Читать книгу The Age of Justinian and Theodora (Vol.1&2) - William Gordon Holmes - Страница 16

III. The four divisions of the Quadrivium were grouped together as the mathematical arts; and six years were allotted to their study. 1. In geometry the discipline did not include the learning of theorems and problems as set forth in the Elements of Euclid, but merely an acquaintance with the definitions and with the ordinary plane and solid figures.897 The teaching in this section, however, was mainly of geography.898 It was asserted doubtfully that the earth was a globe and that there was an inferior hemisphere of which nothing certain could be predicated.899

2. Arithmetic was not practised methodically by the setting of sums to be worked out by the pupils, but consisted chiefly in demonstrating the more obvious properties of numbers, such as odd, even, prime, perfect, etc., together with many fanciful absurdities.900 Operations with figures were indicated verbally in a disconnected manner; multiplication tables to be learnt by heart had not been invented; the higher rules and decimal fractions were unknown.

3. Systematic astronomy at this period and for long after, as is well known, was conceived of on false principles which, whilst admitting of the correct solution of some problems, such as the prediction of eclipses, left the vastness of the universe and its physical constitution totally unapprehended. All the heavenly bodies were regarded as mathematically, if not teleologically disposed about the earth, to which as a centre even the fixed stars, at varying and immeasurable distances as they are, were constrained fantastically by a revolving sphere of crystal.901 The reasoning, however, by which these views were upheld was not sufficiently convincing to gain universal acceptance; and the outlines of the science communicated to students generally received some modifications from the minds of individual teachers.902 Much of the course was taken up with treating of the constellations and the zodiac, not without a tincture of astrology, and some primitive observations on meteorology were included.903

4. Music as known to us is virtually a modern creation; and that of the Greeks would doubtless impress us as a wild and disorderly performance, adapted only to the ears of some semi-barbaric people of the East. Their most extended scale did not range beyond eighteen notes;904 in order to obtain variety their only resource was a shift of key, that is, a change of pitch, or the adoption of a different mode, that is, of a gamut in which the semitones assumed novel positions; and their harmony was restricted to the consonance of octaves. Time was not measured according to the modern method, but there was a rhythm fixed in relation to the various metres of poetic verse. Their usual instruments were the pipe or flute, the lyre, a simple form of organ,905 and, of course, the human voice. Practically, therefore, their music consisted of melody of a declamatory or recitatival type, to which a peculiar character was sometimes given by the use of quarter tones; and choral singing was purely symphonic. But the vibrational numbers of the scale had been discovered by Pythagoras when making experiments with strings; and each of the eighteen notes and fifteen modes had received a descriptive name. Hence the limited scope of the art did not prevent the theory of music from ultimately becoming elaborated with a complexity not unworthy of the native subtlety of the Greeks.906 In practice the musical training of pupils consisted in their learning to sing to the lyre.907

Such in brief were the component parts of a liberal education, with which, however, under the name of philosophy, it was considered essential that a complement of ethical teaching should be conjoined. This complement was digested into three branches, under which were discussed the duty of the individual to himself, to the household, and to the community at large or to the state.908

IV. It now remains for us to glance at the more protracted training of those who had resolved to devote their lives to some particular sphere of activity. Aspirants for the position of professor of the liberal arts, or who wished to utilize their acquirements in a political career, would continue and extend their studies on the lines above indicated; but those who intended to follow the professions of law or physic, or engage in practice of art proper, had to direct their energies into new channels.

1. As the administration of the Empire was almost monopolized by the members of the legal profession, it may be inferred that the throng of youths intent on becoming lawyers fully equalled in number the students of every other calling. Hence we find that not only were schools of law established in every city of importance, notably Constantinople, Alexandria, and Caesarea, but that a provincial town of minor rank obtained a unique celebrity through the teaching of jurisprudence. Berytus, on the Syrian coast, in the province of Phoenicia, with an academic history of several centuries909 at this date, had attained to that position; and was habitually spoken of as the “mother” and “nurse of the laws.”910 Four jurists of eminence, double the number allotted to any other school, under the title of Antecessors, lectured in the auditorium;911 and a progressive course of study was arranged to extend over five years. In each successive year the candidate assumed a distinctive designation which marked his seniority or denoted the branch of law on which he was engaged.912 Before the sixth century the legal archives of the Empire had been swollen to such proportions that it had become an almost impossible task to thread the maze of their innumerable enactments. During the lapse of a thousand years the constitutions of the emperors had been engrafted on the legislation of the Republic, and the complexity of the resultant growth was capable of bewildering the most acute of legal minds. On three occasions, beginning from the time of Constantine, attempts had been made to separate and classify the effective laws;913 and the Code of Theodosius II, published in 438, the only official one, was at present in force. But this work, executed in a narrow spirit of piety which decreed that only the enactments of Christian emperors should be included, was universally recognized as both redundant and insufficient. A still wider entanglement existed in the literature which had accumulated around the interpretation and application of the statutes; during the administration of justice a myriad of perplexing points had arisen to exercise the keenest forensic judgement in order to arrive at equitable decisions; and it was estimated that two thousand treatises, emanating from nearly forty authors, contained in scattered passages matter essential to a correct apprehension of the principles and practice of the law.914 Such was the arduous prospect before a legal student who desired to win a position of repute in his profession.915

2. As Berytus had become famous for its law school, so Alexandria, and even some centuries earlier, had gained a noted pre-eminence as a centre of medical education;916 but with respect to the course of study and the methods of instruction no details have come down to us. We have seen that the regulations for the establishment of the auditorium at Constantinople did not provide for a chair of physic, whence it may be inferred that it was left entirely to those who had attained to the position of senior or arch-physician to organize the teaching and training of pupils. The public medical officers, who attended the poor at their own homes or in the nosocomia or hospitals existing at this date,917 would doubtless have excellent opportunities for forming classes and rendering students familiar with the aspect and treatment of disease. The medical and surgical science of antiquity had come to a standstill by the end of the second century, when the indefatigable Galen composed his great repertory of the knowledge of his own times. That knowledge comprised almost all the details of macroscopic anatomy, but had advanced but a little way towards solving the physiological problems as to the working of the vital machine. The gross absurdities of the preceding centuries had, however, been finally disposed of, such as that fluids passed down the windpipe into the lungs,918 or that the arteries contained air.919 Ordinary operations were performed freely; and the surgeon was conscious that it was more creditable to save a limb than to amputate it.920 Three centuries before the Christian era Theophrastus had laid the foundations of systematic botany, as had his master Aristotle those of zoology and comparative anatomy.921 The resources of therapeutics were extensive and varied, but the action of drugs was not well understood. Remedies were compounded not only from the vegetable kingdom, but also with animal substances922 to an extent which seems likely to be equalled by the more precise medication with the principles of living tissues gaining ground at the present day. Knowledge of minerals, however, was too deficient for such bodies to take a prominent place in pharmacology.923

3. The arts of Greece, after having flourished in perfection from the time of Pericles to that of Alexander in the various departments of architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature, remained dormant for some centuries until the establishment of universal peace under the dominion of Rome provided a new theatre for their exercise. Fostered in the Augustan age by the indolence and luxury of the Imperial city, which offered the prospect of fortune to every artist of ambition and talent, they were communicated to the Latins, who strove earnestly to imitate and equal their masters. The exotic art bloomed on the foreign soil to which it had been transplanted; and the Italians, if they never displayed creative genius or originality of conception, at least learned to reproduce with consummate skill and novelty of investment the emanations of Hellenic inspiration. But the elements of permanency were wanting to such factitious aptitudes, as they were in fact to the fabric of the Empire itself; and the wave of political stability was closely followed in its rise and fall by the advance or decline of the arts. After the reign of Augustus the tide of prosperity ebbed for about half a century until it reached its lowest level during the Civil Wars which heralded the settlement of Vespasian on the throne. It rose again, and for more than fifty years maintained an active flow during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, subsequent to which its course is marked by a gently descending line, under the benign rule of the Antonines, until it sinks somewhat abruptly in the temporary dissolution of the Empire, which preceded the triumph of Severus. Thenceforward, but two centuries from its foundation,924 the sovereignty of Rome entered on shoals and quicksands, calamity succeeded calamity, and a position of stable equilibrium was never afterwards regained; but in the vicissitudes of fortune before the final catastrophe, an illusive glow appeared to signalize more than once a return of the supremacy of the Caesars.925

By the time of Constantine the neglect and degradation of art had become so pronounced that artists could scarcely be found competent to execute, even in an inferior style, any monumental record of the events of the age; or for the construction of the public buildings so lavishly planned by that monarch in his attempted renovation of the Empire.926 To meet the difficulty he promulgated decrees, which were kept in force and multiplied by his successors, with the view of stimulating his subjects to devote themselves to arts and the allied handicrafts. Immunity from all civil burdens was guaranteed; and salaries, with the free occupation of suitable premises in public places, were offered to those who would undertake to teach.927 These measures undoubtedly tended to the elevation of taste and the maintenance of civilization, although they could not infuse a new genius into the people of a decadent age.

At the opening of the sixth century Constantinople was the focus of civilization not only in the East, but also with respect to those western countries which had until lately been united as members of the same political system. The suzerainty of the eastern Emperor was still tacitly allowed, or, at least, upheld; and the prestige of his capital was felt actively throughout the ruder West as a refining influence which only waned after the period of the Renaissance. The main characteristic of art at this epoch is an unskilled imitation of ancient models; and the conventional style regarded as typically Byzantine, which at one time prevailed so widely in Europe, was not to become apparent for many centuries to come.928 But by the fifth century certain modifications of design, betraying the infiltration of Oriental tastes, also began to be observable.929

a. Architecture at Constantinople remained essentially Greek, or, at least, Graeco-Roman; and the constant demand for new buildings, especially churches, ordained that it should still be zealously studied. In the provinces, however, particularly on the Asiatic side, some transitional examples would have enabled an observer to forecast already an era of cupolar construction.930

b. On the other hand, statuary almost threatened to become a lost art. The devotion to athletic contests, which prevailed among the Greeks, caused them to lay great stress on physical culture; and at the public games, as well as in the preparatory gymnasia, they were constantly familiarized with the aspect of the human figure undraped in every phase of action and repose.931 The eye of the artist thus acquired a precision which enabled him to execute works in marble with a perfection unapproached in any later age. To the anthropomorphic spirit of polytheism it was necessary that the images of the gods should be multiplied in temples and even in public places; and the Greeks essayed to express the ideal beauty of their divinities under those corporeal forms which appeared most exquisite to the human senses. Received as being of both sexes and as fulfilling the conception of faultless excellence in a variety of spheres, a boundless field lay open before the artist in which to represent them according to their diverse attributes of sovereignty, of intellect, or of grace.932 But the traditions of Hebrew monotheism sternly forbid any material presentation of the Deity, and sculpture in the round was almost abolished at the advent of Christianity. In one minor department, however, that of ivory carving, a school of artists was constantly exercised in order to provide the annual batch of consular diptychs, which it was customary to distribute throughout the provinces every new year.933 On each set of these plates, figured in low relief, appeared generally duplicate likenesses of the consul of the day, clad in his state robes and surrounded by subsidiary designs. The style of these productions, perfunctorily executed it may be, suggests that the average artist of the period was incapable of portraiture or of tracing correctly the lines of any living form.934

c. Less unfortunate with reference to religion were the pictorial arts at this date. The decoration of churches, in brilliant colour and appropriate iconography, was gradually carried to a degree of elaboration which has never since been surpassed. The intrinsic nature of popular devotion insensibly established the convention that images in the flat did not contravene the divine prohibitions; and ecclesiastical prejudice yielded to expediency. On the iconostasis and around the walls of the sacred edifice, in proximity to the worshippers, Christ, the Virgin, the Apostles, and the Saints, with many a scene of Gospel history, were depicted in glowing tints on a blue or a golden ground. On every available space of the ceiling similar subjects, but of larger dimensions, were executed in a brilliant glass mosaic, and the mass of colour overhead completed the gorgeous effect of the interior.935 Accordantly it was considered that reverence for the holy scriptures was fittingly shown by the reproduction of copies in the most costly form; and hence the painting of manuscripts in miniature revived and endured as one of the staple industries of the age. But in all these cases defective drawing and perspective are often painfully conspicuous, and a meretricious display of colour seems to be regarded by the artist as the highest expression of his skill.936

d. By the end of the fifth century we are on the verge of that new era in literature, introduced by the Byzantines, when to make a transcript of some previous writer was to become an author.937 In other branches of art from time to time some obvious merit becomes visible on the surface, but in the domain of poetry, during nearly fourteen centuries previous to the fall of the Empire, a single name only, that of Claudian, survives to remind us that both Greeks and Latins once possessed the faculty of expressing themselves in verse with nobility of thought and felicity of diction. Poetasters existed in abundance, but without exception their compositions exemplify the futility of striving after an object which in that age had resolved itself into the unattainable. The usefulness of prose as a medium of information, however low may be its literary level, often compensates us for lack of talent in an author; and the bald chronicler, who plagiarized his predecessors in the same field and presented their work as his own, is sometimes as welcome to the investigator as a writer of more ambitious aims. In these barren centuries, however, history and theology are occasionally illustrated by some work of original power.

In the foregoing paragraphs I have dealt with education in relation only to the male sex, and it remains for me to say a few words respecting the mental training of the female. In keeping with the rule as to their social seclusion, the instruction of girls was conducted in the privacy of the family circle. There they received, in addition to the usual rudiments, a certain tincture of polite learning, which implied the methodical reading of Homer and a limited acquaintance with some of the other Greek poets and the dramatists.938 Music, as being an elegant accomplishment, was also taught to them.939 They were not, however, debarred from extending the scope of their studies, and instances of learned ladies are not altogether wanting to this age, for example, the Empress Athenais or Eudocia940 and the celebrated Hypatia.941

A glance at the slight structure of knowledge, the leading lines of which I have just lightly traced, may enable the modern reader to appreciate the conditions of intellectual life among the ancients, and to perceive within how narrow an area was confined the exercise of their reasoning faculties. Viewed in comparison with the vast body of contemporary science, all the information acquired by the Greeks must appear as an inconsiderable residue scarcely capable of conveying a perceptible tinge to the whole mass. For fully eighteen hundred years, from the age of Aristotle to that of Columbus and Copernicus, no advance was made in the elucidation of natural phenomena or even towards exploring the surface of the globe. The same globe has been surveyed and delineated in its widest extent by the industry of our cartographers, has been seamed with a labyrinth of railways for the conveyance of substance, and invested in a network of wire for the transmission of thought. In the universe of suns our solar system appears to us as a minute and isolated disc, the earth a speck within that disc; to the ancients the revelations of telescopic astronomy were undreamt of, and the world they inhabited (all but a tithe of which was concealed from them, and whose form they only mistily realized) seemed to them to be the heart of the universe, of which the rest of the celestial bodies were assumed to be merely subordinate appendages. Geological investigation has penetrated the past history of the earth through a million of centuries to those primeval times when meteorological conditions first favoured the existence of organic life; the people of antiquity were blinded by unfounded legends which antedated the origin of things to a few thousand years before their own age. Spectroscopic observation has assimilated the composition of the most distant stars to that of our own planet. Chemical analysis has achieved the dissolution of the numberless varieties of matter presented to our notice, and proved them to arise merely from diverse combinations of a few simple elements; and electrical research has almost visually approached that primordial substance in which is conceived to exist the ultimate unity of all things.942 Synthetical chemistry has acquired the skill to control the inherent affinities of nature, and to compel her energies to the production of myriads of hitherto unknown compounds.943 By the aid of the microscope we can survey the activities of those otherwise invisible protoplasmic cells which lie at the foundation of every vital process; and the possibility is foreshadowed that, in the alliance of biology and chemistry, we may one day succeed in crossing the bridge which links the organic to the inorganic world and command the beginnings of life.944 In all these departments of objective knowledge the speculations and researches of the Greek philosophers had not even broken the ground. For these primitive observers, without history and without science, the world was a thing of yesterday, a novel appearance of which almost anything might be affirmed or denied. Magnetism was known merely as an interesting property of the lodestone; electricity, as yet unnamed, had barely arrested attention as a peculiarity of amber, when excited by friction, to attract light substances. Nor had the mechanical arts been developed so as to admit of any practical application and stimulate the industries of civilization. Although automatic toys were sometimes constructed with considerable ingenuity,945 the simplest labour-saving machine was as yet uninvented.946 In the early centuries of our era knowledge had become stagnant, and further progress was not conceived of. One half of the world lived on frivolity; the individuality of the other half was sunk in metaphysical illusion. The people of this age contemplated nature without comprehending her operations; her forces were displayed before their eyes, but it never entered into their heads to master them and make them subservient to the needs of human life; they moved within a narrow cage unconscious of the barriers which confined them, without a thought of emerging to the freedom of the beyond; and an ordinary citizen of the present day is in the possession of information which would surprise and instruct the greatest sage of ancient Greece.