Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/238

 ments did not rank as professors, and were not accorded any privileges beyond those of ordinary citizens.

II. At twelve the work of mental cultivation commenced seriously, and the pupil entered on the study of the seven liberal arts, viz., grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. These subjects were taken in two stages, which in the West were beginning to be called the Trivium and Quadrivium. Two years were devoted to the Trivium, the scope of which may be apprehended from a brief summary. 1. The grammar of the period dealt with the eight parts of speech in a sufficiently exhaustive manner; conveyed some notions, often crude and erroneous, as to the derivation of words; and, in the absence of precise anatomical or acoustic science, attempted in a primitive fashion a classification of the letters and a physiology of vocalization. The construction of sentences was analyzed with considerable minuteness; and passages selected from eminent writers were set for the student to parse with an exactitude seldom called for at the presentis found in Greek; Anna Comn.; i, pref.; see Ducange, ''sb. voc.'' The latter word is really the original and goes back to Pythagorean times.]