ics" is
a synonym for the choicest products of the literature of ancient Greece
and Rome. It is to this sense of the word that the following article is
devoted in two main divisions: (A) the general history of classical
(i.e. Greek and Latin) scholarship, and (B) its place in higher
education.

(A) GENERAL HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF THE CLASSICS

We may consider this subject in four principal periods:--(i.) the
_Alexandrian_, c. 300-1 B.C.; (ii.) the _Roman_, A.D. c. 1-530; (iii.)
the _Middle Ages_, c. 530-1350; and (iv.) the _Modern Age_, c. 1350 to
the present day.

(i.) _The Alexandrian Age._--The study of the Greek classics begins with
the school of Alexandria. Under the rule of Ptolemy Philadelphus
(285-247 B.C.), learning found a home in the Alexandrian Museum and in
the great Alexandrian Library. The first four librarians were Zenodotus,
Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus. Zenodotus
produced before 274 the first scientific edition of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, an edition in which spurious lines were marked, at the
beginning, with a short horizontal dash called an _obelus_ (--). He also
drew up select lists of epic and lyric poets. Soon afterwards a
classified catalogue of dramatists, epic and lyric poets, legislators,
philosophers, historians, orators and rhetoricians, and miscellaneous
writers, with a brief biography of each, was produced by the scholar and
poet Callimachus (fl. 260). Among the pupils of Callimachus was
Eratosthenes who, in 234, succeeded Zenodotus as librarian. Apart from
his special interest in the history of the Old Attic comedy, he was a
man of vast and varied learning; the founder of astronomical geography
and of scientific chronology; and the first to assume the name of
[Greek: philologos]. The greatest philologist of antiquity was, however,
his successor, Aristophanes of Byzantium (195), who reduced accentuation
and punctuation to a definite system, and used a variety of critical
symbols in his recension of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. He also edited
Hesiod and Pindar, Euripides and Aristophanes, besides composing brief
introductions to the several plays, parts of which are still extant.
Lastly, he established a scientific system of lexicography and drew up
lists of the "best authors." Two critical editions of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ were produced by his successor, Aristarchus, who was librarian
until 146 B.C. and was the founder of scientific scholarship. His
dis