Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Academy

ACADEMY, the gymnasium in the suburbs of Athens in which Plato taught, and so called after a hero, by name Academus, to whom it was said to have originally belonged. The word is also applied to a high school designed for the technical or other instruction of those who have already acquired the rudiments of knowledge; also a university.

Anciently, there were two public academies: one at Rome, founded by Adrian, in which all the sciences were taught, but especially jurisprudence; the other at Berytus, in Phœnicia, in which jurists were principally educated. Academy is the name, also, of a society or an association of artists, linked together for the promotion of art, or of scientific men, similarly united for the advancement of science, or of persons united for any more or less analogous object.

Source: Collier's New Encyclopedia 1. (1921) New York: P.F. Collier & Son Company. 15.