During his professional career, Libanius was a popular and
respected professor (and public lecturer) at the universities of
Athens, Constantinople, Nicomedia, and Antioch. By his own
report, he could not have been more disappointed in the behaviour
of students: he watched them squander the precious resources
of their fathers on wine, gaming, expensive dining, and other
entertainment, cutting classes or, when they did show up, pimp-
walking languidly into the auditorium and passing the time chatting
with their fellows or laughing loudly and inappropriately during the
lecture. Though they remembered the words of all the popular
songs of the day, Libanius despaired of their keeping any of his own
words in their minds. Only his compassion for their parents could
prevent him from having many of them expelled. If the sons had
been ‘banished from the holy rites of learning’ for having ‘polluted
the altar of the Muses,’ their fathers’ shame, he realized, would
have been unbearable, and would have lasted a lifetime. (Libanius
1.207.6)
Like the students of the other sophistai in Athens, the students
of Libanius, good and bad, formed themselves into a gang that
engaged in frequent street-battles with the partisans of rival
professors. Their rioting and carousing sometimes engulfed the
whole city. How the Athenians must have hated them! Imagine
the disrepute that attached itself to the name scholastikos! It
could only have been pronounced with disdain, perhaps even
contempt. In Philogelos, it is used in 112 jokes that make fun of
the low intelligence and ineptitude of students. In every case,
I’ve translated it “student dunce.” When you read the jokes, you’ll
understand why.
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