The March of the Muses: The Development of Higher Education in Athens from Pericles to the Paripatos

Abstract

Western society has been greatly influenced in numerous ways by ancient Greek society and culture, not the least of which was the Greek educational system. Alexander the Great's conquests relied in many ways upon technology, philosophy, and mathematics taught in Greek institutions of higher learning. How ironic then, that even two centuries prior to Alexander the Great, in the fifth century BC, a clear concept of higher education had yet to be developed. The development in Greek and Hellenistic education from the fifth to the third centuries BC bordered on the miraculous: from having no higher education whatsoever, Greek society developed and built a fairly complex system. This essay will attempt to take a closer look into the development of Greek education itself, focusing on several key movements and characters.