Before the Akademia was a school, and even before Cimon enclosed its precincts with a wall (Plutarch Life of Cimon xiii:7), it contained a sacred grove of olive trees dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, outside the city walls of ancient Athens (Thucydides ii:34). The archaic name for the site was Hekademia, which by classical times evolved into Akademia and was explained, at least as early as the beginning of the 6th century BC, by linking it to an Athenian hero, a legendary "Akademos". The site of the Academy was sacred to Athena and other immortals.
Plato's immediate successors as "scholarch" of the Academy were Speusippus (347-339 BC), Xenocrates (339-314 BC), Polemon (314-269 BC), Crates (ca. 269-266 BC), and Arcesilaus (ca. 266-240 BC). Later scholarchs include Lacydes of Cyrene, Carneades, Clitomachus, and Philo of Larissa ("the last undisputed head of the Academy"[1]).[2] Other notable members of the Academy include Aristotle, Heraclides Ponticus, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Philip of Opus, Crantor, and Antiochus of Ascalon.
After a lapse during the early Roman occupation, the Academy was refounded (Cameron 1965) as a new institution of some outstanding Platonists of late antiquity who called themselves "successors" (diadochoi, but of Plato) and presented themselves as an uninterrupted tradition reaching back to Plato. However, there cannot have actually been any geographical, institutional, economic or personal continuity with the original Academy in the new organizational entity (Bechtle).
The last "Greek" philosophers of the revived Academy in the 6th century were drawn from various parts of the Hellenistic cultural world and suggest the broad syncretism of the common culture (see koine): Five of the seven Academy philosophers mentioned by Agathias were Syriac in their cultural origin: Hermias and Diogenes (both from Phoenicia), Isidorus of Gaza, Damascius of Syria, Iamblichus of Coele-Syria and perhaps even Simplicius of Cilicia (Thiele).
The emperor Justinian closed the school in AD 529, a date that is often cited as the end of Antiquity. According to the sole witness, the historian Agathias, its remaining members looked for protection under the rule of Sassanid king Khosrau I in his capital at Ctesiphon, carrying with them precious scrolls of literature and philosophy, and to a lesser degree of science. After a peace treaty between the Persian and the Byzantine empire in 532 guaranteed their personal security (an early document in the history of freedom of religion), some members found sanctuary in the pagan stronghold of Harran, near Edessa. One of the last leading figures of this group was Simplicius, a pupil of Damascius, the last head of the Athenian school. The students of the Academy-in-exile, an authentic and important Neoplatonic school surviving at least until the 10th century, contributed to the Islamic preservation of Greek science and medicine, when Islamic forces took the area in the 7th century (Thiele). One of the earliest academies established in the east was the 7th century Academy of Gundishapur in Sassanid Persia.
Because of the tradition of intellectual brilliance associated with this institution, many groups have chosen to use the word "Academy" in their name.
During the Florentine Renaissance, Cosimo de' Medici took a personal interest in the new Platonic Academy that he determined to re-establish in 1439, centered on the marvellous promise shown by Marsilio Ficino, scarcely more than a lad.[citation needed] Cosimo had been inspired by the arrival at the otherwise ineffective Council of Florence of Gemistos Plethon, who seemed like a Plato reborn to the Florentine intellectuals.[citation needed] In 1462 Cosimo gave Ficino a villa at Careggi for the Academy's use, situated where Cosimo could descry[?] it from his own villa.[citation needed] The Renaissance drew potent intellectual and spiritual strength from the academy at Careggi.[citation needed] During the course of the following century many Italian cities established an Academy, of which the oldest survivor is the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome, which became a national academy for a reunited Italy. Other national academies include the Académie Française; the Royal Academy of the United Kingdom; the International Academy of Science; the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York; the United States Naval Academy; United States Air Force Academy; and the Australian Defence Force Academy. In emulation of the military academies, police in the United States are trained in police academies. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents the annual Academy awards.
A fundamental feature of academic discipline in those academies that were training-schools for artists was regular practice in making accurate drawings from antiquities, or from casts of antiquities, on the one hand, and on the other, in deriving inspiration from the other fount, the human form. Students assembled in sessions drawing the draped and undraped human form, and such drawings, which survive in the tens of thousands from the 17th through the 19th century, are termed académies.
In the early 19th century "academy" took the connotations that "gymnasium" was acquiring in German-speaking lands, of school that was less advanced than a college (for which it might prepare students) but considerably more than elementary. An early example are the two academies founded at Andover and Phillips Exeter Academy. Amherst Academy expanded with time to form Amherst College.
Mozart organized public subscription performances of his music in Vienna in the 1780s and 1790s, he called the concerts "academies." This usage in musical terms survives in the concert orchestra Academy of St Martin in the Fields and in the Brixton Academy, a concert hall in Brixton, South London.
Academies proliferated in the 20th century until even a three-week series of lectures and discussions would be termed an "academy." In addition, the generic term "the academy" is sometimes used to refer to all of academia, which is sometimes considered a global successor to the Academy of Athens.
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