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Contents Vll
PART 4
CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES AND ISSUES
third act of a play. The very earliest colleges in North American in fact were
very much a product of European social forces and cultural movements under-
way well before the early 1600s; and those in turn were outgrowths of trends at
work since the time of the late Renaissance, and so on. Consequently, Part I of
the present work opens with a necessarily cursory look to beginnings in remote
antiquity, then traces the evolution of institutions of higher learning throughout
the classical and Hellenistic periods, and on into the high Middle Ages. The ori-
gins of the first European universities are treated as well as subsequent evolu-
tion and permutations from the thirteenth to the early eighteenth centuries.
Discussion of the development of modern European higher education is broken
off at the point where the focus of the narrative turns to colonial North America.
It would require separate volumes to examine European institutions of higher
learning over the past two centuries in any meaningful way.
Part II offers an overview of American colonial and antebellum colleges
from the early 1600s through to the midpoint of the nineteenth century. For the
post-Civil War period, the subsequent narrative analyzes formative events and
circumstances surrounding the emergence of comprehensive land-grant
institutions, sectarian or denominational colleges, and the beginnings of the
prototypical American university.
Part III is given over to the main outlines of the history of American
academe in the twentieth century, from the opening years of the 1900s and the
appearance of large corporate research institutions of higher learning through
to the century's closing decade. Finally, in Part IV, contemporary criticisms of
colleges and universities in the United States are briefly examined and
assessed in a concluding historical retrospective.
Lastly, it needs to be said, there is no tacit assumption behind this brief work
that American institutions of higher learning somehow represent a "culmination"
of what has gone before. For its intended readership, the central question that
drives the narrative to follow is simply: What preceded American higher edu-
cation within the Western cultural tradition and how did the modern American
college and university subsequently come to what it is today? Every effort has
been made to make the account accessible to anyone minimally conversant
with the social and intellectual history of Western civilization. More important
still, as a social and intellectual history, rather than an institutional chronicle,
the effort throughout-in this revised edition as in the original-has been to
keep the narrative reasonably compact. The extent to which all of these
aspirations have been achieved satisfactorily, of course, must be left ultimately
to the judgment of readers.
I
PART I
HISTORICAL ORIGINS
AND ANTECEDENTS
1
At this point the examinee abandons his faltering efforts and turns upon his
teacher, accusing him of lack of thoroughness in his instruction. Attempting to
shift the blame for his lackluster performance to his mentor, the student
berates the teacher for not having prepared him sufficiently. The teaching mas-
ter responds with a sharp rejoinder. "What have you done, what good came of
your sitting here? You are already a ripe man and close to being aged! Like an
old ass you are not teachable anymore. Like withered grain you have passed
the season. How long will you play around?"
His harangue continues in the same vein at length. Then, apparently relent-
ing, he breaks offto extend the failed candidate some hope for his future. "But,
it is still not too late," he observes sternly. "If you study night and day and
work modestly and without arrogance, if you attend to your colleagues and
teachers, you still can become a scribe! Then you can share the scribal craft
which is good fortune for its owner, a good spirit leading you, a bright eye,
possessed by you, and that is what the palace requires."
The so-called Examination Text A from which the above exchange is drawn
is of historical interest on several counts. Dating back to between 1720 and
1625 B.C. (and purportedly reflecting a still earlier period in ancient Sumer,
around 2300-2100 B.C.), this particular Babylonian document constitutes one
ofthe very earliest pieces of evidence for institutionalized "higher learning" in
remote antiquity.! It serves also to reveal something of the complexities of a
long and demanding course of studies, a regimen Sumero-Akkadian students
were obliged to master before attaining full-fledged status as scribes
(Sumerian: umbisag, or more commonly, dubsar; in Akkadian, tupsarru, liter-
ally, "tablet-writer").2 As the composition itself attests, a long preparatory
period of study and training was required before a candidate was examined
over his mastery of the vaunted "scribal arts" (Sumerian: namdubsar;
Akkadian: tupsarrutu) and could be considered a true dubsar gagazu
(Akkadian: upsarr mudu), a "scribe rich in scholarship."3
THE TABLET-HOUSE OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
Both textual and archaeological evidence attest to the existence of scribal
institutions of learning flourishing all along the axis of the al-larirah or
"island" formed by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers by no later than the second
half of the third millennium B.C., several centuries before the appearance of
their counterparts among the Egyptians. The emergence of formal schooling in
ancient Mesopotamia may be accounted for by the early development of large-
scale cereal agriculture (supplemented by horticulture and animal husbandry).
It in turn must have necessitated a developed "storage economy," complete
with means for recording wages and rations, registering land titles and rentals,
Higher Learning in Antiquity 5
scribal schools were functioning toward the end of the Old Kingdom, particularly
as temple agencies. lO Additional evidence from a slightly later date indicates
they had grown considerably in numbers and importance by the time of the
outset of the Empire (c. 1570 B.C.). The expansion of a bureaucracy of priests
and scribes to service the administrative needs of an ever-expanding imperium
thereafter rather strongly suggests the prevalence of training institutions, as in
Mesopotamia. Also as was the case in Sumer, scribes came to enjoy close
associations with the ruling classes; and the prestige attached to the rank of a
high-ranking scribe was considerable.
More basic still to the attraction of the scribal vocation, for those capable
of deciphering the mysteries of writing, was that it offered one of the few
alternatives to a life of arduous manual labor. Numerous passages in the
Instruction of Duauf, for example, drive home the point that a scribe's life
is infinitely to be preferred over that of the common laborer. The artisan
must constantly wield his chisel; the farmer's neck and back strain with his
heavy loads; the cobbler spends his life cutting and tearing leather; a smith
sweats at his furnace, "stinking more than fish offa\." But in contrast, "no
scribe lacks sustenance, the things of the king's house; Mesekhent [the god-
dess of birth] has prescribed success to the scribe; at the head of the offi-
cials is he set; and his father and mother give thanks." The aspiring student
scribe is advised to discipline himself and to live as an ascetic: "Rest con-
tent with your diet. If three loaves satisfy you, and you drink two pots of
beer, and the belly is not yet content, fight against it. ... Speak no hidden
words and utter no insolent words .... Set not your heart on pleasures, or
you will be ruined." Further advice is offered: "Acquire for yourself this
great calling of a scribe; pleasant and abounding in possessions are your
palette and papyrus roll, and blissful will you be every day.... Be a scribe
who is free from forced labor and protected from all [burdensome] work."
A scribe need not dig with a hoe for his living, and he does not need to carry
a basket. The scribe, the reader is reminded, "directs every work that is in
this land."JJ
Entry to the scribal craft probably was gained by apprenticeship, through
private tutoring, or most typically by attending a temple school, referred to by
the colloquial title "House of Books." The most common forms of scribal
instruction were likely of a quite rudimentary character, aiming at little more
than students' acquisition of basic literacy skills. But scattered references to a
"House of Life," some dating back to the Old and Middle Kingdoms and oth-
ers to the period following the reign of Rameses III (1195-1164 B.C.), suggest
that some students progressed far beyond. Presumably only a small number of
scribal scholars of exceptional ability entered upon the more extensive courses
8 AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION
affairs, to ethics and politics. Correlatively, the aim of human thought should
be to serve human needs; and only personal or individual experience was
thought to afford a basis for achieving that aim. Each person therefore should
be advised to rely upon his own powers and abilities to make his way through
the world.
What the sophists urged upon their listeners were the practical arts of
oratory and rhetorical persuasion, as well as an array of studies in history,
music, and mathematics. In a culture that had always valued fluency and style
in forensic debate, speech-making, and the like, here was precisely the sort of
training by means of which a young man could improve his life chances. No
longer bound by social class or the circumstances of birth, provided he applied
himself, any ambitious student might aspire to better himself and ultimately
achieve high position within the social order. Students signed up in droves to
sit at the feet of these new teachers.
"Human excellence," proclaimed Protagoras (481-411 B.C.), a recent
arrival from Abdera on the Thracian coast, "is the proper care of one's personal
affairs, so as best to manage one's own household, and also ofthe state's affairs,
so as to become a real power in the city, both as a speaker and man of action."15
Despite its novelty, so bold a declaration must have exercised a powerful
appeal in a society where the spoken word potently molded public opinion.
Because any aspirant to power had to be an effective speaker if he was to be
heard in the courts and halls of government, Protagoras advised the impor-
tance of the study of language-grammar, etymology, syntax-and its uses in
rhetoric. Such studies would assist each student to clarify and shape his
thoughts and enable him to express them eloquently.
Briefly, Protagoras' dictum, "Man is the measure of all things," presaged the
message of all the later sophists to follow. Truth, goodness, justice, or beauty
are relative to particular human interests and needs. Hence there can be only
particular truths valid for a given time and place. Morality varies from one
society to another. There are no absolute canons of right and wrong decreed in
the heavens to fit all cases; private judgment alone must determine what is fit-
ting and appropriate in any given instance or situation. It is incumbent upon
each individual accordingly to erect a personal standard of authority through
his own careful reflection and judgment. The means to establish the measure
of all things follow from the study of logic and oratory.
Those who followed after Protagoras extended much the same message.
Among the more celebrated teachers of wisdom were Gorgias of Leontini,
the Sicilian ambassador to Athens (c. 427 B.C.) who possibly had been influ-
enced by the rhetoricians Tisias and Corax of Syracuse; Prodicus of Ceos,
who stressed the importance of literary studies; Euenos of Paros; such lesser
Higher Learning in Antiquity 11
social issues frontally, while attacking the conventions of the old order, could
not help proving irresistible to a younger generation.
On the other hand, early on "sophistry" evidenced the symptoms of
superficiality and the pedantic shallowness for which it would soon become
notorious. It was one thing to affirm, as did Hippias, that it is logically possi-
ble to learn to argue for or against any formal proposition whatsoever. It was
quite another, perhaps, to require students to memorize set speeches verbatim,
together with lists of prepared questions and answers on both sides of a given
argument, without necessarily insisting on genuine comprehension and under-
standing from them. The latter practice, it might be observed, was to lead
eventually among other things to a proliferation of the infamous technai, or
handbooks on rhetoric and grammar, so much disdained for their lifeless
artificiality by later generations of scholars.
Not surprisingly, it was almost inevitable that the relativism, skepticism,
and radical individualism of the sophists should have aroused strenuous oppo-
sition from guardians of the old order. So far as traditionalists were concerned,
when itinerant teachers questioned both the authority and the very existence of
the gods, it was evident the very foundations of Hellenic culture itself were
under attack. If there are no ultimate truths accessible to human reason, as the
sophists rather clearly implied, and if goodness and justice are simply matters
of subjective preference or taste, then religion, morality, the state, indeed society
itself, were endangered. Also, the sheer rhetorical virtuosity of the sophists
aroused special ire. A sophistic character in Aristophanes' play The Clouds,
for example, boasts, "I mean to say, we argue up or down-Take what you
like-It comes to the same end."
Reaction to the intellectual challenge posed by the sophists was not long in
coming. The response was exemplified most clearly in the life and teachings
of the Athenian philosopher Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.), whose intellectual
"midwifery" was directed to a goal diametrically opposed to that of the
sophists, namely, the uncovering of transcendent knowledge quite distinct
from mere opinion. 16 In common with the sophists (with whom he was
initially confused by his detractors), Socrates insistently sought answers to
questions that had not been posed before and sought to undermine conven-
tional beliefs and assumptions. Likewise, he shared a conviction that the purpose
of philosophy was the proper conduct of one's life, not special insight into the
nature, origin or constitution of the cosmos. Where he differed fundamentally
was in what he considered the appropriate goal of human inquiry. The sophists
professed to teach others how to live successfully in a world where all
knowledge was considered relative and all moral standards mere conventions.
The Socratic aim, however, was to discern a morality separate and apart from
Higher Learning in Antiquity 13
PHILOSOPHIC SCHOOLS
Neither Socrates' instruction nor that of his sophist opponents required the
benefit of an actual physical facility. A small space in the open marketplace of
the city, or perhaps within the colonnades of a nearby temple where one might
find shelter from the sun, usually sufficed for a teaching master, surrounded by
his band of students. With Plato (c. 428-348 B.C.), however, who was
Socrates' most famous pupil, may be found one of the first instances of a literal
"school" devoted expressly to higher learning among the ancient Greeks.
Following an eventful career as a world traveler and would-be advisor to
several successive rulers in Sicily, Plato had returned to his native Athens in
midlife to devote himself to teaching. Around 388 and for the next four
decades until his death, he offered instruction in or near a school (gymna-
sian) located some two miles northwest of the city. Situated in a grove ded-
icated to the early folk hero Academus, the school had long been known
popularly as the Academy. Plato's institution apparently inherited the same
name, an appellation it was to bear thereafter throughout the many centuries
of its existence.
In his early writings, according to one interpretation at least, Plato's teach-
ings differed little from those of Socrates. Considered as a whole, however, the
corpus Platonicum evolved into a much more ambitious and comprehensive
philosophic program than anything contemplated by "the wisest man in
Athens." In common with his mentor, he rejected the sophists' claim that man
is the measure of all things. But in rejecting relativism, Plato went on to con-
struct a grand metaphysical and ethical system guided by a vision of ajust and
harmonious social order. 17 Within an ideal state, he taught, education would
become a tool for sorting and screening people according to their respective
abilities, inclinations, and natures. The bulk of the state's citizenry would be
simple artisans, shopkeepers, and the like. A separate class of warriors would
be assigned the task of serving as guardians, protecting the state from its
enemies and ensuring internal order. A third class of philosophers, guided by
perfect knowledge of the arts of governing, would be set to rule.
Unlike Socrates, Plato came to believe that only a select few were capable
of casting off the chains of myth and superstition in order to achieve true
wisdom. The culmination of years of arduous study and analysis, Plato argued, was
a kind of supra-rational, intuitive apprehension of a transcendent reality
wholly unlike that disclosed by ordinary sensory experience. Only the
"philosopher-king" (or queen), he concluded, was competent to discern
the true archetypal Forms or Ideas from which sensory particulars within the
empirical world ultimately derive. Thus guided and inspired by knowledge of
Higher Learning in Antiquity 15
the Good in and of itself, those entrusted to govern in an ideal state would rule
with perfect justice for all.
The Academy in which Plato conversed with his disciples evolved over an
extended period into a major classical center of learning. IS Little is known
about the formal curriculum in Plato's own time. Presumably it included
dialectic (the study of discussion, discourse, forensic debate, and formal
argumentation), mathematics, and metaphysics. Nor are there reliable indi-
cations of precisely how instruction was managed within the Academy. Plato
himself apparently gave few formal lectures. Note-taking, he once insisted,
is simply a mnemonic device to preserve pseudoknowledge; whereas truth,
once grasped, requires no aids to memory and will forever be remembered. 19
Most likely, such teaching as was done was conducted through oral ques-
tioning and responding, or some other form of dialectic. If there were formal
presentations at all, judging from the evidence left by former students, they
would have dealt primarily with geometry, advanced mathematics, and
number theory.2o
Upon Plato's death, the estate was bequeathed to Plato's nephew, Speusippos
(348-270 B.C.), under whose tenure the school seems to have lapsed into rela-
tive obscurity.21 The Academy regained some of its old vigor and fame when it
passed into the hands of Arcesilaus (315-240 B.C.) who assumed control
around the year 270. A third revival ensued a half century or so later with the
accession of Carneades of Cyrene (c. 214-129 B.C.). He was followed in turn
by Clitomachus, of whom little is known, and he subsequently by a certain
Philo of Larissa. In 88 B.C. the Academy came under the directorship of another
illustrious figure, Antiochus, and entered upon yet another period of prosperity
and influence. All told, the Academy was to remain in operation for a full nine
centuries, until its final closing in A.D. 529. 22
The second major school of philosophy in Athens (in the dual sense of a
systematic body of thought and a literal institution in which its teaching was
housed) was that of Aristotle (384/3-322 B.C.).23 He was born in the Greek city
of Stagira in Chalcidice, not far from the Macedonian court at Pella. In the
year 366 B.C., when he was eighteen, Aristotle arrived at the Platonic Academy
where he remained for almost two decades. After Speusippos assumed the
directorship of the school upon Plato's death, Aristotle reportedly took leave
for the island ofLesbos where he pursued his interests in medicine and marine
biology. Thereafter, according to traditional accounts, he sojourned at the
court of Hermias and subsequently served for several years as tutor to
Alexander, son of the Macedonian monarch Philip. Around 335-334 B.C.
Aristotle returned to Athens, which by now was firmly under Macedonian con-
trol. There in a rented building adjacent to the gymnasion known as the
16 AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION
studied under Gorgias and then struck out on his own as a teacher of rhetoric.
After Socrates died, Antisthenes is said to have opened a school of philosophy
in the gymnasion of the Cynosarges, from which derived the term "Cynicism"
to identify his precepts and teachings. Of Antisthenes' own views little is
known, other than an injunction to his followers to seek the highest good,
which is a virtuous life, and to shun a life of unbridled desire. 28 Diogenes of
Sin ope, a disciple of Antisthenes, developed the school of thought in a new
direction, one predicated upon the untrustworthiness and fallibility of all
human knowledge. Sometime around 310 the school attracted the support of a
young Cypriot merchant by the name of Zeno of Citium (c. 336-264 B.C.).
Having studied for a time under the Cynics, Zeno eventually disassociated
himself from them and opened his own school among the colonnades (stoai)
of the Athenian marketplace. As was customary, the term "Stoa" came into use
to refer to the teachings of Zeno's followers, including Cleanthes of Assus
(331-232 B.C.) and Chrysippus of Tarsus (c. 280-207 B.C.), among many oth-
ers. The term "Porch" (poecile) became the traditional poetic reference to the
place of instruction associated with Stoic teachers.
Interestingly enough, it was the Stoic philosophy that proved most enduring
in the Hellenistic period and that was to find widest acceptance, for example,
among the Roman intelligentsia in succeeding centuries. Stoicism as a school
of thought resists succinct characterization. 29 In brief, Stoic philosophers
taught that the cosmos is an ever-changing flux known but imperfectly through
human sense impressions. Behind its apparent fluidity and chaos, however,
there operate lawlike regularities ordained by an intelligent Providence. By
seeking to understand the ordering processes under which the world operates,
a wise person through rational reflection and contemplation attains to a knowl-
edge of that which is true, virtuous, and beautiful. The proper end of human
existence is to live a life in harmony with nature. Happiness and ultimate ful-
fillment stem from an acceptance of what life brings, whether it be painful or
pleasurable. Such disciplines as grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, logic, poetry, and
music should be regarded as useful means to this supreme end: a life lived in
accordance with the dictates of reason. 3D
The fourth philosophical school of the period was that of Epicurus
(342-270 B.C.), a native of Athens. In the year 306, having returned from a
teaching position at Mytilene, he opened a place of instruction in his home on
the outskirts of the city, in a suburb called Melite. Celebrated for its beautiful
cultivated grounds, it rather quickly came to be known as the Kepos, or
"Garden." Here men and women alike were invited to gather for instruction,
scholarly discussion, and leisurely reflection. Epicurean thought was highly
eclectic, unsystematic, often mystical in its character. Basically, a central
18 AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION
theme was the quest for human happiness. True '~oy" (hedone) in life-hence
the term "hedonism" to characterize Epicureanism-was considered to
come not from attempting to satisfy bodily pleasures, but, rather, from the
more austere pursuit of emotional tranquility and the inexhaustible mental
pleasures of the soup! Self-discipline, avoidance of the distractions of earthly
pleasures, and spiritual concentration-these were the means by which the
highest and most satisfying forms of happiness could be secured. Although the
original Garden of Epicurus closed temporarily in the year 79 B.C., after hav-
ing been guided under some fourteen different directorships, the influence of
its founder was to outlast the institution itself by many centuries. 32
THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD
Even before Plato's death, growing disunity among the Greek city-states had
increased their vulnerability to external threats, most notably that posed by the
expansion-minded Macedonians. By the middle of the fourth century when
the threat could no longer be ignored, it was too late. The major military deba-
cle suffered by the Greeks at Chaeronea in 338 B.C., for example, for all intents
and purposes spelled the end of Greek independence and the establishment of
Macedonian hegemony throughout Hellas. Yet even after the ancient city-
states lost their sovereignty, the classical culture they had nurtured was being
dispersed or exported throughout the eastern Mediterranean world by
Alexander the Great. Nor did his premature death halt the process. The emer-
gence of Hellenistic culture, very much rooted in that of classical antiquity but
enriched and extended by contacts with the peoples of the Near East, pro-
ceeded largely unimpeded by the disintegration and division of the short-lived
Alexandrian imperium. 33 Scores of major municipal centers, for example,
rather quickly evolved from sleepy provincial outposts into bustling cultural
centers in their own right: Antioch in Syria; Seleucia on the Tigris; Pergamon;
Jerusalem; and Pelusium, Oxyrhynchus, Ptolemais, and Alexandria in Egypt,
the last-named founded by Alexander himself in 332 B.C. Nevertheless, all of
the important elements of Greek "civilization" (oikoumene) continued to hold
sway, regardless of who actually held the reigns of political power, whether it
was the Seleucids in the east, the Ptolemies in Egypt, or the Macedonian
diadochi, or generals, in Greece itself. Ultimately, of course, even the mighty
Romans who alone eventually achieved the goal of unified control over the
entire Mediterranean basin, were to succumb to the allure of Greek culture, or
paideia, even as they impressed upon it the flavor of their own history and
institutions.
Details on the precise shape of institutionalized higher learning from the
third and second centuries B.C. onward into the period of Roman domination
Higher Learning in Antiquity 19
service as classrooms. Other recesses were reserved for oiling rooms and
steam baths.
As in the original Athenian model, public involvement in the life and oper-
ations of schools of all levels was cursory at best. Typically, each city had an
education "director," or gymnasiarchos, assisted by a subordinate deputy
known as the paidonomos. Together, they presided over the formal governance
and general administration of the city's educational endeavors. Apparently,
courses of advanced instruction, some extending upwards of five or more
years, were sometimes conducted in public buildings and under public aus-
pices. Equally common, however, were entrepreneurial or private-venture
schools.
Whatever the precise circumstances of the case, when a youth had success-
fully completed his literary and grammatical studies under the grammatikos,
he would leave to seek instruction with a specialist in oratorical eloquence, the
rhetor. An aggregation of disciples attracted to a common master was referred
to poetically as a "chorus" or thiastos, or "fraternity." The popularity of rhetor-
ical schools, which were to be found in practically every major town and city,
is difficult to account for, given the radically altered changes that had tran-
spired since their inception. Rhetoric as a subject of instruction had been
highly functional when city-states were democratic and autonomous. Yet long
after the fifth century, when independent city-states were virtually nonexistent
and oratory no longer served directly for social advance and preferment, the
rhetoricians continued to practice their craft. Moreover, they continued to
attract large student followings. So deeply ingrained was the notion in Greek
culture of the importance of speaking with grace and eloquence that rhetorical
schools t10urished unabated.
Still, testimony to the growing aridity and social irrelevance of the rhetors is
not lacking. In fact, evidence abounds that the models for good speaking
rhetoricians increasingly employed were at once pretentious and divorced
from the practicalities of cultural life. The Master of Rhetoric authored by the
Roman satirist Lucian, for example, affords a case in point as it ridicules pro-
fessorial foibles. 36 The work opens with a speaker declaring, "You ask, my
boy, how you can get to be a public speaker, and be held to personify the
sublime and glorious name of 'sophist.' "With heavy-handed irony the speaker
continues, "Life, you say, is not worth living unless when you speak you can
clothe yourself in such a mantle of eloquence that you will be irresistible and
invincible, that you will be admired and stared at by everyone."
The narrative continues with words of advice: "Bring with you, then, as the
principal thing, ignorance; secondly, recklessness, and thereto effrontery and
shamelessness. Modesty, respectability, self restraint and blushes may be left
Higher Learning in Antiquity 21
at home, for they are useless and somewhat of a hindrance to the matter at
hand. But you need a very loud voice, a shameless singing delivery, and a gait
like mine .... Have also many attendants, and always a book in hand."
Further, "you must pay special attention to outward appearance, and to the
graceful set of your cloak. Then cull from some source or another fifteen, or
anyhow not more than twenty, Attic words, drill yourself carefully in them,
and have them ready at the tip of your tongue."
As Lucian extends the burlesque, his character advises a would-be rhetorician
to acquire the trappings of scholarship: "Hunt up obscure, unfamiliar words,
rarely used by the ancients, and have a pile of these in readiness to launch at
your audience," he advises. "The many-headed crowd will look up to you and
think you amazing and far beyond themselves in education .... If you commit
a solecism or a barbarism, let shamelessness be your sole and only remedy,
and be ready at once with the name of someone who is not now alive, and
never was, either a poet or a historian, saying that he, a learned man, extremely
precise in his diction, approved the expression."
Besides the philosophical and rhetorical schools, a third type of institution
of higher learning prevalent throughout the Hellenistic period was, for want
of any better designation, the scholarly "research center." Illustrative exam-
ples include major teaching and research complexes at Ephesus, Smyrna,
Rhodes, Pella, Cos, and Pergamon, to name only the more prominent.
Foremost among them, however, and far surpassing all others in its longevity,
influence and scale was the famous "Temple of the Muses" (Mouseion) or
Museum, at Alexandria on the Egyptian coast. Located in a city whose inhab-
itants eventually numbered nearly a million or more people by the first cen-
tury, Alexandria was a model of urban planning, boasting spacious paved
streets laid out in regular order, an excellent harbor to facilitate maritime
commerce and trade, and numerous parks, monuments, and temples. It was a
fitting site for one of the most brilliant centers of learning of the entire
Hellenistic world. 37
The Alexandrian Museum was formed under the first two Ptolemaic rulers,
Ptolemy Soter (d. 283 B.C.) and his son and successor, Ptolemy Philadelphus
(d. 247 B.C.). Its first director (prostates) was the Aristotelian scholar
Demetrius of Phaleron (c. 345-283 B.C.) who had studied under Theophrastus
at the Athenian Lyceum. After Demetrius fell from favor, he was replaced by
Zenodotus of Ephesus, then by Callimachus of Cyrene who arrived during the
reign of Ptolemy II, though it is uncertain whether the latter served formally as
a director. Thereafter, leadership passed into the hands of the scholar
Lycophron, to Apollonius of Rhodes, and then to Eratosthenes of Cyrene
(c. 275-195 B.C.). The latter was succeeded by the grammarian Aristophanes
22 AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION
of Byzantium (c. 260-183 B.C.) and thereafter by a long line of less well-
known successors.
Endowed as a storehouse for manuscripts, much like the ancient Mycenaean
storehouses or the great seventh-century library at Nineveh under
Ashurbanipal, the Mouseion attracted large numbers of scholars across the
Greek world. According to the contemporary writer Strabo, the complex was
part of the royal palace of the capitol, and boasted "a public walk, an
[amphitheater] with seats and a large house which is the common mess-hall of
the men of learning ...." Under successive enlargements, its facilities
included copying rooms, botanical and zoological gardens, and a massive
library, the largest of its kind in antiquity. Less flattering in his description of
the institution's operations was the report of Timon in his Satirical Poems. "In
this populous Egypt of ours," he observed, "there is a kind of bird-cage called the
Museum where they fatten up any amount of scribblers and readers of musty
tomes who are never tired of squabbling with each other."38
The roster of intellectual luminaries attracted to the Museum was extensive:
Archimedes of Syracuse; the geometer Euclid; Herophilus of ChaIcedon, who
founded a medical school early in the third century; Erasistratus of Ceos, his
contemporary, who was a specialist in anatomy; the geographer Strabo of
Pontus; and countless others. The Museum's chief attraction to scholars, of
course, was its collection of manuscripts, including thousands of papyrus
scrolls gathered by agents all over the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world.
Subjects treated included all of the major disciplines and fields of knowledge:
astronomy, poetry, grammar, mathematics, medicine, natural history, philoso-
phy, philology, and so on. Estimates of the total number of holdings, including
Babylonian, Indian, Egyptian, Greek, and Hebraic works, vary considerably.
Some accounts, beginning with the great catalogue, the Pinakes (Greek: pinax,
tablet), cite upwards of 400,000 unsorted titles and 90,000 catalogued works,
besides an additional 120,000 single books housed in smaller collections in the
Temple (known as the "Daughter Library" and the Serapiana, or Serapeum).
If we recall that all books in antiquity had to be laboriously reproduced by
hand, the extent of the Museum's holdings is all the more impressive.
Scholars who inhabited the Museum's communal college were primarily
academics engaged in full-time investigation and research. From their ranks
flowed a steady outpouring of commentaries, textual glosses, and original
writings in all fields of knowledge. So far as is known, resident scholars were
not obliged to give lectures or otherwise involve themselves in the actual work
of teaching. Nevertheless, many did so on a voluntary basis. It is in this sense
that the Alexandrian Mouseion qualifies as a center of higher learning, as does
the Museum and Library at Antioch, founded under Seleucid patronage during
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