The Continuous Value of a Traditional Literary Culture

It has been widely recognized that classical education had several shortcomings.¹ From a contemporary standpoint, observance of rigid rules and formulas, reliance on the same authoritative texts, and a narrow curriculum risked stifling creativity, individual thinking, and resistance. In contrast to the way intellectual inquiry flourished under Athenian democracy, the development of education in the imperial period apparently did not have much to do with social and political change, remaining the elite pagan aristocracy’s exclusive patrimony.² And yet the same education also provided a rigorous system of training, a tendency to scrutinize ancient texts to assimilate their fabric and beauty, and a genuine admiration for, and cultivation of, rhetorical excellence; all these elements deeply impacted young minds.³ It is sometimes forgotten that this “imperfect” education produced superb literary figures. While it is surprising that paideia spread equally across the East and West and lasted uniformly over the centuries, I argue that paideia’s enduring presence signifies that it was still vibrant and that stereotyped ideas and contents had not congealed its spirit.

Recent work by Stenger on late antique education has explored the “dynamism and innovations of educational ideologies,” providing a detailed analysis of educational ideas while trying to define new trends. Stenger considered questions of upbringing, educational identity, self-transformation, and the intersection of education and ideologies.⁴ Stenger concentrates on some Christian thinkers’ educational theorizations: that is, on educational philosophy, noting that ancient paideia had reached such a state of inertia that it became easy prey for religion, the Christian Church, and textual communities. However, when we explore the appropriation of traditional education by Christian figures such as Didymus the Blind and Olympiodorus, we will ask ourselves whether they did successfully incorporate classical paideia, which had not ceased to satisfy them.

Christians established a strong notion of religious education—a departure from traditional ideas that were also entrenched in their late antique minds. Once that had happened, religious formation was always present in the philosophical curriculum. While morals and ethical concepts jumped to the foreground in ancient Christian education, we should recognize that these ideas had previously been cultivated, even if with less intensity. Moral formation and the attainment of ethical excellence were already at the center of Quintilian or Plutarch’s educational projects. In addition, we have also explored the ethical concerns of Stoic philosophers such as Musonius and Epictetus. Epictetus aimed to instill a moral conscience in his students, guiding them to become better human beings. Stenger rightly insists on the concept that Christian education was a tremendous force that affected a person’s whole existence. It offered an individual a path to proper behavior and a new “way of life.” But this was not truly an innovation; long ago Pierre Hadot insisted that philosophical education at all times meant to follow and practice a way of life. Epictetus too had wished for his students a transformation that affected their entire existence.⁵

Stenger also treats postclassical education as a monolithic and immutable system. He manifests no desire to go beyond what he defines as the usual and tired examinations of the classroom, the curriculum, and students’ life. These are the issues with which I am concerned in these sections—issues that in contrast I find to offer new and exciting perspectives. Late antique appropriation of an earlier culture took different forms. The Christian Didymus in the fourth century and the pagan Olympiodorus in the sixth adopted to some extent (though in different ways) a traditional literary culture with its lore of divinities. From the third century CE on, the cultural opposition between Christians and pagans becomes considerably less marked. It leaves very few traces in grammatical and philosophical works, to the point that the closing of the Athenian school of philosophy is never mentioned in all the late commentaries.

Initially, Christian communities resisted the notion that traditional education could also address spiritual understanding and therefore was not in opposition to Christian values. Christian writers created the model of the illiterate saint who was only inspired by God, a model that is sometimes still taken at face value by scholars who use in their arguments the fourth-century Vita Antoni, written by the Alexandrian bishop and theologian Athanasius. Recently that notion has been strongly challenged, but an incorrect understanding of illiteracy continues to characterize treatments of other Christian charismatic figures.⁶ At that time, the boundaries between pagan and Christian allegiance to the classical culture became more fluid and were less of a divisive force. Educated Christians who felt part of the traditional literary culture had argued that “it was a culture of the tongue, not of the heart” and could serve the common good.⁷

In the fourth century and later, higher education, with its traditional curriculum that went back to the Hellenistic period, remained the norm also among Christians, at least in some domains.⁸ Grammatical and rhetorical studies were still followed with enthusiasm. But, as usual, philosophy was studied more rarely, with a concentration of activity in Athens and Alexandria. It is meaningful to remember that in the second century, Epictetus had identified Zeus with God, the theos whom he worshipped fervently and who was crucial in his ethical system. Other Olympians are present in the Discourses, but they belong to a secondary tier and are never identified with a higher divinity.⁹ While we see here an authentic belief in God, the other gods are relegated to a mythological space.

There is much evidence that at that time, Christians and pagans did not belong to bounded, opposed groups but rather were more flexible. There were various degrees of intensity inherent in religious allegiance. In many respects, Christianity was not too far from a traditional mindset that accepted the Olympians in a literary context. The dipinto in one of the rooms of the fourth-century school discovered in Egypt’s Dakhla Oasis, at Amheida, testifies to some syncretism.¹⁰ Its first column contains an invocation to a God (line 4), whose name should be capitalized to distinguish him from the mythological gods that are then mentioned. “May God grant my wishes that you learn the Muses’ honeyed works with all the Graces and with Hermes son of Maia reaching the summit of rhetorical knowledge.” This teacher, imparting some grammatical and rhetorical precepts to the students, was evidently a Christian who did not refrain from mentioning the Homeric gods.

Didymus the Blind in his commentaries on biblical books mentioned traditional pagan education centered on the usual authors. His aim, however, was not to discuss mythology and the pagan gods but only to allude to or mention them in the course of his exegesis of the Bible. He took it for granted that young men would be able to identify those traditional passages and authors from past schooling. Certainly the emperor Julian would not have approved of his teaching, though Didymus’s very limited reliance on pagan notions was not threatening, and Didymus had all the pedagogic and moral qualifications that the Codex Theodosianus 13.3.5 considered mandatory. The hidden intention of Julian’s school law, with its perverse logic, was to ostracize Christian educators who regularly used traditional literature.¹¹ Julian meant to form an exclusive group that had access to the canonical texts. That became manifest in Julian’s Epistle 61c, in which the emperor openly opposed Christian teachers of higher education. The latter could not engage with traditional paideia and with the pagan gods unless “they carried them in their souls.” The contradiction of believing in a Christian God but continuing to teach mythology led in his view to an ethical crisis. The gods “were the guides of all learning” and deserved total allegiance. Christian teachers had to either stop teaching the traditional paideia or prove they were sincere in expounding on Homer and Hesiod. Clear evidence of allegiance was necessary. That probably consisted of a public pagan sacrifice, a very difficult testimony for a Christian.¹² Illustrious educators like Prohaeresius¹³ stopped teaching, even though Julian made an exception for them.

However, another side of allegiance to the traditional gods needs to be taken into account. Just as some Christians did not refrain from mixing their religious ideology with aspects of pagan beliefs or culture, so too some pagans were so more in culture than in religious fervor. They cultivated close relations with Christians and were not as strongly absorbed in the cult of the traditional gods as Julian seemed to be. I have argued elsewhere that Julian’s rescript not only was aimed at Christians who operated somewhat in both camps but also cautioned “gray pagans,” who to some extent distanced themselves from the religious content of the Greeks’ cultural heritage.¹⁴ Libanius was one of these; he taught Christian students like Amphilochius of Iconium and Optimus, who became rhetorician bishops.¹⁵ Tradition claimed that he also taught John Chrysostom.¹⁶ The Edict and the letter, in my opinion, sent pagans a controversial message: that they too had to reform their views.

Didymus: A Christian Philosopher

Several ancient historians have provided details on the life of Didymus the Blind, who was hailed as a renowned Christian teacher in fourth-century Alexandria.¹⁷ Rufinus reports that Didymus lost his eyesight as a child but through strenuous work and prayer achieved a high level of learning. He had a vast knowledge of grammar, rhetoric, logic, music, arithmetic, and geometry, and a complete familiarity with the Holy Scripture, which he knew by heart. Didymus followed the doctrines of Origen and was eventually condemned as a heretic together with Origen and Evagrius in the sixth century in a synod convened by Justinian. His works, however, show that he was flexible within his circle. Though he was loyal to the exegetical and theological views of Origen, he did not show theological conformity.¹⁸

Didymus’s students regarded him as an ascetic master, and he regarded his instruction as a form of Christian philosophy, a school for virtue. At that time, as Richard Layton remarked, “The study of philosophy, unlike other educational disciplines in antiquity, relaxed the boundaries between human and divine.”¹⁹ It is very unlikely, in any case, that Didymus’s students had attended privileged schools of philosophy before. Didymus resided in Alexandria his entire life, and because teachers were usually itinerant it was said that “his sedentary existence was imposed by his blindness.”²⁰ This is not a necessary inference, even though Didymus had a further motivation not to leave the city, namely, his health. Teachers traveled when they did not have steady commitments, but when a school became established, they would reside in that place for the rest of their lives, as the examples of Epictetus in Epirus and Libanius in Antioch show. Didymus needed time and tranquility to teach his students and to write. It is possible that his blindness influenced Didymus in a different sense. In his works he never mentioned or alluded to current events. Alexandria was then a major center of pagan intellectuals, philosophers, mathematicians, physicians, and literary figures. It was also a turbulent city at the time, but Didymus apparently kept himself away from everything.²¹ In these commentaries and lectures he never actually cites Origen, who continued to be a controversial figure. Didymus’s lack of mentioning current events was probably due to his desire to concentrate on his studies and teaching, closing himself within his classroom, and not on any uncertainty about his allegiance to Origen.

Although sometimes called a university, Didymus’s school was probably a Christian group meeting in Alexandria. It is not clear what a church school was. The instruction may have taken place either in an imposing setting similar to that of Kom el-Dikka in Alexandria or in Didymus’s own private rooms, where he offered advanced instruction in biblical interpretation.²² A very productive writer, he became an authority in biblical exegesis and left treatises and several commentaries on the Bible. These contain no biographical information but illuminate his teaching. The Christian literary tradition put him in contact with the ascetic Antony.²³ Jerome, Athanasius, and Didymus referred to the figure of Antony as an admired basis for their approach to culture and practical Christian life. Socrates of Constantinople, Sozomen, Jerome, and Rufinus testified to an encounter of Didymus and Antony in which the latter told Didymus that his eyes were those of angels: they put him in contact with God.²⁴ This was a recognition that ascetism and Christian intellectualism had to be regarded as complementary. Didymus represented the type of Christian intellectual deeply immersed in an education and culture that were not only Christian. His type of Christian philosophy was intellectually driven.

Blending classical culture and his deep knowledge of the scriptures, Didymus wrote two books on the Trinity and compendia of his understanding of the Christian faith, drawing on Origen’s works On First Principles and Against Celsus. He also produced treatises on some theological issues and commentaries on the scriptures, just as contemporary followers of Plato and Aristotle did on the works of their predecessors. Many are not extant or are severely lacunose, but their style differs sharply from that of the two school commentaries that I discuss in this section. These commentaries, devoted to Psalms and Ecclesiastes, stand out because they contain students’ questions interspersed with exegesis and represent class lectures of Didymus that were taken down as notes.²⁵Didymus’ commentaries, written mainly in the third quarter of the fourth century, have survived to us in five papyrus codices. Discarded in the sixth century, in 1941 they were found in a cave in Tura, close to Cairo. What follows concerns these notes and attempts to ascertain who recorded them. The surviving commentaries cover the whole of Ecclesiastes, while those on the Psalms are incomplete. In contrast to other commentaries such as those on Zechariah and Genesis, the lemmata and the exegesis are shorter here.

In what respects are the transcripts of Didymus’s classes significant? These notes are so valuable because they illuminate ancient Christian teaching and learning and the differences from pagan education. Since notes are proverbially disorderly, a scribe copied them after they were redacted—as happened for Arrian’s notes—but maintained the texts with their apparent shortcomings. We should compare the evidence they offer against what exists for other ancient schools and evaluate what they show of the exegesis of Christian texts in the early Christian period. Libanius, who lived in the same period as Didymus, left abundant testimonies of his own teaching. From these we can derive much information about the composition of his classes, the social and economic backgrounds of his students, and the curriculum they followed. All this material is of a different tenor from what comes to light through Didymus’s commentaries, however, because it consists of orations and exercises that were edited and published. Even in the letters, Libanius’s voice is muffled by the need to observe some conventions, work in favor of student recruitment, and enlarge his political and religious circles. Both his students’ voices and his own are often conventional and are far from constituting direct testimonies, while through Didymus’s comments the pedagogic setting is direct and authentic. The Discourses of Epictetus feel more vivid than the works of Libanius, permitting us to perceive otherwise unknown sides of his personality and pedagogy. For this reason, I sometimes call on Epictetus for comparison, even though he lived more than two centuries before Didymus and was a Stoic philosopher rather than a Christian.²⁶

Levels of Teaching in Early Christianity

The commentaries on Psalms and Ecclesiastes, unlike Didymus’s other commentaries, contain roughly three hundred questions (or observations) and corresponding answers. The level of the questions is not uniform. The students might ask about the meaning of a phrase or term, or they might venture into more advanced material. Didymus might reply with a straight answer or by showing the different meanings of a word in the singular and plural or in the passive voice, or by postponing his answer with some impatience. The questions are about numerology, points of grammar, and interpretation. Most of the questions are introduced by a sign επερ followed by an abbreviation sign that has been interpreted as representing various forms of ἐπερωτάω (to ask). To these I would also add the possibility of ἐπεργάζομαι (to discuss, to inquire about and elaborate).²⁷ From the beginning these commentaries were identified as Didymus’s lectures to rather advanced students, but signs of the presence of students of various levels of learning are visible. The evidence shows that Didymus addressed students who were not mere catechumens, interested not only in grammar and lexical issues, but also in some logic, rhetoric, philosophy, numerology, geometry, and astronomy.²⁸ In these disciplines, however, their level was not very sophisticated. Throughout, moral exhortations and emphasis are present, suggesting that some ascetics and monks attended the classes in addition to the students of various levels.²⁹ Though these are not commentaries in the traditional sense, the term commentarii is aptly used for them as a term applied to notes.³⁰ With their various formats, the students’ questions let us see the mechanics of a teacher’s delivery of lectures and generation of responses.

Didymus’s Tura transcripts, like Arrian’s notes, reveal how classes were conducted and guide us helpfully through school routines. Plutarch discusses this topic at length in his essay On Listening to Lectures (42F–43F), which contains abundant references to students’ questionable behavior during lectures. He distinguishes between questions asked by students and auditors interrupting the lecturer and those that he allows them to ask at the end of the lecture. An audience should be silent and avoid asking questions while a lecture is being delivered, but even those questions asked at the end should be appropriate; the ethical philosopher should not be plagued by “those in natural science or mathematics.”³¹ The commentaries of Didymus on the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, however, are not proper lectures delivered continuously to the public along the lines prescribed by Plutarch. They cite lemmata, that is, verses and passages from the Bible, and comment on them in front of a lively audience of students who ask clarifications and further questions. Apparently Libanius did not permit questions at his lectures, but he certainly responded to them during teaching.³² We have seen above that not so many questions by students are present in Epictetus’s Discourses. Arrian presents many solo performances of the philosopher where the words of Epictetus contain both questions and answers. His students are behind the text, but their recorded interventions are very few. Occasionally one can hear Didymus’s voice uttering a student’s question, as Epictetus did. The rhythm and frequency of the questions in Didymus’s text is another indication that it reproduces the spontaneous unfolding of the teaching that is captured by notes. Questions can be very brief or long and detailed, or they can be reproduced in a series.³³ Some are at the end of a session as in Plutarch’s essay, but others occur throughout a session and sometimes allude to material done previously. They can even occur at the beginning of a session and recapitulate issues encountered before.

In order to understand in which respects Didymus’s school corresponded to a traditional system of liberal studies in the Greek and Roman world and specifically covered material in a grammarian’s context, it is necessary to review and also challenge what we know about ancient education. Years ago, I attempted to show that a primary level of learning was generally followed by literary studies under the grammarian and the rhetor.³⁴ While elementary education might be acquired informally in cities and the countryside alike, teaching at subsequent levels traditionally took place in cities and was limited to students who could afford the expense. Philosophical education was not part of the enkyklios paideia; it was restricted to smaller circles. I want to emphasize now that these divisions were not rigidly observed in all cases, as students of various ages could be admitted to higher levels, and education could be adapted to local circumstances.³⁵ In late antiquity especially, education was changing. The situation was much more fluid than what exists in the modern world, although one might be tempted to find some parallels. In the Roman and late antique periods, the traditional divisions in circles of learning were beginning to be effaced according to circumstances, localities, and the availability of specialized teachers.

In earlier centuries, educational theory certainly did not favor such blurring. Writing in the first century in the city of Rome, Quintilian denounces those grammarians who were then encroaching on the territory of rhetoric teachers by introducing progymnasmata in their classes.³⁶ He maintains that each educational level has its proper sphere, but his protests show that these different models of teaching were already established. Quintilian puts up a passionate defense of his field, rhetoric, but different models were in existence not only in the countryside but also in urban settings, with teaching of the rudiments going hand in hand with that of higher disciplines. In second-century Rome, Fronto was a lawyer, had a political career, and tutored the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus in rhetoric.³⁷ He was a supporter of Latin literature, and his lessons were often permeated by his passion for obscure and archaic words, with a focus on how they should be chosen and arranged, using examples selected from poets such as Ennius.³⁸ He taught rhetoric but had a fervent interest in literature and attempted to inculcate in Marcus Aurelius the skill of writing beautiful epistles. His model was Cicero, and he sent some excerpts of his letters to Marcus, who had asked him for a selection of them to improve his language skills.³⁹ Teaching epistolary skills was traditionally a task for the grammarian, but since it was needed, Fronto took it over.

Later on, other schools in the East would try to follow this same model in which certain disciplines coexisted with others.⁴⁰ Some of these schools were large and specialized and catered to students who came from all over the Roman East to learn rhetoric. Necessity, however, sometimes dictated different arrangements. In Antioch, Libanius was “the sophist of the city,” and we can surmise that the other local rhetorical groups did not attract the same crowds as his school, which counted eighty students in its best years. Libanius’s school was exclusively for rhetoric, a subject in which he was the ultimate authority, but he employed a number of assistants. For years these assistants were considered grammarians employed by the school, but I have shown more recently that they were rhetors who functioned below their levels of expertise.⁴¹ The school included some very young students and others who were married adults, and so different types of teaching were required.⁴² The curriculum itself was rooted in traditional poetry and literature, and the assistants’ task was to guide students through literary texts, especially the Homeric poems.

In Egypt, private teachers called kathegetai offered their services to young men who could not attend advanced classes in cities like Oxyrhynchus and Alexandria.⁴³ These were teachers of higher education, and they covered levels above the elementary, including subjects up to rhetoric. The letter that the student Neilos wrote to his father in the first or second century indicates that in Alexandria, the teaching of rhetoric was organized in small groups around private teachers.⁴⁴ In the fourth-century dipinto found on the wall of a Greek school in Amheida, the ancient Trimithis in Egypt, literary texts by Homer and Plutarch would suggest the teaching of the grammarian, while another text hints at moving up to the next level, that of the rhetor.⁴⁵ It is absurd to think that two different teachers were involved in a small school in a remote location. Rather, a competent kathegetes with knowledge in both areas must have left the Nile valley to serve those privileged young men in the Dakhla Oasis whose parents cared to offer them a competitive education. The schools I have described above are examples of institutions where subjects were not strictly separated, but where instead the same people covered some of each of them according to necessity.

The size of the school where Didymus taught as doctor scholae ecclesiasticae is unclear. According to Rufinus, the school was not under the authority of bishop Athanasius but rather an urban study group meant to promote personal growth through the reading of the scriptures. As was customary, exegetical lessons were given in the morning and the afternoon was devoted to “a largely transient group of students.”⁴⁶ Students of various ages and backgrounds came and went, and Didymus had to adapt to their different levels. It is not very significant that in the first century Philo of Alexandria probably had only three students in his class, as the dialogue On Animals reveals.⁴⁷ It is likely that Philo, who came from a prominent family and did not have to earn a living from teaching, was not working in an institutional context, but the diversity of students must have been a challenge. One should not be surprised by the lack of uniformity of Didymus’s pedagogic message. At times, in any case, context suggests the presence of more than one student, even if Didymus never uses the second person plural in reference to his audience.⁴⁸

Tradition has attributed to both Origen and Didymus an important role in the catechetical school in Alexandria, so it is worthwhile to try to understand what kind of a school that was. The two commentaries we must consider show that Didymus’s teaching did not in fact address catechumens. For centuries scholars have discussed the catechetical school in Alexandria: its existence, characteristics, and especially the kind of instruction that was imparted there. Both Knauber (1968) and Crouzel (1970) argued for elementary notions being given to the younger ones while older students received some philosophical and ethical teaching.⁴⁹

In a 1977 study by van den Hoek, the account of Eusebius of Caesarea in the Church History was strongly criticized, because he depicted an actual school continuing across time, but more recently it has attracted less criticism.⁵⁰ In 6.3.8–9, Eusebius portrayed the school as something unified, but this seems his own creation.⁵¹ Several times Eusebius referred to a didaskaleion, a term that is rather ambiguous and would indicate a place of teaching or instruction. In one instance, however, he referred directly to a “catechetical” school and said that Origen when he was eighteen years old had become the head of the catechetical school in Alexandria (6.30.1).⁵²Eusebius says that when Origen realized that he had too many students, he asked his student Heraklas to conduct the elementary classes for the youngest of them, keeping for himself the teaching of the older students. Origen’s teaching in Alexandria and Caesarea gave his more advanced students some philosophical and ethical precepts that could strengthen them in learned discussions, but it is unclear whether these were mostly notions deriving from general advanced paideia to help them understand the Scriptures.⁵³

The Schooling of Origen

A good case from which to appreciate the variety of Christian learning experiences in Didymus’s time is the course of studies that Origen followed before teaching in Alexandria and later in Caesarea Maritima.⁵⁴ In the Homilies on the Psalms there is a remark about himself as grammarian and philosopher.

Ὁ διδάσκαλος καὶ κύριος ἡμῶν τοσαῦτα ἔχει μαθήματα ὡς ἀπαγγέλλειν οὐκ ἐπὶ δέκα ἔτη, ὡς ἀπαγγέλλει γραμματικὸς καὶ οὐκ ἔχει τί διδάξει οὐδὲ ὡς φιλόσοφος ἀπαγγέλλει παραδιδοὺς καὶ οὐκέτι ἔχει καινότερόν τι εἴπῃ, ἀλλὰ τοσαῦτά ἐστι τὰ μαθήματα τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὥστε αὐτὸν ἀπαγγέλλειν εἰς ὅλον τὸν αἰῶνα.

Our teacher and Lord has these teachings to proclaim not for 10 years as the grammarian teaches, who then does not have anything new to teach, neither as the philosopher who expands and proclaims and then does not have anything new to say, but these are the teachings of Christ so that he proclaims them for whole ages. (Homilia in Psalmum 74.6)⁵⁵

This passage has troubled scholars of Origen very much because it seems to indicate that Origen studied with a grammarian for ten years, a really long time—as people have objected—and then passed to the guidance of a philosopher without studying rhetoric. There are three solutions for the dilemma. We will see in what follows that in sixth-century Alexandria, Philoponus was called a grammarian and actually had a formal appointment as such but was also teaching philosophy. Another scenario is also possible: Origen studied with a primary teacher for about five years and then with a grammarian for five more. In this way his schooling would have followed the usual protocol, but teachers’ titles would be different from usual. The primary teacher could be called grammatistes, and sometimes the titles grammatistes, the teacher of elementary letters, and grammatikos, the teacher of liberal letters, were considered together and their titles were mixed. It is indicative that in the fourth century, authors like Libanius and Themistius called the grammaticus by the name grammatistes. Robert Kaster has shown that a more fluid notion of literacy could be expected especially away from the large educational centers, with grammarians entrusted with a variety of teaching.⁵⁶ So a third solution for the dilemma about Origen’s schooling is that the passage above is correct and he might have learned all subjects before philosophy from a grammarian, including some rhetoric. Whatever solution we adopt, what precedes confirms that the boundary between different types of teachers could be porous.

Was Didymus a Grammarian?

Blossom Stefaniw has argued that “Didymus was a fourth century Christian grammarian,” asserting that Didymus as a true classical grammarian taught only the traditional subjects that were part of his sphere.⁵⁷ Though this statement surprised many scholars, no one has argued against it systematically, so the question deserves some probing. It not only clarifies Didymus’s role but also allows us to glean information about an ancient Christian classroom. Stefaniw’s argument is that Didymus was a grammarian because “he exhibited all the symptoms of a grammarian.”⁵⁸ His students often raised questions on points of grammar, forcing him to linger on explanations, and as a consequence there were many interruptions and repetitions. While Stefaniw rightly maintains that Didymus did not offer catechetical or purely ethical instruction, he did cover so many other subjects that it seems unnecessary to imprison him in a grammarian’s cage. Some of his “illustrious” students, such as Rufinus or Jerome, joined his class after learning history, rhetoric, and some philosophy and could not be satisfied with simple questions. Others may have spent only a year or two in a grammarian’s class and would still have needed help reading the Bible and guidance to avoid committing errors of interpretation. Didymus was able to respond to all occasions.

The activities of a grammarian had many facets related to reading and writing, but in the Tura commentaries these are mostly confined to clarifying the exegesis of a text.⁵⁹ Lemmata varied, but most of them were short and were followed by explanations intended to facilitate reading comprehension. Though this activity corresponded to the first of the six parts that traditionally constituted the expertise of a grammarian, most of the other domains of the grammarian, such as prosody, explanation of literary devices, and the studies of language and orthography, are almost absent from the commentaries.⁶⁰ Didymus’s principal aim was to help some students overcome the obscurities of the narrative and properly understand the literal meaning before all else. Because Didymus was not teaching his students how to write, he gave them a minimum of “historical” notes, that is, the minutiae and whereabouts of biblical figures according to the grammarian’s method. Only the minimum amount of information necessary to facilitate their understanding was deemed worthwhile. Unlike the pedantic grammarians, who indulged in these minutiae and inundated their students with all of their knowledge of mythological and historical lore, Didymus uses the historiae at a minimal level, and his commentaries are far from swollen with trivia.

Many of the students’ questions and Didymus’s explanations concern the speaker of a passage, the prosopon. Identifying this figure was arduous in some passages. Readers of Latin and Greek literature, and not only students of the Bible, might be confused at times. In the margins of some school papyri containing Homeric passages, readers marked the names of the speakers to facilitate reading. Thus, in P.Oxy. II 223, which contains Book 5 of the Iliad and is replete with lectional signs, a second hand added the speakers’ names, including the general voice of the poet. The Psalms were particularly difficult in this respect because they might be uttered by either a divine or a human voice.⁶¹ When he helped his students, Didymus was not wearing his grammarian’s hat but was simply a concerned teacher who perceived that his students were inadequately prepared. In explaining points of grammar, nuances in meaning, differences in prepositions, the singulars or plurals of verbs, or unknown words, Didymus was trying to remedy the gaps in the cultural baggage of those of his students who were not yet ready for Christian exegesis.

We have seen that the philosopher Epictetus had to confront students who were nostalgic for their gymnasia and past friends and who requested explanations of words. At their previous levels of studies, they had become habituated to the method of minute explanations that Epictetus referred to with disdain. In this case habit was compounded with the need to clarify some words used in philosophy, as also happened with Didymus. Epictetus argued with some contempt that the explanation of “little words” (lexeidia) should not take place in the school of a philosopher.⁶² Didymus was usually more patient when confronting the same needy students, because their comprehension of the Scriptures was also at stake. It is very clear that the school of Didymus included students of more varied levels of learning and preparation and was less specialized than the school of Epictetus, which revolved around Stoic philosophy. And yet in both can be perceived the need to satisfy the requests of diverse students. Didymus was not a grammarian, but he knew grammar well, and when necessary he could act like one. Some of his students used uncertain language and needed to strengthen their grammar and comprehension of the text, but there is no need to assign Didymus only a grammarian’s role. The frequency of linguistic explanation in the two Commentaries indicates that the average student in the class did not possess a high level of knowledge, but the texts also refer to aspects of rhetoric and philosophy to which other students had been exposed.

Another concern of Didymus was to impart to his most advanced students some notions of numerology, natural science, and logic, including the study of syllogisms.⁶³ This is a further indication that Didymus was not specifically a grammarian but instead a teacher who was flexible, like all good teachers, and responded to the needs of his students. If he appears more engaged with grammar than with other disciplines, it is only because the level of learning of his students was mostly lower, and they had not previously had a formal education in philosophy. For Didymus the absolute philosophical authority was Aristotle. Didymus quoted from some works of Aristotle, alluded to specific points in his commentaries and lectures, and incorporated Aristotelian logic in his instruction. He mentioned some syllogisms, including the one about the liar that was popular in the schools.⁶⁴ This syllogism has the following form: “If a person says, ‘I am lying,’ does he lie or tell the truth? If he is lying, he is telling the truth; if he is telling the truth, he is lying.”⁶⁵ Apparently the Stoic Chrysippus had written six books on this exercise, and Epictetus repeatedly refers to him in connection to syllogisms.⁶⁶ Syllogisms were part of an education in philosophy, but they were often practiced at the early stages, judging from their appearances in Epictetus. He presents some of his students joining his school and proudly showing off their skill in these puzzles. Such students’ philosophical ideals consisted of speaking fluently on philosophical principles, showing them off to others, and talking glibly without working on their knowledge of themselves or introspection. It appears that syllogisms were amusing philosophical exercises that Didymus found necessary for giving his best pupils a taste of philosophy. These notions were certainly not included among the subjects taught by a grammarian.⁶⁷ Didymus was very competent in various fields, and he dipped into his diverse stores of knowledge to serve his most advanced students.

Adrian’s Introduction to the Sacred Scriptures

It is useful to consider here as an example of a properly grammatical commentary a very interesting text that is not well known: Adrian’s Introduction to the Sacred Scriptures: An Antiochene Handbook for Textual Interpretation. This text exemplifies the Christian use of traditional education and confirms that Christian grammatical practice followed the traditional one and was confined to properly grammatical notes.⁶⁸ Thus this text is very different from that of Didymus and very informative about how a grammatical commentary would look and what the functions of grammarians were. The text is customarily dated to the beginning of the fifth century and is of great importance because it is the only surviving handbook of biblical interpretation that issued from the fourth and fifth centuries. It purports to address teachers who needed to instruct students and is set in the schoolroom, as Adrian says, in an Antiochene context of biblical scholarship, especially on the Psalms.⁶⁹In early Christian times, lexica, commentaries, and glossaries were inspired by classical texts but were centered on a new classic, the Sacred Scriptures. The text is influenced by John Chrysostom and by the exegetical works of Theodore of Mopsuestia that preceded it.⁷⁰ Theodore’s commentaries on the Psalms and on the Minor Prophets are also a source. Adrian cites and mirrors especially the latter, showing little difference between early Christian texts and the tradition of Greek grammarians and rhetors.

We do not know for sure whether Adrian was a grammarian, but his only surviving work is entirely concerned with the practices of grammar in elucidating texts, looking at style, figures, and tropes and explaining unfamiliar words. It is not fundamentally dissimilar from Quintilian. The commentary is short and is not designed to comment on a particular book, but instead is intended to show a set of instructions that a beginner needs to follow. It is divided into three parts: message (content), diction, and word arrangement. Adrian felt that the text of the Sacred Scriptures was difficult, and so it was imperative for a beginner to know its peculiarities. The type of exegesis that Christian texts followed was modeled on that of the Homeric poems, which presented many difficulties to a reader in style and content. The Christian teacher should first instruct the student about the content of a work, but before embarking on a line-by-line commentary he had to aim at exegetical precision by teaching the student the peculiarities of the biblical language such as figures and the various kinds of tropes.⁷¹ Adrian was familiar with the tradition of commentaries in Antioch. In an important part of appendix 3 (75), Adrian refers to the fact that Christian exegesis must use the same interpretive principles as the classical tradition. He argues that Christian exegesis needs to model itself on the interpretation of Homeric epics and should not venture into unnecessary conjectures. Adrian’s book does not touch on rhetoric and philosophy, but exclusively concerns grammatical material. By examining Adrian’s work, one realizes that Didymus could not be only a grammarian.

Are Didymus’s Texts a Conglomeration of Notes?

In some respects, the Tura commentaries match the notes that Arrian took in the classes of Epictetus, and they are also not dissimilar from the lectures of Olympiodorus taken down by a student.⁷² While the content is different, all the annotations contain a degree of spontaneity that is typical of notes; they let us hear the voices of those who recorded them. This is what constitutes their strength, authority, and fascination. There is no doubt that these were rough annotations of Didymus’s teaching. Mistakes, confusions, and chaotic questions are sure indications of that. The Tura commentaries also show that some students might become confused and fall behind, remaining stuck on and requesting explanations of a previous passage.⁷³ The students sometimes challenged their teacher, but more often they followed along with some reluctance. Didymus’s responses to questions might be rapid, and he often used the expression amelei (“come on, of course, no doubt”) when he felt impatient to move ahead. At times, however, the students would settle on a certain passage, and he would be forced to linger more or less patiently. “We have already said that frequently!” Didymus would sometimes protest to no avail, and sometimes he would refuse to explain a second time. His impatience at being asked to repeat a point is at times palpable, and he can be seen avoiding answering some questions, perhaps because he considered them problematic or redundant.⁷⁴ In certain respects the similarity of these notes to those that are evident in some works of Aristotle is striking.⁷⁵

Evidence of Didymus’s veiled anger at students of different levels is not surprising in a text that originated in class and was not intended to be published. We can compare with this Epictetus’s fury that arose at the sluggish and unethical behavior of some of his pupils. In this case too, notes allow us to look behind a text and comprehend Didymus’s teaching strategies. As in the case of Epictetus, annotations taken by others present in the class can put us in direct contact with the raw feelings of the protagonists. The beginning of an important passage about Job, centered on Job’s rightfulness, is lost.⁷⁶ In this long disquisition and dialogue about the biblical figure, Didymus is far removed from the persona of a grammarian: for instance, he is not concerned with Job’s genealogy or with discussing the minute details of his story. The student who was Didymus’s interlocutor in this dialogue was far beyond needing grammatical help, knew the Bible well, and needed to delve immediately into the meat of the discussion.

Richard Layton has recognized this as one of the most enlightening pedagogic passages of the Tura commentaries.⁷⁷ Here, Didymus engages a well-prepared student who confronts him in a heated debate with the question of whether Job was righteous when he cursed the day he was born. The student reacts with indignation to the apparent reproof of the teacher because he sees a weakness in the argument and does not want to be silenced. The introduction and discussion of the opinion of Protagoras, who is defined as a sophist and whom perhaps the student had never encountered, serves to support the impossibility of mental certainty. The debate is only loosely philosophical, but Protagoras makes it dialectical.⁷⁸ After a debate on the equal validity of contradictory statements, the student finds he has depleted his ammunition but is also left without the conclusive answer he feels he deserves. This must have been a letdown; he was up to the challenge and had insisted on an intellectual confrontation. Centuries later the philosopher Philoponus found himself in a similar situation. Rather than replying to one of his objections, his master Ammonius cut off the discussion and said that otherwise they would surpass the time allotted. In the next lecture Ammonius did not take up the subject and declined to continue discussing it.⁷⁹

One of the values of the Job passage is that it shows how notes are useful in portraying the dynamics of a real classroom. They allow us to move beyond the rigidity of pedagogic texts that had been emended and transmitted in the regular fashion. In this interchange between teacher and student, Didymus appears to be on the defensive and does not fully dispel his pupil’s doubts. Didymus here is a less than sympathetic pedagogue and seeks to escape from the discussion. This passage also exemplifies how uneven Didymus’s answers were and how perceptible (and authoritarian) his voice was. He treats some questions abruptly and very briefly, and others by impatiently confronting students’ insistence or inquiries. Sometimes he refuses to answer altogether. Questions could arise at unpredictable moments, sporadically or all at once. They followed the ups and downs of teaching and learning, evoking the natural movements of lessons, as notes reveal. Didymus refers to his lectures as praxeis, as in the philosophical lectures of late antiquity.⁸⁰

Models held a central position in ancient education. They existed for writing and style, providing students a guide when they produced their texts. As Plato’s Protagoras said, elementary teachers wrote lines and made students write according to them (Prt. 326d). Then, by memorizing poetry and literature, students followed other models. Education also used exempla to delve into the pupil’s world, appealing to his memory and imagination regarding not only grammar but also rhetoric, philosophy, and other disciplines such as medicine. Epictetus uses examples regarding the fields of medicine, music, and navigation, adding to these a wealth of historical examples, some based on contemporary events that could touch on pupils’ concrete situations.⁸¹

The notes of the Tura commentaries show that Didymus used examples of every kind to support his exegesis of the Scriptures.⁸² He had a personal predilection for paradeigmata, which he must have thought had formidable pedagogic value for clarifying a discussion. Most of the time he did not identify their source. Besides biblical examples he also used traditional ones from the everyday world, and especially from rhetoric and philosophy. He had a heterogeneous class. It seems that Didymus’s teaching was for this reason highly individualized, even though he strove to observe procedural guidelines. In this endeavor, exempla could serve as links between the various levels in his class. Some students would simply have enjoyed their descriptive texture, while others may have been reminded of previous lessons on Socrates and Plato.

Shorthand Notae or Students’ Annotations?

As emphasized at the beginning of this chapter, I argue that a text consisting of notes cannot automatically be assumed to be those of students who took them down during class but could also be notae of stenographers present at the lectures. Informal notes of stenographers that were never published would still allow us to gain information on how Didymus’s class was conducted. In what follows, however, I will show that it is very likely that students rather than stenographers recorded the texts. It is commonly maintained that it was stenographers who took down the commentaries on Psalms and Ecclesiastes, as happened in the case of Didymus’s other works. The early commentators who were not familiar with students’ texts were unanimous in this respect, and more recent ones such as Bienert, Richard Layton, and Blumell take it for granted that tachygraphers recorded Didymus’s classes, without discussing the issue.⁸³ Grant Bayliss is the only scholar who has declared his uncertainty about whether these texts were the records of a secretary or students’ notes.⁸⁴ Even though decisive evidence is lacking, the cumulative considerations point in the latter direction. It is necessary to keep in mind the whole question of how stenographers worked, which I have covered in more detail in a previous chapter, to clarify the question. At the time of Didymus, stenographers were very popular in certain circles and occupied prestigious positions. Scholars of Didymus’s works often use the terms “stenographer” and “scribe” interchangeably, but some precision is needed: stenographers recorded words directly, while scribes copied from a model.

The historian Rufinus (11.7) is the source of the general conviction that Didymus functioned exclusively with the help of stenographers.

Huius aliquanti dicta, vel communiter disputata, vel proponentibus responsa adhibitis notariis descripsere.⁸⁵

Some took down his words through the use of stenographers when they discussed together or the answers which he gave to those who questioned him.

We should not be certain that Rufinus’s text alludes to the back-and-forth of questions and answers that occurred in Didymus’s class. First of all, though Rufinus claimed that he had studied with Didymus, he may not have had firsthand knowledge of the functioning of the school as it appears in the Tura papyri, because he did not attend lectures at the same level, but instead followed more sophisticated ones that promoted deeper understanding. One indication that he was not well informed about the school is the fact that he incorrectly portrayed it as very similar to the catechetical school that previously, under Origen, imparted rather elementary notions of doctrine to those preparing for baptism. Moreover, argumentation also took place in other lectures and was probably not transmitted to us because those lectures were written up for publication, polished, and refined, a process during which questions must have been eliminated from them.

The students’ questions in the commentaries on the Psalms and Ecclesiastes are of varied tenor and length, but more than a third of them are abbreviated. They show full or partial verses of the Septuagint with requests for interpretation, and sometimes consist of a single participle or word.⁸⁶ Questions such as these refer to previous sections of the text and are almost inexplicable without that context.⁸⁷ It is absurd to suppose that student questions were so condensed in reality; some interactions would have needed elaboration in a class, but who would have shortened them? I have argued elsewhere that stenographers did not frequently take any initiative or intervene in texts to alter them. Instead, they would adhere precisely to a text that was delivered orally without making changes.⁸⁸ A student, however, may not have had the same respect for his classmates’ voices and therefore may have preserved only what was necessary to introduce Didymus’s responses, exactly as we suspect that Arrian had done. Having been unable to see since a very young age, Didymus depended on someone else to read for him the passages of the Bible that he wanted to interpret in class. It is likely that he would have selected one of his best students to perform this service for him and also, I suggest, to jot down class notes.⁸⁹ Students and scholars usually did not know stenography, which was a specialized activity. We can surmise that when Didymus lectured in class his pace was rather slow, as was the case in the class of Epictetus; the frequent interruptions and requests for explanation are evidence for this. Didymus was not delivering a ready-made sermon for an audience; he aimed at getting his message through to his pupils. He had no need for fast tachygraphers.

A student notetaker might betray his relative lack of expertise. The commentaries on Psalms and Ecclesiastes include some sentences that are incomplete, subjects or verbs that have to be supplied from the context, thoughts that are unclear, lemmata following answers, frequent anacolutha, abrupt connections between verses, the improper use of pronouns, and frequent parentheses. These are signs of oral delivery, showing that the commentaries on Psalms and Ecclesiastes were lectures given in the classroom. These types of irregularities do not appear in other texts of Didymus, which were certainly recorded by stenographers and then revised, and they may signify that a student recorded them. Since a real professional was not involved and the recording was informal, these notes remain testimonies of teaching and classroom life and were not published. In this respect, the hand is not indicative one way or the other. The documentary hand, which is generally fluent with some irregularities, could have belonged either to a stenographer who “translated” his notae or to a scribe who copied the student’s notes later on.⁹⁰ The categories of scribes and private writers were not rigid and could be porous; the writer might have been an advanced student.⁹¹

There is another unusual feature of the Commentaries on the Ecclesiastes and Psalms that suggests that we are dealing with a student’s notes, that is, the frequent occurrence of spaces between words. Spaces are occasionally visible in some documentary texts, but their presence in this case is exceptional because of their frequency and demands explanation. These spaces are less visible in the Commentary to the Psalms because the text is more fragmentary, but they are frequently present in the Commentary to the Ecclesiastes, for example in EcclT. 154.⁹²Underneath the lemmata the rest of the space is divided into easily read units. Shorter sentences are also often introduced by large letters. To say that these interventions made the text easier to read is an obvious observation,⁹³ but why was the text set up in this way and by whom?

We do not know if the commentary was supposed to end up in the hands of students after being taken down and reproduced in many copies or if it was used as a model against which certain passages could be checked. What is clear, however, is that the writer was familiar with a presentation of texts used to facilitate reading in school settings. When a student entered the class of a grammarian, he would still need help decoding passages written in scriptio continua, that is, in continuous blocks without division of words or lectional signs. Only a few books with this feature are preserved, mostly of Homer, but models with separated words provided by a teacher would have fundamentally helped beginners.⁹⁴ Thus Homer or Isocrates could be approached with greater confidence. These models formed an indispensable transition to texts written by scribes in continuous blocks. I suggest that it was a student who had learned to read and write with the aid of passages with separated words and was very familiar with this practice who noted down the Commentaries.

I have considered several factors that, in my analysis, point to the presence of a student (or students) who recorded two of the Commentaries of Didymus. The text’s frequent lack of clarity, its mistakes, and its heavily oral flavor should not be attributed to a stenographer, who generally would have reproduced a text dal vivo with accuracy. The fact that the students’ questions are condensed and compressed beyond what would be reasonable in class also depends on a certain manipulation of the text, the recording of which is more easily attributed to a student than to a professional notetaker. We have seen a similar disregard for students’ questions in Epictetus’s Discourses, which I have attributed to Arrian’s relative lack of interest in the voices of his classmates and to his concentration on the message of his teacher. Compounded by the regular spaces between words that appear in the text for easy legibility, all of this indicates a scholastic mise-en-page. We are familiar with the regard ancient teachers had for senior students, to whom they even entrusted classes to teach. Didymus was no exception. We should not visualize the school of Didymus as a rigid institution with fixed membership and curriculum.⁹⁵ The commentaries give evidence for many levels of learning and refer to students with diverse backgrounds. Ancient schools, especially in late antiquity, were not divided into uniform and discrete groups; teachers could cover various roles, and students learned subjects at several different levels.

1. Morgan 2007.

2. See Barrow 2015.

3. Lendon 2022, 14–25. Lendon argued that parents must have been satisfied by what paideia offered. Ancient students learned what was offered to them deeply. Cf. Cribiore 2001b.

4. Stenger 2022. See also Stenger 2019.

5. Stenger 2022, 141–88 passim. As usually happens, the book basically ignored Hadot and did not mention Epictetus and his promotion of teaching a way of life.

6. See Rubenson 1995; Rubenson and Larsen 2018. Brakke (1995, 253–55) maintained that the reference in Athanasius regarded higher schooling and not primary education, and Cribiore (2013, 66–69) reinforced that argument.

7. See Kaster 1988, 71.

8. Of course, there was not a definite equivalent of Christian grammatical and rhetorical culture.

9. Epictetus believed in a divine law according to which people should not desire what they did not have but needed to be content with what they did have; one had to conduct oneself honestly and obey God in everything. Diss. 2.16 and 28; Bénatouïl 2009, 39, 179–94.

10. Cribiore et al. 2008, 183. This dipinto is on a wall of the most important room in the school, room 15, which had pillars. See also Cribiore and Davoli 2013; Cribiore 2015.

11. On the various phases of the opposition to Julian, see Van Nuffelen 2020. See also Stenger 2022, 32–42; Stenger 2009.

12. See Vössing 2020, 18; Germino 2004. On the reaction of some Christian authors, such as Gregory of Nazianzus, see Elm 2012.

13. Eunapius, VS 101.1–108.4 485–93. Cf. Cribiore 2007a, 52–54.

14. See Cribiore 2013, 229–37.

15. Cribiore 2007a.

16. John Chrysostom may have been his student in Antioch, but there is no trace of him in Libanius’s letters.

17. See, e.g., Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 4.9; Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica 9.15; Socrates Scholasticus, Historia ecclesiastica 4.25; Rufinus of Aquileia, Historia ecclesiastica 2.7; Jerome, Chronicon 8. 812. Rufinus and Jerome took classes from Didymus. His dates are ca. 313–398.

18. Origen probably started as a pagan and then converted to Christianity. He presented himself as a Christian Platonist, which his adversaries considered a contradiction in terms. He was criticized during his life and afterward. See Ramelli 2009.

19. Layton 2004, 13.

20. Layton 2004, 7.

21. See Watts 2006, 2010.

22. See Derda et al. 2007. On the use of these halls, see Watts 2010. Marrou (1956, 328) thought of Didymus’s school exclusively as a private relationship between a lecturer and a listener, but now it is possible to go further than that. About the location of the school, cf. Libanius at the beginning of his career.

23. Socrates, HE 4.25; Sozomen, HE 3.15; Jerome, Ep. 68.2; Rufinus, HE 11.7.

24. On a balanced view of the encounter between Didymus and Antony, see Layton 2004, 19–26. See also Watts 2006, 182–83. It is unlikely that, even if the encounter took place, Antony would refer to Didymus in those terms.

25. Patrologia Graeca 39. The five commentaries on papyrus (about one thousand leaves of papyrus) were discovered deep in a cave in a monastery near Cairo in 1941 and are usually referred to as “the Tura papyri.” They should be dated to the late sixth century. For publication and translation of these texts, see Kehl 1964, 43–47; Gesché 1962, 400–417. The commentaries on the Psalms and Ecclesiastes have been published in the series Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen, together with a German translation (Binder and Liesenborghs 1979, Lage 1; Liesenborghs 1965, Lage 22 und 23 des Tura-Papyrus. Kommentar zum Ecclesiastes Bonn I/VI). Didymus’s commentary covered the whole of Ecclesiastes but only a portion of the Psalms. See the magisterial publication of the text on the PsT by Blumell et al. 2019, 26:10–29:2 and 36:1–3.

26. Dionisotti 1982, 83–125, at 98–99 lines 18–19 and 24; Dickey 2012, 2015; Cribiore 2001b, 15–16.

27. Menander Rhetor Treatise II 442.19. Cf. Blumell et al. 2019, 133n14.

28. Nelson 1995. Nelson’s excellent dissertation, which she did under the guidance of Ludwig Koenen, was never published but is available. Its detailed examination of the texts that illuminate Didymus’s classes has proved a useful reference for scholars. She attempts to calculate the length of the lectures and when they were given (19–24). The fact that the class met in the morning and then after an interruption continued in the late afternoon is logical. It seems that Epictetus did the same. Layton (2004, 5, 7, 160) argued that Didymus aimed at consolidating tradition and presided over an academy modeled on Greek philosophical schools.

29. Blumell et al. 2019, 18. Apparently some women were also present.

30. On nomenclature, see part I. Olympiodorus’s texts, which we will consider in the next chapter, were also called commentarii.

31. Physikas and mathematikas, 43C.

32. In Or. 3.12–14 he listed all possible misbehaviors by students without including questions of any kind.

33. See PsT 104.7; Nelson 1995, 23.

34. Cribiore 2001b.

35. I fear that what I wrote especially in 2001 was taken too literally. At that point I was considering traditional education. I was striving to delineate the functions of the teachers at the various educational levels and did not take into account that the diversity was more nuanced.

36. Quintilian 2.1.

37. Champlin (1980) is still the best book.

38. An example among many, e.g., De eloquentia 3, Haines 1929, 73–81: on attention to synonyms and terms of old writers, see 77.

39. See, e.g., Ad Antoninum Imp. ii.4 and ii 5, Haines 1929, 156–59. Fronto declared that there was nothing more perfect than the letters of Cicero.

40. Cribiore 2007a, 42–84.

41. Cribiore 2007a, 30–37.

42. It was necessary to cater to some students such as the young son of Libanius Cimon.

43. Cribiore 2001b, 53–54, 57; P.Oxy. VI 930, with a kathegetes teaching grammar. For a kathegetes instructing a girl, see Cribiore 2001b, 87, 94–96.

44. P.Oxy. XVIII 2190, Cribiore 2001b, 57.

45. Cribiore et al. 2008, 170–91; Cribiore and Davoli 2013, 1–14; Cribiore 2015, 179–92.

46. Bayliss 2015, 16.

47. Philo of Alexandria, Alexandria, vel de ratione quam habere etiam bruta animalia. Translated from Armenian by A. Terian, Paris, 1988.

48. Nelson 1995, 25.

49. Knauber 1968; Crouzel (1970) critiques in detail Knouber’s argument. Stenger (2022) does not consider the young catechumens but focuses his attention on older individuals.

50. Van den Hoek (1997, 85–87) argued that what Eusebius had remarked was not fundamentally wrong and was worthy of more attention. Though he can be criticized in some respects it is important not to dismiss him.

51. See Heine 2010, 26–64.

52. Both Origen and his teacher Clement of Alexandria mention a didaskaleion.

53. Harmless 2014.

54. See Heine 2010.

55. Perrone 2015 ed. Origenes vol. 13, p. 279, lines 11–15. The Homilies were found seventy years after the finding of the Tura Papyri in 1941. There are twenty-nine Homilies, four of which are new and have the Greek text.

56. See Kaster 1988, 45–47 and 447 with the appendix.

57. Stefaniw 2018, 181. Stefaniw wrote a valuable book, but I disagree with her on her position that Didymus was a grammarian and taught the subjects traditionally attributed to grammarians.

58. Stefaniw 2019, 43–91 at 79 and passim.

59. Cribiore 2001b, 185–219.

60. This according to Dionysius Thrax, Cribiore 2001b, 185.

61. Nelson (1995, 32–33) examines various occurrences.

62. Diss. 3.21.6–8. Cf. his identical dislike for logaria a diminutive of “words” in 2.18.26. See 2.1.31–33.

63. Nelson 1995, 132–80. Stefaniw (2019) recognized the various subjects he taught.

64. Nelson 1995, 132–39; Gellius, NA 18.2. Adults too practiced on them with some enjoyment.

65. von Arnim 2004.

66. Diss. 2.17.34 and 2.21.17 on the syllogism of the liar. About syllogisms in general, see 2.23.44, 2.1.39, and 4.6.

67. Stefaniw (2019, 146–47 and 166) forces them under “the intellectual patrimony.”

68. See Martens 2017, a welcome new edition, translation, and commentary of this text. The text was never translated into English and is not present in the TLG. In the following, I am faithful to Martens’s text.

69. Martens (2017, 14n29) cites the words of Theodoret on the prevalence of the Psalms in Christian education. He argues that commentaries on those were much needed.

70. On Theodore of Mopsuestia (350–428), see Becker 2006.

71. First there will be a short biography of the author, information, and content and then the commentary. We will see that Olympiodorus will follow this division.

72. Stefaniw (2019, 41) argues that the Tura commentaries do not match other lecture notes because she is concentrating on the grammatical aspects of Didymus’s teaching. She also does not take into accounts Epictetus’s Discourses.

73. PsT 83, 21; Stefaniw 2019, 63.

74. PsT 222, 12; Nelson 1995, 48.

75. Cf. part I: the school of Aristotle.

76. PsT 222, 15–29.

77. Layton (2004, 29–35) explores the “scholastic dynamics” of the passage. See also Nelson 1995, 43–47.

78. Stefaniw (2019, 71) rightly recognizes that the most advanced lessons of Didymus cannot be properly categorized as philosophical. Yet they belong to high stages of education such as rhetoric. Some philosophical and ethical questions are also treated.

79. Sorabji 2016b, 388.

80. Cf. the lectures of Olympiodorus and others that were divided in sections (praxeis).

81. Roller 2018.

82. Nelson 1995, 51: “The number of such examples is overwhelming.”

83. Bienert, 1972. Nelson (1995, 13) argues for a stenographer.

84. Bayliss 2015.

85. Schwartz and Mommsen 1999, XI 7, 1013. Some have emended the late aliquanti in aliquanta.

86. PsT 210.3–5 and 210.16–18.

87. Nelson 1995, 28–29 on abbreviated questions.

88. Cribiore 2021.The other texts of Didymus preserved very few signs of oral delivery. Bayliss 2015, 33.

89. Advanced students who had taken the class of a teacher for several years had a position of privilege and could even teach occasionally, such as Eusebius (no. 25 in PLRE I) who became a substitute teacher when Libanius was sick and did very well. See Cribiore 2007b, 267, Ep. 887 (no. 81). Kehl (1964, 41–43) pointed to the oral quality of the text taken down by a student but also mentioned stenographers.

90. Blumell et al. 2019, 3–6.

91. Cribiore 2020a.

92. I thank Gregg Schwendner for this private communication.

93. Blumell et al. 2019, 14–16.

94. Cribiore 2001b, 132–41.

95. Layton 2004, 159. Contrary to that, see Bayliss 2015, 16.