orace, a youth of low stature and black hair, whose
father has given him an education at Rome above his rank in life, and
now is sending him to finish it at Athens; he is said to have a turn
for poetry: a hero he is not, and it were well if he knew it; but he is
caught by the enthusiasm of the hour, and goes off campaigning with
Brutus and Cassius, and will leave his shield behind him on the field
of Philippi.

Or it is a mere boy of fifteen: his name Eunapius; though the voyage
was not long, sea sickness, or confinement, or bad living on board the
vessel, threw him into a fever, and, when the passengers landed in the
evening at Piraeus, he could not stand. His countrymen who accompanied
him, took him up among them and carried him to the house of the great
teacher of the day, Proaeresius, who was a friend of the captain's, and
whose fame it was which drew the enthusiastic youth to Athens. His
companions understand the sort of place they are in, and, with the
license of academic students, they break into the philosopher's house,
though he appears to have retired for the night, and proceed to make
themselves free of it, with an absence of ceremony, which is only not
impudence, because Proaeresius takes it so easily. Strange
introduction for our stranger to a seat of learning, but not out of
keeping with Athens; for what could you expect of a place where there
was a mob of youths and not even the pretence of control; where the
poorer lived any how, and got on as they could, and the teachers
themselves had no protection from the humours and caprices of the
students who filled their lecture-halls? However, as to this Eunapius,
Proaeresius took a fancy to the boy, and told him curious stories about
Athenian life. He himself had come up to the University with one
Hephaestion, and they were even worse off than Cleanthes the Stoic; for
they had only one cloak between them, and nothing whatever besides,
except some old bedding; so when Proaeresius went abroad, Hephaestion
lay in bed, and practised himself in oratory; and then Hephaestion put
on the cloak, and Proaeresius crept under the coverlet. At another
time there was so fierce a feud between what would be called "town and
gown" in an English University, that the Professors did not dare
lecture in public, for fear of ill treatment.

But a freshman like Eunapius soon got experience for himself of the
ways and manners prevalent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardly
en