon, and the fencing master Satyrus, and the marksman Nicander, and the bowman Asclepiades, and Calchedon the instructor in the catapults, and the attendants, and to award a crown of leaves to each; and to have the decree engraved by the Secretary for the time being on two pillars of stone, to be placed one in the Market-place, and the second wherever may seem best.'

Again, a few days afterwards, in a regular assembly in the theatre, one of the presidents put to the vote the following resolution of the Senate and the people :- Whereas the People always has a hearty

A decree

of the

assembly.

interest in the training and discipline of the Ephebi, hoping that the rising generation may grow up to be men able to take good care of their fatherland, and has passed laws to require them to gain a knowledge of the country, of the guardposts and of the frontiers, and to train themselves as soldiers in the use of arms, thanks to which discipline the City has been decked with many glories and imposing trophies; and whereas on this account the People has always chosen a Rector of unblemished character, and accordingly last year Dionysius the son of Socrates, the Phylasian, had the care of the Ephebi entrusted to him by the People, and duly sacrificed with them at their matriculation,... and has trained them worthily, keeping them constantly engaged at the gymnasia, and making them all efficient in their drill, and insisting on decorum, that they should not fail throughout the year in obedience to the Generals, the Tutors and himself; and whereas he has watched over their habits of order and of self-control, taking them with him to the Professors' Lectures, and being present always at their courses of instruction . . . and whereas he has also roused their public spirit by teaching them to be good marksmen with the catapult, and accompanied them in their rounds to the guardposts and the frontiers . . . and has arranged the boatraces in the processions at Munychia . . . and also

the footraces in the gymnasia, and the escorts of honour for our Roman friends and allies . . . and reviewed them on parade at the Theseia and Epitaphia . . . and has been vigilant in all cases to maintain their pride, being constant in attendance on them through the year, and has watched over their studies, and ruled them with impartial justice, keeping them in sound health and friendly intercourse, treating them with a father's care-in return for all of which the Ephebi have presented him with a golden crown and a bronze statue, to show their sense of his character and loving care; and whereas he has passed his accounts as the law requires, the Senate and the People wishing to show due honour to such Rectors as serve with merit and impartiality, Resolve to praise Dionysius, late Rector of the Ephebi of last year and to present him with a golden crown, and have proclamation made thereof in the great festival of Dionysus, as also at the athletic contests of the Panathanaic and Eleusinian feasts.'

In conclusion we may briefly note

1. The system of education thus described was The system

under the control of the government throughout.

above described

was a

"The laws and the decrees' were constantly national

appealed to in the records, not as guaranteeing

corporate status, or securing rights of property,

but as organising and defining all the essentials of

one under

the control

of the

State.

Our information is drawn almost exclusively from the inscriptions,

which are

minute in

their

details,

the institution. They insisted that a religious influence should be exerted, prescribing even the ritual established by the State; they claimed the right to interfere with the details, to correct and to reward the chief officials. It was a truly national system under government inspection, though largely supplemented by voluntary action.

2. It may surprise us that our information comes almost entirely from the inscriptions, and that ancient writers are all nearly silent on the subject. The later Athenian comedy, indeed, if that were left to us, would probably refer to it in illustration of the social manners of the times. But there was little to attract the literary circles in arrangements so mechanical and formal; there was too much of outward pageantry, and too little of real character evolved; the professorial teaching was a mere excrescence of the system; the Rectors passed so rapidly across the stage that none could stamp any marked impress of his genius on it; and originality must have been cramped by the strait-waistcoat of rigid forms.

3. Strangely enough, our information does not end even with all the complimentary phrases, of which a sample has been given in the foregoing decree. There is specified sometimes the exact number of the members of the College; and more

numbers

of the

students,

or less lengthy fragments are still left of the muster rolls, in which the proper names and the nationalities of each are stated. The native-born giving the and aliens are distinguished in the different lists; the and names varying proportions serve to mark the times when this special type of education rose and fell in popular esteem elsewhere. In the second century of our era when more than one hundred strangers sometimes matriculated in the same year, only two or three Roman names occur, while the great towns of Asia Minor and the isles of the Egean are constantly appearing. The Roman character was still too unimaginative and commonplace to prize the varied attractiveness of life at Athens. But the Syrian populations flocked to her, the men of Ascalon and Berytus above all, disguising partially their native names in a Greek dress. It is of special interest to note that at the very time when a new and showing that religious influence was spreading from the East, there were many of there is so much evidence of fusion between the Semitic Greek and the Semitic culture. In the last the Jews played probably no unimportant part; they abounded in all the marts of trade and crowded cities; and, as in the Middle Ages at the schools of Cordova and Bagdad, they may have served to some extent as dragomans between the East and West. But only a small proportion of such foreign students

race.