Main Hall In The Library At Pergamum. Founded by Attalus I (241-197 B.C.), the library has been identified in a group of first-floor
rooms behind the north portico of the sanctuary of Athena. It has been suggested that the line of holes visible in the walls may have
helped to support book-cases, but the room was probably surrounded by statues of poets and historians.
Competition promised well for literary culture. In a court epigram Ptolemy III was honoured as a man 'good at battle and the Muses'. It
was important to be both, for the kings were also competing for a pool of talent from the older Greek cities. Many of these men were
exiles who found a better home as advisers and men of letters at the new courts. Museums and libraries were unquestioned goods to a
Ptolemaic agent like Zeno. From his papyri we know this estate manager as the probable owner of a lovely, early text of Euripides'
Hippolytus, the patron of epigrams for his hunting dogs, and the orderer of books and speeches on embassies which were to be sent from
Alexandria to his brother, no doubt to polish him up. The ethical ideals of school philosophy were urged on the kings and repeated in the
praises and edicts of their officials and agents. Like books, they made the kings more attractive.
Through these migrant courtiers the kings kept contact with the culture and education of older Greek cities. There was a reverse traffic,
too, as part of their covert political publicity. They sent royal architects to the cities, encouraged participation in royal festivals, gave
generous buildings, including libraries, and paid big sums for the education of the cities' youth: in the late 220s, Athens received a
'Ptolemaeum', a gymnasion for her young citizens which also housed books and hosted lectures. These gifts were apt attempts to
influence and impress, for the grossness of the royal wonderland did not stifle keen, civic education. In Greek cities children now began
to learn at the age of seven in privately funded schools, assisted sometimes by an individual's benefaction. They learnt to read and they
practised writing in sentences, some of which, as known on papyrus, have an extreme anti-feminine and anti-barbarian content.
Discipline was maintained by flogging. Aged fourteen, they passed on to a secondary stage which was dominated by literary exercises,
the names of Greek rivers, and quizzes on Homer's Trojans. The old gap before the 'ephebe' stage, at the age of eighteen, was filled for
many Hellenistic men with studies of the classics, including older poetry, and school composition. Then future citizens passed to the
gymnasion, which was funded under civic control by a rich official. The hard core of its training was sport, but some gymnasia had
libraries and held lectures too. Richer young men aspired further, to a private teacher in rhetoric or philosophy. The rhetorical training
was very mechanical. By the later second century B.C. there are signs that more and more formal grammar was being taught in the
earlier stages and that, overall, the studies were becoming ever more literary. There had never been lessons in law, while mathematics,
for most men, was alarmingly elementary. As music became specialized, it withdrew from general schooling.
Detail Of A Schoolteacher's Manual from the Fayum in Egypt. Dated to the last quarter of the third century B.C., this papyrus scroll
gives an idea of the somewhat artificial nature of many aspects of Hellenistic education. It begins by listing notional monosyllables and
obscure, tongue-twisting words, then proceeds (here) to names from geography and mythology.