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Founders of “Liberal Education”: The Case for Roman Orators against Socratic Philosophers

It scarcely needs repeating in American academia that the “first description” of “liberal education” lies “in words attributed to Socrates in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle.“1 Whether from college presidents or associations, historians or philosophers, whether in academic forums or popular encyclopedias, the view is common enough that “the notion of a liberal education was invented by the Greeks,” being then defined as “this ideal of pursuing knowledge for its own sake.“2 Whether this judgment constitutes good history is an interesting question; whether it provides a sound foundation for contemporary discussion about liberal education is perhaps of immediate importance. I will argue here that it does neither. Notwithstanding A. F. West of Princeton at the turn of the century or subsequently the president of the New School for Social Research or the 1945 Harvard Redbook or the 1971 Encyclopedia of Education or recent discussion at the Columbia Seminar on General Education,3 the repeated appeal to the Socratic triumvirate cannot be squared with the historical record of ancient education. Rather, it is to Rome, not to Greece, and to the orators, not the philosophers, that one must turn to find the foundation of a continuing tradition of something called liberal education. To be sure, this approach is not new; it relies in part on “the fundamental modern study” and “the standard modern work” on ancient education by H. I. Marrou.4 But in recent American discussion, the import of such work for liberal education has been particularly ignored. That this is not without cost, I suggest, is demonstrated by the widely bemoaned, introspective selfindulgence among liberally educated undergraduates in America. Although the appeal to the Socratic tradition is one of the most popular gambits in current discussion, there is in general much disagreement and confusion over the historical origins of liberal education, liberal disciplines, liberal arts, and such.5 Therefore, it may be best to begin by citing the most elemental facts on which there is universal agreement. Etymological roots of the word “liberal,” in conjunction with education, derive from the Latin liberalis,6 an adjective applied for centuries to various