Title: Schools of Hellas - An Essay on the Practice and Theory of Ancient Greek - Education from 600 to 300 B. C.
Author: Freeman, Kenneth John
Language: English
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SCHOOLS OF HELLAS

AN ESSAY ON THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF ANCIENT GREEK EDUCATION



  [Illustration: Printer’s Logo]



  [Illustration: IN A RIDING-SCHOOL

  From a Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre. Hartwig’s
  _Meisterschalen_, Plate 53.]



Schools of Hellas

AN ESSAY ON THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF ANCIENT GREEK EDUCATION

FROM

600 TO 300 B.C.


BY

KENNETH J. FREEMAN

SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; BROWNE UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR;
CRAVEN UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR; SENIOR CHANCELLOR’S MEDALLIST, ETC.


EDITED BY

M. J. RENDALL

SECOND MASTER OF WINCHESTER COLLEGE


WITH A PREFACE BY A. W. VERRALL, LITT.DOC.


_ILLUSTRATED_


London

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1907


_All rights reserved_



ΦΙΛΟΚΑΛΟΙΣ [PHILOKALOIS]

ΚΑΙ [ΚΑΙ]

ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΙΣ [PHILOSOPHOIS]



PREFACE


The Dissertation here published was written by the late Mr. K. J.
Freeman, in the course of the year following his graduation at
Cambridge as a Bachelor of Arts, with a view to his candidature for a
Fellowship of Trinity College, for which purpose the rules of the
College require the production of some original work. In the summer of
1906, three months before the autumn election of that year, his
brilliant and promising career was arrested by death.

We have been encouraged to publish the work, as it was left, by
several judgments of great weight; nor does it, in my opinion, require
anything in the nature of an apology. It is of course, under the
circumstances, incomplete, and it is in some respects immature. But,
within the limits, the execution is adequate for practical purposes;
and the actual achievement has a substantive value independent of any
personal consideration. No English book, perhaps no extant book,
covers the same ground, or brings together so conveniently the
materials for studying the subject of ancient Greek education――education
as treated in practice and theory during the most fertile and
characteristic age of Hellas. It would be regrettable that this
useful, though preliminary, labour should be lost and suppressed, only
because it was decreed that the author should not build upon his own
foundation.

Novelty of view he disclaimed; but he claimed, with evident truth,
that the work is not second-hand, but based upon wide and direct study
of the sources, which are made accessible by copious references.

The subject is in one respect specially appropriate to a youthful
hand. Perhaps at no time is a man more likely to have fresh and living
impressions about education than when he has himself just ceased to be
a pupil, when he has just completed the subordinate stages of a long
and strenuous self-culture. It will be seen, in more than one place,
that the author is not content with the purely historical aspect of
his theme, but suggests criticisms and even practical applications. It
may be thought that these remarks upon a matter of pressing and
growing importance are by no means the less deserving of consideration
because the writer, when he speaks of the schoolboy and the
undergraduate, is unquestionably an authentic witness.

But, as I have already said, the work will commend itself sufficiently
to those interested in the topic, if only as a conspectus of facts,
presented with orderly arrangement and in a simple and perspicuous
style.

It is not my part here to express personal feelings. But I cannot
dismiss this, the first and only fruit of the classical studies of
Kenneth Freeman, without a word of profound sorrow for the premature
loss of a most honourable heart and vigorous mind. He was one whom a
teacher may freely praise, without suspicion of partiality; for,
whatever he was, he was no mere product of lessons, as this, his first
essay, will sufficiently show. It is not what he would have made it;
but it is his own, and it is worthy of him.

                             A. W. VERRALL.

  TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
       _January_ 1907.



EDITOR’S STATEMENT


It has fallen to my lot to edit this essay, the first, and last, work
of Kenneth John Freeman, a brilliant young Scholar of Winchester
College and Trinity College, Cambridge, whose short life closed in the
summer of 1906.

He was born in London on June 19, 1882, and died at Winchester on July
15, 1906,――a brief span of twenty-four years, the greater part of
which was spent in the strenuous pursuit of truth and beauty, both in
literature and in the book of Nature, but above all among the
Classics.

Scholarly traditions and interests he inherited in no small measure:
he was the son of Mr. G. Broke Freeman, a member of the Chancery Bar,
and a Classical graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the
grandson of Philip Freeman, Archdeacon of Exeter, himself a Scholar of
the same great Foundation, Craven University Scholar and Senior
Classic in 1839. He was also a great-grandson of the Rev. Henry Hervey
Baber, for many years Principal Librarian of the British Museum, and
Editor of the _editio princeps_ of the _Codex Alexandrinus_. From them
he inherited a passion for Classical study, a keen sense of form, and
a determined pursuit of knowledge, which nothing could daunt, not even
the recurrent shadow of a long and distressing illness.

Through his mother, a daughter of Dr. Horace Dobell, of Harley Street,
London, he was also a great-nephew of the poet Sydney Dobell; and thus
he may well have derived that poetic feeling which distinguished a
number of verses found among his papers, since printed for private
circulation.

His School and University career was uniformly successful. At
Winchester he won prizes in many subjects and several tongues, and
carried off the Goddard Scholarship, the intellectual blue ribbon, at
the age of sixteen.

At Cambridge he was Browne University Scholar in 1903, and in the
first “division” of the Classical Tripos in 1904, in which year he
also won the Craven Scholarship. The senior Chancellor’s medal fell to
him in the following year.

There is no need to enumerate his other distinctions, but the epigram
with which he won the Browne Medal in 1903 is so beautiful in itself
and so true an epitome of the boy and the man, that I am tempted to
quote it here:

  ξεῖνε, καλὸν τὸ ζῆν καταγώγιόν ἐστιν ἅπασιν,
  [xeine, kalon to zên katagôgion estin hapasin],
      νηπυτίους γὰρ ὅμως νυκτιπλανεῖς τε φιλεῖ,
      [nêpytious gar homôs nyktiplaneis te philei],
  δῶρα χαριζόμενον φιλίας καὶ τερπνὸν ἔρωτα
  [dôra charizomenon philias kai terpnon erôta]
      καὶ πόνον εὔανδρον φροντίδα τ’ οὐρανίαν·
      [kai ponon euandron phrontida t’ ouranian];
  τρυχομένους δ’ ἤδη κοιμᾷ τὸν ἀκήρατον ὕπνον
  [trychomenous d’ êdê koima ton akêraton hypnon]
      πέμπει δ’ ὥστε λαθεῖν οἰκάδ’ ἐληλυθότας.
      [pempei d’ hôste lathein oikad’ elêlythotas].

He was always an optimist, who regarded life as a “fair Inn,” which
provided much good cheer. Shyness and ill-health limited sadly the
range of his friends, but not his capacity and desire for
“friendship.” “Manly toil,” both physical and intellectual, was dear
to his soul: thus, though no great athlete, he was an ardent Volunteer
both at School and College, and declared that, had he not chosen the
teacher’s profession, he would have wished to be a soldier: he writes
of Sparta and Xenophon with evident sympathy. Also he fought and won
many an intellectual battle against great odds; to quote one instance,
he wrote the papers for his Craven Scholarship while convalescent in
his old nursery. His poems, to complete the parallel, may justly be
described as the “aspiring thoughts” of a singularly pure and reverent
heart.

It is a simple, uneventful record: six happy years as a Winchester
Scholar; three as a Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge; one year of
travel and study, mainly devoted to the subject of Education, which
always had a special attraction for him; and lastly, one year, the
happiest of his life, when he returned to teach at his old school.

All appeared bright and promising; he was doing the work he desired at
the school of his choice, health and vigour seemed fully restored, and
a strenuous life as a Winchester Master lay before him, when an acute
attack of the old trouble, borne with perfect patience, cut him off in
the prime of his promise.

Then, to quote his own translation of his epigram:

  When I was aweary, last and best
  They gave me dreamless rest;
  And sent me on my way that I might come
  Unknown, unknowing, Home.

The work itself was never finished for the press; indeed, some
chapters, dealing with Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle, did not appear
sufficiently complete to justify publication: these, therefore, we
have withheld. But this book is in substance what he left it, and he
was fully aware that the omitted chapters were in need of further
revision.

In any case, it would have been a labour of love to me to edit this
dissertation; but the labour has been lightened at every turn by the
ungrudging help and friendship of many Scholars. Dr. Verrall, besides
contributing a Preface, has contributed much advice in general and in
detail; Dr. Sandys has revised the proofs and given me the benefit of
his comprehensive knowledge of the subject; Dr. Henry Jackson went
through some of the later chapters and discussed points of general
interest. The original Essay or the proofs have in addition been
revised, from different points of view, by Mr. Edmund D. A. Morshead,
late Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Mr. F. M. Cornford, Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr. G. S. Freeman (brother of the author)
is responsible for the Index; while Mr. W. R. H. Merriman has spent
much pains upon verifying the numerous quotations. In a few cases Dr.
F. G. Kenyon’s erudition came to the rescue. To all these my best
thanks are due. Mr. A. Hamilton Smith of the British Museum was most
helpful in identifying the vases from which the illustrations are
derived. The author, who was a considerable draughtsman, had drawn
scenes from Greek vases with his own hand; but of course our
illustrations are derived from published reproductions, with two
exceptions. The two British Museum vase-scenes (Illustrations III. and
IV.) were specially drawn for this book: they have never been
carefully reproduced before. I must thank the Syndics of the Pitt
Press at Cambridge for their kind permission to reproduce their print
of Douris’ Educational Vase from Dr. Sandys’ _History of Classical
Scholarship_. The design which appears on the cover of this volume is
also adapted from this vase.

It remains to add a few sentences from a Statement which the author
himself drew up:

“I have,” he says, “confined my attention very largely for several
years to original texts and eschewed the aid of commentaries.” This
will be patent to the reader.

“As to accepted interpretations, I have, purposely and on principle,
neither read nor heard much of them, since I wished, in pursuance of
the bidding of Plato himself, not to receive unquestioningly the
authority of those whom to hear is to believe, but to develop views
and interpretations of my own. For I have always believed that
education suffers immensely from the study of books about books, in
preference to the study of the books themselves. M. Paul Girard’s book
in French (_L’Éducation Athénienne_) and Grasberger’s in German
(_Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum_), the latter of
which I have only read in part, have set me on the track of
authorities whom I should otherwise have missed, but I believe that my
acknowledgments in the text and in the notes fully cover my direct
obligations to them in other respects, although my indirect
obligations to M. Girard’s stimulating book, which are great, remain
unexpressed.

“An apology is, perhaps, needed for the peculiar, and not wholly
consistent, spelling of the Greek words. I had meant to employ the
Latinised spelling. But when I came to write Lyceum, Academy, and
pedagogue, my heart failed me. For I did not wish to suggest modern
music-halls, modern art, and, worst of all, modern ‘pedagogy.’ In
adopting the ancient spelling I had Browning on my side. But again,
when I wrote Thoukudides, my heart sank, for I could hardly recognise
an old friend in such a guise. So I decided, perhaps weakly, to steer
a middle course, and preserve the Latinised forms in the case of the
more familiar words. Thus I put Plato, not Platon, but Menon and
Phaidon.” We have adhered to this principle in the main; we need
hardly say that Lakedaimon is the transliteration of a Greek word:
Lacedaemonian is an English adjective. So a citizen of Troizen is a
Troezenian, and of Boiotia a Boeotian. “I have,” the author concludes,
“preferred _Hellas_ and _Hellene_ to _Greece_ and _Greek_. For a rose
by any other name does not always smell as sweet.”

                             M. J. RENDALL.

  WINCHESTER COLLEGE,
     _March_ 1907.



                              CONTENTS


                                                                 PAGE

BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                     xvii
INTRODUCTION                                                        1

                               PART I
                     THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION

                             CHAPTER I
SPARTA AND CRETE                                                   11

                             CHAPTER II
ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS: GENERAL INTRODUCTION                42

                            CHAPTER III
ATHENS, ETC.: PRIMARY EDUCATION                                    79

                             CHAPTER IV
ATHENS, ETC.: PHYSICAL EDUCATION                                  118

                             CHAPTER V
ATHENS, ETC.: SECONDARY EDUCATION――I. THE SOPHISTS                157

                             CHAPTER VI
ATHENS, ETC.: SECONDARY EDUCATION――II. THE PERMANENT SCHOOLS      179

                            CHAPTER VII
ATHENS, ETC.: TERTIARY EDUCATION――THE EPHEBOI AND THE UNIVERSITY  210


                              PART II
                      THE THEORY OF EDUCATION

                            CHAPTER VIII
RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN HELLAS                                  227

                             CHAPTER IX
ART, MUSIC, AND POETRY                                            237

                             CHAPTER X
XENOPHON                                                          259


                              PART III

                             CHAPTER XI

GENERAL ESSAY ON THE WHOLE SUBJECT                                275


INDEX                                                             293



                           ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                           AFTER PAGE

  Vase by Euphronios, Louvre (centre of X. A and
  X. B)――Mounted Ephebos in Riding-School               _Frontispiece_

     I. A. Kulix by Douris, Berlin (No. 2285)――The Flute-Lesson
           and Writing-Lesson
     I. B. Kulix by Douris, Berlin (No. 2285)――The Lyre-Lesson
           and Poetry-Lesson                                       52

    II. Kulix by Hieron, now at Vienna――A Flute Lesson:
        The Boy’s Turn                                             70

   III. Hudria in British Museum (E 171)――Music-School Scenes     104

    IV. Hudria in British Museum (E 172)――In a Lyre-School        108

     V. A. Kulix attributed to Euphronios, at Munich――Scenes
           in a Palaistra
     V. B. Kulix attributed to Euphronios, at Munich――Scenes
           in a Palaistra                                         120

    VI. A. Wrestlers, etc., in the Palaistra
    VI. B. Boxers, etc., in the Palaistra                         128

   VII. The Stadion at Delphi                                     132

  VIII. Kulix signed by Euphronios, at Berlin――Scenes in
        the Palaistra                                             174

    IX. Vase attributed to Euphronios, at Munich――A
        Riding-Lesson: Mounting                                   214

     X. A. Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre――Scene in
           a Riding-School
     X. B. Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre――Scene in
           a Riding-School                                        258



                        SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY


  DITTENBERGER, W. De Ephebis Atticis Dissertatio. Dieterich,
    Göttingen, 1863.

  DUMONT, A. Essai sur l’Éphébie Attique. 2 vols. Didot, Paris,
    1875-76.

  GIRARD, P. L’Éducation Athénienne au vᵉ et au ivᵉ siècle avant
    J.-C. Hachette, Paris, 1889.

  GRASBERGER, L. Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen
    Alterthum. 3 vols. Würzburg, 1864-81.

  LAURIE, S. S. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education.
    2nd Edition. Longmans, London, 1900.

  MAHAFFY, J. P. Old Greek Education. Kegan Paul, 1883.

  MÜLLER, K. O. Dorians. Edition 1824. English translation;
    Oxford, 1830.

  NETTLESHIP, H. In _Hellenica._ 2nd Edition. Longmans, 1898.

  SIDGWICK, A. Essay in _Teachers’ Guild Quarterly_, No. 8.

  USSING, J. L. (Danish.) German translation. Erziehung bei
    den Griechen (und Römern). Altona, 1870.

  WILKINS, A. S. National Education in Greece (Hare Prize,
    Cambridge). Isbister, London, 1873.



INTRODUCTION


The meeting-place of two streams has always a curious fascination for
the traveller. There is a strange charm in watching the two currents
blend and lose their individuality in a new whole. The discoloured,
foam-flecked torrent, swirling on remorselessly its pebbles and
minuter particles of granite from the mountains, and the calm,
translucent stream, bearing in invisible solution the clays and sands
of the plains through which its slow coils have wound, melt into a
single river, mightier than either, which has received and will carry
onward the burdens of both and lay them side by side in some far-off
delta, where they will form “the dust of continents to be.”

To the student of history or of psychology the meeting-place of two
civilisations has a similar charm. To watch the immemorial culture of
the East, slow-moving with the weight of years, dreamy with centuries
of deep meditation, accept and assimilate, as in a moment of time, the
science, the machinery, the restless energy and practical activity of
the West is a fascinating employment; for the process is big with hope
of some glorious product from this union of the two. Those who live
while such a union is in progress cannot estimate its value or its
probable result; they are but conscious of the discomforts and
confusion arising from the ending of the old order that passes away,
and can hardly presage the glories of the new, to which it is yielding
place. It is in past history, not in the contemporary world, that such
combinations must be studied.

The chief historical instance of two distinct civilisations blending
into one is the Renaissance, that mighty union of the spirit of
ancient Hellas and her pupil Rome with the spirit of medieval Europe,
which has hardly been perfected even now. But it is often forgotten
that there were at least two dress-rehearsals for the great drama of
the Renaissance, in the course of which Hellenism learnt its own charm
and adapted itself to the task of educating the world. Alexander
carried the arts, the literature, and the spirit of Hellas far into
the heart of Asia; and, though his great experiment of blending West
with East was interrupted by his early death and the consequent
disruption of his world-empire, yet, even so, something of his object
was effected in the Hellenistic culture of Alexandria, Syria, and Asia
Minor. Within a century of his death began the second dress-rehearsal,
this time in the West. Conquered Hellas led her fierce conqueror
captive, and the strength of Rome bowed before the intellect and
imagination of the Hellene. Once more the great man who designed to
unite the two currents into one stream without loss to either was cut
off before his plans could be carried out, and the murder of Julius
Cæsar caused incalculable damage to this earlier Renaissance, for the
education of Rome, the second scholar of Hellas, was not too wisely
conducted. Yet the schooling produced Virgil and Horace and that
Greco-Roman civilisation in which the Teutonic nations of the North
received their first lessons in culture. After several premature
attempts, medieval Europe rediscovered ancient Hellas and her pupil
Rome at the time of the Renaissance. Since that time the influence
exerted by Hellenism upon modern civilisation has been continuous and
incalculable. How much of that influence remains unassimilated, how
far it is still needed, may perhaps be realised best by passing
straight from the Elgin marbles or a play of Sophocles to a modern
crowd or to modern literature.

Hellas has thus been the educator of the world to an extent of which
not even Perikles ever dreamed. How then, it may naturally be asked,
did the teacher of the nations teach her own sons and daughters? If so
many peoples have been at school to learn the lessons of Hellenism,
what was the nature of the schools of ancient Hellas? How did those
wonderful city-states, which produced in the course of a few centuries
a wealth of unsurpassed literature, philosophy and art, whose history
is immortalised by the names of Thermopylae and Marathon, train their
young citizens to be at once patriots and art-critics, statesmen and
philosophers, money-makers and lovers of literature? They must have
known not a little about education, those old Hellenes, it is natural
to suppose. Have the schools, like the arts and literature and spirit,
of Hellas any lesson for the modern world? These are the questions
which the present work will attempt in some measure to answer.

In some measure only; for the spirit of Hellas cannot be caught at
second hand: it consists in just those subtler elements of refined
taste and perfect choice of expression which cannot but be lost in a
translation or a photograph. In like manner, the secret of Hellenic
education cannot be reproduced by any mere accumulation of bald facts
and wiseacres’ deductions. It is easy for the modern theorist to give
an exact account of his ideal school; he has only to tabulate the
subjects which are to be studied, the books which are to be read, and
the hours at which his mechanical children are to be stuffed with the
required mass of facts. But the Hellenic schoolmaster held that
education dealt not with machines but with children, not with facts
but with character. His object was to mould the taste of his pupils,
to make them “love what is beautiful and hate what is ugly.” And
because he wished them to love what is beautiful in art and
literature, in nature and in human life, he sought to make his lessons
attractive, in order that the subjects learnt at school might not be
regarded with loathing in after life. Education had to be charming to
the young; its field was largely music and art and the literature
which appeals most to children, adventure and heroism and tales of
romance expressed in verse. The music is all but gone, and of the art
only a few fragments remain; the primary schools of Hellas have left
to modern research only portions of their literature. Their
attractiveness must be judged from the poems of Homer. But the charm
of education lies mainly in the methods of the teacher; and of these
posterity can know little. Scholars may piece together the books which
were read and the exercises which were practised, but of the method in
which they were taught, of their order and arrangement and respective
quantities, nothing can be known. There is the raw material, the human
boy, and of the tools wherewith the masters fashioned him, some relics
are left; but of the way in which the artist used those tools, of the
true inwardness of his handicraft and skill, not all the diligence of
Teutonic research can recover a trace. The young art-student will
learn little of Michel Angelo or Raphael, if he focusses his attention
simply on the materials and the tools which they employed: to grasp
their spirit he must go to the Sistine Chapel or to the Dresden
Gallery, and contemplate their masterpieces. In like manner the
student of Hellenic education ought to consider not its materials and
tools, but rather its results and ideals. He must look with his own
eyes and imagination upon the Aegina pediment or the “Hermes” of
Praxiteles, if he wishes to comprehend the objects of the Doric and
Ionic schools. This he must do for himself, since no book can do it
for him. All that this work can hope to do is to furnish some few
ideas about the tools wherewith the Hellenic schoolmasters tried to
fashion the boys at their disposal into the masterpieces bodied forth
in the “Hermes” and the Aeginetan figures: the skilled fingers and the
imaginative brains which used the tools are for ever beyond the reach
of the scholar and the archæologist.

The “Hermes,” with his physical perfection and his plenitude of
intellect, with the features of an artist and the brow of a thinker,
may be taken as the ideal of the fully developed Athenian education of
the early fourth century B.C. The Aeginetan figures stand in the same
relation to the Spartan and Cretan schools; these heroic figures have
the bodily harmoniousness, the narrow if deep thought, the hardness of
the Dorian temper. Perhaps it is not fanciful to see in the so-called
“Theseus” of the Parthenon an earlier ideal of Athenian training, when
it aimed at rather less of dreamy contemplation, at a less sensuous
and more strenuous mode of life. If this be so, that glorious figure
bodies forth the very ideal of Periclean and Imperial Athens at her
grandest moment, before the ruin caused by the long war with Sparta.

The stream of Hellenism ran in two currents. Underlying the local
diversity, which made every little town ethically and artistically
distinct from its neighbour, was the fundamental difference between
Dorian and Ionian. Clearly marked in every aspect of life, this
difference was most marked in the schools. Sparta and Crete on the one
hand, and Athens, followed closely by her Ionian and Aeolic allies and
at a greater distance by the rest of civilised Hellas, on the other,
develop totally different types of education. The young Spartan is
enrolled at a fixed age in a boarding-school: everything he learns or
does is under State-supervision. Perfect grace and harmony of body is
his sole object: he is hardly taught his letters or numbers. The young
Athenian goes to school when and where his parents like; learns,
within certain wide limits, what they please; ends his schooling when
they choose. He learns his letters and arithmetic, studies literature
and music, and, at a later date, painting, besides his athletic
exercises, at a day-school. When he grows older, he may add rhetoric
or philosophy or science or any subject he pleases to this earlier
course. The State interferes only to protect his morals, and to
enforce upon him two years of military training between the ages of
eighteen and twenty.

The superficial differences between the Athenian and the Spartan type
of school are so striking that at first sight they appear to have no
one principle in common. It will therefore be necessary to keep the
two types apart at first and discuss their details separately. But the
Hellenic thinkers recognised certain deep-seated similarities beneath
the superficial contradictions, and it became the object of
educational philosophy to blend the two types into a perfect system.
As soon as a deeper study has been made of the theory of education in
Hellas, the distinctions of practice begin to vanish away and the
similarities of ideal and aim become more and more apparent. When the
survey of both practice and theory, which is the object of this work,
has been completed, it should be possible to grasp and estimate the
common principles, which, amid much variety of detail, governed the
schools of Hellas.



PART I

THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION



CHAPTER I

EDUCATION AT SPARTA AND IN CRETE


According to a current legend, which Herodotos, owing to his Ionian
patriotism, is eager to contradict, Anacharsis the Scythian, on his
return from his travels, declared that the Spartans seemed to him to
be the only Hellenic people with whom it was possible to converse
sensibly, for they alone had time to be wise.[1] The full Spartan
citizen certainly had abundant leisure. He was absolutely free from
the cares of money-making, for he was supported by an hereditary
allotment which was cultivated for him by State-serfs. He had no
profession or trade to occupy him. His whole time was spent in
educating himself and his younger countrymen in accordance with
Spartan ideas, and in practising the Spartan mode of life. The
Spartans divided their day between various gymnastic and military
exercises, hunting, public affairs, and “leschai” or conversation-clubs,
at which no talk of business was permitted; the members discussed only
what was honourable and noble, or blamed what was cowardly and
base.[2] They were on the whole a grave and silent people, but they
had a terse wit of their own, and there was a statue of Laughter in
their city. They were always in a state of perfect training, like the
“wiry dogs” of Plato’s Republic. They were strong conservatives;
innovation was strictly forbidden. The unfortunate who made a change
in the rules of the Ball-game was scourged. In the Skias or
Council-chamber still hung in Pausanias’ time the eleven-stringed lyre
which Timotheos had brought to Sparta, only to have it broken;[3] and
the nine-stringed lyre of Phrunis met the same fate. Having once
accepted the seven-stringed lyre from Terpander, the Spartans never
permitted it to be changed. They had also a talent for minute
organisation; both their army and their children were greatly
subdivided. Every one at Sparta was a part of a beautifully organised
machine, designed almost exclusively for military purposes.

In this strangely artificial State, it was essential that the future
citizens should be saturated with the spirit of the place at an early
age. There were practically no written laws. Judges and rulers acted
on their own discretion.[4] This was only possible if a particular
stamp of character, a particular outlook and attitude, were impressed
upon every citizen. Consequently, education was the most important
thing at Sparta. It was both regulated and enforced by the State. It
was exactly the same for all. The boys were taken away from home and
brought up in great boarding-schools, so that the individualising
tendencies of family life and hereditary instincts might be stamped
out, and a general type of character, the Spartan type, alone be left
in all the boys. For boarding-schools have admittedly this result,
that they impose a recognisable stamp, a certain similarity of manner
and attitude, upon all the boys who pass through them.

Therefore, as soon as a child was born at Sparta, it was taken before
the elders of the tribe to which its parents belonged.[5] If they
decided that it was likely to prove sickly, it was exposed on Mount
Taügetos, there to die or be brought up by Helots or Perioikoi. Sparta
was no place for invalids. If the infant was approved, it was taken
back to its home, to be brought up by its mother. Spartan women were
famous for their skill in bringing up children. Spartan nurses were in
great demand in Hellas. They were eagerly sought after for boys of
rank and wealth like Alkibiades. The songs which they sang to their
charges and the rules which they enforced made the children “not
afraid of the dark” or terrified if they were left alone; not addicted
“to daintiness or naughty tempers or screaming”; in fact, “little
gentlemen” in every way.

No doubt the discipline of the children was strict, but then the
parents lived just as strictly themselves. There were no luxuries for
any one at Sparta: the houses and furniture were as plain as the food.
But there is a charming picture of Agesilaos riding on a stick to
amuse his children; and the Spartan mothers, if stern towards
cowardice, seem to have been keenly interested in their children’s
development; they were by no means nonentities like Athenian ladies.

The children slept at home till they were seven; but at an early age
were taken by their fathers to the “Pheiditia” or clubs where the
grown men spent those hours during which they stayed indoors and took
their meals. About fifty men attended each of these clubs. The
children sat on the floor near their fathers. Each member contributed
monthly a “medimnos” of barley-meal, eight “choes” of wine, five
“mnai” of cheese, two and a half “mnai” of figs,[6] and some very
cheap relish; if he sacrificed to a god, he gave part of the victim to
his “mess,” and if he was successful in hunting (which was a frequent
occupation), he brought his spoils to the common table. There was also
the famous black broth, made by the hereditary guild of State cooks,
which only a life of Spartan training and cold baths in the Eurotas
could make appetising; yet elderly Spartans preferred it to meat.
Perhaps a fragment of Alkman represents a high-day at one of these
clubs: “Seven couches and as many tables, brimming full of
poppy-flavoured loaves, and linseed and sesamum, and in bowls honey
and linseed for the children.”[7]

A Spartan who became too poor to pay his contribution to his club lost
his rights as a citizen, and so could not have his children educated
in the State-system. But as long as the allotments were not alienated,
such cases were not common. The contribution was κατὰ κεφαλήν [kata
kephalên],[8] that is, the fixed quantity of provisions had to be
supplied for every member of the family who attended a club, _i.e._
for every male, since the women took their meals at home. There is no
reason whatever for supposing that the boys, either before or after
they went to the boarding-schools, were fed at the expense of the
State. It is expressly stated that the number of foster-children, who
accompanied their benefactors’ sons to school, varied according to the
extent of their patron’s means.[9] Parents must therefore have paid
something for their boys while they were at school. The teaching
involved no expenses; hence it must have been the food for which they
paid. Thus, only those boys could attend the Spartan schools whose
parents could afford to pay the customary subscription in kind for
their own and their children’s food at the common meals. Xenophon, the
admirer of all things Spartan, adopts the same system in his State,
since he makes the children of the poor drop out automatically from
the public schools. It must be remembered that at Sparta families were
always small, and the population tended to decrease steadily; the
number of males for whom subscriptions had to be paid by the head of
the family can rarely have been large.

Generally speaking, therefore, the Spartan schools were only for the
sons of “Peers” (ὅμοιοι [hómoioi]),[10] that is, those who paid the
subscriptions. But a certain number of other boys were admitted,
provided that their food was paid for. A rich Spartan might, if he
chose, select certain other boys to be educated with his own son or
sons, and pay their expenses meanwhile.[11] The number of these
school-companions depended on the number of contributions in kind
which he was capable of supplying. The school-companions could thus
attend the Spartan schools; but they did not become citizens when they
grew up, unless they revealed so much merit that the Spartan State
gave them the franchise.

From what classes were these school-companions drawn? Sometimes they
were foreigners, sons either of distinguished guest-friends of leading
Spartans, or of refugee-settlers in Laconia. Thus Xenophon’s two sons
were educated at Sparta. These foreign boys were called τρόφιμοι
[tróphimoi] or Foster-children. Xenophon mentions “foreigners from
among the τρόφιμοι [tróphimoi].”[12] If these Foster-children, when
grown up, remained in Sparta they possessed no civic rights. A passage
in Plato refers to the difficulty which was experienced in getting
these Foster-children to accept this humble position.[13] It is
interesting to note that Sparta thus precedes Athens as an educational
centre to which boys from foreign cities came to receive their
schooling.

More often Spartan parents chose Helots to be school-companions of
their sons. Thus Plutarch speaks of “two of the foster-brothers of
Kleomenes, whom they call Mothakes.”[14] The name Mothax was applied
to these educated Helots. They seem to have been notorious for the way
in which they presumed upon their position, if we may assume a
connection between Mothax and Mothon, a term which is used for the
patron deity of impudence in Aristophanes, and elsewhere is the name
of a vulgar dance.[15] They were not enfranchised when their
school-days were over, and had to settle down to slavish duties,
unless they showed peculiar merit. But several of the most
distinguished Spartans, including Lusandros, were enfranchised
Mothakes.

Xenophon, in a passage which has already been quoted, mentions
“gentlemen-volunteers of the Perioikoi and certain foreigners of the
so-called Foster-children and bastards of the Spartiatai, very goodly
men and not without share in the honourable things in the State.”[16]
If most of the authorities are right in regarding “the honourable
things”[17] as a Spartan phrase for their educational system――and
there is good ground for this view――then this passage shows that
illegitimate sons, and perhaps eminent Perioikoi, passed through the
public schools at Sparta although, however, neither were called
Foster-children, a name reserved for distinguished foreigners. The
Helots who shared the education were known as Mothakes, and sometimes
as σύντροφοι [syntrophoi], school-companions; but they do not seem to
have been called τρόφιμοι [trophimoi], “Foster-children.”

During the best period of Spartan history, none of these extra pupils,
τρόφιμοι [trophimoi], Mothakes, illegitimate children, and eminent
Perioikoi, were enfranchised unless they showed peculiar merit. At a
later date, perhaps, any one who passed through the schools became a
Spartan citizen. Plutarch makes this a part of Lukourgos’ system; but
that is improbable. Such a custom would only arise in the days of
Spartan decay and depopulation. On the other hand, any Spartan boys
who flinched before the hardships of their national education, lost
their status, and were disfranchised, if they did not persevere.[18]

Till they were seven, the boys were taken to their fathers’ clubs: the
girls had all their meals with their mothers at home, for the women
did not have dining-clubs. By seeing the hardships which their fathers
endured, and hearing their discussions on political subjects and their
terse humour, the boys were already being trained in the Spartan mode
of life; for the clubs served as an elementary school. There, too,
they learnt to play with their contemporaries, and to exchange rough
jests without flinching. To take a jest without annoyance was part of
the Spartan character; but if the jester went too far for endurance,
he might be asked to stop.

At seven the boys were taken away from home, and organised in a most
systematic way into “packs” and “divisions.” These were the “ilai,”
which probably contained sixty-four boys, and the “agelai,” whose
numbers are unknown.[19] These packs fed together, slept together on
bundles of reeds for bedding, and played together. The boys had to go
barefoot always, and wore only a single garment summer and winter
alike. They were all under the control of a “Paidonomos” or
“Superintendent of the boys,” a citizen of rank, repute, and position,
who might at any moment call them together, and punish them severely
if they had been idle: he had attendants who bore the ominous name of
Floggers.[20] So, as Xenophon grimly remarks, a spirit of discipline
and obedience prevailed at Sparta. In order that the boys might not be
left without control, even when the Paidonomos was absent, any citizen
who might be passing might order them to do anything which he liked,
and punish them for any faults which they committed. The most sensible
and plucky boy in each pack was made a Prefect over it, and called the
Bouâgor, or “Herd-leader”; the rest obeyed his orders and endured his
punishments.[21]

The elder men stirred up quarrels among the boys in order to see who
was plucky. Over every school was set one of the young men over twenty
who had a good reputation both for courage and for morality.[22] He
was called the Eiren. He kept an eye on their battles, and used them
as servants at home for his supper; he ordered the bigger boys to
bring him firewood, and the smaller to collect vegetables. The only
way by which such supplies could be obtained was by stealing them from
the gardens and the men’s dining-clubs. Apparently, then, the boys
dined with him in his house;[23] they were supplied with a scanty meal
by their parents to eat there, and were encouraged to make up the
deficiency by stealing. “When the Eiren had finished supper, he
ordered one of the boys to sing, and to another he propounded some
question which needed a thoughtful answer, such as, ‘Who is the best
of the grown-ups?’ For such particular questions are more stimulating
than generalities like ‘What is virtue?’ or ‘What is a good citizen?’
The answer had to be accompanied by a concise reason; failure was
punished by a bite on the hand. Elder men watched, saying nothing at
the time, but rebuking the Eiren severely afterwards if he was too
strict or too lenient.”

Thus we find at Sparta a prefect-system and fagging. But the sense of
responsibility produced in the elder boys at English public schools
and the practice which they acquire in exercising authority were
prevented at Sparta by the perpetual presence of grown men, which made
Laconian schools more like French Lycées. There is no class of
professional schoolmasters; the Eiren, the Paidonomos, and any elder
who chooses, give the instruction freely and gratuitously. Education,
being so simple, cost nothing at Sparta.

From Plutarch’s mention of stealing from the _men’s_ dining-clubs it
may safely be inferred that boys of this age dined apart. Whether it
was always in the Eiren’s house cannot be ascertained. After the age
of sixteen they must have come into the men’s syssitia; for Xenophon
implies that the visitor to Sparta could see lads of that age at
dinner and ask them questions: and a visitor would certainly not have
dined in a dining-room meant only for boys. Whether the election of
members took place at that age, or whether they still went to their
fathers’ clubs, is unknown.

The education was almost entirely physical. Plutarch, it is true, says
that they learnt “letters, because they were useful.”[24] This may
have been a later introduction, or perhaps the amount learnt was so
little as to justify Isokrates in saying that the Spartans “do not
even learn their letters, which are the means to a knowledge of the
past, as well as of contemporary events”;[25] he also thought it
highly improbable that even “the most intelligent of them would hear
of his speeches, unless they found some one to read them aloud.”[26]
They had, indeed, little reason to learn to read. Their written laws
were very few, and these they learnt by heart, set to a tune. They had
nothing to do with commerce or even with accounts; very few of them
knew how to count.[27] Hippias, the Sophist, found that all they cared
to listen to, were “genealogies of men and heroes, foundations of
cities, and archæology generally.” Probably, like the Dorian
philosopher Pythagoras, and like Plato, the admirer of all things
Dorian, they held that memory was all-important, and that the use of
writing weakened it.[28] Besides the State-laws set to music there
were songs which praised dead heroes and derided cowards: the diction
was plain and simple, the subjects grave and moral; many of them were
war-marches; all were incentive to pluck and energy.

Rhetoric was, of course, utterly forbidden: a young man who learnt it
abroad and brought it home was punished by the Ephors.[28] Spartans
learned to be silent as a rule; when they spoke, their remarks were
short and much to the point, for they thought it wrong to waste a
word.[29] This was definitely taught to the boys, as has been shown
above. “If you converse with quite an ordinary Laconian,” says
Plato,[30] “at first he seems a mere fool; then suddenly, at the
critical point, he flings forth a pithy saying, and his companions
seem no better than children compared with him.” This epigrammatic
wisdom Plato ironically ascribes to the fact that Laconians really
attend Sophists on the sly, and are greater philosophers than any one
knows. Many echoes of their terse and grim humour have come down to
modern times: such as Leonidas’ remark to his troops at Thermopylae,
“Breakfast here: supper in Hades”; and the Spartan’s description of
Athens, “All things noble there,” by which he meant that nothing,
however base, was counted ignoble.

The Spartans must not be regarded as wholly averse to literature. They
knew Homer, and thought him the best poet of his class, although the
manner of life he inculcated was Ionic, not Doric.[31] Alkman spent
his life at Sparta, and has left one splendid song for a chorus of
Laconian girls. Aristophanes could put a fine chorus into the mouths
of Laconians, though its subject is noticeably warlike. For it was
war-poems that the Spartans liked. “They care naught for the other
poets,” says the Athenian orator, Lukourgos, “but for Turtaios they
care so exceedingly that they made a law to summon every one to the
king’s tent, when they are on a campaign, to hear the poems of
Turtaios, considering that this would make them most ready to die for
their country.”[32]

After all, the objects of the Spartan education were not intellectual
acuteness and the accumulation of knowledge, but discipline,
endurance, and victory in war. Discipline was taught by the perpetual
presence of authority, and by very severe punishments. Spartan boys
were practically never left to their own devices: perhaps that is the
secret of the moral failure of nearly every Spartan who was given a
position of authority outside Lakedaimon; for responsibility requires
practice. Endurance was taught by their whole mode of life. They went
barefooted, with a single garment, played and danced naked under the
hot Laconian sun;[33] there were no ointments or luxurious baths for
their bodies, only the Eurotas for a swim, and a bundle of reeds for a
bed. The food which the boys received was very scanty: often they were
turned out into the country in the early morning to provide food for
themselves for the whole day by stealing.

This organised stealing was a feature of Spartan education. At an
early age, as we have seen, the small boys were sent out to steal
firewood and vegetables for the Eiren who had charge of them. Later
they were driven out into the country, to forage for themselves at the
expense of the farms. There was a definite age at which it was
customary to begin stealing.[34] The articles which might be stolen
were fixed by law, and the legal limits might not be transgressed.[35]
It must be remembered that much property in Laconia was held in
common. Any one, for instance, who was belated while hunting might
take what food he pleased from a country house, and even break open
seals to get at provisions. The Spartans also used one another’s dogs
and horses freely, without permission. It is therefore absurd to say
that the system taught the boys to be dishonest. If the State agrees
to declare certain articles to be common property, it is no longer
stealing if one citizen removes them from the house of another: he is
no more dishonest than a man who picks blackberries or buttercups in
England. At one of the English public schools, tooth-mugs used to be a
recognised article of plunder. The small fags were expected to keep
their particular dormitory supplied with them, at the expense of
others. They were punished by the wronged dormitory if caught in the
act of removing them: but ingenuity in such thefts was regarded as
praiseworthy. There was a certain number of these mugs belonging to
the whole house; they were common property, and could therefore be
purloined without dishonesty.

Moreover, this system of legalised robbery had a valuable educational
object at Sparta. It was excellent training in scouting, laying
ambushes, and foraging, all of which it is very important that a
future soldier should learn. Xenophon, a soldier himself, notices
this, and in the _Anabasis_, when he needs a clever strategist, he
selects a Spartan because he has been educated in this way. Since this
was the object of the system, the boys, if caught, were flogged, not
for stealing, but for stealing clumsily. Isokrates declares that skill
in robbery was the road to the highest offices at Sparta. “If any one
can show that this is not the branch of education which the
Lacedaemonians regard as the most important,” he adds, “I admit that I
have not spoken a word of truth in my life.”[36]

These foraging expeditions of the boys prepared them for the similar,
if more arduous, duties of “Secret Service”[37] which awaited them
between eighteen and twenty. Young men of this age were sent in bands
to the different districts of Laconia for long periods, during which
they hid in the woods, slept on the ground, attended to their own
wants without a servant, and wandered about the country by day and
night.[38] When it appeared good to them or their chiefs they made
sudden attacks on the Helots, and slaughtered those who seemed
ambitious enough to be dangerous, the Ephors declaring war on their
serfs yearly in order that there might be no blood-guiltiness attached
to these assassinations.[39] There was a regular officer set over this
secret police, who no doubt directed where the particular youths
should go.[40] At a critical moment of the Peloponnesian War, 2000 of
the bravest and most ambitious Helots suddenly “disappeared,” probably
by this means.[41] But Plato recognised the educational value of such
a system, if the murders were omitted. In his _Laws_[42] he institutes
a force of κρυπτοί [kryptoi], 720 in number, who patrol the whole
country, taking the twelve districts in turn, so as to gain a complete
acquaintance with it. They have all the farm-servants and beasts at
their disposal, for digging trenches, making fortifications, roads,
embankments, and reservoirs, for irrigation works and the like. The
similarity of name suggests similarity of functions, but how much of
this the κρυπτοί [kryptoi] at Sparta did cannot be fixed. Probably
their chief work was to keep watch over the subject populations,
Perioikoi and Helots, who were otherwise left almost entirely to their
own devices.

In their institutions of the foraging parties and Secret Service, the
Spartans show a clear appreciation of boy-nature, as well as a keen
eye for methods of military training. Moderns are beginning to realise
that the average boy has so much of the primitive and natural man in
him that, unless he is permitted to “go wild” and live the savage life
at intervals, he is apt to become riotous and lawless. Hence in recent
days the institution of camps for boys in England and “Seton Indians”
in America. The Spartans, alone of Hellenes, fully recognised this
peculiarity of boys, and met it with the foraging expeditions and
secret service. The Athenian boy was not thus provided for until he
became an ephebos; hence the Athenian streets were full of young
Hooligans, while the aristocratic lads developed more refined, if more
vicious, methods of giving vent to their instincts. In these
country-expeditions alone the Spartan boys had an opportunity of
escaping from the presence of their elders and developing habits of
self-reliance and responsibility. Had Sparta made better use of these
opportunities, the fate of her Empire after Aigospotamoi might have
been different.

A frequent occupation of all ages at Sparta was hunting. This, too,
they recognised to be an excellent training for soldiers, since it
involved courage in meeting wild beasts, skill and ingenuity in
tracking them, and hardships of all sorts in the forests and on the
mountains. Laconia was full of game, and Laconian hounds were famous.
The successful huntsman gave what he had killed to enrich the meals of
his dining-club, and so won much popularity.

Spartan boys must also have learnt to ride, for they had to go in
procession on horseback at the festival of Huakinthos.[43] They were
taught to swim, too, by their daily plunge in the Eurotas. A great
part of their time was spent in gymnastics, under the close inspection
of their elders. Boxing and the pankration were forbidden to the young
Spartan, probably because they developed a few particular muscles at
the expense of the others.[44] For wrestling no scientific trainers
were allowed; the Spartan type depended solely on strength and
activity, not on technical skill; so a Spartan, when beaten by a
wrestler from another country, said his opponent was not a better man,
but only a cleverer wrestler.[45] Gladiators, such as those mentioned
in Plato’s _Laches_ as teaching the use of arms, were not permitted at
Sparta; these, however, seem to have been unpractical theorists, quite
useless in battle, as General Laches shows by a funny anecdote about
one of them.[46] No lounging spectators were permitted in Spartan
gymnasia; the rule was “strip or withdraw.”[47] The eldest man in each
gymnasium had to see that every one took sufficient exercise to work
off his food and prevent him from becoming puffy.[48] The physical
condition of the boys was inspected every ten days by the Ephors,[49]
while the competitions of the epheboi seem to have been controlled by
a special board, the Bidiaioi, who figure in inscriptions.[50]
Aristotle says of the whole Spartan discipline that it made the boys
“beast-like,”[51] but admits that it did not produce the one-sided
athlete, so common in Hellas, who looked solely to athletics, and was
too much specialised to be good for anything else. Xenophon[52] says
that it would be hard to find anywhere men with more healthy or more
serviceable bodies than the Spartiatai. The most beautiful man in the
Hellenic army at Plataea was a Spartan.[53] The Spartan boys’ manners
were in some ways surprisingly maidenlike. When they went along the
highway, they kept their hands under their coat, and walked in
silence, keeping their eyes fixed on the ground before their feet.
They spoke as rarely as a statue and looked about them less than a
bronze figure: they were as modest as a girl. When they came into the
mess-room, you could rarely hear them even answer a question.[54]

Fighting was encouraged at all ages; there were organised battles,
somewhat resembling football matches, for the epheboi, in a shady
playing-field surrounded by rows of plane trees and encircled by
streams, access to it being given by two bridges. After a night spent
in sacrifice, two teams of epheboi proceeded to this field. When they
came near it, they drew lots, and the winners had the choice of
bridges by which to enter the ground, selecting no doubt in accordance
with the direction of sun and wind, as a modern football captain, who
has won the toss, selects the end of the ground from which he will
start playing. The epheboi fought with their hands, kicked, bit, and
even tore out one another’s eyes, in the endeavour to drive the
opposing team back into the water.[55]

The grown men were also encouraged to fight by the following device.
The Ephors selected three of them, who were called Hippagretai. Each
of these three selected one hundred companions, giving a public
explanation in each case why he chose one man and rejected the others.
So those who had been rejected became foes to those who were selected,
and kept a close watch over them for the slightest breach of the
accepted code of honour. Each party was always trying to increase its
strength or perform some signal service to the State, in order to
strengthen its own claims. The rivals also fought with their fists
whenever they met.[56]

This systematised pugnaciousness at Sparta presents an interesting
parallel to the German University duels and to the fights which used
to be almost daily occurrences in the life of an English schoolboy.
Most of the older English public schools can still show the special
ground which was the recognised scene of these battles.

Floggings were exceedingly common at Sparta. Any elder man might flog
any boy. It was not etiquette for boys to complain to their parents in
these cases; if they did so, they received a second thrashing. But the
triumph of this system was the flogging of the “epheboi” yearly at the
altar of Artemis Orthia, in substitute for human sacrifice. Entrance
for the competition was quite voluntary, but competitors seem always
to have been forthcoming even down to Plutarch’s days. They began by
practice of some sort in the country.[57] The altar was covered with
blood; if the floggers were too lenient to some “ephebos” owing to his
beauty or reputation, the statue, according to the legend, performed a
miracle in order to show its displeasure.[58] The competitors were
often killed on the spot; but they never uttered a groan.[59] The
winner was called the “altar-victor” (βωμονίκης [bômonikês]) and an
inscription still records such a victory.[60]

The girls at Sparta were also organised into agelai or “packs.”[61]
They took their meals at home, but otherwise lived a thoroughly
outdoor life. They had to train their bodies no less than the boys, in
order that they might bear strong children, so they took part in
contests of strength as well as of speed.[62] They shared in the
gymnasia and in the musical training. Among their sports were
wrestling, running, and swimming; they were exposed to sun and dust
and toil.[63] They learned to throw the diskos and the javelin;[64]
they wore only the short Doric “chiton” with split sides.[65] They
went in procession at festivals like the boys; at certain festivals
they danced and sang in the presence of the young men, praising the
brave among them and jeering at the cowards. At the Huakinthia the
maidens raced on horseback. Theokritos makes a band of 240 maidens,
“all playmates together, anoint themselves like men and race beside
the Eurotas.”[66] That passage also gives wool-work to Laconian
maidens (which is probably untrue, being contradicted by Plato),[67]
and lyre-playing, which is contradicted by a Laconian in Plutarch, who
says that “such rubbish is not Laconian.” The result of all this
outdoor training was great physical perfection: Lampito, the Spartan
woman in Aristophanes’ _Lusistrata_, is greatly admired by the women
from other cities for her beauty, her complexion, and her bodily
condition: “she looks as though she could throttle a bull.” She
ascribes it to her gymnastics and vigorous dancing.[68] The girls till
they married wore no veil, and mixed freely with the young men; in
fact, there was one dance where they met in modern fashion; first the
youth danced some military steps, and then the maiden danced some of a
suitable sort.[69] Consequently love-matches were far more possible at
Sparta than elsewhere in Hellas. After marriage the women had to wear
veils, and remained at home; gymnastics, dances, and races ceased.

The Spartans were intensely fond of dancing, but it must be remembered
that they often called dancing what moderns would call drill. For war
was almost a form of dance; they marched or charged into battle to the
notes of the flute, crowned and wearing red cloaks. The march tunes
were in frequent use in Sparta, no doubt at military exercises. Every
day the epheboi were drawn up in ranks, one behind the other, and went
through military evolutions and dancing figures alternately, while a
flutist played to them and beat time with his foot.[70] This is simply
musical drill. The great national festival of the Gumnopaidia was very
similar. Three great battalions, consisting respectively of old men,
young men, and boys, drawn up in rank and file, exhibited various
movements, chiefly of a gymnastic sort, singing the songs of Thaletas
and Alkman and Dionusodotos the while and indulging in impromptu
jesting at one another’s expense, after the fashion of a rustic
revel-chorus in Attica. Sometimes the battalions appeared one by one,
and were “led out” like an army, by the Ephors.[71] On other occasions
all three were drawn up in crescent formation side by side, with the
boys in the middle. The festival must have closely resembled the
public parades of the gymnastic clubs in Switzerland. There were posts
of honour and dishonour, as in battle, cowards usually receiving the
latter. But Agesilaos, the king, once received an inferior station
after his victory at Corinth, and turned the insult by a jest, “Well
thought of, chorus-leader: that’s the way to give honour to the
post.”[72] Then there was the war-dance, imitating all the actions of
battle, a sort of manual and bayonet exercise, but accompanied by much
acting and by music. Every Spartan boy began to learn this as soon as
he was five.[73] It was done in quick time, if we may judge by the
“Pyrrhic” or war-dance foot ( ˘ ˘ ). There was also a wrestling-dance,[74]
and most gymnastics were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In
fact, chorus-dancing was a regular part of the education of Spartans
and Cretans: the only experience of singing which most of them
possessed was acquired in this way.[75] It is true that elegiacs were
sung as solos before the king’s tent on campaigns, and at meals, when
the victor got a particularly good slice of meat; but probably this
accomplishment was confined to a few. Aristotle asserts that the
Laconians did not learn songs, but claimed nevertheless to be able to
distinguish good from bad.

       *     *     *     *     *

Such was the Spartan system of education. To an Englishman their
schools have a greater interest than those of any other ancient State.
Sparta produced the only true boarding-schools of antiquity. The
“packs” of the Spartan boys, like the English public schools, formed
miniature States, to whose corporate interests and honour each boy
learned to make his own wishes subservient. Spartan boys, too, like
our own, had the smaller traits of individuality rubbed off them by
the publicity and perpetual intercourse with others involved in the
boarding-school system, in order that the racial characteristics might
the more emerge in them. They, too, learnt endurance by hardship, and
were early trained both to rule and to obey by means of the
institution of prefects and fagging. But here the resemblance stops
short. The Spartans, like most other nations, were not prepared to pay
the price at which alone an education in responsibility can be
obtained, the price which lies in the possible ruin of all the boys
who are not strong enough to be a law to themselves. They very rarely
left the boys to themselves without grown men to look after them. They
were always interfering and supervising, instead of leaving the
prefects to exercise their authority. And so, when Spartans were sent
abroad to govern cities or command armies, having had no practice in
responsibility, they failed shamefully and ignominiously. But this is
equally true of the Athenians and of other Hellenes. The Spartans
deserve all credit for their experiments with the boarding-school
system.

But the system which they adopted had many faults, besides that which
has already been noticed. There was no individual attention for the
boys. The hardships were excessive and brutalising. While the boys’
bodies were developed and trained almost to perfection, their minds
were almost entirely neglected: hence the stupidities of Spartan
policy and the lack of imagination which their statesmen showed. It
was impossible to over-eat or over-drink under the Spartan system, so
the young Spartan had no experience in self-restraint.[76] The
gymnasia and dining-clubs caused a great deal of quarrelling (which
the Spartan authorities welcomed), and of immorality (which was very
strictly forbidden); the Spartan gymnasia erred less, however, in this
latter respect than the Athenian. In war the Spartans were only
invincible so long as they were the only trained troops in Hellas; the
rise of professional armies ruined them, for they could not adapt
themselves to new circumstances. They produced no art and very little
literature, if any. But their whole State was as much a work of art as
a Doric temple, and of very much the same order, with its symmetry and
regularity, its sacrifice of detail to the whole, its strength and
restraint. It was also the inspiration of at least one great piece of
literature, Plato’s _Republic_.

If courage was their sole object, as perhaps it was, they succeeded in
obtaining it. The coward was a rare, and a most unhappy bird at
Sparta. Mothers on several occasions killed sons who returned home
from a campaign disgraced. “No one would mess with a coward, or
consort with him. When rival teams were chosen for the game of ball,
he was omitted. In dances he received the post of dishonour. He was
avoided in the streets. No one would sit next to him. He could not
find a husband for his daughters or a wife for himself,” and was
punished for these offences. “He was beaten if he imitated his betters
in any way.”[77] If the Hellenes were a nation of children, as the old
Egyptian called them, the Spartans were at least a manly sort of
schoolboy. They deified the schoolboy virtues, pluck and endurance. If
we wish to see how far their education, in its best days, enabled them
to prove true to their ideals, let us consider those 300 at
Thermopylae waiting, with jests on their lips, for the onset of
Oriental myriads, and remember that finest of all epitaphs, of which
English can give no rendering, written upon their memorial in the pass
in honour of their obedience unto death――

  Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by,
  That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

       *     *     *     *     *

The Cretan system of education was very similar in many ways to the
Spartan. In both localities the teaching was given by any elder member
of the community who chose, not by a professional and paid class of
masters. But in Crete education cost the parent even less than at
Sparta; for the boys were fed largely at public cost.[78] But so was
every other Cretan, male and female alike. Each community possessed
large public estates, cultivated by public serfs.[79] The revenues
thus accruing to the State were applied to the expenses of government,
which were small, and to the food-supply of all citizens. Thus men,
women, and children were all fed mainly at public cost. It may be
noted, however, that there is no question of providing the children of
improvident parents with meals at the expense of more provident
citizens. Moreover, the heads of families, who each possessed an
allotment, as at Sparta, had to contribute a tenth of the produce of
their estates.

The women-folk took their meals at home,[80] although the cost of
their food was mainly defrayed by the public revenues. The men took
their meals in dining-clubs (ἀνδρεῖα [andreia]). The whole population
of each community was divided into clubs of this sort, apparently on
the family basis, so that two or three families made up a club between
them, to which their children and descendants would in turn belong.
All the males of the family attended these meals; small children,
boys, and young men as well as elders are all mentioned as being
present at the same dinners.[81] The club is only an enlarged family
party. The small children sat on the ground behind their fathers; they
waited on themselves and on their elders, but the general
superintendence of cooking and attendance was in the hands of a woman
with three or four public slaves and some underlings in her
control.[82] As they grew older, the sons sat beside their fathers.
Boys ordinarily received half what their parents had; but orphans were
allowed the full quantity at their dead father’s club.

Thus the Cretan club was an amalgamation of several families into a
sort of clan, whose male members all dined together. All the boys of
the clan formed one boarding-school. They all slept in one room,
perhaps attached to the dining-hall; there was always a dormitory
attached to each of these buildings for visitors from other cities, so
it would be natural to expect a dormitory for the children also. The
boys took their meals in the club dining-hall, in the presence of
their elders, by whose improving conversations upon politics and
morals they were supposed to be educated. These elder members elected
one of their number to serve as παιδονόμος [paidonomos] or
“Superintendent of the boys” of their club.[83] Under his directions
the boys learned letters “in moderation”: they were constantly
practised in gymnastics, in the use of arms, especially the bow, which
was a great Cretan weapon, and in the war-dances, the Kuretic and
Pyrrhic, both indigenous in Crete. They learned the laws of their
country set to a sort of tune, in order that their souls might be
drawn by the music, and also, that they might more easily remember
them. In this way, if they did anything which was forbidden, they had
not the excuse of ignorance.[84] Besides this, they were taught hymns
to the gods, and praises of good men. The favourite metre for these
purposes was the Cretic ( ― ˘ ― ), which was regarded as “severe”
and so suitable for teaching courage and restraint.[85] The Pæan was
their chief national form of song. Cretan boys were also practised in
that terse and somewhat humorous style of speaking which we have
already seen at Sparta.[86]

Cretan boys were always fighting either single combats or combined
battles against the boys of another club-school. They were taught
endurance by many hardships. They wore only a short coat in summer and
winter alike. They learnt to despise heat and cold and mountain paths
and the blows which they received in gymnasia and in fighting.

They remained in the club-schools till their seventeenth year,[87]
when they became epheboi and celebrated their escape from the garb of
childhood by a special festival.[88] Like their contemporaries at
Athens, the epheboi took a special oath of allegiance to the State and
hatred towards its enemies. A fragment still survives of the oath
taken by the epheboi of Dreros, near Knossos.[89] At seventeen the
epheboi were collected into “packs” (ἀγέλαι [agelai]) by private
enterprise. A rich and distinguished young ephebos would gather round
him as large a pack of his contemporaries as he could; their numbers
no doubt depended partly on his wealth, and still more on his personal
popularity. The aristocratic element in this arrangement is very
noticeable, as in all the institutions of Crete as contrasted with
Sparta. The father of this young chief usually acted as leader of the
pack (ἀγελάτης [agelatês]); he possessed full authority over them and
could punish them as he pleased. He led them out on hunting
expeditions and to the “Runs” (δρόμοι [dromoi]), that is, the gymnasia
of the epheboi. Cretans who had not yet entered a pack of epheboi were
excluded from these runs (ἀπόδρομοι [apodromoi]); when they entered,
they were called “members of packs” (ἀγέλαστοι [agelastoi]).[90] The
pack-leader could collect his followers where he pleased;[91] very
possibly the epheboi did not attend the club dinners ordinarily, but
fed or slept either at their patron’s house (whence the need of a rich
pack-leader) or in some special room. They thus corresponded closely
to the Spartan boys of a younger age under their Eiren. Their food was
supplied, like that of all Cretans, largely out of the public
revenues. On certain fixed days “pack” joined battle with “pack” to
the sound of the lyre and flutes and in regular time, as was the
custom in war; fists, clubs, and even weapons of iron might be used.
It was a regular institution, half dance, half field-day, with fixed
rules and imposed by law. These battles must have closely resembled
the contests of the Spartan epheboi in the shady playing-fields. The
life of the boys was surrounded with a military atmosphere throughout.
They wore military dress and counted their weapons their most valuable
possessions. Young Cretans remained in the packs till after marriage.
Then they returned to their homes and the clubs.

Of the practical results of Cretan education nothing can be said. From
the day when Idomeneus sets sail from Troy, Crete almost disappears
from Hellenic history. Too strong to be attacked by their neighbours,
too much weakened by intestine feuds to assume the aggressive, the
Cretans remained aloof from their compatriots on the mainland and in
the archipelago till the close of the period of Hellenic independence.


APPENDIX A

SPARTAN SYSSITIA

These dining-clubs were organised like “diminutive states.”[92] It was
enacted who was to recline in the most important place, who in the
second, and so on, and who was to sit on the footstool, which was the
place of dishonour, usually assigned only to children. “Each man is
given a portion to himself, which he does not share with any one. They
have as much barley bread as they like, and there is an earthenware
cup of wine standing by each man, for him to put his lips to when he
feels disposed. The chief dish is always the same for all, boiled
pork. There is plenty of Spartan broth, and some olives, cheese, and
figs.[93]

“Each contributes to his mess about 18 gallons of barley meal, 60 or
70 pints of wine, and a small quantity of figs and cheese, and 10
Aeginetan obols for extras.” This contribution no doubt covered
expenses, for the quantity sent by an absentee king, probably
representing the average consumption of an individual, falls well
within this estimate (cf. Herod. vi. 57). After the regular meal[94]
an ἔπαικλον [epaiklon] or extra meal might be served. It would be
provided by a member of the mess, consisting either of the results of
hunting or the produce of his farm, for nothing might be bought. The
ordinary components of such a meal were pigeons, geese, fieldfares,
blackbirds, hares, lambs, and kids, and wheaten bread, a welcome
change from the usual barley loaves. The cooks proclaimed the name of
the giver, so that he might get the credit. ἔπαικλα [epaikla] were
often exacted as fines for offences from rich members; the poor had to
pay laurel leaves or reeds. There was also a special sort of ἔπαικλον
[epaiklon] designed for the children, barley meal soaked in olive
oil――a sort of porridge, in fact. According to Nicocles the Laconian,
this was swallowed in laurel leaves――which does not sound very
inviting.

There were also banquets independent of the messes. These were called
κοπίδες [kopides].[95] Tents were set up in the sacred enclosure round
the temple of the deity in whose honour the feast was given. Heaps of
brushwood covered with carpets served for couches. The food consisted
of slices of meat, round buns, cheese, slices of sausage, and for
dessert dried figs and various beans.

At the Tithenidia, or Nurses’ Feast, a κοπίς [kopis] was given at the
temple of Artemis Koruthalia by the stream Tiassos.[96] The nurses
brought the boy-babies to it. The sacrifice was a sucking pig, and
baked loaves were served. The κοπίδες [kopides] were evidently a
feature of Spartan life: Epilukos makes his “laddie” (κωράλισκος
[kôraliskos]) remark, “I will go to the κοπίς [kopis] in Amuklai at
Appellas’ house, where will be buns and loaves and jolly good broth”:
which shows that the children’s parties at Sparta were regarded as
attractive.

The Karneia, the great Spartan festival, was an imitation of
camp-life.[97] The sacrificial meal was served in tents, each
containing nine men, and everything was done to the word of command.


APPENDIX B

CRETAN SYSSITIA

The chief authorities for the attendance at these meals are the two
historians, Dosiades and Purgion, quoted in Athenaeus (143). Dosiades
states that an equal portion is set before each man present, but to
the younger members is given a half portion of meat, and they do not
touch any of the other things. Purgion says: “To the sons, who sit on
lower seats by their fathers’ chairs, they give a half portion of what
is supplied to the men; orphans receive a full share.” The comparison
of the two passages shows that the “younger members” mentioned by
Dosiades are what Purgion calls the orphans, and that they are not yet
full-grown men. Thus they must be either the boys or the epheboi. It
is not, however, at all likely that the epheboi, who were of military
age and engaged in violent exercises, would be given only half
rations, so these younger members are the boys not yet included in the
ἀγέλαι [agelai]. Dosiades continues: “On each table is set a drinking
vessel, of weak wine. This all who sit at the common table share
equally. The children have a bowl to themselves,” that is, the boys
who sat beside their fathers but not at the table. “After supper first
they discuss the political situation, and then recall feats in battle,
and praise those who have distinguished themselves, encouraging the
youngers to heroism.” The quotation shows that not merely the small
children are in question, but boys of an age to understand politics
and war.


     [1] Herodotos, 4. 77.

     [2] Plutarch, _Lukourgos_, 25. Kratinos (Athen. 138)
     ridicules these clubs and says that the attraction of them
     was that sausages hung there on pegs to be nibbled.

     [3] Pausanias, 3. 12. A similar event happened at Argos.
     Plutarch, _On Music_, 37.

     [4] Aristot. _Pol._ ii. 9, 10.

     [5] Plutarch, _Luk._ 16.

     [6] Say, 1½ bushels of meal, 5 gallons of wine, 5 lbs. of
     cheese, and 2½ lbs. of figs.

     [7] Smyth, _Melic Poets_, “Alkman,” 26, if the emendation
     παίδεσσι [paidessi] be correct.

     [8] Aristot. _Pol._ ii. 9.

     [9] Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271).

     [10] Xen. _Anab._ iv. 6. 14; Aristot. _Pol._ ii. 9. 31.

     [11] Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271 e).

     [12] Xen. _Hellen._ v. 3. 9.

     [13] Plato, _Rep._ 520 D.

     [14] Plut. _Kleom._ 8.

     [15] Aristoph. _Knights_, 635, 695 (with Schol. on 697,
     φορτικὸν ὀρχήσεως εῖδος [phortikon orchêseôs eidos]); Eurip.
     _Bacch._ 1060.

     [16] Xen. _Hellen._ v. 3. 9.

     [17] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ iii. 3; _Hellen._ v. 4. 32.

     [18] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ iii. 3.

     [19] “Agelai” of young men are mentioned by inscriptions at
     Miletos and Smurna [Böckh, 2892, 3326]; there may have been
     boarding-schools somewhat resembling those of Sparta at
     these towns for young men.

     [20] μαστιγόφοροι [mastigophoroi]. Xen. _Constit. of Lak._
     ii. 2. Aristotle calls Paidonomoi an aristocratic
     institution. They existed in Crete, and inscriptions mention
     them in Karia, Teos, and many other places.

     [21] Plut. _Lukourgos_, 16. Hesychius declares that the
     Bouâgor was a boy, so the word cannot mean the Eiren, who
     was over twenty.

     [22] Plut. _Lukourgos_, 17; Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ ii. 11.

     [23] In which case the Eiren corresponds closely to the
     Cretan Agelates.

     [24] _Lukourgos_, 16; _Lac. Institutions_, 247.

     [25] Isok. _Panath._ 276 D.

     [26] _Panath._ 285 C.

     [27] Plato, _Hippias Maj._ 285 C.

     [28] Sext. Empir. _Mathem._ 2, § 21.

     [29] Plut. _Lukourgos_, 19-20.

     [30] Plato, _Protag._ 342 E.

     [31] Plato, _Laws_, 680 D. Crete repudiated Homer
     altogether.

     [32] Luk. _against Leokrates_, 107. The Polemarchos was
     judge in these singing competitions, and the winner received
     a bit of meat (Philochoros in Athen. 630 f.).

     [33] Plato, _Laws_, 633 E.

     [34] Plut. _Apoph._

     [35] Xen. _Anab._ iv. 6. 14.

     [36] Isok. _Panath._ 277.

     [37] κρυπτεία, κρυπτή [krypteia, kryptê].

     [38] Plato, _Laws_, 633 C.

     [39] Plut. _Lukourgos_, 28. Isokrates merely mentions that
     the Ephors could kill as many Helots as they liked
     (_Panath._ 271 B).

     [40] Plut. _Kleom._ 28.

     [41] Thuc. iv. 80.

     [42] Plato, _Laws_, 763 B. Some have supposed that κρυπτοί
     [kryptoi] is an interpolation. If so, the resemblance must
     have been close enough to strike a commentator who knew
     Lakedaimon, in spite of the fact that the ages in the two
     systems are different.

     [43] Polukrates (in Athen. 139 e).

     [44] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 4; Plut. _Luk._ 19.

     [45] Plut. _Apoph._ 233 E. Plato adopts the Spartan views
     about wrestling in the _Laws_.

     [46] Plato, _Laches_, 183 D, E.

     [47] Plato, _Theait_. 162 B and 169 B.

     [48] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ v. 8.

     [49] Athen. xii. 550 d. Their dress and bedding was
     inspected at the same time.

     [50] Pausan. iii. 11. 2. βίδεος [bideos], Böckh, 1241, 1242;
     βίδυος [bidyos], 1254.

     [51] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 4. 1.

     [52] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ v. 9.

     [53] Herod. ix. 72.

     [54] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ ii. 4.

     [55] Paus. iii. 14. 2.

     [56] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ iv.

     [57] Hesychius, Φούαξιρ [Phouaxir].

     [58] Paus. iii. 16. 11.

     [59] Plut. _Lukourgos_, 18; Cicero, _Tusc. Disp._ v. 27.

     [60] Böckh, 1364.

     [61] Pindar, _Frag. Hyporch._ 8 Λάκαινα παρθένων ἀγέλα
     [Lakaina parthenôn agela].

     [62] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ i. 4.

     [63] Cicero, _Tusc. Disp._ ii. 15.

     [64] Plut. _Lukourgos_, 14.

     [65] Whence they were called φαινομήριδες [phainomêrides].
     This chiton may be seen in the conventional statues of
     Artemis.

     [66] Theok. _Idyll_ 18. 23.

     [67] _Laws_, 806 A.

     [68] _Lusistrata_, l. 80 onwards. In the play Lampito is
     married. Aristophanes has either made a mistake or the
     gymnastics are meant to be in the past only.

     [69] The ὄρμος [ormos] dance. Compare the dance at the end
     of the _Lusistrata_, where “man stands by woman, and woman
     by man.”

     [70] Lucian, _Dancing_, 274.

     [71] Xen. _Hellen._ vi. 4. 16.

     [72] Xen. _Ag._ ii. 17.

     [73] Athen. 630 a.

     [74] Athen. 678 b.

     [75] Plato, _Laws_, 666 D.

     [76] _Laws_, 634-635.

     [77] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ ix. 5.

     [78] Aristot. _Pol._ ii. 10. 8.

     [79] Additional revenues for the same objects were derived
     from the taxes paid by Perioikoi and serfs (Athen. 143 a,
     b).

     [80] Plato, _Laws_, 781 A.

     [81] Historians quoted by Athen. 143 e.

     [82] _Ibid._

     [83] Strabo, x. 4. 483 (on authority of Ephoros), and
     Herakleides Pont. iii. (who provide most of the details
     about Crete).

     [84] Aelian, _True History_, ii. 39.

     [85] Strabo, x. 4. 480.

     [86] Sosikrates (in Athen. 261 e), speaking of Phaistos.

     [87] Hesychius, ἀπάγελος [apagelos].

     [88] ἐκδύσια [ekdysia], Antoninus Liberalis, 18.

     [89] Mahaffy, p. 81; Grasberger, iii. 61.

     [90] Eustathius on _Il._ ix. 518.

     [91] Herakl. Pont. iii. 3.

     [92] Persaeus _ap._ Athen. 140 f.

     [93] Dicaearchus _ap._ Athen. 141 a.

     [94] Sphaerus _ap._ Athen. 141 c, d.; and Molpis, _ibid._

     [95] Polemon _ap._ Athen. 56 a, and 138-139.

     [96] Cp. the crèche temples in Plato’s _Laws_, 794 A.

     [97] Demetrius of Scepsis (_ap._ Athen. 141 e).



CHAPTER II

ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS: GENERAL INTRODUCTION


Laconia and Crete were mainly agricultural countries that had little
concern with trade or manufactures. Their citizens comprised a landed
aristocracy, supported by estates which were cultivated for them by a
subject population; there was no necessity, therefore, for them to
prepare their boys for any profession or trade, or even to instruct
them in the principles of agriculture. The young Spartan or Cretan no
more needed professional or technical instruction of any sort than the
richer absentee Irish landlords of the present day. He could give the
whole of his school-time, without any sacrifice of his financial
prospects, to the training of his body and of his character.

But the rest of Hellas was for the most part the scene of busy
manufactures and extensive trade. It would be natural to expect that
great commercial peoples, like the Athenians or the Ionians of Asia
Minor, would have set great store by the commercial elements of
education, and to assume that business methods and utilitarian
branches of study would have occupied a large place in their schools.
But this was very far from being the case. To a Hellene education
meant the training of character and taste, and the symmetrical
development of body, mind, and imagination. He would not have included
under so honourable a name either any course of instruction in which
the pupils mastered their future trade or profession, or any
accumulation of knowledge undertaken with the object of making
money. Consequently technical training of all sorts was excluded
from Hellenic schools and passed over in silence by Hellenic
educationalists. Information concerning it must be pieced together
from stray facts and casual allusions, and the whole idea of
“utilitarian” instruction, in the modern sense of the word, must be
carefully put aside during any consideration of Hellenic schools.

For the Hellenes as a nation regarded all forms of handicraft as
_bourgeois_ (βάναυσος [banausos]) and contemptible. Herodotos says
that they derived this view from the surrounding peoples, who all held
it.[98] To do anything in order to extract money from some one else
was, in their opinion, vulgar and ungentlemanly. The lyric poets and
the Sophists were alike blamed for taking fees. The cheapness and
abundance of serf- or slave-labour made it possible for a large
proportion of the free population to live in idleness, and devote
their time to the development of the body by physical exercises, of
the mind by perpetual discussions, and of the imagination by art and
music. Citizenship required leisure, in the days before representative
government came into vogue. It was owing to this principle that the
Athenian received pay for a day’s attendance in the Law Courts or the
Assembly, for by this means the poorest citizen obtained an artificial
leisure for the performance of his duties. Otherwise true citizenship
was impossible. Plato regards a tradesman as unfit to be an acting
citizen.[99] Aristotle rejects as unworthy of a free man all trades
which interfere with bodily development or take time which ought to be
devoted to mental improvement.[100] Xenophon explains the reason of
this attitude. The discredit which attaches to the _bourgeois_
occupations is quite natural; for they ruin the physical condition of
those who practise them, compelling them to sit down and live in the
shade, and in some cases to spend their day by the fire. The body thus
becomes effeminate, and the character is weakened at the same time.
Tradesmen, too, have less leisure for serving their friends and the
State. In some communities, especially the most warlike, the citizens
are not allowed to practise sedentary trades.[101] The owner of a
factory or a farm worked by slave-labour was exempt from corrupting
influences: it was only actual work which was degrading.

A large number, however, from among the poorer classes were compelled
to work with their own hands; so these, as well as the slaves,
required technical instruction. Some indications survive as to the
manner in which this was imparted. Trades were mostly hereditary; “the
sons of the craftsmen learn their fathers’ trade, so far as their
fathers and their friends of the same trade can teach it.”[102] But
others might also learn. Xenophon mentions such cases. “When you
apprentice a boy to a trade,” he says, “you draw up a statement of
what you mean him to be taught,”[103] and the fees were not paid
unless this agreement was carried out. The _Kleitophon_[104] mentions
as the two functions of the builder or the doctor the practising of
their profession and the teaching of pupils. The _Republic_[105] says:
“If owing to poverty a craftsman is unable to provide the books and
other requisites of his calling, his work will suffer, and his sons
and any others whom he may be teaching will not learn their trade so
well.” The teaching of building is mentioned in the _Gorgias_.[106] In
the _Republic_[107] Plato states that the παῖδες [paides] of the
potters――a word which will include both sons and apprentices――act as
servants and look on for a long time before they are allowed to try
their hands themselves at making pots. “To learn pot-making on a
wine-jar” was a proverb for beginning with the most difficult part of
a subject. The pupils of a doctor named Pittalos are mentioned in the
_Acharnians_ of Aristophanes.[108] The comic poets of the early third
century contain several references to cookery-schools. Sosipater makes
one cook say that his pupils must learn astrology, architecture, and
strategy before they come to him, just as Plato had exacted a
preliminary knowledge of mathematics from his disciples. Euphron gives
ten months as the minimum length of a course of cookery. Aristotle
mentions a man at Syracuse who taught slaves how to wait at table, and
perform their household duties: perhaps the play of Pherekrates[109]
entitled _The Slave-Teacher_ may have dealt with a similar case. From
these fragments a picture can be drawn of a regular system of
apprenticeship by which the knowledge of the trades was handed down.
Solon, wishing to encourage Athenian manufactures, had enacted that if
a father did not have his son taught some trade, he could not legally
demand to be supported in his old age.[110] But the general opinion of
Hellas still maintained that “technical instruction and all teaching
which aimed only at money-making was vulgar and did not deserve the
name of education. True education aimed solely at virtue, making the
child yearn to be a good citizen, skilled to rule and to obey.”[111]
For all the gold on the earth and under it, according to Plato, could
not pay the price of virtue, or deserve to be given in exchange for a
man’s soul. Thus the Spartans and Cretans did not stand alone, but had
the support of all Hellas, in banishing from their schools any idea of
technical or professional instruction.

       *     *     *     *     *

But in one notable point their idea of education differed from that
which was prevalent in most of the Hellenic States. The regular course
of education in Athens and in most Hellenic States was for boys
alone: no girls need apply. The women lived in almost Oriental
seclusion;[112] the duty of an Athenian mother was, according to
Perikles,[113] to live so retired a life that her name should never be
mentioned among the men either for praise or blame. Listen to the
description which an Athenian country gentleman gives of his
wife.[114] “What was she likely to know when I married her? Why, she
was not yet fifteen when I introduced her to my house, and she had
been brought up always under the strictest supervision; as far as
could be managed, she had not been allowed to see anything, hear
anything, or ask any questions. Don’t you think that it was all that
could be expected of her, if she knew how to take raw wool and make it
into a cloak, and had seen how wool-work is served out to
handmaidens?” Sokrates, however, to whom this question is addressed,
seems to think that she might have learnt “from her father and mother
the duties which would belong to her in after life.” These, however,
in this case her husband had to teach her. He explains to her that she
must see that everything has a place to itself and is always put
there; she must also give out the stores, teach the slaves their
duties and nurse them when they are ill, and tend the young children.
The summary of the explanation is that Heaven has appointed a fair
division of labour between husband and wife: the wife manages
everything indoors and the husband everything out of doors. A
stay-at-home husband or a gad-about wife equally offend against
respectability. As a rule, apparently, the women simply sat in the
house, “like slaves,” as it seemed to the ordinary athletic Hellene.
Xenophon’s model husband suggests that his wife should take exercise
by walking about the house to see how the supplies were given out, to
inspect the arrangements of the cupboards, and to watch the washing
and the wringing-out of the clothes: this exercise will give her
health and an appetite. But Xenophon was an admirer of Spartan customs
and the athletic Spartan women: probably these ideas would not have
occurred to the ordinary Athenian husband.

Another picture may be quoted from Hellenic literature to show the
extent of education which an ordinary woman received.[115] A certain
Aristarchos comes to Sokrates in great distress. A number of female
relatives, quite destitute, have been thrown upon his hands owing to
various circumstances, and he must support them; but he has not the
requisite means. Sokrates naturally suggests that he should make them
work for their living. But they do not know how to, says Aristarchos.
However, by dint of questioning, Sokrates elicits the fact that they
can make men’s and women’s garments, and also pastry and bread. These,
then, were apparently the accomplishments which an ordinary girl in
Hellas, brought up without any idea of having to earn her own living,
would acquire. Plato also mentions weaving and cooking as the
provinces in which women excel,[116] and describes the women of Attika
as “living indoors, managing the household and superintending the loom
and wool-work generally.”[117]

Thus the Athenian girl spent her time indoors, learning to be a
regular “Hausfrau,” skilled in weaving, cooking, and household
management. She had her special maid to wait on her,[118] as her
brothers had their paidagogos. She would, as a rule, be married young,
and would naturally be very shy after such an upbringing; the marriage
was arranged between the bridegroom and the parents, and, owing to the
seclusion of the women at Athens, love-matches were well-nigh
impossible. The match was mainly a question of the dowry.
Xenophon[119] gives a vivid picture of one of these girl-wives
gradually “growing accustomed to her husband and becoming sufficiently
tame to hold conversation with him.” To keep their beauty under such
conditions they employed rouge and white, and high-heeled shoes. Such
mothers would be quite incapable of giving any literary or musical
education to their children; hence the boys went away to school as
soon as possible. Their school-life usually began when they were about
six years old, the exact age being left to the parents’ choice.[120]
Before this, they learnt in the nursery the various current fables and
ballads, and the national mythology.[121] “As soon as the child
understands what is said, the nurse and the mother and the paidogogos,
yes, and the father himself, strive with one another in improving its
character, in every word and deed showing it what is just and what is
unjust, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is holy and what is
unholy. It is always ‘Do this’ and ‘Don’t do that.’ If a child is
disobedient, it is corrected with threats and blows.”[122] Besides
this purely moral training there might, no doubt, be a certain amount
of technical or of literary instruction at home,[123] and bits of
poetry might be learnt. Up to this age boys and girls lived together.

The sons of rich parents apparently went to school earliest: their
poorer fellow-citizens went later.[124] This was natural. The poor
could not keep their sons at school for a long time, for they wanted
their services in the shop or on the farm, and the fees were a burden:
so they did not send them till they were old enough to pick up
instruction quickly. The rich, on the other hand, to whom money was no
object, sent their boys to school at an early age, when they could do
little more than look on, while their elders worked. Aristotle
commends this custom, and imposes two years of such “playing at
school” upon the boys of his ideal State.[125]

The ordinary system of primary education at Athens consisted of three
parts, presided over respectively by the “grammatistes,”
“kitharistes,” and “paidotribes.”[126] The grammatistes taught
reading, writing, and some arithmetic, and made his pupils read and
learn by heart the great poets, Homer and Hesiod and others. The
kitharistes taught the boys how to play the seven-stringed lyre and
sing to it the works of the lyric poets, which they would incidentally
have to learn. The paidotribes presided over their physical
development in a scientific way; he taught them wrestling, boxing, the
pankration, running, jumping, throwing the diskos and javelin, and
various other exercises; his school-room was the palaistra. To this
triple system some boys added drawing and painting;[127] but this
subject seems to have been an extra till late in the fourth century.
Literature, music, and athletics composed the ordinary course at
Athens.

Which of the three branches of education began first? Probably they
were all taught simultaneously. The order in which they are usually
mentioned does not point to a fixed sequence. Letters were naturally
mentioned first, because all citizens alike learned this subject.
Gymnastics were put last, because, owing to the public gymnasia, these
exercises were carried on long after the other schooling had ceased.
Moreover, most of the recognised exercises of the palaistra were not
taught to small boys; from the nature of the exercises and from the
pictures on the vases it may be deduced that the average boy did not
learn them till his twelfth year at the earliest. But physical
training of an easier sort of course commenced much earlier, and boys
seem to have attended a palaistra from their sixth year onwards to
receive it. Both Plato and Aristotle demand that it should begin
several years before any intellectual instruction; and Plato, making
athletics such as shooting and riding begin at six, defers letters
till ten and lyre-playing till thirteen. Gymnastics would naturally
occupy a part of the day for a healthy young Hellene during the whole
time from his sixth year till manhood. It is thus that the _Charmides_
mentions “quite tiny boys” as present in the palaistra, as well as
older lads and young men.

Lyre-playing may have been deferred, as a harder subject, till the boy
had learned letters for several years; but the seven-stringed lyre,
with the simple old Hellenic music, was probably not a very difficult
instrument to master. The chief factor which determined the
arrangement of subjects in an ordinary family was no doubt the
paidagogos. If there was only one son, he could go to whatever school
his parents pleased; but if there were several, elders and youngers
had all to go to the same school at the same time, for there was only
one paidagogos to a whole family as a rule, and he could never allow
any of his charges to go out of his sight.

That the three subjects were usually taught simultaneously may be
inferred from a passage of Xenophon. “In every part of Hellas except
Sparta,” he says, “those who claim to give their sons the best
education, as soon as ever the child understands what is said to him,
at once make one of their servants his paidagogos, and at once send
him off to school to learn letters and music and the exercises of the
Palaistra.”[128] The emphasis upon the word “at once” certainly
implies that the three subjects began simultaneously.

On the vases letters and music are seen being taught side by side in
the same school; this was a convenient and natural arrangement.
Writing-tablets and rulers are also seen suspended on the walls
of music-schools and palaistrai, and lyres on the walls of
letter-schools[129]; which suggests that the boys went from one
building to another in the day, taking their property with them. Plato
states that three years apiece was a reasonable time for learning
letters and the lyre.[130] The eight years between six and fourteen,
the ordinary time devoted at Athens in the fourth century to the
primary triple course, would give space for these six years, with two
years to spare for elaboration. Gymnastics are meant to go on during
the whole period in Plato, and so do not require a special allowance
of time to themselves.

This system of primary education at Athens may reasonably be traced
back to the beginning of the sixth century. Solon is credited with a
regulation which made letters compulsory, and with certain moral
enactments dealing with existing schools and palaistrai. The
much-disputed popularisation of Homer at Athens by Peisistratos was
probably connected with the growth of the Schools of Letters. Of the
existence of music-schools at this date there is evidence from a
sixth-century vase in the British Museum,[131] which represents a
youth amusing himself with a dog, behind a seated man who is playing a
lyre. This might not seem very conclusive in itself; but now compare
it with the two “amphorai” of the fifth century,[132] which
undoubtedly represent scenes in a music-school. The situation is
almost identical; each alike shows the boy playing with the animal
behind his master’s chair. Curiously enough, all three vases come from
Kameiros in Rhodes, although they are of Athenian manufacture. Thus
the music-school may also be traced back well into the sixth century,
in company with the school of letters and the palaistra; and the
antiquity of the system of Primary Education is thus established.

  [Illustration: PLATE I. A.

  THE FLUTE LESSON, THE WRITING LESSON (ABOVE A WRITING-ROLL, A FOLDED
  TABLET, A RULING SQUARE, ETC.)

  From the Kulix of Douris, now at Berlin (No. 2285).
  _Monumenti dell’ Instituto_, ix. Plate 54.]

  [Illustration: PLATE I. B.

  THE LYRE LESSON, AND THE POETRY LESSON (ABOVE IS AN ORNAMENTAL
  MANUSCRIPT BASKET)

  From a Kulix by Douris, now in Berlin (No. 2285).
  _Monumenti dell’ Instituto_, ix. Plate 54.]

In earlier days this primary course had no doubt sometimes lasted till
the boy was eighteen: but towards the end of the fifth century a
secondary stage of education arose, occupying the years immediately
preceding eighteen. This secondary stage is recognised in the
pseudo-Platonic _Axiochos_ and in the fragment of Teles quoted by
Stobaeus. More important evidence is supplied by Plato. In the
_Republic_ he assigns an elaborate system of mathematics to the age
just before ἐφηβεία [ephêbeia], which he sets at seventeen or
eighteen, the natural age varying with the individual, while the legal
age remained fixed.

When did this Secondary Education begin? Aristotle, counting back from
ἐφηβεία [ephêbeia], assigns three years to it.[133] He has just
commended the arrangement of education, not on hard and fast lines,
but in accordance with the natural growth of the individual: so he
must mean his ἐφηβεία [ephêbeia] to vary from seventeen to
eighteen.[134] Thus he puts the beginning of secondary education at
fourteen or fifteen, the average age of ἥβη [hêbê] in Hellas, as in
Rome. From ἥβη [hêbê] till twenty-one the young Athenian was a
μειράκιον [meirakion]. Thus in point of age the παῖς [pais] of the
primary schools corresponds to the Roman “impubes,” and the μειράκιον
[meirakion] to the “adolescens”; but μειράκιον [meirakion] and παῖς
[pais] are used very loosely, and the former word is often replaced by
νεανίσκος [neaniskos]. We shall, as a rule, call the pupils of the
primary schools boys, and those of the secondary lads.

Fourteen did not, however, represent an exact point at which it was
compulsory to leave the primary school. Sons of the poor left earlier;
rich or unoccupied Athenians might remain later: Sokrates even
attended a lyre-school among the boys when he was middle-aged. The
primary schoolmasters started advanced classes in astronomy and
mathematics to suit elder pupils.[135] In the palaistrai there were
separate classes of boys and lads, who were only supposed to meet on
feast-days;[136] in the _Charmides_, however, grown men, lads, boys,
and quite tiny boys are all exercising together.

Many lads, especially in earlier times, did not attend the schools at
all, but gave their time to gymnastics and whatever else they
pleased.[137] Xenophon relates this as one of the demerits of the
Athenian system.[138]

The mental attainments of a lad who is apparently but little over
fourteen are sketched in Plato’s _Lusis_. The lad Lusis knows how to
read and write, and how to string and play the lyre. He recognises a
quotation from Homer, and has even come across the “prose treatises of
the very wise, who say that like must always be friendly to like;
these are the men who reason and write about the Universe and
Nature.”[139]

This secondary education, beginning soon after fourteen, was only for
the rich: the poor could not afford to keep their sons away from the
farm or trade any longer. It might be scattered over the whole of the
next six or seven years; but there was a serious interruption, which
usually terminated it. At eighteen the young Athenian became in the
eye of the law an ephebos and was called out to undergo two years of
military training. During this period of conscription it was no doubt
possible, especially in the laxer days of the fourth century, to do
some intellectual work; but Plato is probably only accepting the usual
custom when he frees the epheboi of his State from all mental studies
and makes them give their whole energies to military and gymnastic
training. And when the ephebos returned to civil life, he was a full
citizen and was hardly likely to return to school; he might attend an
occasional lecture or so, but that was all.

Thus secondary education usually occupied the years between fourteen
and eighteen, although the latter limit was in no way definitely
fixed, and the same subjects might be studied at any age. In earlier
days no doubt lads spent their time in continuing their musical
studies: primary education could be conducted in a more leisurely
fashion when there was still little to be learnt, and the lyre may
have been deferred till this age, as Plato in similar circumstances
defers it in the _Laws_. But in the days of Perikles knowledge began
to increase and boys had more to learn. So the lyre was crowded into
the first period of education, and a new series of secondary subjects
arose. It was these years which were usually devoted to the four
years’ course which was customary in the school of Isokrates. Before
this date the time was, as a rule, spent in attending the lectures of
the wandering Sophists or in picking up a smattering of philosophy.
Among the subjects which thus formed a part of secondary education
were mathematics of various kinds, more advanced literary criticism, a
certain amount of natural history and science, a knowledge of the laws
and constitution of Athens, a small quantity of philosophy, ethical,
political, and metaphysical, and above all, rhetoric. Plato in his
_Republic_, developing this Athenian system of secondary education,
assigns to the years immediately preceding eighteen the theory of
numbers, geometry, plane and solid, kinetics and harmonics, and
expressly excludes dialectic as more suitable to a later age;[140] in
the _Laws_, prescribing for the whole population, not for a few
selected intellects, he orders practical arithmetic, geometry,
and enough astronomy to make the calendar intelligible. The
pseudo-Platonic _Axiochos_[141] ascribes to Prodikos the statement
that “when a child grows older, he endures the tyranny of
mathematicians, teachers of tactics, and ‘critics.’” These last are
the professors of that curious criticism of poetry which is found, for
instance, in the _Protagoras_ as a subject of the lectures of that
Sophist as well as of Hippias.

At eighteen the young Athenian partially came of age. He then had to
submit to a two years’ course of military training, of which the first
year was spent in Athens and the second in the frontier forts and in
camp. During this period he probably had little time for intellectual
occupations. But when the military power of Athens collapsed under the
Macedonian dominion, the military duties of the epheboi became
voluntary, and their training was replaced by regular courses of
philosophy and literature. The military system became a University,
attended by a few young men of wealth and position and a good many
foreigners. As the forerunner of the first University, the two years’
training of the epheboi may fitly receive the name of Tertiary
Education, in spite of the fact that till the third century it
involved only military instruction.

Thus we have Athenian education divided into three stages: Primary
from six to fourteen, Secondary from fourteen to eighteen, and
Tertiary from eighteen to twenty; while gymnastic training extended
over the whole period.

       *     *     *     *     *

Of these three stages the third alone was compulsory and provided by
the State. The second was entirely voluntary, and only the richest and
most leisured boys applied themselves to it. Gymnastics of some sort
were rendered almost obligatory by the liability of every citizen to
military and naval service at a moment’s notice; but they needed
little encouragement. Of the primary subjects, letters were probably
compulsory by law, and music was almost invariably taught. An old law,
ascribed to Solon,[142] enacted that every boy should learn swimming
and his letters; after which, the poorer might turn their attention to
trade or farming, while the richer passed on to learn music, riding,
gymnastics, hunting, and philosophy. In the _Kriton_ of Plato the
personified Laws of Athens, recounting to Sokrates the many services
which they had done him, mention that they had “charged his father to
educate him in Music and Letters.”[143] But the Laws in Hellas include
the customs, as well as the constitution, of a State. It was certainly
customary for nearly every citizen at Athens to learn some music; but
it was not compulsory. We meet no Athenian in literature who is
ignorant of his letters; we meet several who know no music. In
Aristophanes, Demosthenes and Nikias are on the lookout for the most
vulgar and low-class man in Athens, in order that he may oust Kleon
from popular favour, by outdoing him in vulgarity. They find a
sausage-seller. But even this man knows his letters, though not very
well.[144] Of music, however, he is ignorant, and he has never
attended the lessons of a paidotribes,[145] though Kleon seems to
expect him to have done so. Kleon, who is represented as an utter
boor, is yet said to have attended a lyre-school.[146] In the
_Theages_[147] literature and lyre-playing and athletics are mentioned
as the ordinary education of a gentleman. In fiercely democratic
Athens every parent was eager to bring up his sons as gentlemen, and
no doubt sent them through the whole course if he could possibly
afford it. But the State attitude towards education, as distinct from
the voluntary customs of the citizens, may be summarised in the words
of Sokrates to Alkibiades: “No one, so to speak, cares a straw how you
or any other Athenian is brought up.”[148]

The schoolmasters opened their schools as private enterprises, fixing
for themselves the fees and the subjects taught. The parents chose
what they thought a suitable school, according to their means and the
subjects which they wished their sons to learn. Thus Sokrates says to
his eldest son, Lamprokles,[149] “When boys seem old enough to learn
anything, their parents teach them whatever they themselves know that
is likely to be useful to them; subjects which they think others
better qualified to teach they send them to school to learn, spending
money upon this object.” This suggests that the poor may frequently
have passed on their own knowledge of letters to their sons without
the expense of a school. But all this was a private transaction
between parent and teacher. The State interfered with the matter only
so far as to impose certain moral regulations on the schools and the
gymnasia, to fix the hours of opening and closing, and so forth, and
to suggest that every boy should be taught his letters.

The teaching of the elementary stages of Letters, that is, the three
R’s, was, as will be shown later on, cheaply obtained, and was within
the reach of the poorest. Music and athletics would naturally be more
expensive, for they required much greater study and talents upon the
part of their teachers. The State did take some steps to make these
branches of education cheaper, and so throw them open to a larger
number.

Gymnasia and palaistrai were built at public expense,[150] that any
one might go and exercise himself without charge. These buildings were
also open to spectators, so that any one could acquire at any rate a
rudimentary knowledge of boxing, wrestling, and the other branches of
athletics, by watching his more proficient fellow-citizens practising
them. The epheboi received instruction in athletic exercises at the
cost of the State. But the children, so far as they received physical
training in schools, must have received it in private palaistrai;
their lessons are described as taking place “in the house of the
paidotribes,” ἐν παιδοτρίβου [en paidotribou]――an idiom which always
implies ownership or special rights; and the majority of palaistrai
were private buildings, called by their owners’ names. Thus we hear of
the palaistrai of Siburtios, of Taureas,[151] and so forth: Siburtios
and Taureas were no doubt the paidotribai who taught there. In a later
age, when the boys of different palaistrai ran torch races against one
another, the palaistra of Timeas is victorious on two occasions, that
of Antigenes once.[152]

By the system of leitourgiai rich citizens were made chargeable for
the expenses of the epheboi of their tribe who were training for the
torch races. These races seem to have been the only branch of
athletics which was thus endowed; however, they were numerous, even in
the smaller country districts, so that many epheboi must have profited
by this free training.[153] “Leitourgiai” also provided free
instruction in chorus-dancing (which included singing as well as
dancing) for such boys as were selected for competition. The rich
“choregos” appointed for the year had to produce a chorus of boys
belonging to his tribe for some festival, paying all the expenses of
teaching and training them himself.[154] It is to this free school
that the Solonic law refers when it mentions the “joint attendance of
the boys and the dithyrambic choruses”; for it goes on to state that
the ordinance with regard to this matter was that the “choregos”
should be over forty.[155] In Demosthenes,[156] a certain Mantitheos,
who had not been acknowledged by his father at the usual time,
“attended school among the boys of the Hippothontid tribe to learn
chorus-dancing”: had he been acknowledged, he would have gone to the
Acamantid, his father’s tribe. No doubt, if the choregos was keen
about gaining a victory, he would give a trial to more than the fifty
boys required for a dithyrambic contest. In any case, provided that
all the tribes competed, this one contest (and there were several in
the course of a year) gave a free education to 500 boys. Xenophon
notices that it was the “demos,” the poor majority, who mainly got the
advantage of free training under gumnasiarchoi and choregoi:[157] the
rich naturally preferred to send their boys to more select
schools.[158]

Thus the more elementary stages of letters alone were compulsory at
Athens, but music and gymnastics were almost universally taught, and
the cost of instruction in these subjects was reduced in various ways
by State action: the greater part might be learned for nothing. But
parents needed little compulsion or encouragement to get their
children taught. So much did the Hellenes regard education as a
necessity for their boys, that when the Athenians were driven from
their homes by Xerxes, and their women and children crossed over to
Troizen, the hospitable Troizenians provided their guests with
schoolmasters, so that not even in such a crisis might the boys be
forced to take a holiday.[159] And when Mitulene wished to punish her
revolted allies in the most severe way possible, she prevented them
from teaching their children letters and music.[160]

Of State action with regard to education in Hellas elsewhere than in
Sparta, Crete, and Athens, little is known. But the Chalcidian cities
in Sicily and Italy are said to have provided literary education at
public expense and under public supervision.[161] The law enacting
this is ascribed to the great lawgiver, Charondas, and, although he is
a somewhat shadowy figure,[162] there must have been some foundation
for the story, at any rate at a later date. During the Macedonian
period kings and other rich men often bequeathed large sums of money
to their favourite cities, in order to endow the educational system.
We hear of this happening in Teos and at Delphi: in these places the
parents, if they paid any fees at all, cannot have paid much. But
there is no authority for any such endowments during the period which
we are considering.

       *     *     *     *     *

But if education was neither enforced nor assisted to any considerable
degree by the State, it was certainly encouraged by the prizes which
were offered. Every city, and probably most villages, had local
competitions annually, and in many cases more frequently still, in
which some of the “events” were reserved for citizens, while others
were open to all comers. There were separate prizes for different
ages; the ordinary division was into boys and grown men, an
intermediate class of “the beardless” being sometimes added. But in
some Attic inscriptions the boys are divided into three groups, and in
Chios the epheboi were so distributed.

These competitions were no doubt largely athletic. But music was
usually provided for as well, and in many places there were literary
competitions also. At Athens the different φρατρίαι [phratriai] seem
to have offered prizes annually on the Koureotis day of the Apatouria
to the boys who recited best, the piece for recitation being chosen by
each competitor. Kritias took part in the competition when ten years
old.[163] From Teos we have a list of prizemen, belonging, it is true,
to a later date; but it may be quoted, to give some idea of what the
subjects might be.[164]

        _Senior Class_ (_by age_).

  For rhapsody, Zoïlos, son of Zoïlos.
  For reading, Zoïlos, son of Zoïlos.

        _Middle Class._

  For rhapsody, Metrodoros, son of Attalos.
  For reading, Dionusikles, son of Metrodoros.
  For general knowledge, Athenaios, son of Apollodoros.
  For painting, Dionusios, son of Dionusios.

        _Junior Class._

  For rhapsody, Herakles.
  For reading.
  For caligraphy.
  For torch race.
  For playing lyre with fingers.
  For playing lyre with plektron.
  For singing to lyre.
  For reciting tragic verse (tragedy).
  For reciting comedy.
  For reciting lyric verse.


From Chios we have the following[165]:――

     When Hermesileos, Dinos, and Nikias were gumnasiarchoi, the
     following boys and epheboi were victorious in the competitions
     and offered libations to the Muses and Herakles from the
     sums which were given to them in accordance with the decree
     of the people, when Lusias was taster of the offerings:――

     For reading, Agathokles.
     For rhapsody, Miltiades.
     For playing lyre with fingers, Xenon.
     For playing lyre, Kleoites.

    _Long Distance Race_ (varied from 2¼ miles to about ¾ mile).
     Boys              Asklepiades.
     Junior epheboi    Dionusios.
     Middle    ”       Timokles.
     Senior    ”       Moschion.
     Men       ”       Aischrion.

    _Stadion_ (200 yards).
     Boys             _Athenikon_.
     Junior epheboi    Hestiaios.
     Middle    ”      _Apollonios_.
     Senior    ”       Artemon.
     Men       ”       Metrodoros.

    _Diaulos_ (400 yards).
     Boys             _Athenikon_.
     Junior epheboi    Hubristos.
     Middle    ”       Melantes.
     Senior    ”       _Apollonios_.
     Men       ”       Menis.
     (Apollonios seems to have been so
     good that, though a middle ephebos,
     he competed in and won the
     senior ephebos’ race here, unless
     there were two boys of the same
     name.)

    _Wrestling._
     Boys             _Athenikon_.
     Junior epheboi    Demetrios.
     Middle    ”       Moschos.
     Senior    ”       Theodotos.
     Men       ”       Apellas.

     _Boxing._
     Boys              Herakleides.
     (The rest is wanting.)

     (Notice the three victories of the boy Athenikon.)

At Thespiai in Boiotia[166] there were prizes for senior and junior
boys in the various races, and in boxing, wrestling, pankration, and
pentathlon, besides open prizes for poetry and music of all kinds.
Attic inscriptions arrange the events thus[167]:――

    _Stadion._
  Junior Boys.
  Middle Boys.
  Senior Boys.
  Boys Open.
      Men.

    _Diaulos._
  Junior Boys.
  Middle Boys.
  Senior Boys.
  Boys   Open.
      Men.

  _Fighting in Heavy Arms._
  Junior     Boys.
  Middle     Boys.
  Senior     Boys.
  Epheboi.

The Olympian and Pythian festivals, however, had only a single series
of contests for boys:――

                           _Olympia._
              Boys.   Stadion (Pind. _Ol._ xiv.).
                      Boxing (Pind. _Ol._ x., xi.).
                      Wrestling (Pind. _Ol._ viii.).
  (only in 628 B.C.)  Pentathlon.
  (not till 200 B.C.) Pankration.

                           _Pythia._
  Boys.  Long Distance Race.
         Diaulos (400 yards) (Pind. _Puth_. x.).
         Stadion (200 yards) (Pind. _Puth._ xi.).
         Boxing.
         Wrestling (Bacchul. xi.).
         Pankration (not till 346 B.C.).

But at Nemea both pentathlon[168] and pankration[169] for boys had
already been established by Pindar’s time, as well as the more usual
contests.[170]

How far individual schoolmasters, as distinct from the State, gave
prizes to their pupils, is little known; an epigram in the _Anthology_
supplies the only evidence, by narrating that “Konnaros received
eighty knucklebones because he wrote beautifully, better than the
other boys.”[171] But probably as a general rule the task of rewarding
merit was left to the public contests.

       *     *     *     *     *

Thus the State did much to encourage, if it did little to assist or
enforce, education. With such splendid rewards before them, boys were
probably quite eager to attend school, or at any rate the palaistra.
As soon as they were old enough to go to school,[172] they were
entrusted to an elderly slave,[173] who had to follow his master’s
boys about wherever they went and never let them go out of his
sight.[174] This was the paidagogos――a mixture of nurse, footman,
chaperon, and tutor――who is so prominent a figure on the vases and in
the literature of classical Hellas. There was only one for the family,
so that all the boys had to go about together and to attend the same
schools and the same palaistrai at the same time.[175] He waited on
them in the house, carried their books or lyres to school, sat and
watched them in the schoolroom, and kept a strict eye upon their
manners and morality in the streets and the gymnasia. Thus, for
instance, in Plato, Lusis and Menexenos have their paidagogoi in
attendance at the palaistra, who come and force them away from the
absorbing conversation of Sokrates, when it is time for them to go
home.[176] On a vase these attendants may be seen sitting on stools
behind their charges, in the schools of letters and music, with long
and suggestive canes in their hands.[177] A careful parent would, of
course, see that a slave who was to occupy so responsible a position
was worthy of it: but great carelessness seems often to have been
shown in this matter. The paidagogoi of Lusis and Menexenos, boys of
rank and position, had a bad accent, and on a festival day, it is
true, were slightly intoxicated.[178] Plutarch notices that in his
time parents often selected for this office slaves who were of no use
for any other purpose.[179] Xenophon, feeling the demerits of the
Athenian custom, commends the Spartans, who entrust the boys not to
slaves, but to public officials of the highest rank.[180] But in
well-regulated households the paidagogos was often a most worthy and
valuable servant. Sikinnos, who attended the children of Themistokles
in this capacity, was entrusted by his master with the famous message
to Xerxes, which brought on the battle of Salamis; he was afterwards
rewarded with his freedom, the citizenship of Thespiai, and a
substantial sum of money.[181] The custom of employing these
male-nurses dated back to early times at Athens: for Solon made
regulations about them.[182]

Boys were entrusted to paidagogoi as soon as they went to school at
six. This tutelage might last till the boy was eighteen[183] and came
of age; but more frequently it stopped earlier. Xenophon,[184] in his
wish to disparage everything not Spartan, declares that in all other
States the boys were set free from paidagogoi and schoolmasters as
soon as they became μειράκια [meirakia], _i.e._ at about fourteen or
fifteen. The conjunction of schoolmasters suggests the explanation of
the variations in age. When an elder brother ceased to attend school,
and his younger brothers were still pursuing their studies, there
being only one paidagogos, he had to be left unattended. But in cases
where there was only one son, or where the eldest of several stayed on
at school until he came of age, he would have the paidagogos to attend
him until he was his own master.

The life of such an attendant must have been an anxious one in many
cases. Plato compares his relations towards his charges with the
relations of an invalid towards his health: “He has to follow the
disease wherever it leads, being unable to cure it, and he spends his
life in perpetual anxiety with no time for anything else.”[185] With
unruly boys of different ages, and consequently of different tastes
and desires, the slave must have been often in a difficult position.
He had, however, the right of inflicting corporal punishment.

The chief object of the paidagogos was to safeguard the morals of his
charges. Boys were expected to be as modest and quiet in their whole
behaviour, and as carefully chaperoned, as young girls. Parents told
the schoolmasters to bestow much more attention upon the boy’s
behaviour than upon his letters and music.[186] This attitude was
characteristic of Athens from the first. The school laws of Solon, as
quoted by Aischines, deal wholly with morality. He gives the following
account of them[187]:――

     “The old lawgivers stated expressly what sort of life the
     free boy ought to lead and how he ought to be brought up;
     they also dealt with the manners of lads and men of other
     ages.” “In the case of the schoolmasters, to whom we are
     compelled to entrust our children, although their livelihood
     depends upon their good character, and bad behaviour is
     ruinous to them, yet the lawgiver obviously distrusts them.
     For he expressly states, first, the hour at which the free
     boy ought to go to school; secondly, how many other boys are
     to be present in the school; and then at what hour he is to
     leave. He forbids the schoolmasters to open their schools
     and the paidotribai their palaistrai before sunrise, and
     orders them to close before sunset, being very suspicious of
     the empty streets and of the darkness. Then he dealt with
     the boys who attended schools, as to who they should be and
     of what ages; and with the official who is to oversee these
     matters. He dealt too with the regulation of the paidagogoi,
     and with the festival of the Muses in the schools and of
     Hermes in the palaistrai. Finally, he laid down regulations
     about the joint attendance of the boys and the round of
     dithyrambic dances; for he directed that the Choregos should
     be over forty.”

     “No one over the age of boyhood might enter while the boys
     were in school, except the son, brother, or son-in-law of
     the master: the penalty of infringing this regulation was
     death. At the festival of Hermes the person in charge of the
     gymnasium[188] was not to allow any one over age to
     accompany the boys in any way: unless he excluded such
     persons from the gymnasium, he was to come under the law of
     corrupting free boys.”

It will be noticed that these regulations are entirely concerned with
morality: they safeguard an existing system. They prescribe neither
the methods nor the subjects of education; for with such matters the
Athenian government did not interfere. But over the question of morals
it becomes unexpectedly tyrannous, and makes the most minute
regulations worthy of the strictest bureaucracy. It interfered on this
point in other ways also. The solemn council on the Areiopagos had a
special supervision over the young, from Solon’s time onward; this was
partially taken away from it by Ephialtes and Perikles, but the
_Axiochos_ shows that, though in abeyance, it continued to exist; in
the middle of the fourth century, however, Isokrates laments that it
had fallen into disuse.

The _Axiochos_ also states that the ten Sophronistai, elected to guard
the morals of the epheboi, exercised control over lads also. These
officials probably took their rise in the days of Solon: the
regulation that they must be over forty harmonises with the other
enactments of those days; and, although they died out at the end of
the fourth century, they were revived under the Roman Empire. Now it
is most unlikely that the archaistic legislators of imperial times
would have revived an office which had only existed during the closing
decades of the fourth century. Solon is known to have appointed a
magistracy specially to deal with the children;[189] and, if these
magistrates were not the Sophronistai, all trace of his creation has
been lost, which is most unlikely to have happened. So the
Sophronistai probably date from early times. Their duty was a general
supervision of the morals of the young; their chief function would be
to prosecute, on behalf of the State, parents and schoolmasters who
infringed Solon’s moral regulations. But such prosecutions would
usually be undertaken by private individuals concerned in the case,
and so this magistracy tended to become a sinecure. It may even have
ceased to exist after the fall of the Areiopagos. But it seems to have
revived under the restored democracy for a while (if the _Axiochos_
belongs to Aischines the Sokratic), to sink again in the middle of the
century. At the close of the century it revives once more with the
changes in the ephebic system, and finally perishes when the epheboi
became too few to need ten officers to supervise their morals. An
account of the Sophronistai of this later period will be given in
connection with the epheboi.

  [Illustration: PLATE II.

  THE FLUTE LESSON――THE BOY’S TURN

  _Wiener Vorlegeblätter_, Series C, Plate 4.
  From a Kulix by Hieron, now at Vienna.]

The strategoi[190] exercised a superintendence over the epheboi during
their two years’ training as recruits, as would naturally be expected.
Late in the fourth century they appear also to have been connected
with the local schools in Attica; an inscription at Eleusis, which
Girard assigns to 320 B.C., thanks the strategos Derkulos for the
diligence which he had shown in supervising the education of the
children there.[191] Whether they exercised such functions in the days
when their military duties were more important, is more than doubtful.
But any Athenian magistrate could interest himself in the schools, no
doubt, and intervene to check abuses.[192]

       *     *     *     *     *

In the period of juvenile emancipation and increasing luxury and
indulgence for children which marked the closing decades of the fifth
century, it became customary for conservative thinkers to look back
with longing, and no doubt idealising, eyes to the “good old times.”
The sixth and early fifth centuries came, probably unjustly, to be
regarded as the ideal age of education, when children learned
obedience and morality, and were not pampered and depraved; when they
were beautiful and healthy, not pale-faced, stunted, and
over-educated.

Listen to Aristophanes,[193] yearning for “the good old style of
education, in the days when Justice still prevailed over Rhetoric, and
good morals were still in fashion. Then children were seen and not
heard; then the boys of each hamlet and ward walked in orderly
procession along the roads on their way to the lyre-school,――no
overcoats, though it snowed cats and dogs. Then, while they stood up
square――no lounging――the master taught them a fine old patriotic song
like ‘Pallas, city-sacker dread,’[194] or ‘A cry that echoes
afar,’[195] set to a good old-fashioned tune. If any one tried any
vulgar trills and twiddles and odes where the metre varies, such as
Phrunis and Co. use nowadays, he got a tremendous thrashing for
disrespect to the Muses.” While being taught by the paidotribes, too,
they behaved modestly, and did not spend their time ogling their
admirers. “At meals children were not allowed to grab up the dainties
or giggle or cross their feet.” “This was the education which produced
the heroes of Marathon.… This taught the boys to avoid the Agora, keep
away from the Baths, be ashamed at what is disgraceful, be courteous
to elders, honour their parents, and be an impersonation of
Modesty――instead of running after ballet-girls. They passed their days
in the gymnasia, keeping their bodies in good condition, not mouthing
quibbles in the Agora. Each spent his time with some well-mannered lad
of his own age, running races in the Akademeia under the sacred
olives, amid a fragrance of smilax and leisure and white poplar,
rejoicing in the springtide when plane-tree and elm whisper together.”
All the voices of generations of boys, bound down to indoor studies
when wood and field and river are calling them, the complaint of ages
of fevered hurry and bustle, looking back with regret on the days of
“leisure” and “springtide,” seem to echo in Aristophanes’ lament for
the ways that were no more.

“This education,” he goes on, “produced a good chest, sound
complexion, broad shoulders, small tongue; the new style produces pale
faces, small shoulders, narrow chest, and long tongue, and makes the
boy confuse Honour with Dishonour: it fills the Baths, empties the
Palaistra.”

The next witness to be called is Isokrates. He is somewhat prejudiced
by his dream of restoring the Areiopagos to its old power, but he is
an educational expert and his evidence is supported by that of many
others. In the days when the Areiopagos had the superintendence of
morals, he says,[196] “the young did not spend their time in the
gambling dens, and with flute-girls and company of that sort, as they
do now, but they remained true to the manner of life which was laid
down for them.… They avoided the Agora so much, that, if ever they
were compelled to pass through it, they did so with obvious modesty
and self-control. To contradict or insult an elder was at that time
considered a worse offence than ill-treatment of parents is considered
now. To eat or drink in a tavern was a thing that not even a
self-respecting servant would think of doing then; for they practised
good manners, not vulgarity.”

Call Plato next.[197] “In a democratic state the schoolmaster is
afraid of his pupils and flatters them, and the pupils despise both
schoolmaster and paidagogos. The young expect the same treatment as
the old, and contradict them and quarrel with them. In fact, seniors
have to flatter their juniors, in order not to be thought morose old
dotards.”

The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for
authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of
exercise. The old regime had strictly forbidden luxury. Warm baths had
been regarded as unmanly, and were even coupled with drunkenness by
Hermippos.[198] The boys had only worn a single garment, the
sleeveless chiton, a custom which survived till late times in Sparta
and Crete; but at Athens they began to wear the ἱμάτιον [himation] or
overcoat as well. Xenophon, blaming parents “in the rest of Hellas”
(_i.e._ elsewhere than in Sparta), says: “They make their boy’s feet
soft by giving him shoes, and pamper his body with changes of clothes;
they also allow him as much food as his stomach can contain.”[199]
Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households.
They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room;
they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled
up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against
Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over
the paidagogoi and schoolmasters. Alkibiades even smacked a
literature-master. A similar change came over the position of children
in England during the latter half of the nineteenth century. If Maria
Edgeworth could have met a modern child, she would have uttered quite
Aristophanic diatribes against the decay of good manners.

With this change went a more serious matter, a change of tone. Whether
the old days were as moral as the conservatives supposed, may be
doubted; but the atmosphere of Periclean and Socratic Athens, as
represented by all its literary lights, was certainly most unsuitable
for the young. Perhaps general morality was no worse, but the
immorality was no longer concealed from the children. The old laws
which had excluded unsuitable company from the schools and palaistrai
were neglected, and these educational buildings became the resort of
all the fashionable loungers of Athens.

The preference given to conversation over exercise was a feature of
the age. In part, it was a preference for intellectual as against
purely physical education. The free discussion with children of
ethical subjects probably ceased with the death of Sokrates; this can
hardly be regretted, if Plato’s evidence as to the nature of Socratic
dialogues is to be believed. From the importance which Plato gives to
gymnastics as a corrective to exclusive μουσική [mousikê] even in the
education of his highly intellectual Philosopher-Kings, we may suspect
that the revolt against excessive athletics at Athens, of which
Euripides had been the leader, had gone too far, and that a reaction
was needed. Certainly the Athenians do not distinguish themselves for
pluck or energy in the fourth century: in Platonic phrase, the temper
of their resolution had been melted away by their exclusive devotion
to intellectual and artistic pursuits.

Let me close this subject, however, with a more pleasing picture of
that αἰδώς [aidôs] or modesty at which the older education had aimed.
It is taken from the midst of that brilliant but corrupt Socratic
Athens.[200] Young Autolukos had won the boys’ contest for the
pankration at the great Panathenaic festival. As a treat, Kallias, a
friend of his father, had taken him to the horse-races, and afterwards
invited him out to dinner with his father Lukon: such a dignity was
rarely accorded to an Athenian boy.

The boy sits at table, while the grown men recline. Some one asked him
what he was most proud of――“Your victory, I suppose?” He blushed and
said, “No, I’m not.” Every one was delighted to hear his voice, for he
had not said a word so far. “Of what then?” some one asked. “Of my
father,” replied the boy, and cuddled up against him.

These shy, blushing boys were a feature of the age. The stricter
parents, knowing the dangers which surrounded their sons, tried to
keep them entirely from any knowledge or experience of the world.

       *     *     *     *     *

As far as can be discovered from the somewhat fragmentary evidence,
the Athenian type of education was prevalent throughout the civilised
Hellenic world, with the exception of Crete and Lakedaimon, which had
systems of their own. Xenophon, in praising the Spartan system and
contrasting it with that which was prevalent in neighbouring
countries, ascribes to what he calls “the rest of Hellas” educational
customs and arrangements exactly similar to those which are found to
have existed at Athens. His statement is borne out by other evidence.
Chios certainly had a School of Letters before 494 B.C.; for a
building of this sort collapsed in that year, destroying all but one
of the 120 pupils.[201] Boiotia, byword for stupidity, had schools
even in the smaller towns. A small place like Mukalessos had more than
one; for a detachment of wild Thracian mercenaries in the pay of
Athens fell upon the town at daybreak one morning during the
Peloponnesian War, and entering “the largest school in the place,”
killed all the boys.[202] Arkadia had an equally bad reputation; yet,
according to Polubios,[203] in every Arcadian town the boys were
compelled by law to learn to sing. Troizen must have had schools in
480, when she provided them for her Athenian guests. Aelian vouches
for schools in Lesbos,[204] Pausanias[205] for a school of sixty boys
in Astupalaia in 496 B.C. The poet Sophocles dined with a master of
letters whose school was either in Eretria or Eruthrai.[206] The
inscriptions show that before the third century there were flourishing
schools in most of the islands.

Gymnastic education must have gone on in every Hellenic city, for the
athletic victors at the great games come from every part. Musical
training too was required for the dancing and singing which were
universal throughout Hellas; but how far the lyre was taught must
remain doubtful. In Boiotia the flute replaced the lyre in the
schools. But it may be taken for granted that letters, some sort of
music, and gymnastics were taught in every part of civilised Hellas,
with the possible exception that letters may not have been taught at
Sparta.

Secondary Education, as long as it was supplied by the Sophists,
reached every village in the Hellenic world; later, it had a tendency
to be confined to the large towns. The Tertiary system of military
training and special gymnastics for the epheboi would seem, from the
scanty evidence of the inscriptions, to have been well-nigh universal.

I will now proceed to give a more detailed account of the several
branches of this widespread educational system. As the evidence comes
almost entirely from Athens, my description will deal in the main with
Athenian education; but, as the same type prevailed throughout the
greater part of Hellas, the description may be taken as applying to
the other cities also.


     [98] Herod. ii. 167. Corinth was an exception.

     [99] Plato, _Laws_, 846 D.

     [100] Arist. _Pol._ viii. 2. 4.

     [101] Xen. _Econ._ iv. 3. Sitting was regarded as a slavish
     attitude, since the free citizen mostly stood or lay down.
     Xen. _Econ._ iv. 3.

     [102] Plato, _Protag._ 328 A.

     [103] Xen. _Revenues_, ii. 2.

     [104] Plato, _Kleitophon_, 409 B.

     [105] Plato, _Rep._ 421 E.

     [106] Plato, _Gorg._ 514 B.

     [107] Plato, _Rep._ 467 A.

     [108] Aristoph. _Acharn._ 1032.

     [109] The fifth-century comic poet.

     [110] Plutarch, _Solon_, 22.

     [111] Plato, _Laws_, 643 E.

     [112] Except possibly in Chios and Lokris, and of course in
     Sparta.

     [113] Thuc. ii. 45. 4.

     [114] Xen. _Econ._ vii. 5.

     [115] Xen. _Mem._ ii. 7.

     [116] Plato, _Rep._ 455 C.

     [117] Plato, _Laws_, 805 E.

     [118] As in Lusias, _ag. Diogeiton_, 32. 28.

     [119] In the _Econ._ vii. 10.

     [120] Thus the _Axiochos_ (366 D) puts seven years as the
     age at which grammatistai and paidotribai began. Plato
     (_Laws_, 794) says six; Aristotle (_Pol._ vii. 17) about
     five; Xenophon (_Constit. of Lak._ ii.) “as soon as the
     children begin to understand.”

     [121] Aesop was popular then, as now. This is the μουσική
     [mousikê] anterior to γυμναστική [gymnastikê], so keenly
     criticised in the _Republic_.

     [122] Plato, _Protag._ 325 C-E.

     [123] Xen. _Mem._ ii. 2. 6.

     [124] Plato, _Protag._ 326 C.

     [125] Aristotle, _Pol._ vii. 17. 7.

     [126] The three in this order in Plato, _Protag._ 312 B,
     325-326; _Charmid_. 159 C; _Kleitoph_. 407 C; Xen. _Constit.
     of Lak._ ii. 1; Isok. _Antid._ 267. The first two in this
     order in _Charmid._ 160 A; _Lusis_, 209 B; inverted in
     _Euthud._ 276 A. Aristot. (_Pol._ viii. 3) gives γράμματα,
     γυμναστική, μουσική [grammata, gymnastikê, mousikê]. Plato
     in the _Laws_ 810 A makes κιθαριστική [kitharistikê] follow
     γραμματική [grammatikê]; Aristophanes mentions the
     paidotribes just after the κιθαριστής [kitharistês].

     [127] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 3. 1.

     [128] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ ii.

     [129] See Illustr. Plates I. A and I. B.

     [130] Plato, _Laws_, 810 A.

     [131] Vase B 192.

     [132] Vases E 171, 172; see Plates III. and IV.

     [133] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 4. 9.

     [134] _Ibid._ viii. 1. 2.

     [135] [Plato] _Rivals_, 132 A.

     [136] Plato, _Lusis_, 206 D.

     [137] Plato, _Laches_, 179 A.

     [138] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ iii.

     [139] Plato, _Lusis_, 214 B.

     [140] Rhetoric is, of course, banished from a Platonic
     state.

     [141] [Plato] _Axiochos_, 366 E.

     [142] See Petit, _Leges Atticae_, ii. 4, compiled with great
     ingenuity out of many authors. Hence the proverbs ὁ μήτε
     νεῖν μήτε γράμματα ἐπιστάμενος [ho mête nein mête grammata
     epistamenos], of utter dunce, and πρῶτον κολυμβᾶν δεύτερον
     δὲ γράμματα [prôton kolymban deuteron de grammata]. The
     spelling-riddles of the tragedians imply a whole nation
     interested in spelling.

     [143] Plato, _Kriton_, 50 D.

     [144] Aristophanes, _Knights_, 189.

     [145] _Ibid._ 1235-1239.

     [146] _Ibid._ 987-996.

     [147] [Plato] _Theages_, 122 E.

     [148] Plato, _Alkibiades_, i. 122 B. The Athenian State,
     however, from the time of Solon onwards, supported and
     educated at public expense the sons of those who fell in
     battle. The endowed systems in Teos and at Delphoi belong to
     the third century; it is impossible to say whether such
     existed earlier.

     [149] Xen. _Mem._ ii. 2. 6.

     [150] [Xen.] _Constit. of Athens_, ii. 10.

     [151] Plutarch, _Alkib._ 3; Plato, _Charmides_, 153 A.

     [152] _C.I.A._ ii. 1. 444, 445, 446.

     [153] See Excursus on γυμνιασιαρχοί [gymniasiarchoi].

     [154] He could, and had to, use compulsion in collecting
     boys. This suggests that a parent could always, if he
     wished, get this free education for his son.

     [155] This rule fell into abeyance.

     [156] Dem. _against Boiot._ 1001.

     [157] [Xen.] _Constit. of Athens_, i. 13.

     [158] On the strength of the passages quoted from the law,
     and from Demosthenes, and of Aristophanes, _Clouds_, 964,
     some have maintained a theory that the Athenian tribes
     provided free education in dancing, and perhaps in other
     subjects, to all free boys, exclusive of competitions. But
     the quotation in Aischines, except for the actual law, which
     is a later interpolation, certainly refers only to the
     choregoi, and the passage in Demosthenes is concerned only
     with chorus-dancing for competitions. In Aristophanes the
     boys of the same neighbourhood naturally attend the same
     school, that is all.

     [159] Plut. _Themist._ 10.

     [160] Ael. _Var. Hist._ vii. 15.

     [161] Diod. Sic. xii. 42.

     [162] Probably lived _circa_ 500 B.C.

     [163] Plato, _Tim._ 21 B.

     [164] Böckh, 3088.

     [165] _Ibid._ 2214. I have omitted patronymics.

     [166] _C.I.G. Boeot._ 1760-1766.

     [167] Böckh, 232, 245.

     [168] Pind. _Nem._ vii.

     [169] Bacchul. xiii., Pind. _Nem._ v.

     [170] Wrestling, Pind. _Nem._ iv., vi.

     [171] _Anthol._ ed. Jacobs, vi. 308.

     [172] Sometimes earlier. Plato, _Protag._ 325 C.

     [173] Elderly, as in the picture of Medeia and her children
     given in Smith’s _Smaller Classical Dictionary_ under
     “Medea,” and on Douris’ Kulix, Plates I. A and I. B (if
     those are paidagogoi), and on other vases.

     [174] So Fabius Cunctator was called Hannibal’s paidagogos,
     because he followed him about everywhere.

     [175] There is only one for Lusis and his brothers (Plato,
     _Lus._ 223 A), for Medeia’s two children (Eur. _Med._), for
     two boys in _Lusis_, 223 A, and for Themistocles’ children
     (Herod. viii. 75).

     [176] Plato, _Lus._ 208 C. He is referred to as ὅδε [hode],
     showing that he is present.

     [177] Illustr. Plates I. A and I. B. Perhaps only the
     walking-stick carried by all Athenians.

     [178] Plato, _Lus._ 223 A.

     [179] Plut. _Education of Boys_.

     [180] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ ii. 2.

     [181] Herod. viii. 75.

     [182] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 35. 10.

     [183] In the guardian’s accounts given by Lusias, _ag.
     Diogeiton_, 32. 28, a paidagogos is paid for till the boy is
     eighteen; but there was a younger brother, for whom he may
     have been required, so the elder may have been free earlier.
     In Plautus (_Bacch._ 138) we find a paidogogos in attendance
     till his charge was twenty.

     [184] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ iii. 1.

     [185] Plato, _Rep._ 406 A.

     [186] Plato, _Protag._ 325 D.

     [187] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 9.

     [188] γυμνασιαρχής [gymnasiarchês]. See Excursus on
     γυμνασιαρχοί [gymnasiarchoi]. This law was totally neglected
     in Socratic Athens. See Plato’s _Lusis_.

     [189] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 10. The word σωφρονιστής
     [sôphronistês], in a general sense, occurs three times in
     Thucydides.

     [190] Deinarchos, _ag. Philokles_, 15.

     [191] Girard, _L’Éducation Athénienne_, pp. 51, 52.

     [192] The Archon Eponumos had the control of orphans and
     probably intervened if their education was neglected.

     [193] Aristoph. _Clouds_, 960 ff.

     [194] By Lamprokles (476 B.C.).

     [195] By Kudides (? = Kudias. Smyth, _Melic Poets_, p. 347).

     [196] Isok. _Areiop._ 149 C, D.

     [197] Plato, _Rep._ 563 A.

     [198] _Floruit_ 432 B.C. (in Athen. 18 C).

     [199] Xen. _Constit. of Lak._ ii. 1.

     [200] Xen. _Banquet_, iii. 13.

     [201] Herod. vi. 27.

     [202] Thuc. vii. 29.

     [203] Pol. iv. 20. 7.

     [204] Ael. _Var. Hist._ 7. 15.

     [205] Pausan. vi. 9. 6.

     [206] Athen. 604 a-b.



CHAPTER III

ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS: PRIMARY EDUCATION


We have seen that Primary Education in Hellas consisted of letters and
music, with a contemporary training in gymnastics; to which triple
course was added, late in the fourth century, drawing and painting.
How the day was divided between mental and physical training is
unknown――probably, like everything else, this varied with the taste of
the individual――but the following sketch from Lucian,[207] although it
belongs to a much later date, may perhaps give some idea of a
schoolboy’s day:――

     “He gets up at dawn, washes the sleep from his eyes, and
     puts on his cloak. Then he goes out from his father’s house,
     with his eyes fixed upon the ground, not looking at any one
     who meets him. Behind him follow attendants and paidagogoi,
     bearing in their hands the implements of virtue,
     writing-tablets or books containing the great deeds of old,
     or, if he is going to a music-school, his well-tuned lyre.

     “When he has laboured diligently at intellectual studies,
     and his mind is sated with the benefits of the school
     curriculum, he exercises his body in liberal pursuits,
     riding or hurling the javelin or spear. Then the
     wrestling-school with its sleek, oiled pupils, labours under
     the mid-day sun, and sweats in the regular athletic
     contests. Then a bath, not too prolonged; then a meal, not
     too large, in view of afternoon school. For the
     schoolmasters are waiting for him again, and the books which
     openly or by allegory teach him who was a great hero, who
     was a lover of justice and purity. With the contemplation of
     such virtues he waters the garden of his young soul. When
     evening sets a limit to his work, he pays the necessary
     tribute to his stomach and retires to rest, to sleep sweetly
     after his busy day.”

The school hours were naturally arranged to suit the times of Hellenic
meals, for which the boys returned home. The ordinary arrangement was
a light breakfast at daybreak, a solid meal at mid-day, and supper at
sunset. So the schools opened at sunrise.[208] Solon enacted that they
should not open earlier. They closed in time to allow the boys to
return home to lunch,[209] opened again in the afternoon, and closed
before sunset.[210] How many of the intermediate hours were spent in
work,[211] and what intervals there were, is unknown. There was, of
course, no weekly rest on Sundays; but festivals, which were whole
holidays, were numerous throughout Hellas, and, in Alexandria at any
rate, on the 7th and 20th of every month the schools were closed,
these days being sacred to Apollo.[212] There were also special school
festivals, such as that of the Muses, and holidays in commemoration of
benefactors; thus Anaxagoras left a bequest to Klazomenai, on
condition that the day of his death should be celebrated annually by a
holiday in the schools.[213] It must also be remembered that one of
the three branches of Primary Education in Hellas would be called play
in England: an afternoon spent in running races, jumping, wrestling,
or riding would not be regarded as work by an English schoolboy.
Music, too, is usually learned during play-hours in an English school.
Even Letters, when the elementary stage was past, meant reciting,
reading, or learning by heart the literature of the boy’s own
language, and most of it not stiff literature by any means, but such
fascinating fairy-tales as are found in Homer. There is little trace
of Hellenic boys creeping unwillingly to school: their lessons were
made eminently attractive.

Of the fees which were paid to schoolmasters little is known. An
amusing passage in Lucian,[214] dealing with the under-world,
describes those who had been kings or satraps upon earth as reduced in
the future state “to beggary, and compelled by poverty either to sell
kippers or to teach the elements of reading and writing.” From this it
may be inferred that elementary schoolmasters did not make much money
by their fees. This inference is supported by the fact that even the
poorest Athenians managed to send their sons to such schools. Plato in
the _Laws_ reserves the profession for foreigners, thus suggesting
that it was neither well paid nor highly esteemed. To call a man a
schoolmaster was almost an insult; Demosthenes, abusing Aischines,
says, “You taught letters, I went to school.”[215] The weakness of the
masters’ position may be seen too from the extreme contempt with which
their pupils seem to have treated them. The boys bring their
pets――cats and dogs and leopards――into school, and play with them
under the master’s chair. Theophrastos,[216] in describing the
characteristics of the mean man, says that “he does not send his
children to school all the month of Anthesterion” (that is, from the
middle of February to the middle of March) “on account of the number
of feasts.” The school-bills were paid by the month, and, since boys
did not go to school on the great festivals, and Anthesterion
contained many such days, the mean parent thought he would not get his
money’s worth for this particular month, and so withdrew his boys
while it lasted.

Mean parents also deducted from the fees in proportion, if their sons
were absent from school owing to ill-health for a day or two;[217] but
this was not usually done. The bills were paid on the 30th of each
month.[218] Schoolmasters apparently had some difficulty in getting
their bills paid at all; according to Demosthenes’ statement, his
bills were never paid, owing to the fraudulent behaviour of his
guardian Aphobos.[219]

No doubt the fees varied according to the merits of the school, for
the schools at Athens seem to have differed greatly. Demosthenes, when
boasting of his career, in his speech _On the Crown_, says that he
went as a boy to the _respectable_ schools;[220] the quality and
quantity of the teaching must have been varied to suit the parent’s
pocket. For the poor there would probably be schools where only the
elements of reading and writing were taught. In the higher class of
school these elements would be taught by under-masters, frequently
slaves; but free citizens might also be reduced by poverty to take
such a post. This may be seen from the case of the father of
Aischines, the orator.[221] Impoverished and exiled like many
democrats by the Thirty Tyrants, he returned with the Restoration a
ruined man. To earn his living, he became an usher at the school of
one Elpias, close to the Theseion, and taught letters: his son
Aischines seems to have begun his life by assisting his father in this
occupation. His opponent, Demosthenes, takes advantage of the contempt
with which these ushers were regarded to declare that the father was a
slave of Elpias,[222] “wearing big fetters and a collar,” and the son
was employed in “grinding the ink and sponging the forms and sweeping
out the schoolroom (παιδαγωγεῖον [paidagôgeion]), the work of a
servant, not of a free boy.”

No doubt letters and music were often taught at the same school, in
different rooms. Such an arrangement would be natural and convenient.
The vases suggest it, but their evidence is uncertain. The school
buildings seem often to have been surrounded by playgrounds. A passage
in Aelian[223] shows us the boys, just let out of school, playing at
tug-of-war. No doubt in these places they played with their hoops and
tops, and amused themselves with pick-a-back and the stone- and
dice-games which corresponded to our marbles. In villages these
playgrounds probably did duty as palaistrai.

The headmaster of the school sat on a chair with a high back;
under-masters and boys had stools without backs, but cushions were
provided. For lessons in class there were benches.[224] There
was a high reading-desk for recitations. Round the walls hung
writing-tablets, rulers, and baskets or cases containing manuscript
rolls labelled with the author’s name, composing the school library;
the rolls might also hang by themselves.[225] Masters were expected to
possess at any rate a copy of Homer――Alkibiades thrashed one who did
not. Sometimes they emended their edition themselves.[226] In the
music-schools hung lyres and flutes and flute-cases. The παιδαγωγειον
[paidagôgeion] mentioned by Demosthenes may have been an anteroom
where the paidagogoi sat, but more probably the word is only a
rhetorical variant for “schoolroom.” There were often busts of the
Muses round the walls,[227] which were also decorated with vases,
serving for domestic purposes, and, perhaps, illustrating with their
pictures the books which the boys were reading. At a later date, at
any rate, a series of cartoons, illustrating scenes in the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_, were sometimes hung upon the walls: the “Tabula Iliaca,”
now in the Capitoline Museum, has been recognised as a fragment of
such a series.

The first stage was to learn to read and write. Instead of a slate,
boys in Hellas had tablets of wax, usually made in two halves, so as
to fold on a hinge in the middle, the waxen surfaces coming inwards
and so being protected. Sometimes there were three pieces, forming a
triptych, or even more. For pencil, they had an instrument with a
sharp point at one end, suitable for making marks on the wax, and a
flat surface at the other, which was used to erase what had been
written, and so make the tablets ready for future use. These tablets
are shown in the school-scenes on the fifth-century vases.[228] At a
later period, when parchment and papyrus became more common, these
materials were used in the schools. Lines could be ruled with a lump
of lead, and writing done either with ink and a reed pen or with lead;
for erasures a sponge was employed.

The early stages of learning to write are described in the
_Protagoras_ of Plato.[229] “When a boy is not yet clever at writing,
the masters first draw lines, and then give him the tablet and make
him write as the lines direct.” The passage has been variously
interpreted. Some regard the master as merely writing a series of
letters which the boy is to copy underneath. The word used in Greek
for the master’s writing is ὑπογράψαντες [hypograpsantes], and it is
significant that the word for a “copy” in this sense is a derivative
of this word, ὑπογραμμός [hypogrammos]. Such a copy, corresponding to
the phrases like “England exports engines” or “Germany grows grapes,”
which are employed in English schools for this purpose, is
extant.[230] It is a nonsense sentence designed to contain all the
letters of the alphabet μάρπτε σφὶγξ κλὼψ ζβυχθηδόν [marpte sphinx
klôps zbychthêdon]. If this rendering is correct, the master wrote a
sentence of this sort on the tablets, and the boy copied it
underneath. Others interpret the lines which the master draws on the
tablet as parallel straight lines, within which the boy had to write.
Just such a device is often employed in English copy-books. The word
used for “lines,” γραμμαί [grammai], usually means “straight lines,”
which supports this interpretation. But ὑπογραφή [hypographê], on the
other hand, a derivative of ὑπογράφειν [hypographein], is used for
irregular traces, _e.g._ a footstep,[231] and ὑπογράφειν
[hypographein] itself is a technical term in Hellenic art for
“sketching in” what is afterwards to be finished in detail.
Consequently a third rendering of the passage makes the master draw a
faint, rough outline of the various letters, and the boy has to go
over them with his pen, marking the grooves in the wax deeper and
filling in the details. For example, in England, the master might draw
|·| and the boy go over the two vertical lines and draw in the other
two, M. Thus all three interpretations are sensible and rest on good
authority. But surely the master may be regarded as adopting all three
processes, according to the intelligence of the pupils. For the
beginner he would outline the whole letter, and leave him only the
task of going over it again. Then he would gradually give less and
less help, till the boy was capable of writing the letters with the
assistance of the parallel lines alone. Finally these would be
withdrawn, and the boy would be left to write his imitation of the
copy without assistance. The phrase in Plato is purposely vague, and
will include the whole of this process.

The letters were written in lines horizontal and vertical, so that
they fell beneath one another. No stops or accents were inserted, and
no spaces were left between words. The writing-master probably ruled
both the horizontal and the vertical lines on the tablet for his
pupil. On the Vase of Douris,[232] an under-master is represented as
writing with his pen on a wax tablet, while a boy stands in front of
him. He is probably meant either to be writing a copy or else
correcting his pupil’s exercise. Over his head hangs a ruler, for
marking out the guiding lines on the tablet. Behind the boy sits a
bearded man with a staff, who is probably the paidagogos. The boys in
the class are clearly coming up one by one to receive their copies or
have their exercises corrected, while the rest are doing their
writing. It will be noticed that there is no desk or table: the
Hellenes wrote with their tablets on their knees.

As soon as the boy had acquired a certain facility in writing, he
entered the dictation class. The master read out something, and the
boys wrote it down.[233] At first, of course, very simple words would
be dictated, and there would not be much to write. But, later on, the
boys would write at his dictation passages of the poets and other
authors. For this purpose, ink and parchment may sometimes have been
employed: Aischines seems to have “ground ink”[234] for a
writing-school. Various “elaborations in the way of speed and beauty”
of writing seem to have been customary in the case of more advanced
pupils.[235] Possibly they learnt to make flourishes and ornamental
letters. Speed would naturally be taught, for it was usual to take
notes at the lectures of Sophists and Philosophers, and speed is
required for this purpose. This must have involved the use of the
cursive letters, which otherwise were not needed, for the Hellene had
not very much writing to do, unless he became a clerk to a public
body.

Learning to read must have been a difficult business in Hellas, for
books were written in capitals at this time. There were no spaces
between the words, and no stops were inserted. Thus, the reader had to
exercise much ingenuity before he could arrive at the meaning of a
sentence. Still more difficult for the boys to grasp was the Attic
accent, upon which the masters set a great importance. So difficult
was it, that few foreigners ever acquired it, and a born Athenian, if
he went abroad for a few years, often lost the power of speaking with
the Attic intonation. The first step in learning to read is to acquire
the alphabet. The Hellenes, wishing, as usual, to make learning as
easy as possible, seem to have put the alphabet into verse. A metrical
alphabet, ascribed to Kallias, a contemporary of Perikles, is still
extant, but in a mutilated form, which has been restored in several
not very convincing ways. Probably it has been adapted to suit
different alphabets, for there were several current in different parts
of Hellas. The following is a conjectural restoration:――

  ἔστ’ ἄλφα, βῆτα, γάμμα, δέλτα τ’, εἶ τε, καί
  [est’ alpha, bêta, gamma, delta t’, ei te, kai]
  ζῆτ’, ἦτα, θῆτ’, ἴωτα, κάππα, λάβδα, μῦ,
  [zêt’, êta, thêt’, iôta, kappa, labda, mu,]
  νῦ, ξεῖ, τὸ οὖ, πεῖ, ῥῶ, τὸ σίγμα, ταῦ, τὸ ὖ,
  [nu, xei, to ou, pei, rhô, to sigma, tau, to u,]
  πάροντα φεῖ τε χεῖ τε τῷ ψεῖ εἰς τὸ ὦ.
  [paronta phei te chei te tô psei eis to ô.]

This complete alphabet of twenty-four letters, which appears in modern
Greek Grammars, was not adopted for official purposes at Athens till
403 B.C., “but it is clear that it was in ordinary use at Athens
considerably earlier.”[237]

This metrical alphabet formed the prologue to what may be called a
spelling-drama, in which the whole process of learning to spell was
expressed either in iambic lines or in choral songs. Since its author,
Kallias, is coupled with Strattis, the comic poet,[238] it may be
inferred that the play was a comedy, not a tragedy; the chorus would
then be twenty-four in number. Each member of the chorus represented
one of the twenty-four letters. In the first choric song the letters
were put together in pairs, in the fashion of a spelling class. The
first strophé runs as follows:――

  Beta    Alpha    BA
  Beta    Ei       BĔ
  Beta    Eta      BĒ
  Beta    Iota     BI
  Beta    Ou       BŎ
  Beta    U        BU
  Beta    O        BŌ[239]

In the corresponding antistrophé Gamma was similarly coupled with the
seven vowels, and so on apparently through the alphabet. During the
song, which was set to excellent music, the members of the chorus,
dressed to represent the letters quite clearly, and no doubt posturing
in the right attitude, would form themselves into the required pairs.
Thus, during the first line Beta and Alpha would come together, during
the second Beta and Ei, and so on. After this song came a lecture on
the vowels, in iambic verse, the chorus being told to repeat them one
by one after the speaker. There seems to have been a plot of some sort
in this extraordinary drama, but the main interest was, no doubt, the
spelling. Opportunities were also taken for describing the shapes of
the letters, the audience having to guess what letter was intended.
This kind of alphabetical puzzle seems to have caught the popular
fancy at Athens, for Euripides, Agathon, and Theodektes all employed
it. In each case the concealed word was “Theseus.”

Euripides’ description, if it be his, may be rendered thus:――

  First, such a circle as is measured out
  By compasses, a clear mark in the midst.
  The second letter is two upright lines,
  Another joining them across their middles.
  The third is like a curl of hair. The fourth,
  One upright line and three crosswise infixed.
  The fifth is hard to tell: from several points
  Two lines run down to form one pedestal.
  The last is with the third identical.

In the same spirit, Sophocles, in his satyric drama _Amphiaraos_,
introduced an actor who represented the shapes of the letters by his
dancing.[240] Periclean Athens seems to have taken a very keen
interest in matters of spelling: the audience must all have known
their letters, or such devices could never have become so popular.

Kallias’ play is the ancestor of such books as _Reading without
Tears_. His dramatic presentation of the process of spelling must have
caught the imagination and impressed the memory of many Athenian boys.
It may even be suspected that his method was adopted in enterprising
schools, and spelling lessons were conducted to a tune, perhaps even
accompanied by dancing.[241] The tunes of Kallias were highly praised,
and were, no doubt, very different from the monotonous drone which
announces to the outside world the presence of a Board School.

To return to more prosaic methods. Plato gives an interesting
sketch[242] of a reading class. “When boys have just learnt their
letters, they recognise any of them readily enough in the shortest and
easiest syllables, and are able to give a correct answer about them.
But in the longer and more difficult syllables they are not certain,
but form a wrong opinion and answer wrongly. Then the best way is to
take them back to the syllables in which they recognise the same
letters and then compare them with those in which they made mistakes,
and, putting them side by side, show that in both combinations the
same letters have the same meaning.”

Take an English example. The master writes SCRAPE on the blackboard
and asks the boys to tell him what letters it contains. The class fail
to recognise the letters: the word is too long and difficult. The
master then writes beside it consecutively APE, RAPE, CAPE, in all of
which the boys recognise the letters correctly. Then CRAPE and SCRAP.
From these he passes on to SCRAPE, which they now recognise by analogy
from the words which they know already. “Finally, they learn always to
give the same name to the same letter whenever it comes.”[243]

The methods by which boys learn to spell are the same in all ages.
“When boys come together to learn their letters, they are asked what
letters there are in some word or other.”[244] A certain amount of
mental arithmetic seems to have been included in this stage of
spelling: the pupils were asked _how many_ letters there were in a
word, as well as the order in which they were arranged.[245] But this
will be discussed later.

While the boys were still unable to read, and often afterwards owing
to the comparative scarcity of books, the master dictated to them the
poetry which he intended them to learn by heart, and they repeated it
after him.

The Kulix of Douris gives an interesting picture of either a reading
or a repetition lesson.[246] On a high-backed chair sits an elderly
master, holding a roll in his hand. On it is inscribed what is clearly
meant to be an hexameter line from some epic poet, but Douris was not
very well educated, and so the line is misspelt and will not scan. In
front of the master stands a boy, behind whom sits an elderly man who
is probably, as in the writing scene, a paidagogos. The master may be
dictating the poem while the boy learns it by heart after him, or he
may be hearing him say it. But very possibly the scene represents a
reading-lesson. The attitudes of boy and master are not very
convenient, if both are reading out of the same book; but this was
unavoidable, for, owing to the canons of vase-painting, the figures
could only be full-faced or in profile, and the front of the
manuscript had to be turned in such a way as to be legible.

On the walls of the school hang a manuscript rolled up and tied with a
string, and an ornamental basket. These baskets were used as
bookcases, to hold the manuscript rolls. They may sometimes be seen on
vases suspended over the heads of reading figures, as in the British
Museum vase,[247] which represents a woman reading a scroll. The
paidagogos, we may notice, is revealing his humble origin by crossing
his feet, a serious offence against good manners in Hellas.

“When the boys knew their letters and were beginning to understand
what was written, the masters put beside them on the benches the works
of good poets for them to read, and made them learn them by heart.
They chose for this purpose poets that contained many moral precepts,
and narratives and praises of the heroes of old, in order that the boy
might admire them and imitate them and desire to become such a man
himself.”[248] It is noteworthy that Hellenic boys began at once with
the very best literature to be found in their language: there was no
preliminary course of childish tales. Grammar, when invented, was
taught at a later stage: the boys plunged straight into literature.

The schoolmasters at Athens differed as to which was the best way of
introducing boys to their national literature. The great majority held
that a properly educated boy ought to be saturated in all poetry,
comic and serious, hearing much of it in the reading class, and
learning much of it――in fact, whole poets――by heart.[249] A minority
would pick out the leading passages,[250] the “purple patches,” and
certain whole speeches,[251] and put them together and have them
committed to memory. Plato argued in favour of expurgated editions of
passages carefully selected according to a very strict standard, since
much in literature was good and much bad.[252]

Homer, of course, played the largest part in these literary studies;
from early times “he was given an honourable place in the teaching of
the young.”[253] Vast quantities of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ were
learnt by heart. Nikeratos, in Xenophon,[254] says: “My father,
wishing me to grow up into a good man, made me learn all the lines of
Homer; and now I can repeat the whole of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_
from memory.” Such prodigious feats were, no doubt, assisted by the
rhapsodes, who could be heard at Athens declaiming Homer “nearly every
day.”[255] The Hellenes did not let their greatest poet lie neglected,
to be “revived” at long intervals. Homer was supposed to teach
everything, especially soldiering and good morals. “I suppose you
know,” continues Nikeratos,[256] “that Homer, the wisest of men, has
written about all human matters. So whoever of you wishes to excel as
a householder or public speaker or general, or desires to become like
Achilles or Aias or Nestor or Odusseus, let him come to me.” Then he
proceeds to show how, for example, the poet gives full directions
about the proper way to drive a chariot in a race. Aristophanes[257]
makes the shade of Aeschylus say, “Whence did divine Homer win his
honour and renown, save from this, that he taught drill, courage, the
arming of troops? Many a man of valour he trained, and our own dead
hero, Lamachos. I took my print from him, and represented many deeds
of valour done by a Patroklos or lion-hearted Teukros, to rouse my
countrymen to model themselves upon such men, when they heard the
trumpet sound.”

The great poet does not seem to have been taught pedantically; the
attention of the boys was not concentrated simply on the difficulties
of the Homeric vocabulary. In fact, probably they were little troubled
with such points; the sense, the rhythm, and the beauty of the
original do not depend upon an exact understanding of every word, as
many a modern reader has discovered. In a fragment of Aristophanes,[258]
a father asks his son the meaning of some hard words in Homer, such as
ἀμένηνα κάρηνα [amenêna karêna] and κόρυμβα [korymba]; the son is
quite unable to translate them, at any rate when separated from their
context, and can only retort by asking his father to interpret some
archaic phrases in Solon’s laws. A later comic poet[259] introduced a
cook who insisted on using Homeric language, just as a modern _chef_
writes his _menu_ in French; the man who has hired him is ludicrously
unable to understand his phrases, and has to go in search of a
commentary.

Explanations and interpretations of supposed moral allegories in
Homer, and lessons drawn from a close study of his characters, were
very popular in Hellas, and no doubt figured in the schools.

If Homer occupied the first place in literary education, other leading
authors were not neglected. All the great poets were made useful.
“Orpheus taught ceremonial rites and abstinence from bloodshed, and
Mousaios medicine and oracles, and Hesiod the tillage of land, the
seasons of fruits and ploughing.”[260] Hesiod probably served more as
a theological handbook than as a manual of agriculture; the moral
precepts to Perses in the _Works and Days_ probably also found favour
with schoolmasters. The fourth-century comic poet Alexis gives an
interesting catalogue of a school library.[261] Besides Orpheus,
Hesiod, and Homer, who have been mentioned already, there are
Epicharmos, Choirilos, the author of an epic poem on the Persian war,
and what is called vaguely “tragedy,” probably meaning a selection
from the great tragedians. We can see from Plato’s attacks that
Aeschylus and Euripides must have been important in the schools, and
we know that Athenian gentlemen were expected to be able to recite
them at dinner-parties, and must therefore have learnt them by heart.
The vague words “tragedy” and “comedy” are similarly used of the
recitations of the boys at Teos. Various editions of moral precepts
were also popular. Among these were _The Precepts of Cheiron_, or
Cheironeia, supposed to have been given by the wise Centaur to his
pupil Achilles and put into verse by Hesiod; on a vase at Berlin three
boys are seen reading this work with apparent interest. The extant
lines of Theognis are often supposed to represent a school edition of
the poet’s works, containing the more improving portions. The lyric
poets were taught at the lyre-school, and I shall discuss them later.

Alexis also mentions “all sorts of prose works” in the school library.
The only one of these to which he gives a more definite name is a
cookery-book by Simos. But that is only introduced for the sake of a
joke; such a work would not, of course, figure in an Athenian school.
Aesop may have been a prose work read in schools; it was considered
the sign of an ignoramus “not to have thumbed Aesop,” or to be able to
quote him.[262] Such moral works as Prodikos’ _Choice of Herakles_
were probably popular in schools. The case of Lusis in Plato suggests
that some of the old nature-philosophers may have been read. No doubt
the school library varied according to the taste of the master, and
his freedom of choice may have led to some curious selections. But on
the whole prose works very rarely figured in the elementary schools,
partly because they were usually too technical, still more because the
artistic and literary sense of the Hellenes regarded poetry, if only
because of its greater beauty and its imaginative value, as better for
educational purposes than prose.

It must be remembered that when boys recited Homer or Aeschylus or
Euripides, they acted them, delivering even the narrative with a great
deal of gesture, and dramatising the speeches as fully as they could.
The almost daily recitations of the rhapsodes, and the frequent
dramatic performances in the theatres, gave them plenty of examples of
the way to act. The Hellenes were extremely sensitive and sympathetic:
they were a nation of actors. The rhapsode Ion tells Plato that, when
he recited Homer, his eyes watered and his hair stood on end. This may
give the modern reader some idea of what his repetition-lesson meant
to a boy at Athens. More may be gathered from Plato’s vehement
denunciations of dramatisation in poetry intended for use in schools;
he believed that this continuous acting exerted an evil influence upon
character. But this question will be discussed elsewhere.

The schoolrooms were used as the scene of lectures, to which grown-up
men were invited; probably the lectures would be given to the boys at
a different time. The wandering teacher, Hippias of Elis, meeting
Sokrates one day, invited him to such a lecture, which, from its
subject, was clearly meant mainly for the young.[263] After the fall
of Troy, according to the story which Hippias invented for the
occasion, Neoptolemos asked the wise old Nestor what was good and
honourable conduct and what manner of life would cause a young man to
win renown. Given this convenient opening, Nestor replied by
suggesting many excellent rules of conduct. Hippias had delivered this
lecture at Sparta, where it had won great applause. He now proposes,
he says, “to deliver it the day after to-morrow in the schoolroom of
Pheidostratos, and to impart much other valuable information at the
same time, at the request of Eudikos son of Apemantos. Mind you come
and bring any friends who will be capable of appreciating what I say.”
No doubt it was a very excellent little sermon on the duties of life,
closely analogous to Prodikos’ famous _Choice of Herakles_, and most
improving for the pupils of Pheidostratos, if they were allowed to
attend.

One charming picture of two Athenian school friends,[264] in their
sleeveless tunics, is extant. “I saw you, Sokrates,” says a guest at a
dinner-party, “when you and Kritoboulos at the School of Letters were
both looking for something in the same book, putting your head against
his, and your bare shoulder against his shoulder.”

It is also recorded that the Athenians were great hands at
nicknames:[265] it may be inferred that this peculiarity extended also
to their schoolboys.

A vivid picture of school life has recently come to light in the third
Mime of Herondas. It belongs to the Alexandrian period in point of
date, but many of its details will, no doubt, suit the Athenian
schools just as well; it is, however, quite inconceivable that gags
and fetters were used as punishments at Athens in the schools.

A mother, Metrotimé, brings her truant boy, Kottalos, to his
schoolmaster Lampriskos to receive a flogging.

    METROTIMÉ.            Flog him, Lampriskos,[266]
  Across the shoulders, till his wicked soul
  Is all but out of him. He’s spent my all
  In playing odd and even: knucklebones
  Are nothing to him. Why, he hardly knows
  The door o’ the Letter School. And yet the thirtieth
  Comes round and I must pay――tears no excuse.
  His writing-tablet, which I take the trouble
  To wax anew each month, lies unregarded
  I’ the corner. If by chance he deigns to touch it,
  He scowls like Hades, then puts nothing right
  But smears it out and out. He doesn’t know
  A letter, till you scream it twenty times.
  The other day his father made him spell
  MARON; the rascal made it SIMON; dolt
  I thought myself to send him to a school:
  Ass-tending is his trade. Another time
  We set him to recite some childish piece;
  He sifts it out like water through a crack,
  “Apollo,” pause, then “hunter.”

The poor mother goes on to say that it is useless to scold the boy;
for, if she does, he promptly runs away from home to sponge upon his
grandmother, or sits up on the roof out of the way, like an ape,
breaking the tiles, which is expensive for his parents.

                      Yet he knows
  The seventh and the twentieth of the month,
  Whole holidays, as if he read the stars.
  He lies awake o’ nights adreaming of them.
  But, so may yonder Muses prosper you,
  Give him in stripes no less than――――
    LAMPRISKOS.                        Right you are.
  Here, Euthias, Kokkalos, and Phillos, hoist him
  Upon your backs.[267] I like your goings on,
  My boy. I’ll teach you manners. Where’s my strap,
  The stinging cow’s-tail!
    KOTTALOS.              By the Muses, Sir,
  Not with the stinger.
    LAMP.               Then you shouldn’t be
  So naughty.
    KOTT.     O, how many will you give me?
    LAMP. Your mother fixes that.
    KOTT.                         How many, mother?
    METR. As many as your wicked hide can bear.
    KOTT. Stop, that’s enough, stop.
    LAMP.                            You should stop your ways.
    KOTT. I’ll never do it more, I promise you.
    LAMP. Don’t talk so much, or else I’ll bring a gag.
    KOTT. I won’t talk, only do not kill me, please.
    LAMP. Let him down, boys.
    METR.                     No, leather him till sunset.
    LAMP. Why, he’s as mottled as a water-snake.
    METR. Well, when he’s done his reading, good or bad,
  Give him a trifle more, say twenty strokes.
    KOTT. Yah!
    METR.      I’ll go home and get a pair of fetters.
  Our Lady Muses, whom he scorned, shall see
  Their scorner hobble here with shackled feet.

The exact age at which arithmetic was taught to boys at Athens
involves a somewhat complicated inquiry. The arrangements which Plato
makes in the _Republic_ and _Laws_ defer this subject till the age of
sixteen. In the _Laws_[268] he says: “It remains to discuss, first the
question of Letters, and secondly that of the Lyre and practical
arithmetic――by which I mean so much as is necessary for purposes of
war and household management and the work of government.” His citizens
will also require, he thinks, enough astronomy to make the calendar
intelligible to them. In this passage he distinctly couples practical
arithmetic with music; and when he proceeds to detail, he makes the
study of the lyre last from thirteen to sixteen, and then deals with
arithmetic, the weights and measures, and the astronomical calendar,
studies which terminate with the seventeenth year. This course is
designed for all the free boys in his State: it is to be noticed that
it is eminently practical, elementary, and concrete. In the _Republic_
he is educating a few picked boys: before they are eighteen they are
to have gone through a course of abstract and theoretical mathematics,
the Theory of Numbers, Plane and Solid Geometry, Kinetics and
Harmonics. Thus he mentions two sorts of mathematics, the one
practical and concrete, called by the Hellenes λογιστική
[logistikê],[269] whose object is mainly mercantile, and the other
theoretical and abstract, which they called ἀριθμητική [arithmêtikê].
Both sorts are to be learned in the period next before the eighteenth
year.

But it must not be assumed that this was the case at Athens. The
philosopher is dealing with an ideal State, where education can be
arranged in the theoretically best way, not with the real Athens,
where the boy might be called away to the counting-house or the farm
at any moment, and many did not stay at school after they had once
learned to read and write. Moreover Plato, as a good Pythagorean, saw
a peculiar appropriateness in making numbers follow music, and his
Dorian sympathies made him divide up education into clearly marked
periods, in each of which only one subject was taught. This
arrangement, I have already shown, did not find favour at Athens.

His system must, then, be received with caution. It is inherently far
more probable that the simpler, practical arithmetic would be taught
at the elementary schools of letters, which all citizens, including
future tradesmen and artisans, attended, not at some later date in a
separate school. But can any evidence be found for such an
arrangement? Yes, Plato himself in the _Laws_[270] declares that the
future builder ought to play with toy bricks and learn weights and
measurements when he is a child. His builder, at any rate, cannot wait
to learn arithmetic till he is sixteen. Then, in the same work, he
quotes the instance of Egypt, where “a very large number of children
learn practical arithmetic _simultaneously with their letters_,” and
he goes on to commend the methods by which it was taught. Now Egypt in
the _Laws_ is represented as the home of ideal education, a sort of
Utopia. Again, in Plato[271] Protagoras blames his brother Sophists
for “leading their pupils _back_, much against their wish, and casting
them _again_ into the sciences from which they have escaped, practical
arithmetic and astronomy and geometry and music.” How could the
Sophists[272] be described as “leading them back and casting them
again” into studies from which they had escaped? Where had they learnt
these subjects before they were fourteen? It could only have been at
school. But what the Sophists taught must have been new to the boys,
or they would not have paid to learn it. It was new, because the
Sophists taught the advanced and theoretical stages, which appear in
the _Republic_, and the elementary schoolmasters taught the simpler
and concrete elements of arithmetic, weights and measures, and the
calendar, described in the _Laws_, which were necessary to every
Athenian citizen. From all this it may be assumed that the Athenian
boys, like Plato’s Egyptian boys, learnt simple arithmetic, weights
and measures, and perhaps the calendar, “simultaneously with their
letters.”

Now there are two passages in Xenophon which seem to suit this view.
They are not conclusive in themselves, but they give a valuable hint.
In the first[273] it is stated that any one who knows his letters
could say _how many_ letters there are in “Sokrates,” and in what
order they occur. In the second,[274] in the course of an argument,
two illustrations are used, in close connection with one another. The
passage runs:――“Take the case of Letters. Suppose some one asks you
how many letters there are in ‘Sokrates,’ and which are they?… Or take
the case of Numbers. Suppose some one asks what is twice five?” These
two quotations certainly make simple counting a part of learning
letters, with which study the second passage also closely connects the
multiplication table. It would seem that it was part of a spelling
lesson to answer such questions as “How many letters in ‘Sokrates’?”
Answer, “Eight.” “Where does R come?” Answer, “Fourth.” It may be
noticed also that the symbols of the numerals in ancient Hellas were,
with one or two exceptions, identical with the current alphabet. The
games with cubic dice and knucklebones, to which the boys were much
addicted, must also have needed some arithmetical skill. The natural
conclusion is that simple arithmetic, with, probably, the weights and
measures, and the outlines of the calendar, were taught by the
letter-master: the practice of music by the music-master: while the
theory of numbers, of astronomy, and of music were taught by the
Sophists to μειράκια [meirakia].

        Fives
  -------------------------------
  |              |              |
  |              |              | Thousands
  |            O |              |
  -------------------------------
  |              |              |
  |              |              | Hundreds
  |              |      O O O   |
  -------------------------------
  |              |              |
  |              |              | Tens
  |            O |           O O|
  -------------------------------
  |              |              |
  |              |              | Units
  |            O |         O O O|
  -------------------------------

Simple counting was done on the fingers. “Reckon on your fingers,”
says a character in Aristophanes,[275] “not with pebbles.” A common
word for counting was πεμπάζειν [pempazein], “to reckon on the five
fingers”; the division of the month into three periods of ten days can
be traced to the same custom. But by various devices it was possible
to count up to very large numbers on the fingers. Pebbles were also
employed to assist in arithmetic. In the case of complicated accounts
a reckoning board (ἄβακος [abakos] or ἄβαξ [abax]) was used, on which
the pebbles varied in value according to their position. Such boards
go back to early days at Athens, for Solon compared the life of a
courtier to a pebble upon them, since he was now worth much and now
little.[276] A character in a fourth-century comedy[277] sends for an
abacus and pebbles, in order that he may do his accounts. The pebbles
were arranged in grooves, being worth one or ten or a hundred and so
forth, according to the groove in which they were placed. If they were
put on the left-hand side of the board, their value was multiplied by
five.[278] The various games of πεσσοί [pessoi], which somewhat
resembled chess, were played on a somewhat similar board to this, and
these chess-boards were known as ἄβακες [abakes]. Now the art of
playing with πεσσοί [pessoi] is more than once coupled by Plato with
arithmetic or mathematics generally in such a way as to show that the
game must have involved mathematical skill.[279] As was usual in
Athens, instruction went hand in hand with amusement, and, in playing
games, the boys learned arithmetic willingly. A similar value seems to
have attached to the game of knucklebones, which the boys in the
_Lusis_ are found playing during their whole holiday. Each boy carried
a large basket of knucklebones, and the loser in each game paid so
many of them over to the winner. The art of playing this game is also
coupled with mathematics by Plato;[280] so it must at any rate have
encouraged the study of arithmetic, in his opinion. In the school
scene of the British Museum amphora, a little bag, usually supposed to
contain knucklebones, is figured: so they may even have been used in
schools for teaching arithmetic. In another school scene this bag is
present with a lyre and ruler; so it was evidently part of the school
furniture.

  [Illustration: PLATE III.

  MUSIC-SCHOOL SCENES

  From a Hudria in the British Museum (E 171).]

After such revelations of Hellenic educational methods, it is natural
to suppose that the ingenious devices by which the “Egyptians,”[281]
according to Plato, “make simple arithmetic into a game” for their
children, were really used in Attica. One of these devices[282] was as
follows. The master took, say, sixty apples. First he divided them
among two boys, who were made to count their share, thirty each; then
among three boys, twenty each; then among four, fifteen each; then
among five, twelve each; and then among six, ten each. This would
teach the system of factors. Then, again, a real or imaginary
competition in boxing or wrestling[283] was arranged, say in a class
of nine. The boys would work out, by actual experiment, how many
fights would be necessary, if each boy had to fight all the others one
by one, and how many if a system of rounds and byes was introduced.
This might even teach Permutations and Combinations.

In another case a number of bowls, some containing mixed coins, gold,
silver, and bronze, some all of one sort, would be handed round the
class. The boys would have to count them, add and subtract them, and
so on. Thus they would learn addition and subtraction of money, and
would also gain a clear knowledge of the national coinage.

Plato was immensely impressed with the educational value of
Arithmetic. “Those who are born with a talent for it,” he says, “are
quick at all learning; while even those who are slow at it, have their
general intelligence much increased by studying it.”[284] “No branch
of education is so valuable a preparation for household management and
politics, and all arts and crafts, sciences and professions, as
arithmetic; best of all, by some divine art, it arouses the dull and
sleepy brain, and makes it studious, mindful, and sharp.”[285]

The question of the more advanced stages of Mathematics, which were
taught to older boys, may be left for the chapter on Secondary
Education.

       *     *     *     *     *

The chief and often the sole instrument taught in the music school was
the seven-stringed lyre,[286] with a large sounding-board originally
made of a tortoise’s shell.[287] It might be played either with the
hand or else with the “plektron” or striker; the boy Lusis had learnt
to do either.[288] The boys were also taught how to tighten and relax
the strings by turning the pegs till the proper degree of tension was
obtained. They brought their own lyre with them from home, the
paidagogos carrying it behind his charge. This was a wise regulation
from the master’s point of view; for the boys seem to have usually
ruined these instruments by their early efforts.[289] Like the piano,
the lyre required great delicacy of touch and very agile fingers, and
these qualities could only be obtained by continual practice.[290]

As would naturally be expected, individual tuition was usual in the
lyre-school; instrumental music cannot be learnt in class. The vases
make this point quite clear. The master has a single boy seated in
front of him; both hold lyres in their hands, to which they are
singing, the words of the song being sometimes represented by a string
of little dots. In Plate IV., on the left of this group, a boy is
coming up to take his turn, lyre in hand, while behind him stands his
paidagogos, leaning on a reading-desk and following his charge with
his eyes. On the right is a boy just taking up his flute-case and
preparing to depart, while another sits in the corner, wrapped in his
cloak, waiting for his turn to take a lesson. In Plate III.,[291] the
master is playing a barbitos and apparently singing, while the pupil
plays the flute. On the left is a flute-master playing, and a pupil
just leaving him, flute in hand. Another pupil, with a lyre, is
waiting to take a lesson from the master in the centre, and is amusing
himself meanwhile by playing with an animal that is probably a
leopard,[291] like that which figures in Plate IV. Another pet, a dog,
is howling in disgust at the music. On the right, a pupil with a flute
is advancing to take a lesson from the flute-master in front of him.
Behind him follows a young man, who may be an elder brother replacing
the customary paidagogos for the nonce, or an admirer. In the
background sits a small child, sucking his thumb, probably the younger
brother of one of the pupils, who has come, in accordance with
Aristotle’s advice, to look on, although still too young to learn.

  [Illustration: PLATE IV.

  IN A LYRE-SCHOOL

  From a Hudria in the British Museum (E 172).]

As soon as his pupils knew how to play, the master taught them the
works of the great lyric poets,[292] which were not taught in the
school of letters. These were set to music, and the boys sang them and
played the accompaniment. Every gentleman at Athens was expected to be
able to sing and play in this manner when he went out to a
dinner-party. The custom, however, began to become unfashionable
during the Peloponnesian War. When old Strepsiades, in the
_Clouds_,[293] asked Pheidippides to take the lyre and sing a song of
Simonides, his new-fashioned son replies that playing the lyre was
quite out of date, and singing over the wine was only fit for a
slave-woman at the grindstone. Whether this state of feeling continued
and whether it had a prejudicial effect on the music-schools cannot be
decided. Sometimes the guests brought their boys to sing to the
company: in the _Peace_ the son of the hero Lamachos is going to sing
Homer, while the coward Kleonumos’ boy has a song of Archilochos
ready. Alkaios and Anakreon were also favourites;[294] the lyric
portions of Kratinos’ comedies, too, are mentioned as sung at
banquets:[295] no doubt, the same was true of the other great
comedians. As the iambic parts of Aeschylus and Euripides were recited
at the dinner-table, it is natural to suppose that their songs were
also sung. The aged Dikasts in the _Wasps_ sing the choruses from
Phrunichos’ _Sidonians_. Old songs like Lamprokles’ “Pallas, dread
sacker of cities” and Kudides’ “A cry that echoes afar” were popular
in earlier times. No doubt there was plenty of variety in accordance
with the master’s taste. At the music school, too, may have been
taught the metrical version, set to music, of the Athenian laws, which
was ascribed to Solon,[296] and that of the legislation of Charondas,
which Athenian gentlemen sang over their wine.[297] Athenian boys were
expected to know the laws by the time that they were epheboi, and may
well have been taught them in this convenient and attractive way at
the lyre-master’s. To know how to play the lyre became the mark of a
liberal education, since every one learned letters, but the poorest
did not enter the music-school. “He doesn’t know the way to play the
lyre,” became a proverb for an uneducated person, who had not had so
many opportunities in life as his wealthier fellow-citizens. So, as a
plea for a defendant we find――

  He may have stolen. But acquit him, for
  He doesn’t know the way to play the lyre.[298]

To this the Dikast retorts that he has not learnt the lyre either, so
he must be forgiven if he is so stupid as to condemn the accused.[299]

At the beginning of the fifth century the Hellenes were stimulated,
according to Aristotle,[300] by their growing wealth and importance to
make many educational experiments, especially in music. All manner of
musical instruments were tried in the music-schools, but were rejected
on trial, when the moral effects could be better appreciated. Among
the instruments thus found wanting was the flute. At one time the
flute became so popular at Athens that the majority of the free
citizens could play it. But its moral effect proved to be
unsatisfactory; it was the instrument which belonged to wild religious
orgies, and it aroused that hysterical and almost lunatic
excitement[301] which the Hellenes regarded as a useful medicine, when
taken at long intervals of time, for giving an outlet to such feelings
and working them off the system, in order that a long period of calm
might follow. But such a medicine was most unsuitable to be the daily
food of boys. The flute had two other disadvantages. It distorted the
face sufficiently to horrify a sensitive Hellene.[302] It also
prevented the use of the voice: the boys could not sing to it, as they
sang to the lyre. So Athena, in the old legend, had been quite right
in throwing the instrument away in disgust: it was only suitable for a
Phrygian Satyr, for it made no appeal to the intellect, but only to
the passions.[303]

This is Aristotle’s account. It may be objected that the vases which
represent scenes in the music-schools show the flute and the lyre
being taught side by side, and apparently equally popular. But these
vases can mostly be traced more or less certainly to the first half of
the fifth century, and so they bear out Aristotle’s statement.
Moreover, the flute did not, of course, die out in Hellas by any
means; it only became an extra, instead of the regular instrument in
schools. The most notable Athenians, Kallias and Kritias and
Alkibiades, are said to have played it.[304] It always remained
popular at Thebes. But at Athens, in the banquets, while the guests
usually played the lyre themselves, the flute was as a rule only
played by professional flute-girls,[305] although on the vases the
guests are sometimes found performing on this instrument also.[306]
Probably the Athenian attitude may be summed up in the “ancient
proverb”:[307]

  A flutist’s brains can never stay:
  He puffs his flute, they’re puffed away.

It was usual to play on two flutes at the same time. Such a pair has
been found,[308] together with a lyre, in a tomb at Athens. The flutes
are somewhat over a foot in length, and have five holes on the upper
and one on the lower side. Each has a separate mouthpiece. Besides
this, flute-players sometimes wore a sort of leathern muzzle[309] over
their mouths; but this does not appear in the schools. The pair of
flutes were carried in a double case, made of some spotted skin; it
had a pocket on one side, to hold the mouthpieces,[310] and a cord
attached by which it could be hung up when not in use. The two flutes
seem to have corresponded to treble and bass, “male” and “female” as
Herodotos calls them. The treble was on the right, the bass on the
left.[311] Flutes could be set to different harmonies, apparently by
some rearrangement of stops. In the case of the flute, as in the case
of the lyre, individual tuition was the rule. First the master played
an air, and then the boy had to repeat it, while the master
criticised.[312] Or the master played the air on a barbitos and sang
to it, while the pupil accompanied him on the flute. This method had
two advantages. The master was able to play at the same time as the
boy, and give him instruction while playing, which the flute prevented
him from doing. The song, too, which he was enabled to sing obviated
one of the chief disadvantages of the flute: for the Hellenes objected
to instrumental music as meaningless, unless it was accompanied by
words.

There seem to have been music-schools scattered throughout Attica,
besides those established in the capital: the description of the
village boys marching off to the lyre-master’s in a snow-storm without
overcoats has already been quoted. The names of a few masters are
extant. Lampros taught Sophocles the poet.[313] Sokrates[314]
recommends Nikias to send his son to the famous Damon, who “is not
merely a first-class musician, but also just the man to be with boys
like this.” But whether these musicians kept regular schools cannot be
ascertained. Sokrates himself in his later years attended the
music-school of Konnos, and learned among the boys. “I am disgracing
Konnos the music-master,” he says, “who is still teaching me to play
the lyre. The boys who are my schoolfellows laugh at me and call
Konnos the ‘Greybeard teacher.’”[315] The same Konnos adopted the
common but iniquitous custom of bestowing his chief attention on his
more promising pupils, while neglecting the backward.[316]
Aristophanes caricatures Kleon’s school-days as follows: “The boys who
went to school with Kleon say he would often set his lyre to the
Dorian (= Gift-ian) harmony alone. Finally, the lyre-master lost his
temper and told the paidagogos to take him away, saying, “This boy
can’t learn anything but the Briberian (Dorodokisti) mode.”[317]

The attitude of the philosophers towards music will be discussed
elsewhere. Plato’s view may be summed up in the words which he puts in
the mouth of Protagoras the Sophist.[318] “The music-master makes
rhythm and harmony familiar to the souls of the boys, and they become
gentler and more refined, and having more rhythm and harmony in them,
they become more efficient in speech and in action. The whole life of
Man stands in need of good harmony and good rhythm.” Aristotle’s
attitude is briefly this. “Music is neither a necessary nor a useful
accomplishment in the sense in which Letters are useful, but it
provides a noble and worthy means of occupying leisure-time.”[319]

       *     *     *     *     *

Aristotle mentions that in his day some added drawing and painting to
the three parts of the course.[320] It was not universal, like these,
and it does not seem to have started till the fourth century. In the
_Republic_ and _Laws_ Plato does not attack and criticise it among the
other educational subjects; but it plays so prominent a part in the
_Republic_ that it is obvious that the philosopher regarded it as a
dangerous enemy to the views which he wished to spread. It is
noticeable that the discussion of Art comes in as an after-thought, in
Book X. May it not be inferred that when Plato wrote the earlier
books, drawing and painting were not yet in vogue in the schools, but
they became popular before he had finished his great work?

In Periclean Athens the possibilities of artistic training had
certainly existed. In the _Protagoras_,[321] as an instance in some
argument, it is suggested that the lad Hippokrates might “go to this
young fellow who has been in Athens of late, Zeuxippos of Heraklea.
Every day that he was with him he would improve as an artist.” Earlier
in the same dialogue Sokrates remarks that his friend might go to
Polukleitos or Pheidias, and pay to be taught sculpture.[322] The
large numbers of boys who became apprentices to the potters at Athens
must have learned line-drawing and designing and painting from the
earliest times. But art probably did not become a usual part of a
liberal, as distinct from a technical, education till the middle of
the fourth century.

This date is fixed by a passage in Pliny.[323] According to him, its
introduction was due to Pamphilos the Macedonian. At his instance,
first at Sikuon, where he lived, and afterwards in the rest of Hellas,
free boys were taught before everything painting on boxwood, and this
art was included in the first rank of the liberal arts. Now Pamphilos’
picture of the Herakleidai is mentioned in the _Ploutos_ of
Aristophanes, which appeared in 388 B.C. Apelles, his pupil, began to
come into prominence about 350: Pamphilos himself seems to have lived
on till the close of the century. The introduction of painting into
the schools at Sikuon may therefore be dated, roughly, about 360 B.C.,
and from there the custom spread over Hellas. By 300 B.C. no doubt art
had become a regular part of the educational curriculum; for the
philosopher Teles,[324] who probably lived about that time, mentions
the gymnastic trainer, the letter-master, the musician, and the
painter as the four chief burdens of boys. A trace of the new
art-schools, with their technical vocabulary, is found in the _Laws_,
the work of Plato’s old age:[325] “paint in or shade off,” he says,
“or whatever the artists’ boys call it.”

Of the methods used in drawing and painting in Hellas little trace is
left. Polugnotos and his contemporaries had produced idealised
pictures, taking points from many beautiful men and women and uniting
them to make one perfect man or woman. When Idealism gave way to
Realism in Hellas, the change affected painting also. The artists
tried to create a real illusion in their works, taking subjects like
chairs or tables and making the spectator believe them to be
real. They were helped by the developments of perspective and
foreshortening, which were discovered at this time. It is against this
exaggerated realism and the choice of homely subjects that Plato’s
attack is directed: he hates such illusions as shams.[326] In the
diatribes of the _Republic_ the possibility of idealised painting
seems to be forgotten. Whether the boys in the art-schools also
suffered by this change and were condemned to draw chairs and tables
only cannot be decided.

The pupils, of course, did not have paper to draw and paint upon, nor
was canvas employed. Ordinarily they used white wood, boxwood for
preference, owing to its smoothness. Lead or charcoal would serve for
drawing; for erasures, instead of india-rubber a sponge was used.[327]
They may, perhaps, have practised on their wax tablets. One process
was σκιαγραφία [skiagraphia] “shadow-drawing,” which produced rough
sketches in light and shade: these seem to have been only intelligible
when considered from a distance. Plato regarded them with distrust, as
a sort of conjuring.[328]

In ordinary painting, which might be either watercolour or
encaustic,[329] the first thing was to sketch in the outline
(ὑπογράφειν, περιγραφή [hypographein, perigraphê]); the artist then
filled in (ἀπεργάζεσθαι [apergazesthai]) the picture with his colours,
with perpetual glances, now to the original, now to the copy, mixing
his paints the while. Beginners would, no doubt, rub out (ἐξαλείφειν
[exaleiphein]) frequently, and paint in again.

Aristotle,[330] in discussing artistic education, notices that it gave
boys a good eye for appreciating art, and enabled them to exercise
good taste in buying furniture, pottery, and other household
requisites, which, to judge from the scanty relics, must have been
masterpieces of beauty in the house of a cultivated Athenian. But
still more important, it gave them “an eye for bodily beauty”:[331]
which suggests that the human form, especially its proportions, formed
the chief study of the art-schools. Proportion was the essence of
Hellenic art; the great sculptors, as is well known, spent much time
in drawing up a canon of perfect proportions for the human body. The
boys may well have used their companions in the palaistrai for models,
and the canons of physical proportion which they were taught by the
art-master would serve to stimulate them with a desire to attain to
such a perfection of body by their own athletic exercises.


     [207] Lucian, _Loves_, 44-45.

     [208] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 12; Thuc. vii. 29; Plato,
     _Laws_.

     [209] Lucian, _Parasite_, 61.

     [210] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 12.

     [211] _Anthol. Palat._ x. 43 has been quoted as evidence
     that six hours’ work a day was a maximum. The epigram runs:
     “Six hours suffice for work; rest of the day, expressed in
     numerals, says ζῆθι [zêthi], ‘enjoy life.’” But the point is
     the joke that the numerals for 7, 8, 9, 10, the later hours
     of the day, are ζʹ [z´], ηʹ [ê´], θʹ [th´], ιʹ [i´], which
     spells ζῆθι [zêthi]. The epigram does not mean to state a
     fact; the joke is its only _raison d’être_. In any case
     schools are not mentioned.

     [212] Herondas, _Schoolmaster_ (iii.) 53.

     [213] Mahaffy, _Greek Education_, p. 54.

     [214] Lucian, _Nekuom._ 17.

     [215] Dem. _de Cor._ 315.

     [216] Theoph. _Char._ 30.

     [217] _Ibid._ 30.

     [218] Herondas, iii. 3.

     [219] Demos. _ag. Aphobos_, i. 828.

     [220] Demos. _Crown_, 312.

     [221] Demos. _Crown_, 270. This is the most probable
     restoration of the facts from the statements of the opposing
     orators.

     [222] _Ibid._ 313.

     [223] Aelian, _Var. Hist._ xii. 9 (at Klazomenai).

     [224] Benches do not appear on vases, because a row of boys
     involves elaborate perspective; the artist preferred to take
     single boys on stools, as a sort of section of a class, just
     as he gave the stools only two legs. Xen. _Banquet_, 4. 27,
     shows two boys sitting side by side. It is not necessary to
     reject benches, with Girard.

     [225] Alexis, _Linos_ (in Athen. 164 B.C.). See Illustr.
     Plates I. A and I. B.

     [226] Plut. _Alkib._ 7.

     [227] Herondas, iii. 83. 96.

     [228] See Illustr. Plate No. I. A.

     [229] Plato, _Protag._ 326 D.

     [230] In Clement of Alexandria, who gives two others.
     _Strom._ v. 8 (p. 675, Potter). A writing copy set by a
     master, though not of the alphabetical kind described by
     Clement, is actually extant on a wax tablet in the British
     Museum (Add. MS. 34,186). It consists of two lines of verse
     written out by the master and copied twice by a pupil.

     [231] Aeschylus, _Choeph._ 209.

     [232] Illustr. Plate I. A.

     [233] Xen. _Econ._ xv. 5.

     [234] Demosth. _de Cor._ 313.

     [235] Plato, _Laws_, 810 A (cp. the prizes for calligraphy
     in Teos).

     [236] Athen. 453 d.

     [237] Giles’ _Manual of Comparative Philology_, § 604.

     [238] Athen. 453 c, d.

     [239] A fragment of terra-cotta has been found at Athens,
     containing on it:
          αρ βαρ γαρ δαρ [ar bar gar dar]
          ερ βερ γερ δερ [er ber ger der]
     which must have belonged to some spelling-book――perhaps the
     brick formed part of the wall of a schoolroom.――Quoted by
     Girard, p. 131.

     [240] Athen. 454 f.

     [241] This is by no means inconceivable, when it is
     remembered that the Hellenes often set even the laws to
     music, in order to make them easier to learn and remember.

     [242] Plato, _Polit._ 278 A, B.

     [243] _Ibid._

     [244] _Ibid._ 285 C.

     [245] Xen. _Econ._ viii. 14.

     [246] See Illustr. Plate I. A.

     [247] Case E 190.

     [248] Plato, _Protag._ 325 E.

     [249] Plato, _Laws_, 811.

     [250] τὰ κεφάλαια [ta kephalaia]――a phrase used in later
     times for “commonplaces,” “topics,” which suggests that
     these selections were of that sort.

     [251] As the great speeches are picked out from Shakespeare
     for “repetition” nowadays.

     [252] Plato, _Laws_, 802, 811.

     [253] Isokrates (_Paneg._ 74 A). He says the object was to
     make the boys hate the barbarians; as, _e.g._, English boys
     might learn _Henry V._ in order to dislike the French!

     [254] Xen. _Banquet_, iii. 5.

     [255] _Ibid_.

     [256] _Ibid_. iv. 6.

     [257] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 1035.

     [258] From the _Banqueters_.

     [259] Straton (in Athen. 382, 383).

     [260] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 1032.

     [261] Athen. 164.

     [262] Aristoph. _Birds_, 471; _Wasps_, 1446. 1401.

     [263] Plato, _Hipp. Maj._ 286 B.

     [264] Xen. _Banquet_, iv. 27. School friendships are also
     mentioned in Aristot. _Eth._ viii. 12; Aristoph. _Clouds_,
     1006.

     [265] Athen. 242 d.

     [266] The translation is free, and I omit a good deal that
     is less relevant.

     [267] For a picture of such a flogging see p. 599 of Bury’s
     _Roman Empire_.

     [268] Plato, _Laws_, 809 C.

     [269] The distinction between λογιστική [logistikê],
     reckoning up and comparing numbers, chiefly in bills and the
     like, practical arithmetic, and ἀριθμητική [arithmêtikê],
     theory of numbers, is noted in Plato, _Gorg._ 451 B.

     [270] Plato, _Laws_, 643 B.C.

     [271] Plato, _Protag._ 318 D.

     [272] So Theodoros in the _Theaitetos_.

     [273] Xen. _Econ._ viii. 14.

     [274] Xen. _Mem._ iv. 4. 7.

     [275] Aristoph. _Wasps_, 656.

     [276] In Diogenes Laertius, i. 2. 10.

     [277] Alexis (in Athen. 117 e).

     [278] An abacus of a very similar sort is still in use in
     China and Japan, even in banks. The “pebbles” are pushed to
     and fro, not in grooves, but on wires passing through the
     middle of them. Calculations can be made by this means with
     marvellous rapidity.]

     [279] e.g. _Polit._ 299 D. πεττείαν ἢ ξύμπασαν ἀριθμητικήν
     [petteian ê xympasan arithmêtikên].

     [280] Plato, _Phaid._ 274.

     [281] Plato, _Laws_, 819 B.

     [282] The restoration of this process rests on Athen. 671;
     the other two are purely conjectural.

     [283] Suggests at once Hellenic, not Egyptian customs.

     [284] Plato, _Rep._ 526 B.

     [285] Plato, _Laws_, 747.

     [286] Technically speaking, this was λύρα [lyra], the κιθάρα
     [kithara] being a professional instrument which was not
     taught at school.

     [287] Illustr. Plate I. B.

     [288] Plato, _Lusis_, 209 B. On Inscriptions there are
     separate prizes for the two methods.

     [289] Xen. _Econ._ ii. 13.

     [290] _Ibid._ xvii. 7.

     [291] Cp. British Museum Vase E 57, on which a man is
     leading a leopard by a string.

     [292] Plato, _Protag._ 326 B.

     [293] Aristoph. _Clouds_, 1356.

     [294] Aristoph. fragment of _Banqueters_.

     [295] Aristoph. _Knights_, 526.

     [296] Plut. _Solon_, iii.

     [297] Hermippos (in Athen. 619 b).

     [298] Aristoph. _Wasps_, 959.

     [299] _Ibid._ 989.

     [300] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 6. 11.

     [301] For this reason it was opposed to _Dorian_ influences
     by Pratinas. It was excluded from the Pythian games (Pausan.
     10. vii. 5). Pratinas bids it be content to “lead drunk
     young men in their carousals and brawls.”

     [302] Telestes, in his defence of the flute, could only
     retort that Athena, being condemned to eternal spinsterhood,
     ought not to be particular about her looks (Athen. 617).

     [303] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 6. 11.

     [304] Athen. 184 d. Plutarch, however, says that when
     Alkibiades’ masters tried to make him learn the flute, he
     refused, declaring that it was unfit for gentlemen (_Alk._
     ii. 5).

     [305] Not a respected profession at Athens.

     [306] Brit. Mus. E 495, 64, 71.

     [307] Athen. 337 f.

     [308] Smith’s _Dictionary of Antiquities_.

     [309] φορβεία [phorbeia]. It belonged to professionals.

     [310] γλωσσοκομεῖον [glôssokomeion].

     [311] See the “Inscription” of the _Andria_ and other plays
     of Terence.

     [312] See Illustr. Plate II.

     [313] Athen. 20 f.

     [314] Plato, _Laches_, 180 D.

     [315] Plato, _Euthud._ 272 C.

     [316] _Ibid._ 295 D.

     [317] Aristoph. _Knights_, 987-996.

     [318] Plato, _Protag._ 326 B.

     [319] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 3. 7.

     [320] _Ibid._ viii. 3. 1.

     [321] Plato, _Protag._ 318 B.

     [322] _Ibid._ 311 C.

     [323] Plin. _Hist. Nat._ 35.

     [324] Stob. _Floril._ 98, p. 535.

     [325] Plato, _Laws_, 769 B.

     [326] See _Rep._ X. 596 E, 605 A, etc. In the _Sophist_, 235
     D, 266 D, etc., Plato reserves his denunciation for
     φανταστική [phantastikê] which creates illusions; he almost
     approves of εἰκαστική [eikastikê]. Idealised painting is
     hinted at in _Rep._ 472 D, 484 C.

     [327] Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_, 1329.

     [328] Plato, _Theait._ 208 E.

     [329] The modern oil process was not employed till late on
     in the Renaissance. Fresco was common.

     [330] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 3. 12.

     [331] θεωρητικὸν τοῦ περὶ τὰ σώματα κάλλους [theôrêtikon tou
     peri ta sômata kallous].



CHAPTER IV

ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS: PHYSICAL EDUCATION


It is well known that the Hellenes attached an enormous importance to
physical exercise. This was partly, no doubt, due to their intense
appreciation of bodily beauty, which it was the endeavour of their
gymnastic training to produce. But it must be remembered that to be in
“good condition” was essential to them. Any morning an Hellenic
citizen might find himself called upon to take the field against an
invader, or might be despatched to ravage an enemy’s territory. Only
the most cogent excuses were accepted. Plato[332] has left a vivid
picture of a rich man, who has lived in idleness and luxury, suddenly
called out to serve his country. Unhappy Dives marches along panting
and perspiring, he is ill on board ship, and in battle when he has to
charge or fight vigorously, he has no wind and is in a state of
hopeless misery; while his poorer or wiser companions, who are “lean
and wiry, and have lived in the open air,” mock at him and despise
him. Sokrates points out to young Epigenes,[333] who has neglected his
physical condition, what risks he runs. In battle, when a retreat is
sounded, he will be left behind by his companions, and be either
killed or taken prisoner by the foe; and the lot of the captive was
frequently slavery for life, unless his friends ransomed him. But
there were also intellectual and moral risks. “Bodily debility,” says
Sokrates, “frequently causes a loss of memory, and low spirits, and a
peevish temper, and even madness, to invade a man, so as to make even
intellectual pursuits impossible.” To be a good citizen and to be a
good thinker a man must always be in good physical condition. It
became a duty to oneself and to the State “to live in the open air and
accustom oneself to manly toils and sweat, avoiding the shade and
unmanly ways of life.”[334] By divine ordinance, “Sweat was the
doorstep of manly virtue,” as old Hesiod had sung.[335]

This addiction to gymnastic exercises of all kinds was characteristic
of the Hellenic peoples from the days of Homer. The original object
had been symmetrical development of the body, health, speed, strength,
and agility. But, as the Egyptian sage remarked, the Hellenes were a
nation of children――it is just that which gives to them their charm
and interest――and children usually and naturally care most for the
body. Consequently athletics were carried too far: they became an end
in themselves, instead of being merely a means of attaining physical
activity and health. The professional athlete became a sort of spoilt
child, fed at public expense,[336] courted by crowds of admirers, and
all the time he was quite useless for everything except his own
particular sort of contest, boxing or wrestling or the like. The
tendency was ruinous: the Hellenes preferred to be good gymnasts
rather than good soldiers.[337] The competitor, boy or man, who
entered for one of the great prizes had to live in complete idleness
from other pursuits.[338] Such professionals “slept all the day long,
and if they departed from their prescribed system of training in the
very slightest degree, they were seized with serious diseases.”[339]
Consequently they were useless as soldiers, since in war it is
necessary to be wide awake, not torpid, and to be able to stand
vicissitudes of heat and cold, and not to be made ill by changes of
diet. Specialisation even led to deformity. The long-distance runner
developed thick legs and narrow shoulders, the boxer broad shoulders
and thin legs.[340] It is to this specialisation that Galen[341]
attributes the decline in utility of Hellenic athletics. Philostratos
even notes that only in the good old days was the health of athletes
not actually impaired by their exercises. In those times, he says,
they grew old late, and took part in eight or nine Olympic
contests――retained, that is, their efficiency for thirty years or
more; moreover, they were as good soldiers as they were athletes.
Later, these habits changed, and athletes became averse to war,
torpid, effeminate, luxurious in their diet. The medical profession
took upon itself to advise them――a good thing in its way, but
unsuitable for athletes; for it told them to sit still after meals
before taking exercise, and introduced them to elaborate cookery.
Bribery also came into vogue among the professionals; usurers began to
enter the training schools on purpose to lend them money for bribing
their opponents.[342] The first recorded instance of this was early in
the fourth century.[343]

  [Illustration: PLATE V. A.

  SCENES IN A PALAISTRA

  _Archaeologische Zeitung_, 1878, Plate 11. From a Kulix at Munich,
  attributed to Euphronios.]

  [Illustration: PLATE V. B.

  SCENE IN A PALAISTRA――A BOY WITH HALTERES, A BOY WITH JAVELIN, AND
  TWO PAIDOTRIBAI

  _Archaeologische Zeitung_, 1878, Plate II. From a Kulix at Munich,
  attributed to Euphronios.]

Critics of this exaggerated athleticism were not wanting, even in the
earliest times. The attack begins with Xenophanes of Kolophon. In an
elegiac poem he writes: “If a man wins a victory at Olympia … either
by speed of foot or in the pentathlon, or by wrestling, or competing
in painful boxing, or in the dread contest called the pankration, his
countrymen will look upon him with admiration, and he will receive a
front seat in the games, and eat his dinners at the public cost, and
be presented with some gift that he will treasure. All this he will
get, even if he only win a horse race. Yet he is not as worthy as I;
for my wisdom is better than the strength of men and steeds. Nay, this
custom is foolish, and it is not right to honour strength more than
the excellence of wisdom. Not by good boxing, not by the pentathlon,
nor by wrestling, nor yet by speed of foot, which is the most honoured
in the contests of all the feats of human strength――not so would a
city be well governed. Small joy would it get from a victory at
Olympia: such things do not fatten the dark corners of a city.”

Pass straight from this to the works of Pindar, in order to see
whether Xenophanes’ attack was justified. To Pindar the world holds
nothing better than an Olympian victory. Be the descendant of athletes
and be an athlete yourself――that is the summit of human attainment and
bliss. His gods are either athletes themselves or founders of athletic
contests. A man’s true desires may usually be best traced in the
conception which he forms of the future state: Pindar’s portrait of
Elysium is characteristic. First the scenery, a magnificent
description in his best manner:

  In that Underworld the sun shines in his might
                  Through our night.
  Round that city through the dewy meadow-ways
                  Roses blaze.
  Through the fragrant shadows, bright with golden gleams,
                  Fruitage teems.…
  Every flower of joyance blooms nor withers there.[344]

And in this Paradise how are the shades of the departed occupying
themselves? “Some take their joy in horses, some in gymnasia, some in
draughts.”[345] That is the highest bliss conceivable, in Pindar’s
opinion.

But Euripides did not agree with him. He denounces the athletic life
with much vigour.[346] “Of countless ills in Hellas, the race of
athletes is quite the worst.… They are slaves of their jaw and
worshippers of their belly.… In youth they go about in splendour, the
admiration of their city, but when bitter old age comes upon them,
they are cast aside like worn-out coats. I blame the custom of the
Hellenes, who gather together to watch these men, honouring a useless
pleasure.[347] Who ever helped his fatherland by winning a crown for
wrestling, or speed of foot, or flinging the quoit, or giving a good
blow on the jaw? Will they fight the foe with quoits, or smite their
fists through shields? Garlands should be kept for the wise and good,
and for him who best rules the city by his temperance and justice, or
by his words drives away evil deeds, preventing strife and sedition.”

In return for this, the athlete-loving populace, finding their voice
in the popular poet Aristophanes, denounced Euripides and his Sophist
friends for emptying the gymnasia and making the boys desire only a
good tongue, instead of a sound body, turning them into pale-faced,
indoor pedants, fit for nothing but jabbering nonsense. The attitude
of the poet in the _Clouds_ and _Frogs_ is just that of an average
schoolboy discussing a student.

Plato has already been quoted as an authority against the athlete of
his day. In the _Laws_ he rejects every kind of gymnastics which is
not strictly conducive to military efficiency, and, like the Spartans,
condemns the pankration and boxing. Races in the ideal State are to be
run in full armour, and the javelin and spear are to replace the
quoit. It is exactly the position of some moderns, who would
substitute shooting and field-days for cricket and football. The case
against the athletes may be closed with Aristotle’s testimony: he also
condemns the specialisation of the trained professional.[348]

But these denunciations of athletes do not apply so much to Athens as
to the other States of Hellas. The Athenian Agora was full of the
statues of generals and patriots, not, as was the usual custom, of
athletes.[349] The author of the treatise on the Athenian
constitution,[350] writing in the early days of the Peloponnesian War,
notices that the democracy had driven gymnastics out of fashion.[351]
He writes as one of the aristocrats who, like Pindar and his princely
friends, cared mainly for the body and the outward beauties of life:
the democracy was vulgar, for it could not spend all its time in
bodily exercises and musical banquets. No doubt at that period in
Athens, as can be seen in Aristophanes, there was a reaction in favour
of intellectual pursuits against the exclusive athleticism of the
preceding age: the time of the citizens in a great democracy was also
largely monopolised by State duties, whether in the Assembly or in the
Law Courts or in fighting by sea or land. But athletics still remained
quite sufficiently popular even at Athens, and athletic “shop”
remained one of the chief topics of conversation at a dinner-party.[352]

       *     *     *     *     *

Gymnastic exercises centred round two sorts of buildings which are
often confused, the “gymnasium” and the “palaistra.” The former may be
said to correspond to the whole series of fields and buildings
intended for games, which surround a modern public school, including
football and cricket grounds, running track and jumping pit, fives
courts, and so forth. The “palaistra” often resembled little more than
the playground of a village school: it only demanded a sandy floor,
and sufficient privacy to protect the exercises from intrusion: such
buildings could be run up at private expense in the smallest villages,
and were often attached to private houses. A “gymnasium,” on the other
hand, must have cost a vast sum to erect: even a great capital like
Athens only possessed three in the fourth century; small towns must
have been unable to afford them at all. But the gymnasia were public
buildings, open to all; they were always full of citizens of all ages,
practising or watching others practise; they were a fashionable place
of resort, where Sophists lectured in the big halls, and philosophers
taught in the shady gardens. For the trainer who wished to instruct
his class of boys they were wholly unsuitable; besides, any casual
stranger could stand by and get a lesson for nothing. Consequently,
even at Athens, the boys were taught in palaistrai which could be
closed to the public:[353] in the towns and villages there was no
other place.

It is quite true that boys went to the gymnasia. Aristophanes[354]
talks of “a nice little boy on his way home from the gymnasium.” In
Antiphon,[355] some older boys are practising the javelin in a
gymnasium; a younger boy, who had been standing among the spectators,
being called by his paidotribes, runs across the course and is killed.
If the reading “paidotribes,” for which K. F. Hermann would substitute
“paidagogos,” is correct, we find a paidotribes and his class of
younger boys present in a gymnasium, probably to practise
javelin-throwing, which must have demanded a larger space than the
palaistra often afforded. The elder boys are probably not under his
tuition, for they are using real javelins, not the unpointed shafts
which were employed at school. Paidotribai with small palaistrai may
often have taken their classes to the free public gymnasia to practise
the diskos, the javelin, and running, which required a large space.
But none the less the palaistra was the usual scene of the teaching of
boys.[356] It must not, however, be supposed that a palaistra was
always reserved for boys. The “many palaistrai,” which the democracy
built for itself,[357] were doubtless as much public buildings, open
to all ages, as the Akademeia or Lukeion. The palaistrai owned or
hired by private teachers must have been open to adults when the boys
were not present; that which is the scene of the _Lusis_ was
apparently attended by two classes, one of boys and the other of
youths, who only met there on festival days. In the palaistra of
Taureas, however, mentioned in the _Charmides_, the different classes
seem all to meet in the undressing-room; but on that occasion the
building may have been open for general practice, not for teaching.
Some such arrangement into classes must have taken place in the
village palaistrai.[358] The master who taught the boys in the
palaistra was called the paidotribes, “boy-rubber”: he must have owed
his name to the great part which rubbing, whether with oil or with
various sorts of dust, played in athletics.[359] He was expected to be
scientific. He had to know what exercises would suit what
constitutions:[360] he is often coupled with the doctor.[361] His
object was to prevent, the doctor’s to cure, diseases. He even
prescribed diet. Besides health, he was expected to aim at beauty and
strength.[362] His training, in Plato’s opinion, also served to
produce firmness of character and strength of will: he must therefore
know how much training to administer to each boy, for too much would
cause excess of these qualities and lead to savage brutality, and too
little would result in effeminacy.[363]

Since so much science was demanded of the paidotribes, parents
exercised much forethought in choosing a gymnastic school for their
boys:[364] they would “call upon their friends and relations to give
advice, and deliberate for many days,” in order to find a trainer
whose instructions would “make their son’s body a useful servant to
his mind, not likely by its bad condition to compel him to shirk his
duty in war or elsewhere.”[365] This at Athens, no doubt: in the
smaller towns and villages there could have been little choice:
parents must have taken what they could get.

On arriving at the chosen palaistra with his paidagogos the boy would
find a class assembling. He would first go into the undressing-room[366]
and strip. For all the exercises were performed naked. This no doubt
gave the trainer a good opportunity of watching which muscles most
required development, and what constitutional weaknesses, if any, must
be treated circumspectly. Passing into the palaistra proper, the boy
would find an enclosure surrounded, in the case of the more expensive
schools, with pillars. There would be no roof. Hellenic custom
maintained that it was healthy to expose the naked body to the open
air and the mid-day sun: a white skin was regarded as a sign of
effeminacy.[367] If the sun became dangerously hot, little caps were
worn, which at other times hung on the walls of the palaistra. The
floor was sand. Before wrestling or practising the pankration or
jumping, the boys had to break up the soil with pickaxes[368] in order
to make it soft: these pickaxes were also suspended on the walls.
Beside them would be also _kôrukoi_ or punch-balls, _haltêres_ (a sort
of dumb-bell, used for jumping and other exercises), the scrapers with
which the dirt and sweat were removed, bags to hold the cords which
were used as boxing-gloves, and spare javelins. Grown-up men were not
allowed to enter during the lessons, but could apparently, if they
wished, watch “from outside,” that is, probably, from the
dressing-room, where we often find Sokrates conversing with the
pupils, boys and lads: he could not, probably, penetrate further.

The symbol of office which marked the paidotribes was a long forked
stick depicted in the vases.[369] This was probably derived from the
branch which the umpires at the games held in their hands. The two
symbols are so much alike when represented on the vases[370] that it
is often hard to distinguish them. There were generally several
under-masters in the palaistra. The more proficient boys also were
employed in teaching backward schoolfellows; these “pupil-teachers”
appear on vases,[371] holding the stick of office like the grown-up
masters. No doubt, poor boys managed to get instruction in this manner
from their richer friends in the public gymnasia and palaistrai,
without attending a school at all.

The staff of a palaistra also included professional flute-players, for
most of the exercises[372] were performed to the sound of a flute, in
order that good time might be preserved in the various movements. The
player in these cases wore the φορβεία [phorbeia] or mouth-band.[373]

As I have pointed out in Chapter II., although the literary
authorities make gymnastic training of a sort begin with the seventh
year, it is not at all probable that the more recognised exercises,
such as boxing and wrestling, began till a good many years later. The
vases suggest that these subjects were taught some years after letters
and music had begun, for they represent only older boys as learning
them. Aristotle seems to vouch for a graduated course of gymnastic
exercises during boyhood.[374]

  [Illustration: PLATE VI. A.

  IN THE PALAISTRA: WRESTLERS, PAIDOTRIBES, BOY PREPARING GROUND

  Gerhard’s _Auserlesene Vasenbilder_, cclxxi. Fig. 2.]

  [Illustration: PLATE VI. B.

  IN THE PALAISTRA: BOY PUTTING ON BOXING-THONG, A PANKRATION LESSON,
  AND A PAIDOTRIBES

  Gerhard’s _Auserlesene Vasenbilder_, cclxxi. Fig. 1.]

What did the boys learn at the palaistra in the meantime? Deportment
and easy exercises. A passage in Aristophanes informs us that they
were taught the most graceful way to sit down and get up.[375] Vases
represent boys learning how to stand straight. There were also all
sorts of exercises in which the unpointed javelin played the part of a
training-rod and the halteres the part of dumb-bells. The paidotribes
might also try to strengthen particular muscles in particular boys. In
an epigram,[376] a trainer is exercising a boy’s middle by bending him
over his knee, and then, while holding his feet fast, swinging him
over backwards.

No doubt what was known as “gesticulation” (to cheironomein)
[τὸ χειρονομεῖν] played a large part in this earlier training.
“Gesticulation” meant a scientific series of gestures and movements of
all the limbs, somewhat like the modern systems of physical education
taught by Sandow and others. It was chiefly an exercise for the arms,
as the name implies, but on a celebrated occasion Hippokleides the
Athenian stood on his head on a table and “gesticulated” with his
feet.[377] The particular movements were very carefully designed, and
were all intended to be beautiful and gentlemanly.[378] Gesticulation
served as a preparation for various dancing-systems, but was distinct
from dancing, for Charmides was able to gesticulate but unable to
dance.[379] It was also preparatory to gymnastics, for it resembled
the movements of a boxer sparring at the air for lack of an
opponent.[380] The halteres were possibly often employed, for they
played a part in many gymnastic exercises.[381] This “gesticulation,”
then, being a preliminary to gymnastics and dancing, would be the
natural thing for the small boys to learn in the palaistra. Other
early exercises were rope-climbing[382] and a sort of leap-frog.[383]
The various kinds of ball-game,[384] mostly designed to exercise the
body scientifically, may also have been employed. Of the regular
exercises of the palaistra, which I am about to discuss, running and
jumping would suit quite small boys; the diskos and javelin could also
be begun at an early age, for smaller sizes were made for children.

       *     *     *     *     *

The age at which the recognised exercises were first taught no doubt
varied with individual taste and physical capacity: no strict line can
be drawn. These exercises were wrestling, boxing, the pankration,
jumping, running, throwing the diskos and the javelin.

_Wrestling_ (πάλη [palê]) was probably regarded as the most important
of these subjects, for it gave its name to the Palaistra. For this
exercise the soil was broken up with the pickaxe and watered: the
bodies of the combatants were oiled beforehand. By these means the
Hellenes prevented their boys from disfiguring their bodies with bumps
and bruises, and the slipperiness of the ground and of the
antagonist’s body made the exercise more difficult and therefore more
valuable. Three throws were necessary for victory. There were two
sorts of wrestling. In one the victor had to throw his antagonist
without coming to the ground himself; this was a matter of ingenious
twists and turns somewhat like the Japanese jiu-jitsu. In the other
both combatants rolled over and over on the ground: this was less
scientific. The leading paidotribai had their own favourite systems of
wrestling, with various openings, as in chess, and various ways of
meeting them. “What style of wrestling did you learn at the
Palaistra?” Kleon asks the sausage-seller.[385] When two boys were set
to wrestle in school, they were not allowed to contend as they pleased
with a view to victory, but had to carry out the directions of the
paidotribes.[386] A fragment of a system of wrestling has been
unearthed at Oxurhunchos.[387]

Suppose there are two boys, Charmides and Glaukon. The paidotribes
sets them to wrestle, while the rest of the class watch. He holds a
long forked stick in his hand. Pointing with it to Charmides, he says,
“You put your right hand between his legs and grip him.” Then to
Glaukon, “Close your legs on it, and thrust your left side against his
side.” To Charmides, “Throw him off with your left hand.” To Glaukon,
“Shift your ground, and engage.” Each group of directions, or figure
σχῆμα [schêma], as it was called, closes with the word “Engage” πλέξον
[plexon]. At this point, probably, the two boys were allowed to
wrestle at will, the result, however, being foreseen and inevitable
owing to the previous moves.

An epigram in the _Anthology_ represents instruction of this sort
being given: the boy retorts in the middle, “I can’t possibly do it,
Diophantos; that’s not the way boys wrestle.”[388]

But, to use a parallel given by Isokrates, a pupil is not yet a
complete orator, when he knows how to create pathos, irony, and so
forth, and has been taught the parts of a speech: he has still to
learn when and where and in what order to employ these several
artifices. So with wrestling. A boy who knows his “figures” is not yet
a wrestler: he has got to learn when is the right moment to employ
each of them in an actual contest with a real antagonist. “When the
paidotribes has taught his pupils the ‘figures’ invented for bodily
training and practised them and made them perfect in these, he makes
the boys go through their exercises again and accustoms them to
physical toil, and compels them to string together one by one the
figures which they have learnt, that they may have a firmer grasp of
them and get a clearer comprehension of the right occasions for using
them: for it is impossible to comprehend these in an exact
science.”[389] The boys have to judge for themselves, in the heat of
the contest, which figure it will be expedient to use: the trainer
cannot fix that beforehand. But they will best be able to judge, if by
long practice they have discovered which figures suit them best and
which prove fatal to a particular type of opponent.

_Boxing_ was similarly taught by a series of “figures.” The boys used
the light gloves, consisting of strings wound round the hands, not the
heavy, metal-weighted gloves which professional athletes wore. The
_pankration_[390] was a mixture of boxing and wrestling: the boys
usually wore similar gloves for this but left the fingers unfastened,
only the wrists and knuckles being protected: sometimes they fought
with bare hands. For both these exercises it was usual to wear dogskin
caps, in order to protect the ears from injury. The pankration seems
to have been regarded as an unsatisfactory game for boys: so it was
excluded from both Olympian and Pythian games till a comparatively
late date. For one thing, it was dangerous, and the exercise was very
severe. But in the palaistra, carefully regulated by the paidotribes
and stopped when the fighting became dangerous, no doubt it was
harmless enough. Alkibiades, however, once succeeded in biting an
opponent who was pressing him hard, being ready to do anything rather
than be beaten. “You bite like a girl, Alkibiades!” exclaimed the
indignant boy. “No, like a lion,” answered Alkibiades.[400]

  [Illustration: PLATE VII.

  _Photo by Mr. R. Coupland._

  STADION AT DELPHI FROM THE FORTIFICATIONS OF PHILOMELOS.
  Length about 220 yards.


  _Photo by Mr. R. Coupland._

  STADION AT DELPHI FROM THE FORTIFICATIONS OF PHILOMELOS.
  A nearer view.]

_Running_ needs no comment: the methods are much the same in all ages.
The chief distances for races in Hellas were the Stadion or 200
yards,[401] the Diaulos or quarter-mile, and the Long-distance race,
which varied from three-quarter mile to about three miles. The race in
armour was not taught to boys. Races were often run over soft sand,
where the runners sank in, just as long-distance races in England
often include a ploughed field or two. The sand made running both a
more severe exercise (so that a shorter distance sufficed) and also a
better training for war.

For the _long jump_ the Hellenes used the “halteres” or light
dumb-bells, to assist their momentum.[402] Even in competitions, a
flute-player stood by, to give the competitors the assistance of his
music: no doubt it helped them to manage their steps so as to “take
off” on the right spot. They alighted into a large sandy pit, dug up
by the ever-present pickaxe: the jump was only measured if they came
down on to this evenly, leaving a clear trace of their foot.

The _diskos_ was a flat circle of polished bronze or other metal.[403]
The specimen in the British Museum is between 8 and 9 inches in
diameter, and is inscribed with athletic pictures on either side. It
was flung with either hand. A great many attitudes were necessary
before the diskos was launched, and every muscle of the body must have
been well exercised in the process. The time was given, in the
palaistra, by a flute-player. In competitions both the distance and
the direction of the throw were taken into consideration.

Boys learnt to throw the _javelin and spear_ by practising with long
unpointed rods, which were also used for a variety of physical
exercises. The mark seems to have been a sort of croquet-hoop or pair
of compasses, fixed into the ground: other targets were also
employed.[404] The vases which represent this pursuit often show the
paidotribes carrying this hoop or fixing it into the ground. It was
planted at a fixed distance which was stepped out.

It may be mentioned, before we leave the “paidotribes,” that his fee
for his whole course seems to have been a μνᾶ [mna], about £4:[405]
this enabled the pupil to attend his lectures “for ever,” that is,
perhaps till the course was finished. Or perhaps this sum made a pupil
a life-member of a particular private palaistra.

Let us now look into one of the gymnasia at Athens, the Akademeia or
Lukeion. We will suppose that it is late in the afternoon, for this
was a favourite time for taking exercise: the Athenians liked to get a
good appetite for their evening meal. Outside, a troop of young men
who intend to be enrolled in the State-cavalry are practising their
evolutions, mounting, in the absence of stirrups, by a leaping-pole,
and charging in squadrons. On another side a body of heavy infantry
with spear and shield are assembling for a night march into the
Megarid;[406] they are packing their supplies, onions and dried fish,
perhaps, into their knapsacks as they fall in, and are grumbling at
having to leave Athens just when a festival is coming; a burly
countryman is complaining to his general that it is not his turn to
serve, as he took part in the raid into Boiotia last week, and his
general is threatening him with a prosecution for insubordination if
he becomes abusive. After paying our respects to the patron deities,
Herakles and Hermes and Eros,[407] and having muttered a curse on all
tyrants suggested by the statue of Eros which Charmos the
father-in-law of Hippias the Peisistratid set up,[408] we enter the
gymnasium.

The first room which we come to is the undressing-room.[409] On the
benches round the walls a row of men are sitting discussing the exact
nature of Self-control: an extremely ugly person, to whom they all pay
great respect, is stating that it is an exact science, and, if only
they can discover this science, the whole world will become virtuous.
Lads and men are stripping all about the room, and passing off to take
their exercises elsewhere; others keep coming in and dressing and
listening to the discussion for a minute or two. A handsome young
fellow comes in: the ugly man makes room for him with great energy,
and his friends who are sitting at the end of the bench are pushed off
suddenly on to the floor. A shout of laughter, mingled with some
strong Attic abuse, arises. Not wishing to be involved as witnesses in
an interminable lawsuit, we hurry out through the further door into a
great cloister.[410] In the centre of this is a large open space, with
no roof. Here we meet a well-known mathematician from Kurene,[411] who
is walking round the cloister with a crowd of pupils: he is explaining
to them that famous theorem about right-angled triangles, whose proof
is so neat that Pythagoras the vegetarian sacrificed a hundred oxen
when he discovered it. At intervals the mathematician stops and draws
a diagram in the dust with his stick. As we follow him, we can look
into the rooms which surround the cloister. In one, a crowd of men are
anointing themselves with oil.[412] The rubbing, which is so good for
all bodily ills, and the oil, even if not followed by any further
exercise, are regarded as an excellent thing. An Athenian gentleman is
expected to carry about a certain fragrance of this oil,[413] and his
skin must always be sleek with it; but as a rule the anointing is a
prelude to exercise, and is meant to make the joints supple and the
body slippery enough to elude a wrestler’s grip.[414] A slave or an
attendant stands by many of the men, holding one of those dainty
oil-flasks which make so great a feature in modern Museums of
Archæology. Through the next door we see the “dusting-room.” Various
sorts of dust were used for rubbing the body. They served to clean it
of sweat after exercise, to open the pores, to warm it when cold, and
to soften the skin. A yellow dust was particularly popular; for it
made the body glisten so as to be pleasant to look at, as a good body
in good condition ought to be.[415] Next perhaps will be the
bathing-room――a popular place in the evening, for it was usual to take
a bath before dinner.[416] The bathers either splash themselves out of
great bowls which stand upon pedestals, or receive a shower bath by
getting a companion or an attendant to pour a pitcher of water over
them. Tanks capable of receiving the whole body at once were not
usual, though known to Homer.[417] Then we see the room of the
_korukos_, or punch-ball, which will present a very curious
appearance.[418] The _korukos_ is a large sack hanging from the
ceiling by a rope. The lighter _korukoi_ are filled with fig seeds or
meal, the heavier with sand. They hang at about the height of a man’s
waist. You push one of them gently at first, and more and more
violently as you gain experience; having pushed it, you plant yourself
in the way of the rebound, and try to stop the sack with your hands or
your chest or your back or your head. If you are not strong enough,
you will be knocked over, and the room will laugh. This will practise
you in standing steady, and make all parts of your body firm and
muscular. The _korukos_ can also be used as a punch-ball, to
strengthen the boxer’s arms and shoulders. This exercise is especially
recommended for boxers and pankratiasts: the latter ought to use the
heavier variety. Perhaps there will also be some lay-figures hanging
up round the walls, for these also were used for practising. Here,
too, some unlucky individuals who, from unpopularity or other causes,
are unable to find an antagonist, will be exercising their fists on
thin air. But both these expedients were regarded as ridiculous.[419]

There were a large number of other rooms round the cloister, some
intended for exercises in wet weather, for, if possible, exercise was
always taken out of doors; for it was regarded as a great object to
make the skin brown and hard by exposure to the sun. So King Agesilaos
put his Asiatic captives up for sale in his camp naked, in order that
his Hellenic soldiers, seeing their pale, soft flesh, unused to
exposure, might despise their enemy. But as most of these rooms were
furnished with seats, they were largely used as lecture-halls by
wandering Sophists,[420] who gave free lectures in them to any
passer-by who might care to listen, in order to attract regular,
paying pupils. So we can take our pick and hear lectures on poetry or
metaphysics, music or rhetoric, geography or history, at our pleasure.

After this, we can turn our attention to the great central
courtyard,[421] which is surrounded by the cloister, or to the
racecourse and open spaces which lie beyond it. In one part will be
the wrestling arena.[422] Pairs of oiled, naked combatants will be
struggling together, amid a crowd of cheering spectators, and perhaps
the trainer will be standing by, giving them directions. One group
attracts especial attention: for the pair are going to represent
Athens at Olympia next year. Elsewhere the pankratiasts are
contending, some sparring at arm’s length, others joined in a deadly
grapple, rolling over and over on the ground and pummelling one
another’s heads with their gloved knuckles. They are covered with
clotted dust and oil and will need much scraping. Then there are the
boxers, bearing either the light gloves, or, if they intend to take
part in a big competition, the heavy iron balls padded over with
leather which were used in the great Games.[423] There are races too
in progress, lap by lap round the great Stadion. Some of the runners
are naked, others are wearing helmet and shield, since they are
practising for the Race in Armour. Friends run beside them for a
little way, pacing them and encouraging them. Others are jumping, with
the halteres in their hands, into the pit, while their friends mark
the point where their heels have left a mark in the sand. A
professional flute-player, with his mouth-band on, sets the time. Each
is, no doubt, hoping to beat Phaüllos’ great jump of 55 feet――the
world’s record. Everywhere are crowds of spectators,[424] and
everywhere eager trainers giving advice, hoping, if their pupil gains
a prize at some great Games, to make a name for themselves, and
attract a crowd of lads to their paid lessons: perhaps they will even
be immortalised by some contemporary Pindar in a song in honour of
their pupil’s victory.

In another corner, it may be, there will be teams practising together.
A regiment of epheboi may be undergoing their gymnastic training
before service on the frontier:[425] or a team of them may be
training, watched by the rich “gumnasiarchos,” for the torch-race at
the festival of Hephaistos, or for the race from the Temple of
Dionusos to that of Athena of the Sunshades, where the winner will
receive a large bowl containing wine and honey and cheese and meat and
olive oil――not all mixed together, let us hope.[426] There may also be
teams practising wrestling and other bodily exercises together. Their
trainer, “thinking it impossible to lay down separate regulations for
each individual, orders roughly what suits the majority. So every one
of the team takes an equal amount of exercise, and they all start and
all stop running, or wrestling, or whatever it may be, at the same
moment.”[427]

In the larger open spaces we shall find Athenians throwing the diskos,
like Muron’s celebrated figure, or practising archery, or flinging the
spear or javelin. In watching these care must be exercised: unwary
spectators may be killed or injured. Mythology is full of unfortunates
killed in this way. Was not the fair Huakinthos slain by Apollo’s
quoit? Antiphon, too, in his new book on speech-writing, takes as one
of his themes a boy killed by a comrade’s javelin accidentally. We can
also take a lesson in the use of spear and shield from the teacher of
arms: a pair of Sophists, who specialise in this subject, have just
come to Athens, and will doubtless be exhibiting their skill here. We
remember, though, that the warlike Spartans ridicule these professors,
and General Laches regards them as quite useless for military
purposes, as we heard him telling Sokrates the other day.[428] So we
will pass on.

The vast majority of people in the gymnasium confine themselves to
walking about. The colonnades and the gardens are convenient and
attractive, and there is plenty to watch everywhere. The “xustos,” or
covered cloister,[429] where athletes exercise in bad weather, is
particularly popular among the walkers. And while they walk, they
talk. There is a group of philosophical students arguing about the
Supreme Good or constructing an ideal State. There is a party of
inquirers who are discussing the nature of plants, or the varieties of
crustaceans. Yonder, a half-naked, unkempt enthusiast is declaiming
against luxury. “Man,” he cries, “is independent of circumstances.”
Everywhere, walkers and spectators and talkers, but walkers above all.

For the average Athenian spent all his time upon his legs: to sit down
was the mark of a slave.[430] He walked nearly all day: the distance
which he covered in five or six days would easily stretch from Athens
to Olympia. He took a walk before breakfast, another before lunch,
another before dinner, and another between dinner and bed.[431]

Games of ball are going on in the ball-court yonder.[432] We may
remember that the poet Sophocles was a famous player.[433] But the
shadow on the great sun-dial has nearly reached the ten-foot mark
which announces dinner-time to the Athenian world. The crowds who have
been exercising themselves are scraping off the sweat and dirt with
the στλεγγίς [stlengis] or scraper,[434] or else hurrying to the
bath-rooms. After the bath comes another anointing, with oil and water
this time.[435] Then away through the nearest gate into the city,
while the great buildings on the Akropolis grow misty in the twilight
and Athena’s guardian Spear catches the last rays of the setting sun.

All this was open to the poorest Athenian: there was no fee for
entrance. The only expenses were those incurred in buying an oil-flask
and scraper, which the State did not as a rule provide, and any fees
that might be paid to a trainer for special “coaching.” The poor could
learn as much as they required from watching those who were
proficient. It was usual to tip the man in the public baths who poured
cold water over the bathers and assisted them generally: but this
probably did not apply to the bath-rooms in the gymnasia. The State
certainly made it easy for every citizen to take as much exercise as
he pleased.

Women were wholly excluded from athletics at Athens. In Sparta girls
exercised themselves as much as the boys. In other Dorian States
feminine athletics were encouraged to a less degree. At Argos there
were foot-races for girls. In Chios they could be seen wrestling in
the gymnasia.[436]

       *     *     *     *     *

But the gymnasia and palaistrai, though they provided so many
different kinds of exercises, did not supply the Hellenes with their
sole opportunities for keeping the body in good condition. Hunting was
a popular employment at Sparta and no doubt elsewhere: Xenophon, who
was devoted to it, would have liked to make it more popular in
Attica,[437] where it languished, perhaps from lack of game. Swimming
and rowing were usual accomplishments. Riding was compulsory for rich
citizens at Athens, for they had to serve in the cavalry; it was also
popular in Thessaly, the land of horses. Military service provided
both an incentive to physical exercise and a frequent means of
obtaining it. Dancing was universal throughout the Hellenic world and
played a larger part in Hellenic education than is usually recognised.
At Sparta it was of paramount importance. At Athens it was taught free
to large numbers of boys under the system of leitourgiai. Plato
divides physical education into dancing and wrestling.[438]
Aristophanes[439] brackets dancing between the palaistra and music,
when he wishes to give the three elements of a gentleman’s education.
Choral dancing to a Hellene was at once the ritual of religion, the
ordinary accompaniment of a festival or public holiday, the highest
form of music, and the most perfect system of physical exercise then
discovered.

The modern reader finds it very hard to realise why Hellenic
philosophers attach so much educational importance to the various
kinds of dance. This is because modern dancing differs from its
ancient prototype in two very important particulars: it is not
connected with religion and it is not dramatic. In the East dancing
was, and is, the language of religion. David, to show his fervour,
danced before the Ark with all his might. In Hellas, dancing
accompanied every rite and every mystery.[440] The choral dance
afforded the outlet to religious enthusiasm which elsewhere is
provided by services: any change in its characteristics was a change
in ritual and in the inexpressible sentiments and moral attitudes
which become so closely bound up with habitual religious observances.
And, since it was the usual ritual of worship, dancing became
all-important in education, as providing the forms through which the
highest aspirations of the children were accustomed to find
expression.

The boy who danced in honour of Dionusos was trying to assimilate
himself to the god, whose history and personality would be brought
home to him vividly by the vineyards around him: they would serve him
for a parable. The vine that came so mysteriously out of the earth,
lived its short life in the rain and sunshine, and was crushed and
killed at the harvest, to rise again in the strange juice which
thrilled him with such wondrous power――there was plenty of parable for
him there. And while he felt the god’s history so vividly, he was
acting it, for acting was the very essence of Hellenic dancing. He
would act the sorrows of Dionusos, his persecution from city to city,
and his final conquest; he would match each incident in the story with
suitable inward feelings and outward gestures of sorrow and triumph.
Thus his dancing came to be a keenly religious observance, accompanied
by more vivid acting than is possible on a modern stage; such dancing,
it must be remembered, was the parent of Attic Drama. The dramatic
power of such acting became enormous; one dancer, it is said, could
make the whole philosophic system of Pythagoras intelligible without
speaking a word, simply by his gestures and attitudes.[441]

In such dramatic dancing the subject or plot was important. Here the
weakness of the old Hellenic mythology became fatal. For it was the
old myths that supplied the motives of religious dances as well as of
the drama, and many of them were morally unsatisfactory. When a chorus
of boys danced the _Birth-pangs of Semelé_, the most famous dithyramb
of Timotheos, not unnaturally objections were raised. The new school
of musicians and poets, which arose towards the end of the fifth
century, tried to represent everything and anything in the most
realistic way possible: their dancers had to imitate with voice and
gesture “blacksmiths at the forge, craftsmen at work, sailors rowing
and boatswains giving them orders, horses neighing, bulls
bellowing,”[442] and so forth. They chose the commonest and coarsest
scenes, just like Dutch painters. In their hands, dancing became
something vulgar, as well as morally risky, though still under a
semi-religious sanction. It is this charge which justified Plato’s
denunciations of the dramatic element in poetry and music. It must be
remembered that the choregos at Athens, who collected the boys from
his tribe to dance these dithyrambs, could use compulsion if fathers
refused to allow their sons to join his chorus.[443] Yet the
advantages of learning to dance were great, quite apart from the
religious aspects. Dancing was a scientifically designed system of
physical training, which exercised every part of the body
symmetrically.[444] The different masters invented systems of their
own, just as the paidotribai invented systems of wrestling; in both
cases the teaching began with a series of figures, which were
afterwards fitted together. Different localities also had their own
particular figures.[445]

The solo dance was used for private exercise. It also made its way
into the drama. Sometimes, too, in the choral performances one or two
of the best dancers were singled out to perform more elaborate
evolutions expressing the dramatic course of the subject. But the
choral dance was universal throughout Hellas. Its motives ranged from
the solemn religious questionings of Aeschylus to the drunken
buffoonery of the vine-festivals. The dance might be the act of
worship of a whole people, as in the great festivals at Delos. It
might, like the Gumnopaidia at Sparta, be designed to exhibit the
physical perfection and practise the military evolutions of a nation
in arms. It might celebrate the triumphant return of an Olympian
victor to his native city, as did many of the dances which accompanied
the extant odes of Pindar. The chorus-songs of Tragedy and Comedy were
set to dances of a sort; but from these last boys seem to have been
excluded.

For educational purposes, besides the dithuramboi already mentioned,
the two most important classes were the War-dance and the Naked-dance
(γυμνοπαιδία [gymnopaidia]).[446] In the War-dance the performers,
clad in arms, imitated all the ways in which blows and spears might be
avoided, now bending to one side, now drawing back, now leaping in the
air, now crouching down: then, again, they acted as though they were
hurling javelins and spears and dealing all manner of blows at close
quarters.[447] The Kuretic dance in Crete was very similar; the
dancers “in full armour beat their swords against their shields and
leaped in an inspired and warlike manner.”[448] The field-days, when
teams of boys and “packs” of epheboi fought one another to the sound
of music, were only a more warlike sort of dance. In fact, war and the
war-dance were as closely connected in Hellas as war and drill in
Modern Europe. The Thessalians called their heroes “dancers”; Lucian
quotes an inscription that “the people set up this statue to Eilation,
who danced the battle well”: “chief dancer” (προορχηστήρ
[proorchêstêr])[449] was a dignified title. The same author observes
that in warlike Sparta the young men learn to dance as much as to
fight, and that their military and gymnastic exercises alike were
inextricably mixed up with dancing.[449]

The “Naked-dance” was to gymnastics what the war-dance was to
war.[450] It represented the movements of the palaistra set to music,
accompanied by some singing.[451] The style was solemn, like that of
the ἐμμέλεια [emmeleia], or dance of Tragedy. It was performed in the
main by boys, as the name γυμνοπαιδία [gymnopaidia] implies; but grown
men also took part, as at Sparta, where practically the whole male
population danced it at once. Plato seems to mean a similar type by
his “peace-dance” (in the _Laws_), which is to be a thanksgiving for
past mercies or a prayer for continued prosperity.

In the regular system of education at Athens, it is true, the boys
learned only to sing and play, not to dance. But owing to the
perpetual demand for boys from each of the ten tribes to compete at
the great festivals in war-dances and dithyrambs, dancing must have
been a common accomplishment. These competitors also attracted and
encouraged a large number of dancing-masters. Any boy who showed
promise as a dancer, or perhaps even as a singer only, would be
singled out by the agents who collected choroi for the choregoi.

Some rich man, let us call him Tisias,[452] has just been appointed
choregos of the Erechtheid tribe for the war-dance of boys at the
Panathenaic festival, or a boy-chorus in dithyrambs at the Thargelia.
After drawing lots with the choregoi of other tribes, he gets
Pantakles assigned to him as his poet and music-master, to teach the
boys: he might, if he wished, hire at his own expense extra dancing-
and music-masters.[453] Tisias then sends for Amunias, whom the
Erechtheid tribe have chosen to collect their choroi and keep an eye
on them while they are being trained. If Tisias bears a bad name or is
unpopular with his tribe, he and his agent will have trouble in
collecting the boys; for the fathers will refuse to give them up, and
there will be fines imposed and securities taken, before the chorus
assembles. But as a rule the parents will accept gladly; it is a
chance of a free education for a month or so, for Tisias will pay all
expenses, even of meals, and the State supplies the teacher; it is a
chance, too, for the boy to distinguish himself.

Meanwhile, Tisias will have provided a suitable schoolroom, in his own
house, if possible; rich men, to whom the post of choregos was a
frequent burden, would keep an apartment for the purpose. If he
himself is busy, he will depute friends, who can be trusted to swear
in his favour before the Courts, to watch the teaching; the agent will
also be present.[454] For sometimes accidents occurred. Once a boy was
given a dose to drink, to improve his voice, and it killed him.[455]

When the day of the competition came, the chorus would be suitably
dressed at Tisias’ expense; he might perhaps allow them gold
crowns.[456] There might be nine other choroi entering for the prize,
but in the time of Demosthenes this was not common. The whole Athenian
people and many foreigners would be present at the contest, and it
would be an anxious day for choregos, boys, and parents. The State
gave the prizes,[457] usually a tripod, which went to the winning
choregos, who would set it up in some public place with an appropriate
inscription, such as――

     The Oeneid tribe was victorious; a choros of boys.
     Eureimenes, son of Meleteon, was choregos. Nikostratos
     taught.[458]

Or――

     Lusikrates, son of Lusitheides of Kikunna, was choregos. The
     boys of the Acamantid tribe won. Theon played the flute.
     Lusiades taught. Euainetos led.[459]

       *     *     *     *     *

We pass to the position which riding held in Athenian education. The
two richest classes in the State were liable to service in the
cavalry. They had to supply their own horses, which were examined and,
if unfit, rejected; but the State paid them a sum of £8 annually for
maintenance and arms in time of peace. As, however, the number of the
citizen cavalry never rose above 1000, the whole of these two classes
can never have been so employed at once: the remainder served in the
heavy infantry. The two Hipparchoi elected for the year, and their
subordinates, the ten Phularchoi, who each commanded a tribal
contingent, on coming into their office, would note how many of the
thousand who had served in the former year were no longer liable to
service owing to age, and would fill up the vacancies; they would also
make good those gaps which occurred from time to time during their
term of office owing to wounds or death or sudden poverty. To secure a
recruit, they had only to go to some rich and active young man who was
not already serving; if he refused to be enrolled, they could
prosecute him. The training often began before eighteen, for Xenophon
speaks of persuading the recruit’s guardians,[460] from whom he would
be free at that age. So Teles mentions the horse-breaker as among the
teachers of the lad in the secondary stage of education. No doubt it
took some training to make an efficient cavalryman, and the Hipparchoi
liked to take the recruits young; but to keep a stud was the favourite
amusement of a rich young Athenian, and many would learn to ride
without any view to military efficiency. As the Hellenes rode without
stirrups, mounting was one of the great difficulties of the young
rider, and figures chiefly on the vases. Often they used the long
cavalry-spear as a vaulting-pole.[461] Otherwise a groom or the master
gave the pupil a leg up: on a vase[462] in the British Museum the
master is seen simply pushing the boy into his seat. A comic
poet,[463] who has left us a picture of the young recruits learning to
ride under the eye of their Phularchoi, speaks only of mounting and
dismounting.[464] “Go to the Agora,” says the speaker to his slave,
“to the Hermai, where the phularchoi keep coming, and to the pretty
disciples whom Pheidon is teaching to mount their steeds and to get
down again.” Xenophon, among much sound advice to the young rider
about buying, training, and keeping his horse, gives the Hipparchos
the following suggestions:――

     “Persuade the younger men to vault on to their horses. It
     will be best if you supply the teacher for this. The older
     men may be put up by some one else in the Persian way. To
     practise the men in keeping their seats over difficult
     country, frequent riding expeditions are a good thing, but
     will be unpopular. So tell your men to practise by
     themselves whenever they are in the open country. But take
     them out yourself occasionally and test them over all sorts
     of ground. Give them sham fights in different kinds of
     country. In order to make them keen about throwing the
     javelin from horseback,[465] stir up rivalry between the
     different squadrons and give prizes for this and for good
     riding and the like. Above all make yourself and your
     attendant gallopers as smart as possible.”[466]

There were frequent reviews under the eyes of the Boule. In the
race-course at the Lukeion there was a sham fight, each hipparchos
commanding five squadrons which pursued one another, and then charged
front to front, passing through the gaps in one another’s lines.
They had, also, to wheel in line. The review was followed by
javelin-throwing.[467] Another review was held at the Akademeia, on a
course with a hard soil (ὁ ἐπίκροτος [ho epikrotos])――good practice
for cavalry intending to fight in rocky Attica. Here they had, among
other manœuvres, to charge at full gallop and suddenly come to a
halt.[468]

One of the attractions of the cavalry service was the great
Panathenaic procession, where the horsemen played a leading part: an
idealised picture of them may be seen on the frieze of the Parthenon.
Xenophon gives a series of directions how to make the horses prance
and hold their heads up on this great occasion, and suggests devices
in gait which will attract popular notice. This and kindred
processions must have made recruiting for the cavalry easy.

       *     *     *     *     *

_Swimming_ seems to have been, as would naturally be expected, an
exceedingly common accomplishment in the maritime states of Hellas;
even at inland Sparta the boys must have learnt it for their daily
plunge in the Eurotas. According to tradition,[469] there was a law at
Athens that every boy should be taught reading, writing, and swimming:
the proverb for an utter dunce was “he knows neither his letters nor
how to swim.”[470] Herodotos distinctly implies that all Hellenes knew
how to swim. “The Hellenic loss at Salamis,” he says, “was small. For,
as they knew how to swim (as opposed to the barbarians who did not),
when their ships were destroyed, they swam over to the island.”[471]
He takes it as a matter of course that every sailor could swim. The
whole crew of a captured trireme during the Peloponnesian War as often
as not jumped overboard and escaped by swimming.[472] In a story in
Athenaeus the boys of Lasos, on coming out of the wrestling-school, go
off together for a bathe and begin to dive. A friend of Aristippos
used to boast to him of his diving.[473] During the blockade of
Sphakteria by the Athenian fleet, numbers of Helots swam over from the
mainland to the island under water.[474] Scanty and scrappy as they
are, these details show that swimming must have been taught to most
boys, at any rate if they were ever likely to serve in a fleet. Plato
twice[475] uses a metaphor drawn from a man swimming on his back,
showing that this method was known. When a young disputant is being
severely handled in a discussion, Sokrates intervenes, “wishing to
give the boy a rest, since he saw that he was getting a severe ducking
and he feared that he might lose heart.”[476] The phrase suggests that
the sight of boys learning to swim was familiar. They could learn
either in the innumerable creeks and bays of the sea, or in the lakes
and rivers, or in diving-pools.[477] There were also various
“gymnastic games” which young people played in the water
together;[478] but of their nature nothing is known.

It cannot reasonably be doubted that in the maritime states a large
proportion of the boys, at any rate of the lower classes, were taught
to _row_, since each trireme required a crew of 200, nearly all of
whom had to use the oar. In the good old days, according to
the _Wasps_, the main object was to be a good oar,[479] and
rowing-blisters were a sign of patriotism.[480] In an emergency, the
Athenians could make the whole citizen force under a certain age
embark on the fleet and could win a victory with these rowers; this
would have been impossible if the average citizen had been ignorant of
rowing.[481] On such occasions many even of the Hippeis embarked:
Aristophanes jestingly asserts that in an expedition to Korinth the
horses tried also, shouting, “Gee-ho, put your backs into it. Do more
work, Dobbin.”[482] Before the close of the war,[483] Charon, the
ferryman of Styx, assuming that every Hellene knows the way to row,
makes the souls of the departed row themselves across. Boat-races were
certainly known at this period. A client of Lusias asserts that he has
won a race with a trireme off Cape Sounion.[484] Probably the
trierarchoi, the rich men appointed to fit out the State navy, either
voluntarily or by regular custom, made the ships race one another.
Thus the races would be as much inter-tribal contests as the
dithyrambs or torch-races. Two crews of the epheboi of a later date
used to race in the two sacred triremes. The vessels sailing out for
the Sicilian expedition raced as far as Aigina.[485] A fragment of
Plato the comic poet[486] refers to similar contests:

  Thy high-heaped tomb on this fair promontory
  Shall take the greetings of our far-flung fleets,
  And watch the merchants sailing out and in,
  And be spectator when the galleons race.


EXCURSUS I

The “gumnasiarchoi” have created some confusion among those who have
discussed Attic ways. Some authorities would make them rich men
performing a “leitourgia” and holding a similar position to the
trierarchoi and choregoi: others make them officials appointed to
superintend the gymnasia.

The gumnasiarchia is certainly reckoned among leitourgiai as a general
rule. A speaker in Lusias,[487] giving a list of these duties which he
had performed, says: “I supplied a chorus of men at the Thargelia, a
chorus of war-dancers at the Panathenaia, a cyclic chorus at the
little Panathenaia, I was Gumnasiarchos for the Prometheia and was
victorious, then choregos with a chorus of boys, then with beardless
war-dancers at the little Panathenaia.” In Andokides[488] a
gumnasiarchos at the Hephaisteia is mentioned. The author of the
treatise on the Athenian constitution says:[489] “In the case of the
choregiai, gumnasiarchiai, and trierarchiai, the Athenians realise
that the rich fill the offices and the populace serve under them and
get the benefit. So the populace claims to be paid for singing and
running and dancing and sailing in the ships.” Now “singing and
dancing” belong to the choregiai, and “sailing in the ships” to the
trierarchiai. So “running” is left for the gumnasiarchiai. The main
feature of the yearly festivals of Hephaistos and Prometheus, which
the two earlier passages gave as the scene of the duties of the
gumnasiarchos, was a torch-race. It may thus be inferred that the duty
of the gumnasiarchos was to collect, and train, a team of his own
tribe for the torch-race at these festivals.[490] In connection with
this duty, they could prosecute members of their team, or any one who
interfered with them, for impiety before the Archon Basileus,[491]
since the race was a religious function. They were thus in the
sacrosanct position which Demosthenes as choregos claims for himself
in his speech against Meidias.

So far the gumnasiarchos is an ordinary performer of a leitourgia, and
his duties are confined to providing a tribal team for the torch-races
at the Prometheia and Hephaisteia. His team, usually at any rate,
consisted of epheboi, as we learn from an inscription describing the
victory of Eutuchides with his epheboi.[492]

       *     *     *     *     *

There is also the law quoted as Solon’s in Aischines’ speech against
Timarchos.[493] “The gumnasiarch_ai_ (note that it is a different
word) “are not to allow any one over age to keep company with the boys
at the festival of Hermes in any way whatsoever: if he does not keep
all such persons out of the gymnasia, the gumnasiarch_es_ shall be
liable to the law that prescribes penalties for those who corrupt free
boys.” But the orator himself only mentions paidotribai, and special
enactments dealing with the Hermaia; there is no mention of a
gumnasiarches. The law itself is an addition made in a later period
when there was a special officer to control the gymnasia. But there is
no evidence for such an official in the days of the independence of
Hellas.

One interesting passage remains. “I was gumnasiarchos in my deme,” or
country district, says a speaker in Isaios.[494] There must therefore
have been local torch-races, for which rich men were called upon to
pay and train teams, just as there were certainly local theatrical
performances. The passage opens up a prospect of vigorous athletic
life throughout the country districts and villages of Attica.


     [332] Plato, _Rep._ 556 B-D.

     [333] Xen. _Mem._ iii. 12. 1.

     [334] Plato, _Phaidr._ 239 c.

     [335] Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 289.

     [336] Solon reduced this endowment to 500 drachmai for an
     Olympian victor, 100 for an Isthmian (Plut. _Solon_, 23).

     [337] Plut. _Quaest. Rom._ 40.

     [338] Plato, _Laws_, 807 c.

     [339] For this their vast appetites were partly responsible.
     Milo and Theagenes each ate a whole ox in a single day
     (Athen. 412 f). Astuanax the pankratiast ate what was meant
     for nine guests (_ibid._ 413 b).

     [340] Xen. _Banquet_, ii. 17.

     [341] Galen, _On Medic. and Gym._ § 33 (ed. Kühn. v. 870).

     [342] Philos. _On Gymnastics_, 54.

     [343] Pausan. v. 21. 10.

     [344] Pind. _Olymp._

     [345] Pindar, frag.

     [346] Fragment of _Autolukos_.

     [347] A very bold attack on the Olympian games, which must
     have caused a sensation in the theatre.

     [348] Aristot. _Pol._ vii. 16. 13.

     [349] Lukourg. _ag. Leok._ 51.

     [350] [Xen.] _Constit. of Athens_, i. 13.

     [351] κατέλυσε [katelyse] must mean this, as in [Andok.]
     _ag. Alkibiades_, where that gentleman is said to be
     καταλύων τὰ γυμνάσια [katalyôn ta gymnasia] by his bad
     example.

     [352] See end of Aristoph. _Wasps_.

     [353] As shown by the beginning of Plato, _Lusis_, 203 B.

     [354] Aristoph. _Birds_, 141.

     [355] Antiphon, _Second Tetralogy_.

     [356] The law quoted in Aischines _ag._ _Timarchos_ is
     spurious, being a later interpolation; it cannot therefore
     be used as evidence.

     [357] [Xen.] _Constit. of Athens_, ii. 10.

     [358] The division of the boys into classes by age in the
     contests points to such a usage. Cp. the ἡλικίαι [hêlikiai]
     at Teos.

     [359] Later, this was done by a special official, the
     ἀλειπτής [aleiptês].

     [360] Aristot. _Pol._ iv. 1. 1.

     [361] _e.g._ Plato, _Gorg._ 504 A; _Protag._ 313 D; Aristot.
     _Pol._ iii. 16. 8.

     [362] Plato, _Gorg._ 452 B.

     [363] The paidotribes is distinguished from the gumnastes as
     the schoolmaster from the crammer. The gumnastes coached
     pupils chiefly for the great games, while the paidotribes
     presided over physical training generally, especially of
     boys, but sometimes of epheboi. See the elaborate discussion
     in Grasberger, i. 263-268.

     [364] Plato, _Protag._ 313 A.

     [365] _Ibid._ 326 C.

     [366] ἀποδυτήριον [apodytêrion].

     [367] See Thompson, Plato, _Phaedr._ 239 C., and Eur.
     _Bacch._ 456.

     [368] Illustr. Plate VI. A.

     [369] Illustr. Plates VI. A and VI. B.

     [370] See especially the Panathenaic vases in the British
     Museum.

     [371] _e.g._ Brit. Mus. E 288.

     [372] Brit Mus. B 361, E 427, E 288.

     [373] Illustr. Plate VIII.

     [374] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 4.

     [375] Aristoph. _Clouds_, 973.

     [376] _Anthol. Palat._ xiii. 222.

     [377] Herod, vi. 127-129.

     [378] Athen. 629 B.

     [379] Xen. _Banquet_, ii. 19.

     [380] Plato, _Laws_, 830 C.

     [381] Philostratus, _On Gymnastics_, 55.

     [382] Galen, _De sanit. tuend._ ii. 8.

     [383] Grasberger, i. 154.

     [384] Described at length, Grasberger, i. 84-98.

     [385] Aristoph. _Knights_, 1238.

     [386] See Illustr. Plate VI. A for a wrestling lesson.
     Lucian, _Ass._ 8-11.

     [387] Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Grenfell and Hunt, Part III. No.
     466 (1903). The papyrus is of the second century.

     [388] _Anthol. Palat._ xii. 206.

     [389] Isok. _Antid._ 184.

     [390] See Illustr. Plate VI. B for a pankration lesson.

     [400] Plut. _Alkib._ ii. 3.

     [401] See Illustr. Plate VII.

     [402] See Illustr. Plate V. B.

     [403] Illustr. Plate V. A.

     [404] Illustr. Plate V. B.

     [405] Athen. 584 C, referring to about 320 B.C.

     [406] Aristoph. _Peace_, 357.

     [407] Zeno in Athen. 561 C.

     [408] Athen. 609 D.

     [409] ἀποδυτήριον [apodytêrion]. See Plato, _Charmides_, 153
     ff.

     [410] κατάστεγος δρόμος [katastegos dromos]. Plato,
     _Euthud._ 273 A.

     [411] Theodoros (Plato, _Theait._).

     [412] This was often done outside (Plato, _Theait._ 144 C).
     The oil-room (ἐλαιοθέσιον [elaiothesion]) of Vitruvius may
     be a later invention. This preliminary anointing was called
     ξηραλοιφεῖν [xêraloiphein]. After the baths they rubbed
     themselves with a mixture of oil and water; this was
     χυτλοῦσθαι [chytlousthai].

     [413] See Xen. _Banquet_, 1. 7.

     [414] Aristoph. _Knights_, 492.

     [415] Philostratus, _On Gymnastics_, 56. It was usual to be
     dusted before wrestling.

     [416] Xen. _Banquet_.

     [417] For a good bathing scene, see Brit. Mus. Vase E 83.
     Also E 32.

     [418] Philostratus, _On Gymnastics_, 57.

     [419] Plato, _Laws_, 830 C.

     [420] Particular Sophists attached themselves to particular
     gymnasia and palaistrai which they came to regard as their
     schools. Mikkos has already occupied the newly-built
     palaistra in the _Lusis_, 204 A. Cp. Plato’s position at the
     Akademeia and Aristotle’s at the Lukeion.

     [421] αὐλή [aulê] (Plato, _Lusis_, 206 E).

     [422] κονίστρα [konistra].

     [423] Plato, _Laws_, 830 B.

     [424] For the excitement of the spectators and their shouts
     of encouragement see Isok. _Euag._ 32.

     [425] Some gymnasia provided a large “Room of the Epheboi.”
     So in Vitruvius’ model.

     [426] Athen. 495-6.

     [427] Plato, _Polit._ 294 D, E.

     [428] But by the end of the fourth century the teacher of
     arms becomes an important individual in the training of the
     epheboi.

     [429] Plato, _Euthud._ 273 A.

     [430] Xen. _Econ._ iii. 13.

     [431] Xen. _Econ._ xi. 18; _Banquet_, i. 7, ix. 1.

     [432] σφαιριστήριον [sphairistêrion].

     [433] Athen. 20 f.

     [434] Brit. Mus. E 83, for a picture of this in use.

     [435] χυτλοῦσθαι [chytlousthai].

     [436] Athen. 566 e.

     [437] _Hunting with Hounds_, passim. So Plato in the _Laws_,
     with reservations.

     [438] Plato, _Laws_, 795 E.

     [439] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 729.

     [440] Lucian, _On Dancing_, 15.

     [441] Athen. 20 d.

     [442] Plato, _Rep._ 396 A, B.

     [443] Antiphon, _The Choreutes_, 11.

     [444] Xen. _Banquet_, ii. 17.

     [445] Lakonian and Attic (Herod. vi. 129); Persian (Xen.
     _Anab._ vi. 1. 10); Troizenìan Epizephurian Lokrian, Cretan,
     Ionian, Mantinean in Lucian, _On Dancing_, 22.

     [446] Not necessarily nude, for γυμνός [gymnos] only
     represents the absence of the armour used in the War-dance.

     [447] Plato, _Laws_, 815 A.

     [448] Lucian, _On Dancing_, 8.

     [449] Lucian, _On Dancing_, 8.

     [450] The dance known as γυμνοπαιδική [gymnopaidikê] is
     described in Athen. 631 b, as including representations of
     wrestling. In 678 b, c, the festival of the Γυμνοπαιδίαι
     [Gymnopaidiai], and the dances in it are referred to, but no
     mention is there made of wrestling.

     [451] Athen. 630 d.

     [452] This sketch is drawn chiefly from Antiphon, _The
     Choreutes_.

     [453] Demos. _ag. Midias_, 533.

     [454] Rivals sometimes tried to interrupt the lessons or
     bribe the teacher (Demos. _Mid._ 535).

     [455] The situation of Antiphon’s speech.

     [456] Demos. _Mid._ 520.

     [457] Xen. _Hiero_, ix. 4.

     [458] Böckh, 212.

     [459] _Ibid._ 221.

     [460] Xen. _Hipparch._ i. 11.

     [461] Illustr. Plate IX.

     [462] Brit. Mus. E 485.

     [463] Mnesimachos, _Hippotrophos_ (Athen. 402 f).

     [464] See Illustr. Plates X. A, X. B and the Frontispiece
     for scenes in a riding-school.

     [465] The mark was a suspended shield, Brit. Mus.
     Prize-Amphora 7, Room IV.

     [466] A rough summary of Xen. _Hipparch._ i. 15-26.

     [467] Xen. _Hipparch._ iii. 6.

     [468] Xen. _Hipparch._ iii. 14.

     [469] Petit, _Leg. Att._ ii. 4.

     [470] Plato, _Laws_, 689 D.

     [471] Herod. viii. 89.

     [472] _e.g._ Thuc. iv. 25.

     [473] Diogenes Laert. ii. 8. 73.

     [474] Thuc. iv. 26.

     [475] Plato, _Rep._ 529 C; _Phaidr._ 264 A.

     [476] Plato, _Euthud._ 277 D.

     [477] Plato, _Rep._ 453 D.

     [478] Galen, _de loc. aff._ iv. 8. See Grasberger, i. 151.

     [479] Aristoph. _Wasps_, 1095.

     [480] _Ibid._ 1119.

     [481] Xen. _Hellen._ i. 6. 24.

     [482] Aristoph. _Knights_, 600.

     [483] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 200-271, describes a rowing lesson.

     [484] _Lus._ 21. 5.

     [485] Thuc. vi. 32.

     [486] Plut. _Themist._ 32.

     [487] Lusias, speech 21. 1-2.

     [488] Andok. 17. 20.

     [489] [Xen.] _Constit. of Athen._ i. 13.

     [490] So
       lampadi γυμνασιαρχεῖν λαμπάδι [gymnasiarchein].――Isaios,
          _Philoktemon_, 62. 60.
       γυμνασιαρχεῖσθαι εὐ ταῖς λαμπάσιν [gymnasiarcheisthai eu
          tais lampasin].――Xen. _Revenues_, 4. 52.
       λάμπάδι νικήσας γυμνασιαρχῶν [lampadi nikêsas
          gymnasiarchôn].――Böckh, 257.

     [491] Dem. _ag. Lakritos_, 940; Aristot. Ἀθ. Πολ. [Ath.
     Pol.] 57.

     [492] Böckh, 243.

     [493] Aesch. _Tim._ 12.

     [494] Isaios, _Menekles_, § 42. See Wyse’s edition on the
     passage.



CHAPTER V

SECONDARY EDUCATION: I. THE SOPHISTS


At fourteen or soon after, it was usual for the ordinary course of
letters and lyre-playing to terminate: the gymnastic lessons might be
carried on till old age interrupted them. During the first
three-quarters of the fifth century, the lad, on leaving school, was
left to live more or less as he pleased, if he was rich enough not to
have to work for his living: the sons of poorer citizens at this age,
if not before, settled down to learn a trade or engaged in
merchandise. Rich boys, no doubt, spent most of their time in athletic
pursuits; riding and chariot-driving were favourite amusements. But
with the Periclean age arose a violent desire for a further course of
intellectual study, and a system of secondary education arose, to
occupy the four years which elapsed between the time when the lad
finished his primary education and the time when the State summoned
him to undergo his two years of military training.

Many of the primary schools of the better sort started courses of
study for lads, providing, no doubt, separate class-rooms, or else the
younger boys attended at different hours from those at which the elder
pupils assembled. Probably some such provision had been made much
earlier for those who wished to obtain a more advanced knowledge of
literature and music than was offered by the primary schools. But in
the time of Sokrates many masters seemed to have held classes for lads
as well as for boys. On entering the schools of Dionusios,[495] the
master of letters, Sokrates finds a class of lads assembled here.[496]
They all belong to noble families: the poor were no doubt unable to
afford education of this sort. Two of the lads were busy discussing a
point of astronomy, and were quoting the authority of Oinopides[497]
and Anaxagoras, for Sokrates catches these two names as he enters the
room. They were drawing circles on the ground and imitating the
inclination of some orbit or other with their hands. This scene shows
a much more advanced sort of study than was usual at the primary
school of letters. The Sophists seem to have often lectured in
class-rooms.

More often secondary education was imparted, not in the regular
schools by regular, established masters, but by the wandering savants,
who taught every conceivable subject, and were all grouped together
under the general name of Sophists.[498] From this category the
mathematicians and astronomers, who in all respects occupied the same
position, are often excluded. This is due to the authority of Plato,
who, while detesting the other subjects taught as secondary education,
had a great affection for mathematics and astronomy, the only subjects
which he prescribes for lads in the _Republic_ and _Laws_. But
Aristophanes, taking a more logical position, includes geometry and
astronomy among the subjects taught by the burlesque Sophists of the
_Clouds_. In point of fact, secondary education included any subject
that the lad or his parents desired; and the wandering professors who
imparted it, and even established teachers like Isokrates, who kept
permanent secondary schools at Athens, were all alike, in the popular
view, Sophists.

But the more important subjects do naturally fall into two great
groups, Mathematics and Rhetoric. Mathematics, as may be seen from the
_Republic_, meant, as a part of secondary education, the Science of
Numbers, Geometry, and Astronomy, with a certain amount of the theory
of Music, which, owing partly to Pythagorean traditions, was classed
with mathematics. We have already seen a class learning Astronomy.
Plato, in the _Theaitetos_,[499] supplies a sketch of a lesson in more
advanced arithmetic, which, by Hellenic custom, was usually expressed
in geometrical terms in order to obtain the assistance of a diagram.
The lad Theaitetos says to Sokrates that Theodorus of Kurene, the
great contemporary mathematician, had been teaching him. “He was
giving us a lesson in Roots, with diagrams, showing us that the root
of 3 and the root of 5 did not admit of linear measurement by the foot
(that is, were not rational). He took each root separately up to 17.
There, as it happened, he stopped. So the other pupil and I
determined, since the roots were apparently infinite in number, to try
to find a single name which would embrace all these roots.

“We divided all number into two parts. The number which has a square
root we likened to the geometrical square, and called ‘square and
equilateral’ (_e.g._ 4, 9, 16). The intermediate numbers, such as 3
and 5 and the rest which have no square root, but are made up of
unequal factors, we likened to the rectangle with unequal sides, and
called rectangular numbers.” And so on. As the pupils apply the same
principle to cubes and cube roots, Theodorus must have initiated them
into the mysteries of solid geometry also.

Here we find a professor lecturing to a select class, in this case of
only two lads, and his pupils, as in the class-room of Dionusios,
discussing and elaborating among themselves afterwards the
subject-matter of the lecture. Theodoros is mentioned as teaching
Geometry, Astronomy, and the theory of Music, as well as the Science
of Numbers. Geometry by this time included a good number of the easier
propositions which were afterwards incorporated in the works of
Euclid; the school of Pythagoras, and, later, that of Plato, did much
to develop it. The problem of squaring the circle was already
occupying attention.[500] Compasses and the rule were the ordinary
geometrical implements: diagrams were drawn on the ground, on dust or
sand. In Arithmetic surds[501] were a popular subject: but
arithmetical problems, being usually expressed in terms of geometry
plane or solid, become as a rule a part of the latter science.

To Plato these mathematical studies are alone suitable for secondary
education: the philosopher Teles,[502] carrying on the same tradition,
makes arithmetic and geometry the special plagues of the lad.[503] But
then the philosophers despised Rhetoric.

Rhetoric, from the time of Gorgias onwards, formed a very large part
of secondary education Isokrates was its greatest professor. He
provided in his school a course of three or four years for lads, to
occupy their time till they were epheboi. But the methods, the aims,
and the personality of this interesting professor will be discussed
later.

       *     *     *     *     *

Besides mathematics and rhetoric, there were literary studies. The
_Axiochos_ gives κριτικοί [kritikoi] among the teachers of a lad.
These are the lecturers on literary subjects, who concerned themselves
with interpretations, often far-fetched, of the poets; a summary of
the literary discussion in the _Protagoras_ may give some idea of such
a lesson.

“PROTAGORAS. I consider that it is a most important part of a man’s
education to be skilled in poetry; to understand, that is, what is
rightly said, and what is not, by the poets. Simonides says to Skopas,
son of Kreon the Thessalian, ‘To become indeed a good man is hard, a
man foursquare, wrought without blame in hands and feet and mind.’ You
know the poem? Do you know then that farther on in the same poem he
says, ‘But the saying of Pittakos, wise though he was, seems to me not
said aright: he said, “’Tis hard to be noble.”’ Don’t you see that the
poet has contradicted himself?”

Sokrates replies by distinguishing “being” from “becoming,” and
suggests that χαλεπός [chalepos] (hard) may mean not “difficult” but
“bad.” He then gives a lecture in his turn. He picks out a μέν [men]
in the first line and puts it into a most unwarrantable position in
his translation, and makes “indeed” go with “hard.” To become good is
difficult but possible, to be and remain good quite impossible. Hence
Simonides goes on to say that he is quite satisfied with those who do
no positive harm. Sokrates also notes a philological point, that
ἐπαίνημι [epainêmi] in the poem is a Lesbian Aeolic form, justified
because the poem is addressed to a citizen of Mitulene. It may be
remarked that Hippias also possessed a lecture on the subject. A
lecture on Homer by a Sophist is mentioned by Isokrates: such lectures
were frequently given by the rhapsodes.

Grammar was also taught, and the right use of words. Less usual
subjects were geography,[504] art, and metre. Logic was in its
infancy, but the growing lad could practise himself in argument by
listening to the disputes of the dialecticians. Current conversation
was full of ethical and political discussions: in the fourth century
there were the philosophical schools of Plato and, later, of
Aristotle, and the lectures of Antisthenes the cynic in Kunosarges;
and Isokrates taught political science. Lads seem to have been
expected to learn something, at any rate, of the laws of their
country: no doubt they were taken up to the Akropolis to read Solon’s
code: occasionally they may have been present as spectators in the
law-courts, in order that they might gain an idea of legal procedure.
Those who intended to become speech-writers for the courts would
doubtless learn more: they would also attend some well-known writer
like Lusias or Isaios, and learn the art of forensic rhetoric.

It must be clearly understood that the whole of this secondary
education was purely voluntary. The parent need not send his lad to
hear any teaching of the sort: the poorer classes certainly would not.
The richer parents could choose what subjects they or their sons
preferred: rhetoric or literature, geography or mathematics――it was
all one to the State. Teachers came and went: few stayed in Athens
long. Their pupils had either to follow them abroad, as Isokrates went
to Gorgias in Thessaly, or wait for their next visit. It was only the
schools of Isokrates, of the great philosophers, and of a few
speech-writers like Lusias and Isaios, that had any permanence in
Athens. Isokrates himself had taught in Chios for a time: Plato was
more than once in Sicily, and his school had to do without him in his
absence. There is a peculiar fluidity about secondary education in
Hellas: the teachers are always on the move. Endowed buildings for
them there were none: they taught in their own houses and gardens, or
in those of rich hosts, or in school-rooms borrowed for the occasion,
or in public resorts like the gymnasia, or even in the streets.
Consistent or continuous instruction was the exception: the Sophists
proper gave it only to a few. The average lad at this time naturally
acquired a wide and superficial knowledge of a great number of
subjects, just the amount of knowledge which is such a dangerous
thing. The lads became Jacks-of-all-trades: Plato, struck with the
educational error of wide superficiality, wrote the _Republic_ as a
counterblast, preaching “One man, one trade.” This protest is largely
directed against the specious superficiality of the Sophists’
teaching.

Consequently, secondary education fell into two halves, the fluid
teaching of the wandering Sophists and the continuous teaching of the
more stationary schools of Plato and Isokrates. It will be convenient
to accept this division, and take the fluid half first. In subjects,
the two must overlap one another: the Sophists taught logic as much as
Plato, rhetoric as much as Isokrates, and universal information of
very much the same range as Aristotle. But the method was different,
just because as a rule the Sophist was here to-day and gone to-morrow,
while the stationary teachers taught the same pupils for several years
together and could study their particular idiosyncrasies, and the
value of education depends very largely on the teacher’s understanding
of, and sympathy with, the individual boys whom he teaches.

It is of interest to trace the development of the term Sophia and of
the Sophists who professed it.

The earliest thoughts of the Hellenic peoples were enshrined in
hexameter verse. Homer and Hesiod represent the science and
philosophy, as well as the religion, of their age. The poetical
tradition survived in philosophy as late as Parmenides and Empedokles:
the last trace of it may perhaps be found in the myths of Plato. The
religious and ritual thinkers and the composers of oracles also
employed verse. Consequently “wisdom,” in the earliest Hellenic
literature, is mainly associated with poetry and music, and the words
σοφοί [sophoi] and σοφισταί [sophistai] are applied indiscriminately
to poets.[505] This sense of σοφιστής [sophistês] survived in later
times, and Protagoras could call Homer, Hesiod, Mousaios, Orpheus, and
Simonides all alike by this title. Orpheus is so styled in the
_Rhesos_. Phrunichos called Lampros the musician a “hyper-sophist,”
and Athenaeus declares that Sophist was a general title for all
students of music.

A second use of the word “wise man” had also existed from the earliest
times, by which it had been applied to those who were skilful in some
particular craft, such as carpentering,[506] medicine,[507] or
chariot-driving.[508]

The “Seven Sages” also received the name of Sophist,[509] and in their
age the cognate words σοφός [sophos] and σοφία [sophia] became
connected with practical and political wisdom.[510]

Then the rise of education in Hellas, in which these old poets and
thinkers were largely employed, and the analogy of the other
educational titles with similar endings, γραμματιστής [grammatistês]
and κιθαριστής [kitharistês], gave the word σοφιστής [sophistês] an
association with the teaching profession. Scientific knowledge was
beginning to accumulate. Sufficient history was known to serve as a
foundation for political theory and precept. Rhetoric was becoming an
essential preliminary to political life, since, with the rise of
democracy, persuasion became the dominating influence in law-courts
and assemblies. The desire for knowledge was never so keen as during
the latter half of the fifth century in Hellas. With the demand came
the men. All over the Hellenic world arose professional teachers, who
carried the knowledge, which they had learnt from one another or
discovered for themselves, from city to city. Everywhere their
lectures attracted large and enthusiastic crowds. Among the subjects
which they studied and taught may be mentioned mathematics (including
arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy), grammar, etymology, geography,
natural history, the laws of metre and rhythm, history (under which
head fell also mythology and genealogies), politics, ethics, the
criticism of religion, mnemonics, logic, tactics and strategy, music,
drawing and painting, scientific athletics, and, above all, rhetoric.
To such a heterogeneous collection what name could be given but
“wisdom,” σοφία [sophia]? The name Sophist was applied indiscriminately
to all these secondary teachers.

There are several interesting accounts of these Sophists in extant
literature, but the writers are always prejudiced opponents.

In the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, the Sophists and their pupils are
represented as living in an underground Thinking-Shop. They are pale
and squalid, engaged in all sorts of researches. Natural history is
represented by the important question, “How many times the length of
its own foot does a flea jump?” a problem which is solved by actual
experiment. Later in the play they inquire why the sea does not
overflow, since the rivers are always running into it. Scientific
instead of mythological explanations of thunder and lightning are
given. There is religious criticism too, such as Xenophanes had
uttered long before: “If Zeus imprisoned his own father, why has he
not been punished?” There is astronomy, “the paths and orbit of the
sun,” and a hanging basket is introduced as an observatory. Geometry
and compasses are mentioned. The visitor is shown a map of the world,
containing Euboia, Lakedaimon, and Attica on a large enough scale, it
would seem, to mark the deme Kikunna; perhaps, as Strepsiades expects
to find dikastai on it at Athens, it had pictures of elephants and
monsters in unknown districts. The students are interested in metres
and rhythms. The poet laughs at grammar, forming “cockess” as the
logical feminine of cock, and making the chief Sophist object to
feminine nouns with masculine terminations. It is suggested that the
pupils at the Thinking-Shop are dirty, half-starved vegetarians, too
economical to go to the hair-cutter or the baths, abstaining from wine
and the gymnasia. But the main point attacked by Aristophanes is the
teaching of Argument. The whole object of learning under the Sophists
is, according to him, to be able to cajole the dikastai and so win
impunity to cheat, and to have an argument to justify anything. The
successful scholars beat their fathers and mothers, giving logical
reasons for their behaviour; they refuse to go to school, and are too
clever to believe or accept anything. But their intellectual
exhilaration is spasmodic; they have been taught, if they reach a
difficult problem, to jump on to something else.

A vivid sketch of Sophist-life is given in Plato’s _Protagoras_. Young
Hippokrates, on returning to Athens in the evening after pursuing a
runaway slave to the frontier, hears that Protagoras the great Sophist
has arrived in the city. Only the lateness of the hour deters him from
rushing off to find Sokrates, who will give him an introduction to the
teacher. Next morning he comes round to Sokrates’ house long before it
is light, bangs and shouts at the door in his excitement, and
announces that he is ready to spend all the money which he and all his
friends possess, in fees.

They go off to the house of Kallias, where Protagoras and other
Sophists are staying. The porter is so worn out by the number of
visitors that he is distinctly rude. They find Protagoras walking up
and down in the cloisters of the house, with three or four listeners
on either side, one of whom is learning to be a Sophist himself.
Behind follows a crowd, mostly composed of the foreigners whom he
draws from city to city, like Orpheus, with his magic voice. Another
Sophist, Hippias, is sitting on a sort of throne in the opposite part
of the cloisters; around him on benches are a number of inquirers, who
were asking him questions about natural science and astronomy. A third
Sophist, Prodikos, is in a side-building, still in bed, covered up in
blankets.[511] His audience sat on neighbouring beds. The whole
assemblage finally collect couches and benches together in a great
circle to hear a discussion between Sokrates and Protagoras. Kallias,
the host on this occasion, often entertained Sophists: at another time
he had Gorgias and Polos in the house. His cloisters must have
provided a favourite lecture-room. The Sophists also haunted the
gymnasia. The discussion in the _Euthudemos_ takes place in the
undressing-room of the Lukeion: the two Sophists have been walking in
the cloister. Hippias on one occasion lectures in a school-room, on
another in a public place at Olympia.

Protagoras was the first of these teachers to take pay. His system was
very fair. On the close of their course of instruction his pupils, if
they chose, paid the fee for which he asked; otherwise, they went into
a temple, and, after taking an oath, paid as much as they said his
instruction was worth.[512] Hippias made about £600 in a very short
time in Sicily, receiving some £80 from the tiny town of Inukos,
although Protagoras was also lecturing in the island at the time.
Prodikos charged £2 for a particular lecture on correct speech,[513]
but there was also a less complete form of it which cost only 10d.; he
seems to have been noted for the gradations in his charges, for there
were also lectures at 5d., 1s. 8d., and 3s. 4d.[514] The sum which
Euenos of Paros asked for teaching the whole duties of a man and a
citizen was £20.[515] Probably, however, the charges of these
Sophists, and the money which they made, were much exaggerated by
their contemporaries. Isokrates, the pupil of Gorgias, gives a much
lower estimate. “None of the so-called Sophists,” he says, “will be
found to have collected much money. On the contrary, some passed their
lives in poverty and the rest in quite ordinary circumstances. The
richest Sophist within my memory was Gorgias. He spent most of his
time in Thessaly, the most prosperous part of Hellas. He lived to a
great age and followed his profession for a great many years. He did
not take upon himself any public burdens by settling in any one city.
He did not marry or have children to bring up. Yet with all these
opportunities of growing wealthy, he only left about £800 at his
death.”[516] It must be remembered that the Sophists received money
only from those who definitely enrolled themselves as pupils or came
to a few advertised lectures. Hippias lectured at Sparta frequently,
and never received a penny. Any one might go and ask a Sophist a
question, and would almost always receive a voluminous answer. The
eloquence and practical skill of these men were also always at the
disposal of their own city. Like the greater Renaissance scholars,
Hippias, Gorgias, and Prodikos were much occupied in going on
embassies. For the larger part of their life-work they received no
payment whatever; what they actually received was possibly less than
what their philosophic opponents obtained in donations from friendly
tyrants.

At any rate, their fees were not heavy enough to damp the ardour of
their pupils. Young men left their relations and friends to follow
Sophists from city to city. These enthusiastic disciples were almost
ready to carry their teachers about on their shoulders, so great was
their affection for them. Why this enthusiasm? Partly because the
Sophists were men of great personal charm. Partly because in that age
the thirst for knowledge was unbounded. Partly from a desire to learn
the way of virtue, which the Sophists claimed to teach. But the most
potent reason was ambition. The young wished to shine in conversation,
the great occupation of the age, and to be able to discuss every
conceivable topic with intelligence. But education was also the road
to political success. The Sophists taught systematic rhetoric, and
logic of a sort. They also supplied the subject-matter for orations,
in their practical handling of political science, of history, of
ethical commonplaces; for a public oration was expected to be a
storehouse of erudition. Rhetoric was needful not only for power, but
also for security; for in the courts it had more influence than mere
argument and facts.

       *     *     *     *     *

About the individual Sophists little is known. They appear for us only
in the pages of those who traduced them. Plato is mainly occupied with
various conclusions which he draws from their philosophic theories,
which were not a part of their teaching. _Protagoras_, the eldest of
them, a most dignified personage, set himself to train good citizens:
he claimed that he enabled his pupils to manage their households and
govern their states. He imparted to them all the worldly wisdom which
he had gained by long years of personal experience. He made a special
study of political science, no doubt for this purpose, and left a
treatise upon the subject, which was sufficiently excellent for a
certain Aristoxenos to be able to say that Plato had plagiarised most
of the _Republic_ from it.[517] Being businesslike, he favoured
clearness of thought, and studied grammar: he was the first to
separate nouns into the three genders.[518]

_Prodikos_ belonged to the same practical school. He began by teaching
his pupils the right use of words.[519] Thus he told Sokrates not to
use δεινός [deinos] when he meant “clever”; for its proper meaning was
“terrible,” applicable to war, disease, or the like.[520] There is an
amusing skit on his pet subject in Plato.[521] “The audience in a
philosophical debate should give an impartial but not an equal
attention to both speakers; for it is not the same thing. For it is
right to give an impartial hearing, but you ought to incline, not
equally towards both, but rather towards the wiser speaker. I also ask
you to agree, and to discuss, not to dispute. For friends discuss with
friends for friendship’s sake, but enemies dispute. In this way our
meeting will be best conducted. For you, the speakers, would thus win
from the audience most repute, not praise (for repute is without
deception in the minds of the hearers, but praise is an outward
expression of what is often not felt); and we, the audience, would
thus receive most happiness, not pleasure; for happiness is produced
by the mental reception of knowledge and wisdom, pleasure by eating or
by some other pleasant physical state.” It was easy to laugh, but, as
Plato himself shows, these distinctions of meaning were extremely
useful in meeting logical quibbles, and were much needed in
contemporary logic. Besides this, Prodikos was a moral teacher, and
composed the famous _Choice of Herakles_, in which he inculcated the
duty of hard work as opposed to a life of laziness and pleasure. He
was an invalid, but worked on in spite of ill-health; the result was,
perhaps, a certain amount of pessimism.

_Hippias_ was a marvellously all-round genius. He once came to the
Olympian festival with everything that he wore or carried made by
himself, ring, oil bottle, shoes, clothes, a wonderful Persian girdle;
he also brought epic poems, tragedies, dithyrambs, and all sorts of
prose-works.[522] He knew astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, grammar. At
Sparta he taught history and archæology. He had a wonderful system of
mnemonics, by which, if he once heard a string of fifty names, he
could remember them all.[523] He lectured on Homer and other poets. He
also composed a moral discourse, which won great applause at Sparta,
where quibbles or bad morality would have been sternly repressed; it
was afterwards delivered in an Athenian school-room. Hippias was
always ready to answer any question which was put to him, and was
rarely at a loss.

A less prominent Sophist was _Antiphon_, who must be carefully
distinguished from his namesake the Attic orator. He published works
on physics, on concord (ὁμόνοια [homonoia]), and on political science.
The fragments are interesting, and show some popular handling of
ethical teaching. The following extracts[524] will give some idea of
the man:――

     “First among things human I reckon education. For if you
     begin anything whatever in the right way, the end will
     probably be right also. The nature of the harvest depends
     upon the seed you sow. If you plant good education in a
     young body, it bears leaves and fruit the whole life long,
     and no rain or drought can destroy it.”

     “Life is like a day’s sentry-duty, and the length of life is
     comparable to a single day. While our day lasts, we look up
     to the sunlight, then we pass on our duty to our
     successors.”

     “A miser stored up money in a hiding-place, and did not lend
     or use it. Then it was stolen. A man to whom he had refused
     to lend it told him to put a stone in the hiding-place
     instead, and imagine that it was money; it would be just as
     useful.”

Among the Sophists were some apparently who were merely jesters, and
used their brains solely in arousing laughter. It may well be doubted
whether the account which Plato gives of _Euthudemos_ and
_Dionusodoros_ is true to life; but they probably represent a type. As
teachers, no sane man could take them seriously. They had been
gladiators, and had taught forensic rhetoric; afterwards they
discovered a genius for quibbles. They were ready to make out any
statement to be true or false. The respondent may only answer “Yes” or
“No,” and no previous statement could be quoted against them, since
they did not claim to teach anything consistent. A sample[525] of
their arguments will make their methods clearer. “_A._ Your father is
a dog. _B._ So is yours. _A._ If you answer my questions, you will
admit it. Have you a dog? _B._ Yes, a very bad one. _A._ Has it
puppies? _B._ Mongrels like itself. _A._ Then the dog is a father?
_B._ Yes. _A._ Isn’t the dog yours? _B._ Certainly. _A._ Then being
yours and a father, it is your father, and you are the brother of
puppies.” Absurd as it is, such discussions are a good means of
teaching logic, since they make the search for rules intellectually
compulsory.

No doubt there were black sheep among the lesser Sophists, to whom
Plato’s bitter definitions in the _Sophist_ were quite applicable, who
were “hunters after young men of wealth and position, with sham
education as their bait, and a fee for their object, making money by a
scientific use of quibbles in private conversation, while quite aware
that what they were teaching was wrong.” But they do not appear in
extant literature, which has only recorded a very few, and those the
very pick, of the hundreds of Sophists that there must have been in
the Socratic age.[526]

       *     *     *     *     *

The Sophists who have been mentioned so far have been but little
concerned with Rhetoric: they form rather a school of Logic, opposed
to the rhetorical school of _Gorgias_ and his followers.

  [Illustration: PLATE VIII.

  IN THE PALAISTRA: FLUTE-PLAYERS (WITH φορβεία [phorbeia]),
  JAVELIN-THROWER, DISK-THROWER, AND BOXER

  Gerhard’s _Auserlesene Vasenbilder_, cclxxii. Fig. 1.
  From a Kulix, now at Berlin, signed by Epiktetos (No. 2262).]

Of the rise of Rhetoric in Hellas I need say little: the whole subject
has been admirably treated elsewhere.[527] For educational purposes,
Hellenic rhetoric started with several fatal drawbacks and some
counterbalancing advantages. The southern nature of the Hellenes
preferred sensuous charm of sound to logical accuracy of fact; their
rhetoric, arising as it did out of poetry, and modelling itself upon
its literary parent, pandered only too readily to their taste. With
truth it had no more to do than Homer had; its object was to please
the ear by curious rhythms, balanced clauses, parisosis, and all other
possible devices. As long as the form was excellent, no matter how
trivial the subject:[528] mice or salt were good enough for a theme.
The oration must, of course, be full of passion, but that could be
simulated: rhetoric had inherited the legacy of acting from its
parent, Lyric Poetry. So rhetoric became simply a question of style,
not of argument; and since arguments were not required, the strength
or weakness of a case did not matter: rhetoric could make any cause
attractive to a sensuous Hellenic ear by its tricks of style, and thus
make “the weaker cause the stronger.” The method by which its
professors taught their pupils brought out this attitude clearly. They
were accustomed to take an imaginary case, and then to teach their
pupils how to write a speech on either side of it: the extant
“Tetralogies” of Antiphon are examples of the method, which was
excellent educationally; for it is good to see the arguments on both
sides of a case. It was the carelessness about fact and indifference
to truth, and the element of acting, that were so dangerous to the
pupils. These elements certainly wrecked the justice of the Athenian
courts; their effect on Hellenic character was probably equally
unsatisfactory.

Rhetoric also inherited the “gnome” or commonplace, a general
statement about ethics or politics or what not, which could be
developed into a sententious little essay. Budding orators learned to
compose a little store of these and keep them ready for use, to be
inserted in a speech whenever an opportunity occurred. For writing
these essays, a certain amount of independent thought about politics
and ethics was necessary; and both the thought and the essay-writing
were no doubt good for the lads.

The flowery and poetic style, which was the main characteristic of
early Hellenic rhetoric, was the creation of Gorgias. A fragment of a
funeral oration, in which no doubt he put forth all his powers, may be
given as a sample of the sort of thing which his pupils learned to
write:――

“As witness to their deeds these dead set up trophies over the foe,
offerings to Zeus, offered by themselves. They were not unskilled in
natural Ares nor lawful loves nor armèd strife nor beauty-loving
Peace; revering the Gods by Justice, honouring their parents by
Service, just to their countrymen by Equality, faithful to their
friends by Loyalty. Therefore, when they died, love for them died not
with them, but deathless in bodies no longer bodies it lives when they
live no longer.” In the _Encomium on Helen_ we have “fright exceeding
fearful, and pity exceeding tearful, and yearning exceeding painful,”
and “productive of pleasure, destructive of pain.” In the _Palamedes_
Gorgias even uses puns.

His poetical compounds and those of his pupil _Alkidamas_ were famous.
In short, at this time there was no boundary whatever between poetry
and prose: prose, if anything, was the more poetical of the two.

This strange hothouse Euphuistic style of Gorgias took Hellas by
storm, and his influence was enormous: it even half-mastered the
austere mind of Thucydides. As reformed by the greater critical
faculties of his pupil Isokrates, it became the parent of Ciceronian
Latin and so of the prose literature of centuries.

The other rhetorical Sophists of the time are less interesting.
_Likumnios_ and _Polos_, teacher and pupil, seem to have devoted
themselves to questions of rhythm: they employed quaint conceits and
affectations, like Gorgias. _Theodoros_ and _Euenos_ divided and
subdivided the parts of an oration into “confirmation” and “additional
confirmation,” and “by-blames” and “by-panegyrics”: in which work
Polos joined them. _Thrasumachos_ of Chalcedon, who seems to have been
a bigger man altogether, began to attack the psychological side of
rhetoric by studying the questions of pathos and indignation; these
studies he embodied in pamphlets, and no doubt his results were
imparted to his pupils.

One of the beauties of old Hellenic education had been that it did not
make the rich a class apart from the poor by giving a widely different
form of culture. The rise of the Sophists changed all this: their fees
excluded the poor. The odium of resultant class-separation fell upon
the teachers. Their pupils, rich, aristocratic, and cultured, inclined
towards oligarchy. Hellenic sentiment held the teacher responsible for
the whole career of his pupils. So for this reason again the
democracies regarded the Sophists with suspicion, as the trainers of
oligarchs and tyrants. It was chiefly because he had been the teacher
of Kritias and Alkibiades that Sokrates was put to death by the
restored democracy. The persuasive powers which the rhetoricians gave
to their pupils might be, and often were, misused; the pupils might
mislead the Ekklesia into bad policy or the law-courts into injustice
by their eloquence. However much the Sophists might protest that they
taught only rhetoric, not ethics, they were held responsible for the
dishonesty as well as for the eloquence of such pupils. Besides,
rhetoric gave the rich man, who alone could buy it, a most
undemocratic influence in the State. The odium against the Sophists
was increased by their religious and political views. They were free
thinkers in all things. Protagoras was a frank agnostic; Gorgias
believed that nothing whatever existed. Their political theories were
equally revolutionary, full of the idea of Social Contracts and the
right of the one strong man. All this was extremely distasteful to the
majority, who were democratic and orthodox. But it must be remembered
that no such views appeared in lectures: they were confined to an
occasional book or to private conversation. Outwardly the Sophists
were law-abiding and respectable servants of the constitution, and
their lectures were, if anything, rather commonplace.

Thus the prejudice against them was excited partly by their
freethinking and partly by their fees. The first of these two reasons
applied still more to Sokrates and the philosophic schools. But
Sokrates neither asked nor received fees: Plato and Aristotle only
accepted presents. Consequently when the philosophic party tried to
dissociate themselves in the popular mind from the Sophists with whom
they were confounded, they attempted to revive the old Hellenic
prejudice against taking fees for “wisdom,” which had given trouble to
the lyric poets, and to emphasise the money-making aspects of the
Sophists’ profession. This rather absurd appeal to the gallery has
influenced posterity; but it did not win universal acceptation in
Hellas. Aischines still calls Sokrates a Sophist. Under the Roman
Empire “Sophist” became a title of distinction applied to artistic
stylists and teachers like Libanius.


     [495] Plato’s own schoolmaster, Diog. Laert. iii. 5.

     [496] [Plato] _Lovers_, 132.

     [497] Reputed inventor of Euclid i. 12 and 23, and a great
     astronomer.

     [498] Thus the lad Theages, who has learnt letters,
     lyre-playing, and wrestling, is vaguely in search of a
     Sophist, to make him “wise” ([Plato] _Theages_, 121 D, 122
     E).

     [499] Plato, _Theait._ 147 D.

     [500] Aristoph. _Birds_, 1005.

     [501] Plato, _Hipp. Maj._ 303 B.

     [502] Stob. 98, p. 535.

     [503] And learning to ride. He is thinking of the
     aristocratic lad, who would afterwards enter the later
     exclusive ephebic college.

     [504] Among the common amusements of Athenian dinner-parties
     was a geographical game, in which A gave, say, the name of a
     city in Asia beginning with K, and B had to reply with one
     in Europe beginning with the same letter (Athen. 457).

     [505] Pind. _Isthm._ 5 (4) 36. σοφισταί [sophistai]; σοφός
     [sophos], Pind. _Ol._ i. 15; _Pyth._ i. 42. σοφία [sophia],
     _Hymn to Hermes_, and Pind. _Ol._ i. 187.

     [506] Hom. _Il._ 15. 412.

     [507] Pind. _Pyth._ 3. 96.

     [508] _Ibid._ 5. 154.

     [509] In Isokrates, _Antid._ 235.

     [510] As in Theog. 1074.

     [511] He was an invalid.

     [512] Plato, _Protag._ 328 C.

     [513] Plato, _Krat._ 384 E.

     [514] [Plato] _Axioch._ 366 C.

     [515] Plato, _Apol._ iv. 20 B.

     [516] Isok. _Antid._ 156.

     [517] Diog. Laert. iii. 25.

     [518] Aristot. _Rhet._ iii. 3. 5.

     [519] Plato, _Euthud._ 277 E.

     [520] Plato, _Protag._ 341 A.

     [521] _Ibid._ 337 A-C.

     [522] Plato, _Hipp. Min._ 368.

     [523] Plato, _Hipp. Maj._ and _Protag._ 318.

     [524] Quoted in the Teubner Antiphon from Stobaeus. _Flor._
     98. 533. _Flor._ Appendix, 16. 36. This Antiphon comes in
     Xen. _Mem._ i. 6. 1.

     [525] Plato, _Euthud._ 298 D.

     [526] It is not fair to condemn Polos and Thrasumachos on
     the score of the opinions which Plato puts into their
     mouths.

     [527] Jebb, _Attic Orators_.

     [528] Compare Renaissance poetry in Italy.



CHAPTER VI

SECONDARY EDUCATION: II. THE PERMANENT SCHOOLS


Athens was the place in which the fluid educational system of the
Sophists would naturally begin to crystallise. Not only were the
Athenians the keenest and most intellectual of the Hellenes: owing to
the vast trade of their city, merchants, astronomers, inventors,
poets, thinkers of all sorts, poured into it, and men of all trades
and all tongues collected there. Many stayed there for a few days
only, in passing; for Athens was a sort of Clapham Junction in those
days. All these brought a perpetual supply of new ideas into the city,
which the inhabitants were quick to assimilate.

But, possessing all the advantages of a commercial centre, Athens was
free from the disadvantages. The clamour and vulgarity of trade were
confined to the Peiraieus: in the gymnasia or the streets or the
colonnades of Athens the philosopher and the thinker could teach and
meditate in peace, in an atmosphere ennobled by her treasures of
architecture and art and sculpture, which subdued the most blatant
visitor, amid the literary circles which her dramatic contests
attracted and encouraged. Here was an ideal spot for the meeting-place
of the best minds in Hellas and the growth of a great educational
system. The city was an education in itself. Perikles had called
Athens the school of Hellas; the name was now to be justified in its
most literal sense.

Early in the fourth century there arose established secondary schools
in Athens. Plato began to teach Logic and Philosophy, Isokrates
Rhetoric, not for a few weeks at a time, but permanently: their
courses lasted three or four years. Characteristically, there was no
State organisation or interference; Isokrates taught in his own house,
near the Lukeion, Plato in his garden near Kolonos and in the
Akademeia. Their pupils came from all parts of the civilised world,
staying in Athens during their course of study. Plato imposed a
preliminary examination in mathematics upon his pupils; Isokrates only
commended a knowledge of such subjects. The students of these two
schools became recognised features of Athenian life.

Plato led his pupils towards intellectual research and a life of
retirement; the tendency of the school was markedly aristocratic, and
several of the lads became tyrants in after life. Isokrates inculcated
the practical life: his teaching was meant as a preparation for
success in society and politics. But as his school naturally was only
for the comparatively wealthy and leisured classes, it also tended to
be aristocratic; however, it produced some of the leading democratic
statesmen of the day.

Besides these two great schools others grew up. It is hard to
distinguish exactly between the boys who went to Isokrates in order to
learn political speaking and those who went to a “logographos” like
Lusias or Demosthenes to learn forensic oratory. The “logographoi” do
not seem to have claimed to impart culture, but only technical
instruction: they are thus on the boundary line of education. But
Demosthenes went to the “logographos” Isaios to get precisely the
instruction which Isokrates had refused him: so it is hard to make a
clear distinction. I shall therefore give a short sketch of the
“logographoi” also.[529]

By the time that these schools began to establish themselves the
Sophists were beginning to die out. Times were harder in the fourth
century, and fewer people had money to spend on these expensive
teachers. The intellectual movement of the Periclean age had spent
itself, and the desire for universal knowledge was no longer so keen.
Moreover, it is quite probable that settled schools, like that of
Isokrates at Athens, were forming in many of the great centres: it is
known that Isokrates himself taught for a while in Chios. The great
demerit of the Sophists’ teaching, namely, that it was too much in a
hurry and gave no time for personal endeavour on the part of the
pupil, had been recognised: and the result was that the Sophists
settled down in a single place and gave continuous courses of
instruction.

But a good many Sophists of the old type remained, to vex Isokrates by
their criticisms and rivalries. They still came to Athens at the great
festivals, and gave hurried lectures.[530] But they had not the
originality of their predecessors, and people preferred to read the
works of Protagoras or Gorgias for themselves to hearing them repeated
as original by a lecturer. Books were already a serious rival to
lecturing, and were a cause of much searching of heart to Plato:
Isokrates, however, preferred to write himself and so advertise his
school.

Besides the wandering Sophists there were probably a good many
teachers, both of Philosophy and of Rhetoric, established permanently
at Athens. Isokrates mentions casually that all the schools[531]
produce only two or three first-class speakers. In his educational
prospectus, _Against the Sophists_, he criticises these rivals freely.
“They merely try to attract pupils by low fees and big promises. The
speeches which they write themselves are worse than the improvisations
of the wholly untrained, yet they promise to make a complete orator
out of any one who comes to them; for they make no allowance for
natural talent or for experience, but regard eloquence as an exact
science, just like the A B C and equally communicable; whereas it is
really a progressive art, where the same thing must never be said
twice, and its rules must be relative to the occasion and the
circumstances.”[532] It is clear that these rivals committed the
serious crime of underselling Isokrates and also of issuing more
attractive prospectuses; perhaps, too, they are the captious critics
to whom he is always referring.

Isokrates is still more severe on various philosophical teachers; he
cannot mean Plato alone, for he mentions their fees, and Plato made no
charge. There must have been a large number of philosophical
professors, of whom Plato was only the most brilliant. But in many
points Isokrates no doubt meant his denunciations to apply to Plato
also. The summary of his attack is as follows:――“They make impossible
offers, promising to impart to their pupils an exact science of
conduct, by means of which they will always know what to do. Yet for
this science they charge only 3 or 4 μναῖ [mnai] (£12 or £16), a
ridiculously small sum. They try to attract pupils by the specious
titles of the subjects which they claim to teach, such as Justice and
Prudence. But the Justice and the Prudence which they teach are of a
very peculiar sort, and they give a meaning to the words quite
different from that which ordinary people give; in fact, they cannot
be sure about the meaning themselves, but can only dispute about it.
Although they profess to teach Justice, they refuse to trust their
pupils, but make them deposit the fees with a third party before the
course begins.”[533] Here we have a picture of a distinct group of
ethical teachers all trying to work at that Socratic paradox that
virtue is knowledge, and imparting their results to pupils for low
fees.

All these Professors of Ethics seem to have made Mathematics and
Astronomy a part of their course, just as Plato did. “To the old
Athenian education, of Letters and Music and Gymnastics, they have
added a more advanced course, consisting of Geometry and Astronomy and
such subjects, together with eristic dialogues,” that is,
Dialectic.[534] This course seems to have been much criticised as
being a mere waste of time, since it was of no practical use and the
knowledge so obtained was soon forgotten in after life. But Isokrates,
although these subjects played no part in his own school, was
sufficiently good an educationalist to see their merits: the study of
subtle and difficult matters like Astronomy and Geometry “trains a boy
to keep his attention closely fixed upon the point at issue and not to
allow his mind to wander; so, being practised in this way and having
his wits sharpened, he will be made capable of learning more important
matters with greater ease and speed.”[535] But all these unpractical,
if improving, studies should be abandoned before the nineteenth year:
for they dry up the human nature and make men unbusinesslike. “Some of
those who have become so adept in these subjects that they teach them
to others, show themselves in the practical conduct of life less wise
than their pupils, not to say than their servants.”[536] Consequently,
those who care to study mathematics and eristic should confine them to
the years between fourteen and eighteen: and then pass on to learn
rhetoric with Isokrates; the rest can come to his school as lads, as
many did.

But, although he differentiated himself so carefully from what moderns
would call the philosophical schools, Isokrates styled himself a
teacher of philosophy quite as much as they did. To him, as to the
Romans, philosophy was the art of living a practical life. “That which
is of no immediate use either for speech or for action does not
deserve the name of Philosophy.”[537] The true philosopher is not the
dreamer who neglects what is practical and essential, but the man of
the world who learns and studies subjects which will make him able to
manage his household and govern his state well; for this is the object
of all labour and all philosophy.[537] With this practical end in view
he ridicules the metaphysical researches of “the old Sophists, of whom
Demokritos said that the number of realities was infinite, and
Empedokles declared for four, and Ion for not more than three, and
Alkmaion for only two, and Parmenides and Melissos for one, while
Gorgias asserted that nothing existed at all.”[538]

In the promises which he makes of imparting to his pupils this
practical wisdom which he calls philosophy, Isokrates is
characteristically cautious. An exact science, which will embrace all
possible questions and circumstances which may arise in domestic and
political matters, is an impossibility; men must be content with a
general capacity of forming a right judgment in view of each
particular case when it arises. Consequently he defines as “wise men,”
σοφοί [sophoi], “those whose judgment usually hits upon the right
course of action,” and as “seekers after wisdom” or philosophers,
φιλόσοφοι [philosophoi], “those who occupy themselves with those
studies and pursuits from which they will most quickly obtain this
practical wisdom,”[539] or capacity of forming correct judgments. But
a judgment can only be formed properly after a proper deliberation: so
the work of Philosophy is to practise her pupils in this
deliberation.[540]

This practice is, of course, provided in the school of Isokrates; for
his school was, in fact, a debating or deliberating society, in which
the pupils wrote and recited carefully composed speeches on given
themes, or listened to the harangues of their master. Sometimes they
discussed events of the day and matters of general interest[541] at
the moment; at another time their topic was some constitutional or
historical question, or the comparative merits of different nations
and governments.[542] At another time, as may be seen from the example
of Isokrates’ own orations, they dealt with those mythical characters
who were historical realities as well as sacred personages to the
average Hellene, Theseus and Helen and Bousiris: this in their eyes
was almost equivalent to religious instruction and they were virtually
writing theological essays. No doubt also the pupils wrote and recited
those “commonplaces” or short essays on general topics, composed in a
most elaborate style, which ancient orators kept in stock, ready to be
inserted in a speech when a suitable opening presented itself.
Isokrates’ own works are particularly full of these highly finished
little essays:[543] so it is at least extremely probable that he
insisted upon their composition in his school. Before his pupils, too,
Isokrates would recite those fine sermons of his, like the
_Demonikos_; and effective pieces of moral exhortation they must have
been.

Thus the Isocratean school claimed to be, and was, a school of morals:
it was also a school of good style and composition. The boys’ essays
had to be written in a particular style, grandiloquent and ornate, to
suit their themes. “For it is absurd to suppose that the matter and
manner of ordinary conversation or of forensic oratory are suitable to
Pan-Hellenic themes; on the contrary, in this kind of speech the
thoughts must be more original and more lofty, the style more
striking, and the diction more poetical and elaborate.”[544] Style,
diction, and matter must, in fact, be that which Isokrates worked out
in his own speeches. That style[545] I do not mean to discuss here.
The fact that he wrote in a study and never spoke in public, has made
him exaggerate the merits of the artistic prose-style of which he was
the first really great exponent; but of its popularity with an
Hellenic audience there can be no question. The pupils of Isokrates
became the most eminent politicians and the most eminent prose-writers
of the time; his house, as Cicero puts it, was the school of Hellas
and the manufactory of eloquence.

To acquire this kind of oratory, there was need both of natural
ability and of diligent study. Isokrates professes to supply, first an
exact science of all the rhetorical devices and the various forms
which speech can take, and then practice in the right employment and
arrangement of these several parts. To learn the technique of rhetoric
is comparatively easy, if the aspirant applies to the right man; but
the right use of the technique can never be brought under any set of
rules, or taught by one man to another: it can only be learnt by
experience. The future orator must try the effect of each arrangement
and combination of technique on the audience, and so draw up his own
system.[546] The requisite audience for these experiments will be
provided by the other pupils of the school, with the master as chief
critic. A good master is essential. By his personal influence he will
be able to communicate those finer elements of style which cannot be
communicated in formal teaching. If he is worth his salt, all his
pupils will bear the stamp of his own manner, and will easily be
distinguished from every one else by the similarity of their style to
his and to one another’s.[547] Education in rhetoric at Isokrates’
school seems to have begun with the study of his own works. In the
_Panathenaikos_ he describes himself as reading the speech over with
two or three of his regular pupils; they revise and criticise it as
they go along. This would give Isokrates the opportunity of expounding
his own views of technique, with his own works before him as
illustrations. It may be inferred from the beginning of the _Bousiris_
that the written speeches of other Sophists were also studied, and
their faults, or aberrations from Isocratean canons, pointed out, in
order that they might be avoided in future. At any rate, Isokrates
complains that other professors of the same sort of Rhetoric at Athens
made use of his writings for teaching their own pupils, though, of
course, according to him, they did so in order to show the boys what
to admire, not what to avoid. When this technique had been fully
mastered Isokrates set his pupils to write speeches on their own
account, choosing for them some great and improving theme: in these
speeches they had to apply the rules which they had learnt, and the
subtler influences which they had imbibed, from their teacher. But
they had also to think out the subject-matter, and in this lies much
of the merit of the whole system. For, as Isokrates observes, the
essayist who writes upon such themes will have to think noble
thoughts, and select noble deeds as his instances and illustrations.
This contemplation of what is noble will be a greater incentive to
virtue than any so-called science of ethics:[548] for there is no
science which can create goodness in wicked natures, but exhortation
and persuasion can work wonders. Moreover, since the orator’s best
argument is, after all, a good reputation, the young orator will see
that his conduct and character are as excellent as possible.[548] And
the practice of weighing just what thoughts and actions are suitable
to the speech involves that faculty of sound deliberation which is
necessary for the formation of right judgments. In fact, Isocratean
“Philosophy” does more to form character than it does to produce
eloquence.[549]

The pupils practised themselves, as we have seen, by delivering their
harangues before Isokrates and their fellow-pupils. The school formed
a select clique of trained critics of Rhetoric; the encouragement of
criticism by this means must have been valuable. To this council
Isokrates submitted his own orations before publication; former pupils
were also invited to attend on these occasions. There is an
interesting account of such an assembly at the end of the
_Panathenaikos_. “I was revising the speech as it stands down to this
point,” Isokrates says, “with three or four of the lads who are
accustomed to study with me. On reading it through, we were satisfied
with it and thought it only needed a peroration. I determined,
however, to send for one of those among my pupils who had been brought
up in an oligarchy and had set themselves to praise Lakedaimon, so
that he might notice any false charge which we had unwittingly brought
against the Spartans.” The pupil comes, and, while praising the speech
enthusiastically, makes an unguarded criticism of its matter which led
to a long discussion, in the course of which he and Isokrates deliver
lengthy harangues. Finally, the pupil is crushed. The boys who had
been present throughout the discussion were completely convinced by
Isokrates and applauded him warmly. But the master himself was not
satisfied. So three or four days later he called together all his old
pupils who were in Athens, and the speech was submitted to their
judgment, and received with enthusiastic applause. The former critic
then delivered a brilliant harangue, trying to elucidate a hidden
meaning in the speech. “The crowd of pupils, which is usually ready to
applaud, shouted, flocked round him, and congratulated him, thoroughly
agreeing with his eulogy of me,” says Isokrates. “I praised him too,
but did not reveal whether he had hit off my secret meaning or not.”

The whole tone of the passage suggests that such an appeal to the
pupils for criticism and advice was common, the only extraordinary
feature being the presence of the “old boys.” This view is supported
by other passages. In the _Areiopagitikos_[550] Isokrates tells his
imaginary audience that “Some who heard me on a former occasion
describe this constitution which Athens once enjoyed, while praising
it enthusiastically and calling our ancestors happy,… told me that I
was not likely to persuade you to adopt it.” On another occasion his
speech made such an impression upon this preliminary audience that “No
one praised the beauty of the style, as they usually do, but all
admired the truth of the argument.” When he first told his pupils that
he meant to send an advisory speech to Philip, “they all thought he
was mad, and had the impudence to rebuke him, a thing which they had
never done before.… But when they had heard the speech, they changed
their minds completely and thought that Philip, Athens, and all Hellas
would alike be grateful to him.”[551]

Isokrates’ great political pamphlets, with their wonderfully polished
style and their striking themes, naturally served him as an excellent
advertisement, as he naïvely admits in the _Antidosis_. Those who
required further information about his educational methods and aims
would turn to the prospectus _Against the Sophists_, which he
published at the beginning of his career. Owing to these attractions,
pupils came to him from all parts of the Hellenic world, from Pontos,
Sicily, and Cyprus;[552] he had “more than all the other teachers of
philosophy put together.”[553] They were not merely private citizens,
but statesmen, generals, kings, and tyrants.[554] Probably the age at
which they came varied greatly, but most of his actual pupils would
probably be between fifteen and twenty-one. He often speaks of
μειράκια [meirakia] as among them. Moreover, he speaks of parents
bringing their sons to him,[555] which they certainly would not do if
the boys were over eighteen. Public life in the average Hellenic state
began at twenty; so boys would wish to be ready for it by that age.
The course at Isokrates’ school lasted for three or four years.[556]
The Athenian lad was more or less busy with his military duties from
eighteen to twenty, so he would probably take the course between
fourteen and eighteen; natives of other states would fit it in
according to their local customs. The fee for the whole course was 10
mnai, or £40.[557] The story[558] goes that Demosthenes, having only
£8, offered to pay that sum for one-fifth of the course. But Isokrates
replied that he could not sell his philosophy in slices; the customer
must take the whole fish or none at all. Probably, however, the tale
is a fiction: Isokrates himself claims not to have made any money out
of his countrymen, and only to have charged his foreign pupils.

Since, soon after the opening of his school, he had a hundred pupils,
the accounts of his great wealth, which he repudiated so indignantly,
cannot have been far wrong, especially as he received 20 talents
(nearly £5000) for his panegyric on Euagoras. His own comparison of
his wealth with that of Gorgias, who left only £800 at his death, is
curious, if the above statements are true.

But his pupils, drawn from a class that had sufficient substance to
live at leisure,[559] seem to have been well satisfied with what they
got for their money. “At the end of their time, when they were on the
point of sailing home to their friends, they so loved their life in
Athens that they parted from it with tears and sighs.” Isokrates kept
on friendly terms with them afterwards. Thus he writes to Timotheos,
tyrant of Herakleia and an old pupil, to congratulate him on his
accession and commend to him another old pupil, Autokrator. Then there
is the charming letter in which he introduces Diodotos, another of his
pupils, to the Macedonian Antipater, at some personal risk, for there
was war between Athens and Macedon at the time. “I have had many
pupils,” the letter runs, “some of whom have become great orators,
some men of action, some great thinkers, some, with no particular
talents, have at any rate become upright and cultured gentlemen:
Diodotos combines all these qualities.”

The chief boast of the school of Isokrates was that it produced
gentlemen. Isokrates defines education not as a knowledge of
metaphysics and a contemplation of the Good, nor yet as technical
ability in some particular profession, art, or trade, but as a sort of
culture and polish. “This is my definition of the educated man,” he
says. “First, he is capable of dealing with the ordinary events of
life, by possessing a happy sense of fitness and a faculty of usually
hitting upon the right course of action.

“Secondly, his behaviour in any society is always correct and proper.
If he is thrown with offensive or disagreeable company, he can meet it
with easy good-temper; and he treats every one with the utmost
fairness and gentleness.

“Thirdly, he always has the mastery over his pleasures, and does not
give way unduly under misfortune and pain, but behaves in such cases
with manliness and worthily of the nature which has been given to us.

“Fourthly (the most important point) he is not spoilt or puffed up nor
is his head turned by success, but he continues throughout to behave
like a wise man, taking less pleasure in the good things which chance
has given him at birth than in the products of his own talents and
intelligence.

“Those whose soul is well tuned to play its part in all these ways,
those I call wise and perfect men, and declare to possess all the
virtues; those I regard as truly educated.”[560]

Thus the object of Isokrates was rather to impart culture and polish
to his pupils than to teach them rhetoric; it is in this point that he
differs from the other professors who taught the same sort of rhetoric
as he did at Athens and have now been forgotten, and from the
logographoi, who taught the kind of speaking which suited the Athenian
law-courts, without professing to supply anything but a technical
knowledge of their particular subject.

In an Athenian trial the prosecutor and defendant had each to deliver
a speech for themselves; afterwards, regular advocates might address
the jury in some cases, but this was rare. So the duty of an Athenian
lawyer was simply to write speeches for his clients to deliver, not to
speak himself. Thus the metic Lusias, who had no right to speak in a
court himself, was a famous lawyer, or logographos, speech-writer, as
the Hellenes called him.

Mantitheos, say, finds himself involved in a lawsuit. He comes to
Lusias and explains the circumstances. Lusias masters the details,
looks up the laws on the question, and studies his client’s age,
character, and so forth. He then writes a speech sufficiently
dramatised to come naturally from Mantitheos’ mouth. In composing it
he will simulate the indignation which he supposes his client to feel,
he will adopt the nonchalant air of injured innocence which Mantitheos
showed in telling the story, and so on, till the speech is a real bit
of dramatisation like the speeches in a tragedy. When composed, the
speech would be carried off by Mantitheos, learnt by heart, and duly
recited. It is all a bit of acting on Lusias’ part. The habit of
simulating feelings when writing speeches was dangerous, when the
logographos came forward to speak in his own person on some question.
Demosthenes never quite escapes the suspicion of acting and posing,
even in his most impressive moments.

Besides these clients, the Athenian lawyers had permanent pupils, who
either intended to be lawyers themselves or thought the study would
help them in a political life. Their methods of teaching, as may be
seen from Plato’s _Phaidros_, resembled those of Isokrates. In the
dialogue called by his name, Phaidros is going out to walk off the
effects of sitting indoors too long.[561] He had been listening to
Lusias, “the cleverest speech-writer of the age,” reciting one of his
speeches, on which he had spent much labour. Phaidros had made him
repeat it several times, and has now borrowed the book in order to
learn it by heart during his walk. Sokrates persuades him to read it
aloud, in doing which he is quite carried away by its eloquence.[562]
Sokrates then proceeds to criticise the style and matter of the
speech,[563] and to compose one of his own on the same subject to show
how it ought to be treated.

This reveals the method of teaching. The teacher, as here and in
Isokrates’ case, recites a speech of his own, explaining how it was
done and asking for criticism from the pupils. Then the pupil would
learn it by heart and declaim it in some solitary place. On other
occasions, as Sokrates does here, the master would take the speech of
some rival professor and criticise it severely, composing a better
speech himself. The _Bousiris_ and _Helen_ of Isokrates show this
method. Or else the pupil replied to the teacher, or the teacher wrote
two speeches on opposite sides of the question. The extant work of
Antiphon and the lost work of Gorgias[564] are of this type.

Most of the Attic orators seem to have taken pupils. Isaios taught
Demosthenes. Demosthenes in his turn seems to have had great
popularity as a teacher. He “promises to teach young men the art of
speaking”;[565] “he filled Aristarchos with empty hopes of becoming
the prince of orators all in a moment”;[566] “he invited some of his
pupils to come and listen to the speech _On the False Embassy_,
promising to show them how to cheat and mislead the audience”;[567]
“later on he will brag before his boys of his tricks.” These passages
give an interesting picture of Demosthenes and his pupils, as seen
through his opponent’s green spectacles.

       *     *     *     *     *

In opposition to the schools of Rhetoric stood the schools of
Philosophy, leading their pupils towards the life of retirement and
contemplation and away from the strenuous life of political and social
activity.[568] We have seen that there were many professors of
Philosophy at Athens in Isokrates’ time, charging fees of three or
four mnai for their course. But only one of them is known to
posterity, and he gave lessons gratis. Otherwise, Plato must be taken
as a member of a class, albeit the most brilliant member. The teaching
of Plato centred, as is well known, round the Akademeia. Plato
possessed a house and garden, which he bequeathed to his school,
between that gymnasium and Kolonos. When he and his pupils wished to
be private they could withdraw into his gardens; otherwise they
frequented the Akademeia, from which their school took its name. It
was not every one who could obtain admission to the school, for, as
Plato taught gratuitously, he could pick and choose his pupils. He
expected would-be students to be well grounded in Geometry: there must
have been some sort of entrance-examination. His successor,
Xenokrates, finding that an applicant was ignorant of Music, Geometry,
and Astronomy, told him to go away: “for you give philosophy no chance
of getting a grip upon you.”[569] The inner circle of the school had
their meals in common: the banquets were extremely plain. Timotheos,
the Athenian general, who was accustomed to rich living, after having
been a guest at one of these meals, remarked, on meeting Plato next
day, “Your suppers are more pleasant on the following day than they
are at the time.”[570] After the meal, a larger number of friends
probably came in; this, at any rate, was a custom at the similar
meetings held by the philosopher Menedemos a generation later.[571]
The discourse often went on all night. There was a fixed code of rules
to regulate these meals,[572] which is suggestive of Plato’s
pleasantries in the _Laws_ about the educational value of strictly
regulated bouts of intoxication. But drunkenness was, of course, not
allowed: Plato had a particular objection to it, and used to tell
drunkards to look in the looking-glass and they would never err in
that way again.[573] It offended his strict canons of physical beauty
and propriety. It is interesting to note that the author of the
_Republic_ admitted women on terms of equality to this inner circle of
the Akademeia, in defiance of Athenian prejudice. Lastheneia of
Mantineia and Axiothea of Phlious, who dressed in male attire, are the
first champions of women’s rights to a University education who appear
in history.[574] The discussions of this clique were probably
conducted after the model of the Platonic dialogue, and doubtless were
in Plato’s mind when in the _Laws_ he constructed his curious ethical
and political debating-society for the older and wiser members of his
state.

But admission to these mysteries must have been reserved for
comparatively few, personal friends and mature thinkers: the members
formed rather a private club than an educational system. The young
Athenian who wished, when his primary education was finished, to study
philosophy under Plato, had two means open to him: there were lectures
in various public places; there was also a school for lads in the
Akademeia.

The only lecture,[575] of which any very definite trace is left, was
not a great success from the educational point of view. Plato
announced beforehand that his subject would be “The Good.” A great
crowd collected, expecting to hear a neat Isocratean discussion of
such things as Health, Wealth, Friendship, which were popularly
considered to be rival claimants for the title of the Good. But Plato
began to talk about arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, and
discussed the One as the Good. The whole lecture was couched in
enigmatical language. The majority of the audience went away in
despair.[576] Only practised Platonists like Aristotle and Herakleides
and Hestiaios did their best to understand the lecture, and took
notes. The whole idea of a “popular lecture” must have been repugnant
to Plato. In his view, knowledge was only for the few, who, starting
with great natural abilities, could devote themselves for years at a
time to continual study and research. The pupil must be talented to
start with: he must undergo a long course of preparatory studies in
Logic and Mathematics: only when middle-aged might he approach the
inner mysteries of Philosophy. Holding such educational ideas as
these, Plato naturally made his lectures unintelligible to all but a
few: his main subject for public exposition seems to have been that
curious mathematical metaphysic which Aristotle combats as Platonic,
although it is nowhere found in the extant dialogues. By reading the
_Metaphysics_ of Aristotle the modern inquirer can perhaps realise how
difficult Plato’s lectures must have been.[577]

At the school in the Akademeia, Plato seems to have instructed his
lads chiefly in Logic and Mathematics. Logic consisted chiefly of
definitions, such as those for which Sokrates was always hunting, and
that curious process of “division” which is exemplified at such length
in the _Sophist_ and _Politikos_. Diogenes Laertius[578] gives a long
catalogue of such divisions, of which only a few can be found in
extant works: the rest must have figured in the school, and survived
as traditions in the commentaries. A comic poet has left a picture of
the logic school at work[579]:――

     “_A._ What of Plato and Speusippos and Menedemos? Upon what
     are they now engaged? What is their thought? What argument
     is investigated among them? Tell me, I pray, if you know.

     “_B._ I can tell you clearly. For at the Panathenaia I saw a
     herd (ἀγέλη [agelê]: note the Spartan word) of lads in the
     gymnasium of the Akademeia, and listened to strange,
     portentous arguments. They were drawing up definitions about
     natural history. They separated the life of animals and the
     nature of trees and the tribes of vegetables: then, among
     these last, they inquired to what tribe the cucumber
     belonged.… First of all they stood speechless, and, putting
     their heads down, thought for a long time. Then suddenly,
     while the lads still had their heads down, and were
     thinking, one of them said it was a circular vegetable,
     another declared that it was a herb, another suggested a
     tree. A Sicilian Doctor who was present ridiculed them most
     rudely. But the lads took no notice; and Plato, very gently
     and without losing his temper at all, told them to try again
     to define the species to which it belonged. So they began
     their divisions again.”

In the _Sophist_ the mysterious stranger divides Art into (1) creative
or productive, (2) acquisitive. Then acquisitive art into (1)
acquisition by exchange, (2) acquisition by capture. Then the art
which acquires its object by capture is divided into public or
competitive and secret or hunting. Then, when hunting has been duly
divided and subdivided, a definition of angling is obtained. In the
parody by Epikrates, the same process is employed in order to define
“cucumber,” although the stages are, of course, confused. A cucumber
is a form of life. Life is divided into animals and vegetation:
vegetation into trees and vegetables. Then the doubt arises, to which
half does the cucumber belong. Some of the pupils say it is a
vegetable, some a tree. So the lesson begins again.

Plato’s pupils seem to have been expected to take great care of their
personal appearance: their neatness is a common butt of contemporary
comedians[580]:――

  Then rose a smart young man from the Akademeia
  Of Plato.…
  His hair was neatly smoothed, his foot was neatly
  Laced in the sandal, bound with even lengths
  Of shoe-lace curved about his ankle-bones:
  And neat the corselet of his weighty cloak.

And again:

  _A._ Who’s that old fellow yonder, do you know?
  _B._ He looks a Hellene, wears a mantle white,
       A fair grey tunic, little soft felt hat,
       A well-tuned[581] staff, in fact, to put it short,
       ’Tis like a glimpse of the “Academy.”[582]

Of Plato himself, as he walked up and down among his pupils, wrestling
with intellectual difficulties, several pictures survive in
literature. A character in Alexis[583] remarks to a friend who has
come to visit him:

  You’ve come in the nick of time. I’m in a fix.
  Though walking up and down, like Plato, I’ve
  Found nothing clever: but my legs are tired.[584]

Amphis, in his _Dexidemides_, said:

     Plato, all you can do is to frown, drawing up your eyebrows
     severely, like a shellfish.[585]

The psychological yearning of the _Phaidon_, perpetually interrupted
by cold currents of scepticism, must have found an echo in Plato’s
school-teaching, as the following dialogues from Comedy show[585]:――

  _A._               My mortal frame grew dry:
       My deathless part rushed forth into the air.
  _B._ Why, bless us, are we in the school of Plato?

And

  _A._ You’re a man, clearly, and have got a soul.
  _B._ Like Plato, I don’t know but I suspect it.[585]

Of discipline in the Akademeia under Plato nothing is known: the
following story[586] belongs to the school a little after his death. A
certain Polemon agreed with some young friends of his, who attended
the school, that he would rush into the room during the lesson, drunk
and garlanded. This he carried out. But the teacher, Xenokrates, went
calmly on with his lecture, which happened to deal with Sobriety. This
conduct quite overcame Polemon, and he became a most diligent pupil,
and finally succeeded Xenokrates as teacher.

Of Plato’s affection for his pupils, his own poems afford sufficient
proof. One of them was named Aster, or Star. One day, as the lad was
studying the heavens, his master wrote the following epigram about
him:――

  Star of my soul, thou gazest
    Upon the starry skies;
  I envy Heaven, that watches
    Thy face with countless eyes.

And when he died, Plato wrote his epitaph:

  Thou wert the morning Star among the living,
    Ere thy fair light had fled:
  Now, being dead, thou art as Hesperus, giving
    New splendour to the dead.[587]

Additional evidence is given by his efforts on behalf of Dionusios and
Dion, which led him into so many perils in Sicily.

Plato was teaching in Athens almost continually from 388 till 347. His
pupils included, no doubt, many of the chief men of the day: Chabrias,
Iphikrates, Hupereides, Phokion, Lukourgos, and Demosthenes are
mentioned, besides the philosophers Speusippos, Xenokrates,
Herakleides of Pontos, and Aristotle. But posterity ascribed pupils
recklessly to all the great teachers of antiquity, so the catalogue
carries little weight. It is interesting to observe that the school as
a whole was attacked for producing tyrants: the bitter description of
the miseries of tyranny in the _Republic_ are at once a sad reflection
upon former pupils and a warning to those whom he was instructing at
the time. But the Philosopher-king, who embodied Plato’s ideal form of
Government, may well have had a corrupting influence upon the pupils.
Dion, the philosopher and patriot who became a tyrant, is an
interesting commentary upon the _Republic_.

Teaching in the Akademeia was given gratuitously; but those who were
so disposed might give presents to their teacher. Dionusios presented
Plato with over 80 talents.[588]

The school of Aristotle in the Lukeion differed little in its methods
from the school of Plato in the Akademeia. He had been a pupil of
Plato for twenty years before he began to teach on his own account. He
used to give instruction walking up and down in the walks of the
Lukeion. In his earlier period, at any rate, he seems to have taught
rhetoric, and taught it in Isocratean fashion: we hear of him setting
a theme, on which he and the pupils delivered harangues “in rhetorical
fashion.” Later the school became a home of universal knowledge and
research; in this respect Aristotle is the heir of the much-abused
Sophists. He adopted Xenokrates’ custom of appointing one of the
pupils to be Archon of the school for ten days, and then another: this
system must have relieved him of much petty business.[589] He
delivered two courses of lectures daily: one in the morning on
abstruse subjects to picked pupils; and the other in the afternoon,
open to all comers and more intelligible in matter and manner.[590]
His fame as a teacher was sufficient to win him the honour of being
chosen to be Alexander’s tutor, and he seems to have retained his
pupil’s respect, if not perhaps his affection. Aristotle, dreaming of
a tiny city-state, and Alexander, dreaming of a world-empire and
carrying out his dream, are an ill-assorted pair. What would Plato
have given for the chance of educating such a Philosopher-king?

That there were bitter feuds between the various educational leaders
in Athens, goes without saying. A Hellene could no more brook a rival
than could an Italian of the Renaissance. Isokrates attacks
Plato,[591] Plato Isokrates, and then their pupils take the quarrel on
into the next generation. Both attack with equal animus the wandering
Sophists and the Eristics, who retaliated with vigour. A would-be
pupil must have found it hard to choose a professor under whom to
study, when so much evil had been spoken of them all.[592]

       *     *     *     *     *

The schools of Rhetoric and of Philosophy were only for the rich and
the leisured classes: the poor had neither the time nor the money
requisite for attending them. But they were not wholly debarred from
the higher knowledge. There were still Sophists lecturing for
advertisement in public places. Still more, there were books, which
were beginning to be both numerous and cheap: every Athenian could
read. How important a part books were beginning to take in national
education may be seen from the works of Isokrates and Plato, who are
both excessively indignant at the intrusion of such a rival.

“I know that what is read has less power of persuasion than what is
heard. It is universally believed that a speech, if actually
delivered, deals with serious and important subjects; but if only
written and never spoken, it is supposed to aim merely at effect and
the fulfilment of a contract. This opinion is quite reasonable. For
the written speech is deprived of the prestige of the author’s
presence and of his voice and of the proper rhetorical delivery: it is
read when the occasion which called it forth is past, and the points
which it discusses are consequently less interesting. The slave who
reads it aloud puts no character into it, but drones it out as though
he were reckoning up the items of a bill.” Such is Isokrates’ view,
somewhat freely translated, of “the written word,” which his shyness
compelled him to use instead of the spoken, and he beseeches Philip of
Macedon, whom he is addressing, to put aside the usual prejudice
against writings.

Plato regarded the written word with even greater contempt. To him it
is the cause of forgetfulness; those who employ writing learn to rely
on their notes, not on their memory, and are accustomed to register
their impressions on tables of wax, not of the mind.[593] Again, it is
impossible for an author to control the circulation of his works; they
may reach those for whom they are not intended.[594] For Plato expects
speaker and writer alike to express only what is suitable to their
audience; the teacher must, by a study of psychology, know what
arguments will do good and what will do harm to each particular pupil.
But a book cannot impart knowledge, in the Platonic sense of the word,
at all; for it is unable to answer questions or to explain its
author’s meaning when the reader fails to follow.[595] Comprehension
of a fact or of a statement made on a writer’s authority, without
comprehension of the meaning and the explanation, is not
knowledge.[596] Consequently, not even a lecture[597] or a sermon, far
less a book whose author is absent or dead, can impart knowledge; to
gain this, long study and a severe course of dialectic are essential.
The possessor of true knowledge must be able to defend his view
against any opposing arguments and to support it by discussion
himself:[598] neither book nor lecture can give this intimate
acquaintance with every point of view. Moreover, teaching is like
agriculture. There are different soils and different minds. The seed
of knowledge will bear different fruit in different soils, and there
are types of minds in which some particular seeds must not be sown at
all. Thus the same teacher will produce quite different philosophical
results in different minds: just as Sokrates did with his various
pupils. It is the development of the individual intellect and
aptitudes of each pupil, not the inculcation of his own theories, that
is the teacher’s true object.[599] Consequently, even a consistent
scheme of dogmas is wrong for educational purposes; for it may suit
the intellect of the teacher himself, but it cannot suit all his
pupils.

Hence, in order to be consistent with his own educational ideals,
Plato makes his works inconsistent: they are not a body of rigid
dogmas. Also, he provides in them just that discussion which he notes
as lacking in most books; it is possible to ask his books a certain
number of questions, for he anticipates and answers them himself in
the dialogue. In this way he makes his words pass through the
alembic[600] of each pupil’s brain, and come out according to the type
of mind through which they have passed. There is no enforcement of
authority in true Platonism.

Plato refused to publish any philosophy in his own name. By speaking
through the mouth of others, he could vary his attitudes just as he
wished. The written word, he declares, must necessarily contain much
trifling. Its composition is a good amusement for leisure hours.[601]
Its one use is that it serves to remind the writer of what he knows
already, when the forgetfulness of old age comes upon him. But the
writer is quite worthless if he possesses nothing better in his mind
than what he has written on paper,[602] “twisting words up and down,
glueing them together and pulling them apart.”[603]

Books, however, were already serious rivals to personal intercourse,
as a means of education. The libraries founded by Peisistratos at
Athens and by Polukrates at Samos were, it is true, almost certainly
fabulous; for Euripides was satirised for possessing a collection of
books, so it must have been a novelty in his time. Books were probably
very rare before the Periclean age, but then they multiplied with
great rapidity. The children used them in the schools. Schoolmasters
were expected to possess them: Alkibiades beat one for not having a
copy of Homer. The comic poet Alexis makes Herakles’ master, Linos,
possess copies of Orpheus, Hesiod, the tragedians, Choirilos, Homer,
Epicharmos, and all sorts of prose works, including a cookery-book. A
cargo of books was wrecked at Salmudessos,[604] a fact which points to
a large book-trade in Hellenic waters. Euthudemos, the companion of
Sokrates, possessed a fine collection of the best-known poets and
Sophists, including the works of Homer.[605] Sokrates suggests that he
may be collecting his books in order to learn Medicine, on which
subject there were many treatises, or Architecture or Geometry or
Astronomy. This shows how handbooks dealing with all manner of
subjects were multiplying.

Xenophon’s treatise on _The Horse_ had been preceded by a similar work
by Simon;[606] he himself also wrote on _Hunting_, on _The Duties of a
Cavalry Officer_, on _The Management of a Farm_, and _The Constitution
of Sparta_, besides his more definitely historical and philosophical
works. His _Education of Kuros_ conceals a treatise on the duties of a
general. The subjects are significant of the new movement; for earlier
Hellenes had supposed that Homer and Hesiod taught the whole art of
agriculture and generalship. Other agricultural treatises, containing
much theory but very little practical knowledge, were also in
circulation.[607] Later in the fourth century Aineias the Tactician
contributed a manual for generals. Medical treatises emanated in great
numbers from the school of Hippokrates, and probably from elsewhere.
Chares and Apollodoros published works on Husbandry,[608] Mithaikos a
_Sicilian Cookery-Book_,[609] Metrodoros a book of Homeric allegories.
Books of travels and geography are also mentioned by Aristotle.[610]
Handbooks on “Rhetoric” were first compiled by Korax and Tisias: they
dealt with the subject of “arguments from probability.” Show pieces
were written by Antiphon and Gorgias. A treatise by Polos upon the
systematic arrangement of a speech was read by Sokrates. Thrasumachos
published a work upon _Appeals to Compassion_.

The prices were probably not high, for the labour of copying could be
cheaply performed by means of slaves. Sokrates, in the Platonic
Apology,[611] mentions that a copy of Anaxagoras could sometimes be
picked up for a drachma; and there is no reason to suppose that
Anaxagoras was particularly cheap. If this was an average price, books
must have been within the reach of most Athenians.


     [529] Isokrates clearly felt them to be his educational
     rivals. See _Antid._ 310 A, and the end of the _Paneg._

     [530] There is a sketch of them in Isok. _Panath._ 236 C; to
     a lecture on Homer three or four of them had appended an
     attack upon Isokrates.

     [531] Isok. _Antid._ 99.

     [532] Isok. _Soph._ 10. 293 A.

     [533] Isok. _Soph._ 4. 291 D. Cp. the modern
     “caution-money.”

     [534] Isok. _Pan._ 26. 238 A.

     [535] Isok. _Antid._ 118. 265.

     [536] Isok. _Panath._ 238 D.

     [537] Isok. _Antid._ 118. 266.

     [538] _Ibid._ 118. 268.

     [539] Isok. _Antid._ 118. 268.

     [540] _Ibid._ 91.

     [541] Isok. letter to Alexander.

     [542] Isok. _Panath._ 275. It is noticeable how many of his
     pupils became historians――Ephoros, Theopompos, Androtion,
     Asklepiades.

     [543] See, for example, “On Slander “(_Antid._ 313 E), “On
     Speech” (115. 255).

     [544] Isok. _Antid._ 48.

     [545] For a complete analysis of it, see Jebb’s _Attic
     Orators_.

     [546] Isok. _ag. Soph._ 294 C; _Antid._ 91-93, etc.

     [547] _Ibid._ 294 E.

     [548] Isok. _Antid._ 121.

     [549] Isok. _ag. Soph._ 295 D.

     [550] Isok. _Areiop._ 151 B.

     [551] Isok. _Philip_, 85, 86.

     [552] Isok. _Antid._ 106.

     [553] _Ibid._ 318 C.

     [554] _Ibid._ 316 C.

     [555] Isok. _Antid._ 110.

     [556] _Ibid._ 62.

     [557] [Demos.] _Lakritos_, 15 and 42.

     [558] [Plutarch] _Ten Orators_, 837.

     [559] Isok. _Antid._ 129.

     [560] Isok. _Panath._ 239.

     [561] Plato, _Phaidr._ 227-228.

     [562] _Ibid._ 234 D.

     [563] The criticisms do not suit Lusias; they fit Isokrates
     much better.

     [564] Cicero, _Brutus_, xii. 46-47.

     [565] Aischines, _Timarch._ 171, 173.

     [566] _Ibid._ 171.

     [567] _Ibid._ 175.

     [568] Plato, _Gorg._ 484-486; end of _Euthud._; _Theait._
     172-177; _Rep._ 496.

     [569] Diog. Laert. iv. 2. 6.

     [570] Athen. 419 d.

     [571] _Ibid._ 419 e and 55 d.

     [572] Athen. 186 b.

     [573] Diog. Laert. iii. 26.

     [574] _Ibid._ iii. 31.

     [575] See for this lecture Simplikios (on Aristot.
     _Physics_, p. 202 B, 36), and Aristoxenos, _Harmon_, beg. of
     Bk. ii. On one occasion, at least, it was delivered in the
     Peiraieus (Themist. _Orat._ 21. 245).

     [576] The popular attitude may be seen in Amphis’
     _Amphrikates_ (Diog. Laert. iii. 25): “I no more know what
     good you’ll get than I know what Plato’s Good is.”

     [577] Plato seems also to have recited his dialogues in
     public. Favonius asserted that Aristotle alone of the
     audience stayed to the end when Plato thus delivered the
     _Phaidon_ (Diog. Laert. iii. 25).

     [578] Diog. Laert. iii. 45, etc.

     [579] Epikrates (in Athen. 59 d, e).

     [580] Ephippos, _Shipwrecked Man_ (Athen. 509).

     [581] εὔρυθμος [eurythmos], probably a hit at Plato’s demand
     for “rhythm.”

     [582] Antiphanes, _Antaros_ (Athen. 545 a).

     [583] Alexis, _Meropis_ (Diog. Laert. iii. 22).

     [584] This walking up and down was characteristic of
     Hellenic teaching. Compare the _Peripatetics_, and Archutas
     in the temple-gardens at Tarentum (Athen. 545 b).

     [585] Diog. Laert. iii. 22.

     [586] _Ibid._ iv. 3. 1.

     [587] The first translation is my own, the second Shelley’s.

     [588] Saturos and Onetor in Diog. Laert. iii. 11.

     [589] The above details are mainly from Diog. Laert. v.

     [590] Aul. Gell. xx. 5. 4.

     [591] Plato had also his feuds with Antisthenes, who wrote a
     dialogue against him, calling him Satho, with Aristippos,
     and with Aischines the Sokratic (Diog. Laert. iii. 24).

     [592] Kriton feels this difficulty in _Euthud._ 306 D, E.

     [593] Plato, _Phaidr._ 275 A.

     [594] _Ibid._ 275 E.

     [595] Plato, _Phaidr._ 275 D; _Theait._ 164; _Protag._ 329
     A, and 347 E.

     [596] So book-knowledge is a hothouse plant which has sprung
     up unnaturally all in a moment, and very delicate when
     exposed to the open air of criticism (_Phaidr._ 276-7).

     [597] Plato, _Sophist_, 230 A.

     [598] Plato, _Menon_, 97; _Rep._ 534 B, C.

     [599] Plato, _Rep._ 518.

     [600] Plato, _Phaidr._ 277 A.

     [601] Plato, _Phaidr._ 276 D, E.

     [602] Plato apparently regarded his dialogues as mere
     trifles compared with what he taught to his inner circle.

     [603] Plato, _Phaidr._ 278 D.

     [604] Xen. _Anab._ vii. 5. 14.

     [605] Xen. _Mem._ iv. 2.

     [606] Xen. _Horsemanship_, i.

     [607] Xen. _Econ._ xvi.

     [608] Aristot. _Pol._ i. 11. 7.

     [609] Plato, _Gorg._ 518 B.

     [610] Aristot. _Pol._ ii. 3. 9.

     [611] Plato, _Apol._ 26 D.



CHAPTER VII

TERTIARY EDUCATION


When he reached eighteen years, the young Athenian partly came of age.
His property passed into his possession, if he had been a ward, and he
could now prosecute his guardians if they had defrauded him. But he
could not appear in any other sort of lawsuit, or take part in the
National Assembly, nor could he be taxed, till he was twenty.

First of all, his deme or parish had to examine him to see if he was
of proper parentage and of the requisite age.[612] If they rejected
him, the case came before the regular Court of Athens. In the event of
being again rejected, if it was on the score of age, he returned to
the ranks of the boys to wait a further trial, but if on the score of
parentage, he might be sold as a slave and his price put into the
Treasury. If his deme accepted him he was again examined by the Boule
of 500 at Athens, who might rescind their decision.[613]

When he had passed all these preliminary examinations, the boy was
inscribed upon the roll of his deme, the ληξιαρχικὸν γραμματεῖον
[lêxiarchikon grammateion], and became in the eyes of the law an
ephebos. It was then incumbent upon him to take a solemn oath in the
temple of Aglauros, in the following terms[614]:――

     “I will not disgrace my sacred weapons nor desert the
     comrade who is placed by my side. I will fight for things
     holy and things profane, whether I am alone or with others.
     I will hand on my fatherland greater and better than I found
     it. I will hearken to the magistrates, and obey the existing
     laws and those hereafter established[615] by the people. I
     will not consent unto any that destroys or disobeys the
     constitution, but will prevent him, whether I am alone or
     with others. I will honour the temples and the religion
     which my forefathers established. So help me Aglauros,
     Enualios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone.”

This oath and ceremony must be ancient. The orator Lukourgos[616]
includes them among “the ancient laws and customs of the original
founders,” and claims that the oath of the Hellenic army at Plataea in
479 was imitated from the oath of the Athenian epheboi. By this solemn
act the ephebos accepted the duties and responsibilities of an
Athenian citizen. So in Plato’s dialogue, the _Kriton_,[617] where the
Laws of Athens are introduced as pleading their cause, they say, “When
any one has passed his examination, and has seen the constitution of
the city and us, the Laws of Athens, we bid him, if he is dissatisfied
with us, to take what is his and go whither he pleases. But if he
stays, we consider that he has promised to obey us.” For there is good
evidence, besides that which is afforded by the above passage, to show
that Athenian boys were taught what the laws of their city were,
before they promised to obey them. Thus Aischines says: “When any one
is inscribed upon the muster roll of his deme and knows the laws of
the city.”[618] Plato puts it even more definitely: “When the children
leave school,[619] the city compels them to learn the laws.”[620] So
the ephebos knew what he was doing when he swore to obey the law of
the land.

Meanwhile the tribes had met and each chosen three men of over forty
years of age, from whom the assembled people elected one, to look
after the epheboi of each tribe.[621] These supervisors were called
Sophronistai or Moderators. That these Moderators probably dated back
to Solonic times, and possessed a general, but rarely exercised,
supervision over all education, I have endeavoured to show in Chapter
II. Their province was the morality and discipline of the epheboi,
whose military training was naturally controlled by the military
officers, the Generals and Taxiarchoi; later, however, when the
epheboi ceased to be a military body, these latter functionaries
ceased to have any connection with them. Towards the close of the
fourth century the people elected a single Kosmetes or Chancellor for
the epheboi; he is first mentioned, if a probably spurious passage in
the _Axiochos_ is rejected, in an inscription, in which he is
associated with the epheboi and Moderators of the year in awarding a
crown to Theophanes in the Archonship of Nikostratos (333-332
B.C.).[622] But in 280 B.C., in the list of the officers and masters
of the epheboi, the Kosmetes is mentioned, but no Sophronistai:[623]
at that time the epheboi were too few to need an officer to each
tribe.

These newly appointed magistrates took the epheboi of their year in
charge at once. The young recruits were first taken round the temples,
and then put into garrison in Mounuchia and Peiraieus. They had
masters and under-masters appointed for them by the Sophronistai to
teach them the use of heavy arms, and also of the bow, javelin, and
catapult. There were also two Paidotribai, for gymnastics. These
masters, together with later introductions such as literary teachers,
chaplains, doctors, and so forth, appear regularly in the inscriptions
after 300 B.C.[624] The Sophronistai were paid a drachma a day for
their services. They also received four obols for every ephebos in
their tribe, out of which they had to provide the rations, etc.; the
ephebos did not handle the money himself. Each tribe messed
together.[625]

Besides the Sophronistai and Kosmetes, the Council of the Areiopagos
also kept a watch over the epheboi. Discipline seems to have been
fairly strict: the _Axiochos_[626] talks of “rods and immensities of
evils.” But there were plenty of amusements, and, apparently, plenty
of vacations. There were a very large number of special festivals, in
which the epheboi took part. There were also the torch-races at the
feasts of Hephaistos and Prometheus, for teams of epheboi from each
tribe, trained at the expense of a gumnasiarchos. The epheboi had also
a special part of the theatre reserved for them.[627]

No doubt a large part of the time of these epheboi was spent in severe
physical exercise in the gymnasia. The analogy of the epheboi in
Plato’s _Republic_ and _Laws_ would suggest this. The _Axiochos_
mentions, as consequent upon enrolment in the epheboi, “the Lukeion
and Akademeia,” _i.e._ practices in these gymnasia. Xenophon,[628]
just before mentioning the “peripoloi” or epheboi in their second
year, talks of “those who are ordered to practise gymnastic
exercises,” clearly referring to this period. He suggests that their
duties would be better and more cheerfully performed if they received
a larger supply of rations than those who were training for
torch-races; to these latter no doubt a liberal gumnasiarchos might
serve out meals costing much more than four obols a day. Probably
those who were physically inferior alone were told off for these
compulsory gymnastics: Xenophon’s phrase seems to distinguish them
from the epheboi selected for the torch-race, who would naturally be
the physically fittest in the tribal contingent.

At the end of their first year of training, the epheboi appeared in
the theatre at the great Dionusia to show off their military
evolutions and the drill which they had learned. After the review they
received a spear and shield from the State.[629] The sons of those who
had fallen in battle, being the wards of the State,[630] received a
complete outfit of armour. These arms, which the epheboi received from
the State, were considered to be sacred: consequently to throw away
the shield in flight was regarded as a serious offence, almost an act
of sacrilege.[631]

  [Illustration: PLATE IX.

  A RIDING LESSON――MOUNTING

  _Archaeologische Zeitung_, 1885, Plate 11. From a Kulix at Munich,
  attributed to Euphronios.]

After receiving their arms from the State, the epheboi were marched
out of Athens, and spent most of the next year patrolling the country
and frontiers, and garrisoning the forts.[632] Attica was studded with
these περιπόλια [peripolia], or patrol-stations, from Oinoé and Phulé
on the north-western frontier to Anaphlustos and Thorikos in the
south. The epheboi, like the κρυπτοί [kryptoi] in Plato’s _Laws_ and
at Sparta, were shifted about from district to district, in order that
they might acquire a thorough knowledge of their country’s
geographical peculiarities. The tribal companies, into which they were
divided, relieved one another in various stations. Thus in the course
of 334-333 we know that both the Hippothontid and the Kekropid tribes
were successively stationed at Eleusis, for the people of that
district pass two separate votes of thanks to them for the excellent
discipline which they had preserved.[633] There may also have been
open-air camps: the Eleusinian inscriptions talk of ὑπαίθριοι
[hypaithrioi].

The epheboi seem to have been assisted in their patrol-duties by a
mercenary force of foreigners. Thucydides[634] declares that
Phrunichos was assassinated by a peripolos: the Athenian people,
according to Lusias, rewarded Thrasuboulos of Kaludon as the slayer
and recorded his name on a pillar.[635] If the historian had meant to
dispute this award, he must have referred to it, for it was clearly
the accepted version. He also states that the plot was arranged at the
house of the captain of the peripoloi, and mentions an Argive as one
of the accomplices: Lusias mentions a Megarian. Both these foreigners
were probably peripoloi. But foreign youths cannot at this period have
been permitted to serve with the tribal companies of epheboi. A
legend, it is true, asserts that this privilege was granted to the
young men of Kos, in honour of the great doctor Hippokrates; but even
this only shows that all other states were excluded. Indeed,
foreigners were not enrolled among the Athenian epheboi until a much
later epoch, when the system was no longer military.

What, then, was this “Foreign Legion”? M. Girard identifies it with
the Mounted Archers, on the strength of a passage in Aristophanes’
_Birds_. An unknown deity has invaded the territory of Cloud-Cuckoo
town. Peisthetairos exclaims, “Why didn’t you despatch peripoloi after
him at once?” To which the messenger replies, “We did send 30,000
Mounted Archers.” The inscriptions at Eleusis also make a force of
non-citizen troops serve under the captain of the peripoloi. These
mercenary troops, having no civil duties, would naturally be used as a
patrol. Moreover, to an Athenian, “archer” meant “policeman.” Athens
was policed by foreign “Archers”: it would be natural for Attica to be
policed in like manner, only by a mounted force, as a greater distance
had to be covered.[636] But it is also possible that the non-Athenian
peripoloi were the sons of μέτοικοι ἰσοτελεῖς [metoikoi isoteleis],
who, being forced to serve as hoplites when grown up, would require
some preliminary training; these alien hoplites are coupled by
Thucydides[637] with the recruits and veterans, who garrisoned the
Athenian walls and forts: they seem to have served as a perpetual
patrol.

The first three classes of Athenian citizens in wealth must all have
passed through this training; for, although the two first were liable
to cavalry service, they might also be called upon to serve as
hoplites.[638] Rich young epheboi, who had plenty of time on their
hands, would naturally learn both cavalry and infantry drill. The
poorer Zeugitai would only have to learn their duties as heavy
infantry, and were probably allowed to spend a good proportion of
their time on their farms in Athens. But what about the fourth class,
the Thetes? They were not liable to be called out as hoplites, but had
to serve on land as light-armed troops or at sea as rowers. Did they
also have a recruit course? Now the garrisons of the Athenian forts
and walls were hoplites:[639] there is no trace of the Thetes here.
But the patrol duties in the mountains can hardly have been performed
by heavy troops: it is noticeable that in Xenophon light troops are
suggested for this purpose, when Sokrates is developing an elaborate
scheme for holding the frontiers of Attica against all invaders.[640]
In the next century, at any rate, light troops were used for this
purpose. In a later work Xenophon talks of “those who are ordered to
occupy the forts and those who have to serve as peltasts and patrol
the country,”[641] in a passage where he is clearly referring to the
epheboi. Thus there are two classes, the garrisons, who would
naturally be hoplites, and the patrols, who are peltasts, suitably
equipped for mountaineering. But the peltasts only began to appear
towards the close of the Peloponnesian War: the first mention of them
is in Thucydides’ account of the army of Brasidas. Before this time,
the light troops were archers and some slingers; thus, in the monument
to those of the Erechtheid tribe who fell in the year 459, after the
hoplites four archers are mentioned.[642] But they were a small force:
there were only 1600 of them in 431 B.C. The majority of the Thetes
served in the ships. In the _Birds_ of Aristophanes, which appeared in
414, when it was a question of repelling a sudden raid, just after the
peripoloi have been mentioned, Peisthetairos bids his immediate
attendants arm themselves with slings and bows: these are clearly the
weapons for a flying column despatched in pursuit of raiders.[643]

The passage of Xenophon makes it clear that there were peltasts in the
ephebic force in the fourth century; that of Aristophanes suggests the
probability of archers and slingers among them in the fifth. But
whether these light-armed troops consisted of enterprising Zeugitai
who added this training to their hoplite drill, or were a small
detachment of Thetes, cannot be fixed. Thetes must, at any rate, not
have been numerous in the ephebic force, for they could not have
spared the time necessary for such lengthy training.[644]

As a rule, the epheboi were not expected to do more than guard the
frontier and repel an occasional foray: even this, however, must have
given them plenty of employment in war-time. But they shared in
Muronides’ great victory in the Megarid in 458, when Athens had to use
her reserves.[645] Either they or the “foreign legion” joined in a
later invasion of Megara.[646] But as a rule they served for home
defence only. Their recruit-course ended with their twentieth year:
henceforth they were ordinary Athenian citizens and soldiers.

In about 332 B.C., when Lukourgos delivered his speech against
Leokrates, the old ephebic system seems still to have been in force.
The suggestion that Leokrates might have evaded the ephebic oath is
only rhetorical, for the orator immediately goes on to assume that he
took it.[647] In 328, the probable date of Aristotle’s _Athenian
Constitution_, it seems still to have been in existence, for the
philosopher records it as part of the contemporary regime. The
inscriptions support these authorities. A list of epheboi of the
Kekropid tribe enrolled in 334 is given under the vote of thanks: the
upper part of the list is gone, but the numbers were apparently
large.[648] Some forty-four names can be inferred from the fragments,
belonging to six or seven demes out of the twelve which composed the
tribe; but apparently the smallest contingents are at the bottom, so
there may well have been a hundred names in the tribe, and 1000
epheboi altogether. Considering the impoverishment of Attica and the
consequent decrease in the hoplite classes, this is probably a fair
proportion of epheboi.[649] A tribal contingent is still large enough
to serve as a garrison for Eleusis, and to act by itself.

But in the next century the numbers drop down to twenty-nine and
twenty-three. The service must have been voluntary. Moreover, brothers
are found serving together, from which it may be inferred that the
exact age qualification was no longer regarded.[650] Philosophy and
literature become subjects of study; and a library, swollen by gifts
from old epheboi, is collected. Foreigners begin to be enrolled in the
second century, and in course of time outnumber the native Athenians.
Although the old military service is preserved, no doubt in a
mummified condition, the system of the epheboi develops into the
Athenian university, where young Romans like Cicero’s son came to
learn philosophy, though they had little to learn from Athens in
military matters. The Sophronistai and Kosmetes become the Proctors
and Chancellor, the special festivals the compulsory services, of the
new University. The torch-races, the military duties, and the naval
races[651] become its athletics. It is the old conscription system of
Athens, not the schools of Plato or Isokrates, that gives birth to the
first University.

The system of epheboi was represented at Sparta by the κρυπτοί
[kryptoi]. We hear of an archephebos at Argos, and a
gumnasiarchos who manages the epheboi at Troizen.[652] In the
Megarid and in Boiotia the epheboi were trained as cavalry,
hoplites, or peltasts.[653] An ephebarchos can be traced in Teos.
There were patrol-houses, and so possibly epheboi patrols in the
territory of Syracuse.[654] This period of special training for
military duties seems to have been general all over Hellas. Plato
adopts it without demur in the _Republic_ and _Laws_.


     [612] Aristot. Ἀθ. Πολ. [Ath. Pol.] 42 for these
     examinations.

     [613] Luk. _ag. Leok._ 18. 76.

     [614] Pollux, viii. 105-106, etc.

     [615] κραίνοντες [krainontes]. Note the archaic word.

     [616] Luk. _ag. Leok_. 18. 75.

     [617] Plato, _Krit._ 51 D, E.

     [618] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 18.

     [619] I have already suggested that metrical versions may
     have been taught at the music-schools.

     [620] Plato, _Protag._ 326 D. Boys used to listen to cases
     in the law-courts. This would give them some idea of legal
     procedure. (Compare the custom at some English public
     schools of letting the boys go to hear the local assizes.)
     Demosthenes thus went with his paidagogos to hear the trial
     of Kallistratos.

     [621] Aristot. Ἀθ. Πολ. [Ath. Pol.] 42. 2.

     [622] _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 1571 B.

     [623] _C.I.A._ II. 316.

     [624] e.g. _C.I.A._ ii. 316. 338.

     [625] Aristot. Ἀθ. Πολ. [Ath. Pol.] 42. 3.

     [626] [Plato] _Axiochos_, 367 A.

     [627] Schol. on Aristoph. _Birds_, 794.

     [628] Xen. _Revenues_, iv. 52.

     [629] Aristot. Ἀθ. Πολ. [Ath. Pol.] 42. 4.

     [630] Thuc. ii. 46.

     [631] Lucias, x. 1, and Aristophanes anent Kleonumos,
     _passim_.

     [632] Properly speaking, it was only during his second year
     that the ephebos was a peripolos or patrol. Aischines,
     however, claims to have served two years as a peripolos. The
     term may have been used loosely, or else in times of crisis
     the epheboi may have been hurried off to the frontier as
     soon as they were enrolled.

     [633] _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 574 D, and 563 B.

     [634] Thuc. viii. 92.

     [635] Lusias, xiii. 71.

     [636] The force may also have included citizens, for the
     younger Alkibiades once served in it (Lus. xv. 6). But that
     was a special occasion, when the ordinary cavalry had
     refused to receive him.

     [637] Thuc. ii. 13. 6-7.

     [638] Lus. xvi. 13, xiv. 10.

     [639] Thuc. ii. 13. 6-7.

     [640] Xen. _Mem._ iii. 5. 27.

     [641] Xen. _Revenues_, iv. 52.

     [642] _C.I.A._ I. 143. Cp. _C.I.A._ I. 79 for
     citizen-archers.

     [643] It is noticeable that in Aristotle’s time the epheboi
     were taught by a “Teacher of Archery.” He may be a survival.

     [644] In Boiotia and the Megarid the epheboi served as
     cavalry, hoplites, or peltasts (_C.I.G._ Boiot. and Meg.
     2715, 2717-21, 1747-48, etc.).

     [645] Thuc. i. 105.

     [646] _Ibid._ iv. 67.

     [647] Luk. _ag. Leok._ 76.

     [648] _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 563 b.

     [649] In 431 B.C. Athens had 13,000 hoplites of between
     twenty and forty years of age. On this average there would
     be perhaps about 1000 epheboi per year, or 2000
     altogether――the same number as here. The 16,000 of the
     reserve in 431 includes veterans and metics as well as
     epheboi.

     [650] The changes seem to have happened shortly before 305,
     for in an inscription of that year the numbers have dropped
     greatly and brothers serve together.

     [651] _C.I.A._ ii. 466, 470.

     [652] _C.I.G._ Pelop. 589, 749, 753.

     [653] See note 2 on p. 218.

     [654] Thuc. vi. 45, vii. 48.



THE EPHEBIC INSCRIPTIONS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY

(Dealing with Attica only)


I. _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 574 d.

“The epheboi of the Hippothontid tribe, who were enrolled when
Ktesikles was Archon (334-333 B.C.), having been crowned by the Boule
and Demos, offered this offering.”

Then follows a mutilated vote of thanks from the people of Eleusis to
the epheboi for the discipline which they had preserved while
garrisoning the town, and to their Sophronistes, who is to receive a
crown, and to have a front seat at local festivals.


II. _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 563 b.

Decrees in honour of the epheboi of the Kekropid tribe.

(_a_) By the Kekropid tribe.

“Kallikrates of Aixoné proposed. Whereas the epheboi of the Kekropid
tribe, who were enrolled when Ktesikles was Archon (334-333 B.C.), are
orderly and do everything that the laws enjoin upon them, and are
obedient to the Sophronistes appointed by the people, we pass a vote
of thanks to them and crown them with a golden crown of 500 drachmas
for their excellent discipline and behaviour. We also pass a vote of
thanks to the Sophronistes, Adeistos, son of Antimachos, and award him
a golden crown of the aforesaid weight, for that he hath well and
diligently directed the epheboi of the Kekropid tribe. This vote to be
recorded on a stone pillar and set up in the shrine of Kekrops.”

(_b_) Vote of the Athenian people.

“Hegemachos, son of Chairemon, proposed. Whereas the epheboi of the
Kekropid tribe stationed at Eleusis do well and diligently pay heed to
the orders of the Boule and Demos, and do behave themselves orderly,
we pass a vote of thanks to them for their good discipline and
behaviour, and enact that each of them be crowned with an olive crown.
We also pass a vote of thanks to their Sophronistes, Adeistos, son of
Antimachos, and decree to him a crown of olive, when he has passed his
scrutiny. This vote to be recorded on the offering which the epheboi
of the Kekropid tribe offer.”

(_c_) Vote of Eleusinians.

“Protias proposed. Whereas the epheboi of the Kekropid tribe and their
Sophronistes, Adeistos, son of Antimachos, do well and diligently
garrison Eleusis, the people of the deme pass a vote of thanks to them
and crown each of them with a crown of olive.”

The vote to be recorded as before.

(_d_) Similar vote of the Athmonian deme in honour of their
fellow-demesman, Adeistos.

With this is a list of the epheboi in question, much mutilated.


III. _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 1571 b.

“Theophanes, son of Hierophon, offered this to Hermes, having been
crowned by the epheboi and Sophronistai and Kosmetai.”

This is signed by the epheboi for the years 333-332, 332-331, and
331-330.


IV. _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 251 b.

A vote of thanks from the Boule and Demos to the epheboi as a whole
for their exemplary behaviour, and to their Kosmetes and Sophronistai
and teachers. A mutilated list of epheboi follows. This belongs to the
year 305-304 B.C.


V. _C.I.A._ IV. ii. 565 b.

A vote of thanks of the Pandionid tribe to Philonides, who had been
elected by the people Sophronistes of their epheboi, and had performed
his duty well.


VI. Böckh, 214 (belonging to 320 B.C.).

(Dug up at Aixoné.)

An extract:――“We pass a vote of thanks to the Sophronistai and crown
each of them with a crown of olive, namely, Kimon, son of Megakles,
and Puthodoros, son of Putheas … for the zeal they showed in regard to
the all-night revel.”

The epheboi took part in a sacrifice and revel in honour of Hebe.
Apparently, as a rule, they were noisy and gave trouble to the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood. But this year they were kept in
order by the Sophronistai. Hence the vote.



PART II

THE THEORY OF EDUCATION



CHAPTER VIII

RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN HELLAS


The greater part of the religious instruction in Hellas was given
outside the schools, in the home and in public life. The child learnt
the current ritual observances proper to each particular deity or
occasion by participating in them himself. His religious devotion was
practised and stimulated by the festivals and sacred songs and dances
which made up so large a part of Hellenic life. In a religion like the
Hellenic, which was so largely a matter of forms and ceremonies, there
was little dogma to be learnt by children; no catechism, no sectarian
teaching was necessary. Such dogma as there was consisted in the myths
which were current about the various deities and heroes; and of these
myths there were so many varieties that heterodoxy about them became
almost impossible.

Such as it was, this dogma, consisting of manifold and often
contradictory myths, was enshrined in the poetry of the race, so that
most of the poems became sacred books, regarded by the orthodox as
inspired. This sacred literature, as we have seen, was the chief
object of study in the primary schools at Athens, where it was read,
written, and learnt by heart. At Sparta almost the whole of literary
and intellectual education consisted of sacred songs in honour of gods
and heroes. The myths were the very essence of primary education in
Hellas.

In order to understand the attitude of the educational theorists
towards these myths which run through most of the Hellenic poetry, it
is necessary to realise the extraordinary authority which was given to
the poets, and especially to Homer and Hesiod. Every word of them was
regarded as inspired and strictly true: their authority was
indisputable. At the beginning of the sixth century an interpolated
line in the _Iliad_ was made the main support of the Athenian claim to
the Island of Salamis. Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, according to the
current legend, was refused the command of the Hellenic forces against
Persia because, as the Spartan envoy put it, Agamemnon would groan if
he heard of such a thing, and because Homer had said that an Athenian
was the best man at drawing up and marshalling a host, for which cause
the Athenians now claimed the command.[655] That such arguments could
be employed shows in what veneration Homer was held. He was considered
to be especially inspired.[656] His admirers asserted that he had
educated Hellas, and that his works provided fit instruction for the
whole conduct of life.[657] More specifically, it was said that “The
divine Homer won his glory and renown from this, that he taught good
things, drill, valour and the arming of troops.”[658] He was misquoted
to support peculiar views, as in Plato.[659] People had their
favourite texts: Sokrates’ was “In due proportion to thy means pay
honour to the gods.” It was a not unheard-of accomplishment to know
the whole _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ by heart. Moral lessons were drawn
from them. Thus the story of Kirké was a warning against
self-indulgence. Kirké made the companions of Odusseus swine through
their over-indulgence in the pleasures of the table; Odusseus himself,
by Hermes’ advice and his own self-restraint in such matters, escaped
this fate.[660]

In time, however, the higher morality of the leading Hellenic thinkers
revolted against the low morality, to say nothing more, of much of the
mythology embodied in the poets. Xenophanes began the attack. “Homer
and Hesiod,” he cries, “ascribed to the gods all that is considered
disgraceful among men.” Herakleitos declared that Homer deserved a
thrashing. Even the pious Pindar tried to alter some of the myths to
suit his own morality, and Aeschylus fights hard for an underlying
monotheism. In the next generation the storm broke: awakening
intelligence, fostered by the Sophists and the philosophers, shrank
away from the horrors of the _Theogony_. Tragedy, by bringing
mythology before the eyes, had made its impossibility more apparent.
The researches of the earlier historians in comparative mythology had
undermined the bases of belief. Herodotos had found that a god named
Herakles had been recognised in Egypt 17,000 years before his time;
consequently the Hellenic Herakles, only six centuries before the
historian’s age, must be only a man of the same name.[661] Rationalism
began to master the mythology: Thucydides tried to apply scientific
methods to the Trojan War, making, for example, its duration due to
the difficulty of obtaining supplies for so large a force. The
rationalism of Euripides is well known. Metrodoros, a pupil of
Anaxagoras, made the gods natural forces and varieties of matter――a
device already employed by Empedokles for poetical convenience. In
this way Sokrates rationalises the Boreas-myth in the _Phaidros_,[662]
where Plato states that the wise disbelieve such tales; but Sokrates
was too busy studying his own personality to raise all these numerous
questions, so he accepts the customary belief. The defenders of Homer,
led by Metrodoros and Stesimbrotos,[663] tried to allegorise him,
declaring that the worst myths had a moral meaning in the background.
The allegories were often ludicrous: Plato rejects them wholly for
educational purposes, as children always take the literal
interpretation.

But public opinion was still fiercely attached to the old deities, as
the incident of the Hermai and the condemnation of Anaxagoras,
Protagoras, and Sokrates showed. The deities could not be sacrificed:
consequently it was the myths that had to go. The myths said that Zeus
dethroned his own father and committed adultery: if the myth is true,
since Zeus is Supreme God, these crimes are justifiable.[664]
Therefore the myth must be untrue. Homer and Hesiod lied: their works
are mainly a blasphemous fiction.[665] Isokrates[666] sums up this new
attitude. “The poets,” he declares, “blasphemously represented the
sons of the Immortals as having done and suffered worse deeds than the
most impious of men: they spoke such things about the gods as no one
would venture to allege of his worst enemy; not only do they make them
steal, commit adultery, and fall into slavery to mortals, but even
represent them as eating their children, mutilating their fathers, and
binding their mothers in chains.… For this the poets did not go
unpunished, but some of them were wanderers and begged their bread,
some became blind, another was an exile all his life long, and
Orpheus, who devoted himself especially to such stories, was torn in
pieces.”[667]

The greatest objection to these immoral legends was that they were
taught in the nursery and the elementary school, at the most
impressionable age.[668] Hence Plato wishes to lay down strict canons
for the myths, legends, and fables which are to be taught to children.
“For the beginning of everything is half the battle, especially in the
case of what is young and tender. Young children are like soft wax,
ready to take a clear and deep impression of any seal which is laid
upon them. Hence the immense importance of the earliest stages of
education, the myths and stories taught in the nursery and at school.…
The compositions of Homer and Hesiod are fiction, and unlovely fiction
at that; even if true, they had better not be told to the young and
undiscerning.… The myths must be improving on the surface, not by
allegory.”[669]

Plato is not prepared to rewrite the Hellenic Bible: he will only draw
up the canons which the poets must follow. It is to be noticed that
these canons are peculiar, and would exclude not merely most of Homer
and Hesiod, but a large part of the Old and some of the New Testament.
The first canon is that God, being good, cannot be the cause or
originator of any harm or evil to mankind; for these things some other
cause must be discovered. The greater part of the human lot is evil:
so God is not the cause of the majority of human events.

This excludes Homer’s lines:

  Two butts of human fortunes by the gates of Heaven stood,
  One full of all things evil, and one of all things good.
  To whom God gives a mixture, his life is weal and woe,
  But to whom He gives of the evil alone, he lives as a beggar below.

And

  Zeus is the world’s housekeeper, who serves out weal and woe.

And Aeschylus’

  God plants the seed of sin among mankind,
  Whene’er He wills to bring a race to naught.

If God is represented as the cause of misfortunes, the poet must say
that the misfortunes were good for the sufferers, making them better
and happier.[670]

The second canon is that God is not a wizard, appearing now in one
form, now in another. Why should He change? External forces are not
likely to change Him: He would not change Himself, since it would
necessarily be a transition to the less good and less beautiful, since
He is perfect. So the lines――

  Disguised as human strangers, in many a changing guise,
  Gods roam about the cities, to spy iniquities,

and the tales of Proteus and other metamorphoses, are false.
Consequently mothers should not tell their children that a god may
always be present in disguise, for it is a lie and is also likely to
make the children cowardly. Lying is only useful in dealing with
enemies, for managing lunatics, and for making a satisfactory
explanation where certainty is impossible. God has no such reason for
lying or deception.

The character of the Deity having been thus purged of mythological
accretions, Plato passes on to the treatment of the future state. This
must not be described as in any way terrible, or the children will
learn to prefer dishonourable life to honourable death. So reject――

  O better be a poor man’s serf, and share his scanty bread,
  Than be the crownèd king of all the nations of the dead.

And

  From him his soul bewailing her hapless fortunes fled,
  Her youth and beauty leaving, to the kingdoms of the dead!

All such passages must be expurgated from school editions; nor is it
right to admit the fearful scenery of Hell, the rivers of Hate (Styx)
and Wailing (Kokutos), ghosts, banshees, and other terrible words, for
fear of making the children nervous.

Then comes the discussion of the ideal man, in which Achilles falls
from the pedestal which he had previously occupied as the ideal of
Hellenic manhood. Great men must not indulge in immoderate
lamentations for their dead friends. The lament of Achilles for
Patroklos and of Priam for Hektor, when he rolled in the dust and the
dungheap, must be rejected. “For if the young should take such stories
seriously and not laugh them to scorn as contemptibly improbable, they
would be most unlikely to consider such lamentations degrading, or to
check themselves when they felt any impulse to act in such a way, but,
without shame or restraint, they would whine out many dirges over tiny
misfortunes.”[671]

Nor must the heroes be made too fond of laughing. For immoderate
laughter leads by reaction to immoderate grief. So reject――

  Then rose among the blessed gods a laugh unquenchable.

The myths must instil self-control, obedience to rulers and elders and
to the better instincts. This leads Plato to expurgate――

  Thou drunkard, shameless as a dog, and fearful as a deer:

but commend――

  Good father, sit in silence, and hearken to what I say.

Then Homer teaches gluttony, by making Odusseus, the wisest of men,
say――

  Best thing in life I count it, a heavy-laden board, While in the
  goblets ceaselessly the good strong wine is poured.

Still worse are the tales of the lusts of Zeus or of Ares and
Aphrodite, and of the covetousness of the gods.

  Gifts win the heart of gods: gifts win the heart of kings.

Nor must the heroes be allowed to blaspheme. “My respect for Homer
makes me shrink from saying it, but it is impious to state or to
believe that Achilles was ready to fight against the river, a god, or
that he dragged Hektor’s body round Patroklos’ tomb or slaughtered
captives upon it, or that he gave to the dead Patroklos the hair which
he had dedicated to the river god Spercheios.”[672] Nor must poets say
that wicked men are enviable, if they are not found out, or that
justice does good to others but is a loss to oneself. On the contrary,
they must invent myths to establish the opposite, whether it be true
or not, because it is profitable.

Plato cares very little for literal truth in mythology; he is only
desirous that the fiction should be improving and in accordance with
sound ethics. It is impossible to know the truth, he thinks, about
things primeval and the gods, so it is necessary to invent stories as
near the truth as possible and such that they will be improving. The
majority of men, as Isokrates also noticed, prefer myths to anything
else; for their intelligence can only grasp ethical and metaphysical
truths when they are embodied in stories and parables and fables.[673]
These fictions, however, are like powerful drugs: their concoction
must only be entrusted to competent hands, or the result will be
deadly. The rulers of the State, the philosophers, must construct the
national mythology, not unskilled and irresponsible persons like
poets.[674] Plato himself gives a good many instances of such
profitable myths; he enshrines in them, as in a popular form, many of
his deepest beliefs, his psychology,[675] his views of the immortality
of the soul,[676] his political theory that all men are not
equal.[677] In his opinion mythology was the proper food for the
unenlightened many who were incapable of philosophic certainty; the
philosopher, by the light of his exact knowledge of ethics and
metaphysics, was to concoct this food.

In pursuance of this theory an ideal character, in history or fiction,
was required to personify and make real to the multitude the
disembodied ideals of Ethics.[678] Achilles had been tumbled from his
pedestal by philosophy. Who was to replace him? Plato tries to put an
idealised Sokrates in this position, but he could not square the
historical personality with the ideal man postulated in the
_Republic_. Xenophon, also thinking that a pattern man is “an
excellent invention for the study of morality,” proposes
Agesilaos.[679] Prodikos tried to make Herakles the model of the
young. Aristotle formulated the μεγαλόψυχος [megalopsychos], but never
personified him. Stoicism sought for its Wise Man or Perfect Saint,
but never found him; Epicureanism was satisfied with its founder. But
the search for the personification of the ethical ideal becomes the
central feature of Hellenic philosophy and religion from the time of
Plato onwards.


     [655] Herod. vii. 159-161.

     [656] Plato, _Ion_, 24 C.

     [657] _Rep._ 606 E. So in Isokrates, _To Nikokles_, 530 B.

     [658] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 1034-1036.

     [659] Plato, _Rep._ 391 B.

     [660] Sokrates in Xenophon, _Mem._ i. 3, 7. The moralisation
     is quite un-Homeric.

     [661] Herod, ii. 43-46. This tendency culminated in
     Euhemeros, at the end of the fourth century, who claimed to
     have found inscriptions in Crete giving the careers of
     mortal kings named Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus. He argued that
     the gods were distinguished men, deified by admiring
     posterity. His theory passed to Rome in Ennius’ translation
     and supported the imperial cult.

     [662] Plato, _Phaidr._ 229 C.

     [663] Plato, _Ion_, 530. Cp. Xen. _Banquet_, iii. 6, where
     Anaximandros is mentioned.

     [664] Cp. Aristoph. _Clouds_, 905, 1080, representing
     “Sophist” arguments.

     [665] Plato, _Rep._ 377 D.

     [666] Isok. _Bous._ 228 D.

     [667] Cp. the statement of Herodotos (ii. 53) that Homer and
     Hesiod created the details of Hellenic mythology, even the
     names and functions of the deities.

     [668] Plato, _Rep._ 377 B.

     [669] _Ibid._ 378.

     [670] Plato, _Rep._ 380.

     [671] Plato, _Rep._ 388 D.

     [672] _Ibid._ 391 B. Plato maligns Achilles. He only
     promised the hair to Spercheios on condition that he
     returned home alive, which he knew he would not do if he
     slew Hektor.

     [673] Compare Tennyson, _In Memoriam_, xxxvi.:

       For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
           Where truth in closest words shall fail,
           When truth embodied in a tale
       Shall enter in at lowly doors.

     [674] Plato, _Rep._ 389 C.

     [675] In the _Phaidros_.

     [676] In the _Republic_, and elsewhere.

     [677] _Rep._ 414-417, etc. For the use which Plato made of
     myths as popular expositions of his views, cp. _Laws_, 663,
     664, 713, 714, 716.

     [678] Isokrates recognised this too, _Antid._ 105 C.

     [679] Xen. _Ag._ x. 2.



CHAPTER IX

ART, MUSIC, AND POETRY


Since poetry, music, singing, and dancing were the chief components of
a Hellenic boy’s education, the æsthetic canons by which these were
regulated came to be of great importance in the moral history of
Hellas, and were the objects of much thought and inquiry on the part
of the educational theorists. It is hard for a modern reader to
understand the attitude which Plato and Aristotle adopt towards
poetry, art, and music, partly owing to the way in which these
subjects are neglected in many modern schools, and still more owing to
the immense changes which have taken place both in the subjects
themselves and in their relations to the State as a whole.

In ancient Hellas art, literature, and music were addressed to the
whole citizen-body, not to a cultured upper class. The epics were
recited to crowds that might number thousands. The choral lyrics were
danced and sung by large choruses in the presence of a whole city.
Tragedy and Comedy were acted before the whole Athenian populace,
swollen by crowds from every part of Hellas. The great orations were
spoken either to the national assembly, where every grown man might be
present, or to a jury of several hundred citizens. So with Hellenic
art. The statues and pictures were not created for private
drawing-rooms, but for public temples, colonnades, or gymnasia.

Thus it was national, not individual taste which was the standard of
Hellenic art and literature: they had to follow the taste of the city,
not of a clique. But every city in Hellas, as in the Italy of the
Renaissance, had an intense individuality of its own, which dominated
its poets, artists, and musicians. The art-schools of the islands, of
Argos, of Athens were as distinct from one another as those of Venice,
Florence, Perugia. The greater centres had types of music so far
distinct that they required different instruments. Language,
character, and politics in like manner presented a different aspect in
each community. But underneath this ubiquitous local individuality lay
the fundamental distinction between the Dorian, on the one hand, and
the Ionian, with whom for æsthetic purposes may be classed the
Aeolian, on the other. For Hellenism began to run its course in two
distinct channels, the Doric and the Ionic.[680]

The Doric characteristics were the sacrifice of the detail and the
individual to the whole and the community, a love of terseness and
simplicity, a strong sense of harmony, order, and proportion, a hatred
of complexity, mystery, vagueness, and luxury, and a preference for
the perfect body over the developed intellect. The Dorians were
essentially one-sided, and lacking in imagination, intellect, and
invention; they were strong conservatives, and any innovation was
repugnant to them.

The Ionians were a very different people. Individualism was strong in
them from the first. They had a tendency to floridity, to exaggeration
of detail, and to luxury. A quick-witted and imaginative race, they
were fond of perpetual innovation. Versatility was characteristic of
them. They preferred intellectual to physical success. Their
imagination outran their powers of execution. They had none of the
solidity of the less brilliant Dorian, none of his discipline,
self-restraint, directness, or perseverance. They were his inferiors
in most physical and ethical qualities, his superiors in all
intellectual pursuits.

Till the fifth century the two conflicting types exercise little
influence upon one another. The Ionians produce a sensuous, dreamy,
refined, and imaginative sculpture; the Dorians a series of physically
excellent but wholly unintellectual athlete-statues. The Aeolians
produce the personal lyrics of love and wine; the Dorians the choral
poetry of athletic triumphs and gymnastic dances. The Dorians can
claim the ethical and collectivist philosophy of Pythagoras; the
Ionians the intellectual and individualist philosophy of the so-called
Ionian schools.

Athens during this period was purely Ionic, as her statues, the
remains of which are now being recovered from the rubbish heaps where
Xerxes threw them, abundantly testify. Further evidence comes from the
style of dress shown in these statues and in other works of art of the
period: it is almost oriental.[681] The statues reveal an excess of
detail and over-refinement: the most common type was a draped woman.
The Dorians, on the other hand, were most successful in the nude male
type; and the great Aeginetan school quite failed to represent the
goddess Athena.

The same principle of differentiation applied to music as well as to
art, in Hellas: the Dorian, the Ionian, the Aeolian, as well as the
neighbouring Phrygian and Lydian, each produced a type of their own,
or “harmony,” as it was called. Each “harmony” bore the mark of the
“ethos,” or moral character, of the tribe or race which produced it,
plainly and unmistakably. Music in early Hellas must have been of a
primitive type, and an acute musical ear had not yet been developed by
long training. Consequently, the average Hellenic audience was in the
position of the utterly unmusical man of modern times: the complicated
music of modern masters would have been wholly unintelligible to them,
and the only meanings which they could extract from music were certain
broad ethical impressions. The unmusical man is stirred by a good
marching tune, moved to a certain depression by a dirge or dead march,
enlivened and excited by a rollicking bacchanalian song, and reduced
to a solemn and half-religious frame of mind by the tones of a great
organ. So with the average Hellene: he extracted this amount of
impressions from his music, and no more. Any idea of music as the
voice of the unutterable was quite foreign to his mind; in fact, he
disliked any music that was unaccompanied by singing: tunes without
words were unknown in earlier Hellas.

How these different harmonies were produced, by what combination of
notes and scales each was regulated, may be left to the specialists:
it is one of those questions which will probably never be settled
conclusively. The fact remains that they existed, each with an
unmistakable moral characteristic of its own. But what exactly the
moral characteristic of each was, is rendered doubtful by the
conflicting evidence of different writers; probably, as musical taste
changed and developed, the same “harmony” came to cause a different
impression. Plato’s ear, accustomed to the prevalent Dorian, found the
Lydian doleful and depressing; Aristotle and his contemporaries, more
used to softer music, praised it as valuable for educational
purposes.[682] Herakleides of Pontos,[683] who made a special study of
music, gives, in a fragment, a sketch of the old Hellenic “harmonies.”
The Dorian, according to him, was manly, dignified, stern, and robust,
not effeminate nor merry nor variegated nor versatile.[684] The
Aeolic, afterwards called “Hypo-Dorian,” was haughty and pretentious,
rather conceited, not, however, base in any way, but inflated and
confident. It was the right music for “woman, wine, and song.” The
Ionic, representing the old Ionic character before the race
degenerated, was passionate, headstrong, contentious, showing no signs
of benevolence or merriment, but revealing a certain hardness of heart
and temperament. It was not florid nor cheerful, but austere and
harsh, with a not ignoble dignity which fitted it to accompany
Tragedy. Later, the race and the “harmony” seem to have degenerated,
and are charged with being luxurious and effeminate. There used also
to be a Locrian “harmony,” which was used by Pindar and Simonides, but
afterwards it fell into contempt and died out.

Besides these purely Hellenic types, there were two which came from
barbarian races, the Lydian and the Phrygian. Of the Lydian there were
several varieties. The Mixed-Lydian was doleful and suitable to
dirges: it made the audience feel mournful and grave. The
Syntono-Lydian was very similar. The pure Lydian is rejected as
effeminate by Plato;[685] but Aristotle, resting on the musical
experts, declares that it involves order and arrangement (κόσμος
[kosmos]) and is well adapted for education. About the Phrygian
opinion is still more divided. Plato commends it. According to him it
suitably represents the notes and accents of a self-controlled man “in
peaceful and unconstrained circumstances, trying to persuade some one
or making a request, praying to a god or advising a man, or giving his
attention to the request or advice or arguments of some one else; and
if he attains his object, not puffed up, but in all things acting, and
accepting the consequences of his actions, with moderation and
self-control.” The philosopher then goes on to reject the flute, as
suitable only to hysterical enthusiasm. But this, as Aristotle pointed
out, was inconsistent. For the Phrygian harmony and the flute went
hand in hand: the wild orgies of Dionusos and other worships of an
enthusiastic nature were usually accompanied by the flute and could
only be set to the Phrygian harmony. The dithyramb, for instance,
could only be set in this way; when Philoxenos definitely tried to
write one to the Dorian, he slid back without being able to prevent it
into the Phrygian. Aristotle therefore, accounting it an enthusiastic
harmony, reserves it as a “purge” (κάθαρσις [katharsis]), which, by
providing under well-regulated conditions an occasional outlet for
hysteria, will work such affections out of the system for a long
period: at the end of which another dose will be required.[686]

In Hellas music was held to be an efficacious medicine for the ills
alike of body, soul, and mind. Even the grave and learned philosopher
Theophrastos, the pupil of Aristotle, asserted that the Phrygian
“harmony” on the flute was the proper means of curing lumbago.[687]
Pindar states that Apollo “gives to men and women cures for grievous
sickness, and invented the harp, and gives the Muse to whom he will,
bringing warless peace into the heart”:[688] the god of medicine is
the son of the god of the harp. The Pythagorean philosopher Kleinias,
when he was in a bad temper, used to take up his harp, saying, “I am
calming myself.”[689] He and his school regarded the harp as the true
means of attaining that peace and solemn orderliness of soul which as
true Dorian musicians they desired. Lukourgos produced at Sparta the
state of mind necessary to enable his reforms to be carried, by
sending from Crete a lyric poet named Thales, whose songs, by their
calm and orderly tune and rhythm, were an incentive to discipline and
concord: by this means the Spartans were imperceptibly calmed in
character.[690] The Arcadians, according to their compatriot Polubios,
from ancient times onwards “made music their foster-brother” from
their cradles till they were thirty years of age, in order to
counteract the brutalising tendencies of their rough life and harsh
climate; and the inhabitants of one district, Kunaitha, which
neglected this preventive, were notorious for their wickedness.[691]

Thus music came to be regarded as the best means of forming character.
It was only necessary to apply the right sort of “harmony” to the
young and susceptible personality, and the right “ethos” would be
produced. The Dorian was most in request for educational purposes: its
merits were universally recognised. For it “suitably represented the
notes and accents of a brave man in the presence of war or of any
other violent action, going to meet wounds or death or fallen into any
other misfortune, facing his fate with unflinching resolution.”[692]
Of the others, as has been said, Plato preferred the Phrygian and
Aristotle the Lydian.

       *     *     *     *     *

Not only beautiful music, but beautiful art also, was believed to
produce, by an unconscious but irresistible influence, beautiful
characters in those who came into contact with it; while, on the other
hand, bad art, as well as bad music, was the cause of vice and low
moral ideals.[693] This, they naturally thought, was particularly true
in the case of children, who are so sensitive to all external
influences; moreover, it is the early impressions that make most
difference in a man’s life. To serve this educational end, the
Hellenes expected every statue and painting, as well as every poem and
tune, to have ἦθος [êthos], that is, according to Aristotle’s
definition,[694] to be such that its moral purpose was manifest to the
average man. For this purpose Hellenic art had to become impersonal:
the great statues represent a single trait of character. The smaller
individualising traits are omitted: the single trait chosen is then
idealised and carried to its utmost possible development. This
produced a single and easily intelligible effect. The frieze on the
Parthenon represented the perfect knight in various attitudes, not
So-and-so and Somebody-else. The same idealised abstractions can be
traced in the “Theseus” of the Pediment, and in most of the dramas of
Sophocles.

The realisation of this artistic ideal was made possible by the fusion
of the two currents, Doric and Ionic. At the end of the sixth century
a wave of Doricism passes over Athens, and the first competent
athlete-sculptors arise there. A second wave came in the middle of the
next century, in the period of Perikles. The Dorian characteristics
now dominate Attic artists alike in poetry, sculpture, and
vase-painting. Aeschylus had possessed the best traits of the Ionic
temperament, chastened by the great crisis of the Persian wars: his
imagination is half oriental, and he has often been compared to a
Hebrew prophet. But the canons of Sophocles are purely Doric, as are
those of Pheidias. The mixture of Doric ethics with Ionic imagination
produces the great age of Hellenic art and literature. With art in
such an educative condition, the effect of the great public buildings
and temples, which adorned even quite humble villages, and of the
glorious statues of which every temple, agora, and gymnasium formed a
perfect treasure-house, must have been very great upon the Hellenes,
who were probably the most susceptible of all peoples to artistic
influences. Moderns vaguely realise that a great Gothic Cathedral does
direct the emotions quite perceptibly. The more susceptible Athenians
must have been much more strongly influenced by the Parthenon and the
Propulaia. In fact, it is related that Epaminondas declared that his
countrymen could never become great unless they removed these
buildings bodily to Thebes. Strangers visiting Athens were so overcome
by her architectural glories that they thought her the natural capital
of the world――an effect which Perikles may well have intended. Great
works of art produce great effects: it is not unnatural to suppose
that smaller works produce a not inconsiderable, if smaller, effect.
Modern theorists often declare that the pictures and wall-paper of the
nursery ought to be in the best taste. Plato and Aristotle ruled that
everything, however humble, which surrounds the growing child should
be in accordance with the best canons of art, since art influenced
morality so strongly. “Ought we not to keep an eye,” says Plato,[695]
“on the craftsmen also, and prevent them from representing moral evil
or disorderliness or bad taste or lack of grace or lack of harmony
either in their imitations of animals or in their buildings or in any
other object of their craft? If they are unable to carry out our
directions in this matter, ought we not to expel them from the
community, lest boys who are brought up in the bad pasture of these
bad representations may pluck poison daily from everything around
them, and little by little insensibly accumulate a large amount of
evil in their souls? Must we not rather search for such craftsmen as
are able, by their native genius, to discover what is beautiful and
graceful? For in this way our children, dwelling in a region of
health, will be influenced for good by every sound and every sight of
these works of beauty, inhaling as it were a healthy breeze that blows
to them from a goodly land.” Every article of furniture, every detail
of architecture, is to take its part in educating the citizens. But if
art and music are so potent a factor in education, they require to be
carefully regulated: a depravation of popular taste, which will cause
a depravation of the dependent artists, will by its educating
influence increase the national decadence both of taste and of morals,
in an ever-widening degree.

       *     *     *     *     *

Poetry had at least an equally potent influence upon contemporary
ethics. The works of the great poets were the chief medium of
education, and large quantities of them were learned by heart in all
the elementary schools.[696] What the boys learned, they then recited,
with as much dramatic action as they were capable of: the rhapsodes
provided them with models. Thus the boys really _acted_ the poets as
far as they could. Acting was a new thing in Hellas in Solon’s time,
and it was received with apprehension. When Thespis first acted one of
his plays, Solon asked him if he was not ashamed to tell such lies in
public, making himself out to be what he was not. Thespis replied that
it was only in fun. Then Solon struck the ground with his stick and
said, “We shall soon find this fun of yours invading our commercial
transactions.” Later, when Peisistratos obtained the bodyguard, to
which he owed his tyranny, by pretending to have been wounded by his
enemies, Solon said the stratagem was a case of acting.[697] This
objection was echoed by Plato, and is not wholly unjustified by the
course of history. For the great vice of Hellenic life was its
insincerity: it is impossible to tell how far a Hellene is in earnest.
It is this vice which ruins their oratory; it is this which, in later
times, made the “hungry little Greek” the type of a fawning liar in
Roman opinion. It was not only in recitations that acting played a
great part. The dances were essentially dramatic: it was this quality
which enabled them to give birth to the drama. In the war-dance all
the gestures and attitudes of attack and defence in actual battle were
represented. The Dionysiac dances were originally the acts of devotees
trying to assimilate themselves to the god in his sufferings and
triumphs.

How vividly a Hellene entered into the dramatisation may be seen from
the case of the rhapsode Ion. When he recited Homer, his eyes filled
with water and his hair stood on end; and his audience were in much
the same condition. The effect in the “Mimetic” dances, where music,
gestures, rhythm, and poetry all combined to produce a single
impression, must have been greater still; the audience, as well as the
performers, must often have been quite carried away. Such performances
were very frequent. Is it unnatural to suppose that such frequent
assimilation had an important effect on the Hellenes, with their
artistic temperament and great susceptibility? At any rate, Plato,
Aristotle, and Aristophanes, not to mention lesser names, believed
that it had.

Among these potent poetic influences, the drama must certainly not be
forgotten. Sokrates regarded the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes as a far
more deadly attack upon his career than anything that Anutos and
Meletos could say. To Plato, the theatre plays the part of the “Great
Sophist,” the educating influence which forms the opinion and the
character of the young.

It must be remembered that Hellenic poetry enshrined the religion of
the race: this fact gave it an enormous influence. The characters in
Aeschylus and Sophocles are divine or semi-divine; many of the
audience in the theatre were wont to revere Agamemnon or Theseus; all
paid worship to Athena and Apollo. The Athenian drama was sacred to a
Hellene as is the play at Oberammergau to a Christian. Had Shakespeare
dramatised the Bible, modern children might have recited his speeches
and acted his plays with somewhat similar feelings to those with which
Hellenic boys recited Homer or Aeschylus. Suppose Shakespeare had thus
dramatised the story of Esau and Jacob, and an imaginative child was
set to learn Jacob’s speeches and repeat them; suppose he was also in
the habit of hearing them recited by a first-class actor who knew how
to bring out the minuter traits of character.[698] Is it not, at any
rate, quite rational to argue that the child would gradually absorb
some of these traits of character, just as children often pick up the
peculiarities of nurses and others with whom they have no hereditary
connection? Might not underhand habits be reasonably attributed to
frequent acting of the part of Jacob? Yet in ancient Hellas the
influence was much stronger, for the people were more susceptible and
the characters were believed to be half-divine.

       *     *     *     *     *

Thus in ancient Hellas music, art, and poetry had an immense effect on
the characters and morals of the race. This influence may well have
been exaggerated by Hellenic thinkers. Damon the musician declared
that every change in artistic standards produced a change in the tone
and constitution of a State; and Plato agreed with him.[699] The
danger of such innovations is a large part of the theme of the _Laws_,
and, in a less degree, of the _Republic_. Sparta accepted this
attitude and forbade all change. The opinion was certainly widely
held, and must have rested on experience.

Just as the thinkers were beginning to realise this principle, it
happened that a very great change in the artistic canons did take
place. Sophocles is succeeded by Euripides, Pheidias by Praxiteles:
music suffers a similar transformation. Idealism gives way to realism:
Sophocles and Pheidias had represented men as they ought to be,
Euripides and Praxiteles represent them as they are. Poets and
sculptors still pretend to be delineating deities, but in reality they
are delineating contemporary life.[700] Their creations not only cease
to be idealised, they cease to have only a single trait. The “Hermes”
of Praxiteles is a dreamy but vigorous young Athenian who might have
been met in the Akademeia or Lukeion; the “Herakles” of Euripides is
now a homicidal maniac, now a reckless mercenary.[701] The characters
become human by losing their divineness. In the next generation the
divine names are dropped, and Menander can depict contemporary life
without having to call his characters Orestes or Phaidra. Music also
ceased to be so severely separated off into types. All manner of
musical innovations arise, which it is very hard for a modern to
grasp. But the result is clear enough. It became no longer possible to
detect the ethical meaning of a tune: music was becoming complex, just
as characters in drama and sculpture were becoming complex. It was
also more homely in subject. It became daringly “mimetic” also,
imitating all the sounds of nature. This was an age of daring
experiments, and musicians shared the general movement.

To the Conservative party in Hellas and to the educational theorists
these changes naturally appeared ruinous. In their opinion, Euripides
was practically parodying the Bible and making divine characters share
all the follies and weaknesses, and use the homely language, of mere
men. Boys, learning such poetry by heart, would cease to have ideals:
everything would be commonplace to them. They would recite the most
homely language, and act the most homely parts, under the idea that
they were half-divine. Moreover, with the attack of the new school
upon the old religion, the more immoral parts of Hellenic mythology
were brought into undue prominence. Euripides seems to have chosen
some questionable subjects; the dithyrambic poets were worse, and
chose themes quite unsuitable for children to act or hear. And music
ceased to have any ethical value; it was all trills and onomatopœia.
Such changes meant a revolution in the results of education.

The poet Aristophanes is the first to raise his voice against the
change. A few months before the utter ruin of Athens, he produces the
_Frogs_, which really repeats the attack of the _Clouds_, with
Euripides instead of Sokrates for the defendant. The poet is attacked
as at once the prophet of the new culture of the Sophists and of the
new artistic standards. The following are some of the chief faults
which Aristophanes finds with the new school represented by
Euripides:[702] (1) an undignified style of music, worthy only of the
bones as an accompaniment; (2) its habit of mixing all sorts of
incongruous musical rubbish together, “lewd love-songs, drinking
catches of Meletos, Karian flute-music, dirges, and dances”; (3) its
trills or shakes, as in εἰειειειειλίσσετε [eieieieieilissete]; (4) its
mixture of incongruous pictures, “dolphins, spiders, halcyons,
prophet-chambers, and race-courses,” pathos and bathos, commonplace
and solemnity; (5) bad metre, licenses of every sort, and frequent
“resolved” feet. As a parody of its habitual incongruity Aristophanes
gives:

     “O God of the sea, that’s what it is. O ye neighbours,
     behold yon monstrous deed: Gluke’s gone off with my cock.
     Nymphs, ye daughters of the hills! Mary Ann, lend a hand.”

Aristophanes’ voice comes with a certain pathos, for the play is the
last utterance of Periclean Athens, just at the point of falling and
trying to find a scapegoat on whom to lay the responsibility of its
ruin: and the scapegoat chosen is the new artistic and musical
standard. The Ionic temperament had, in fact, broken away from all
restraint. The Doric canons of order, symmetry, regularity, and
solidity were thrown aside. Everything antique was treated with
disdain; all authority was rejected with scorn. No standards, ethical
or artistic, were tolerated. Perpetual change, daily novelty, became
the one desire of Athens. The foundations of belief, the bases of the
moral code, were broken down. The whole world seemed to be crumbling
away, and nothing was arising to take its place. Spectators became
dizzy with the eternal fluctuations. What wonder if they turned
longing eyes towards the one centre of gravity in Hellas, towards the
one place where politics, art, and ethics retained their old
stability, towards Sparta? So Sparta becomes the philosopher’s ideal,
and it is the Spartan canon that Plato tries to reimpose on Ionicism
running riot.[703] The fault which he finds with contemporary art and
music is that they simply try to please and amuse the audience, not to
educate and improve it.[704] They are like parents who try to soothe a
fractious child with sweetmeats when his health requires castor oil.
But the poets and artists are the slaves of the mob which pays them.
They must be freed from this control, and made the servants of the
government. Strict canons must be drawn up, which they must follow on
pain of being expelled from the State. The canons must be drawn up by
a select body of experts; the mob is incapable of judging in such
matters; the critic must guide their taste, not follow it.[705] Good
music and art must bear the stamp of a good “ethos,” and, since men
appreciate the character most which most resembles their own, it will
be the good man who will most appreciate good music:[706] so the good
man becomes the standard. In order to point his moral, Plato sketches
the history of the Athenian drama, showing how its dependence on
popular opinion ruined it[707]:――

“At the time of the Persian wars Athens was a limited democracy, with
the magistracies arranged according to a property qualification. The
spirit of obedience and discipline prevailed in those days, and was
strengthened by the dread of Persia. The populace willingly obeyed the
laws that fixed the artistic and musical standards. By these
regulations the different types of song and accompaniment, hymns or
prayers to the gods, lamentations, pæans, dithyrambs, and so forth
were kept quite distinct, no one being allowed to mix them together;
the standard, too, was not fixed, as now, by the shouts and stampings
and confused applause of the mob, but every one listened in silence
until the end of the play, the educated classes from preference, and
boys and their paidagogoi, and the mob generally, under the direction
of the rod. Thus the mass of the citizens were ready to obey in an
orderly manner, not venturing to make noisy criticisms. In course of
time some poets, who ought to have known better, led the way in
breaking down these laws. Frenzied and distracted by their desire for
pleasure, they mixed lamentations with hymns and pæans with
dithyrambs, they imitated the flute on the lyre, they confused
everything with everything else. Blinded by ignorance, they lied and
said that there was no question of accuracy of representation in
music: the only standard was the pleasure of the hearer, whatever sort
of man he might be. With such style of poetry, and arguments to match,
they inspired the many with contempt for the laws of Art, and gave
them the idea that they were capable of criticising it. So the
audience was no longer silent but noisy, since it supposed that it
knew what was good and what was bad. Art was no longer governed by
good taste, but by the bad taste of the mob. Nor was this the worst of
it. From Art the infection spread to other spheres, and every one
began to think that he knew everything, and consequently to break the
laws. For, thinking themselves wiser than the laws, they no longer
feared them.… Next comes a refusal to obey the Archons, then contempt
for the orders of parents and elders, then a desire to be free from
the restraints of a constitution. The end is utter contempt for oaths
and covenants and the gods.”

It is the lack of order and system in contemporary music which Plato
dislikes.[708] In modern dances, he complains, manly words are set to
effeminate tunes or gestures, and the voices of men and beasts and
instruments are mixed together into a confused and unintelligible
hodgepodge.[709] Music without words is equally detestable. Music that
runs on without the proper pauses and loves mere speed and meaningless
clamour, using flutes and harps without words, is in the worst taste.
The meaning must be quite plain.

Music must also be good. Poets say much that is good, much that is
bad: they are irresponsible beings.[710] The State ought to appoint
censors who will reject all unsuitable poems and tunes and dances.
Those which are already in existence must be selected and expurgated.
If this ruins the poetry, never mind: moral tone is far more important
than poetical skill. In fact, poetry ought to be written by moral
citizens without any regard being paid to their poetical talents: it
would also be well if they did not compose till they were fifty![711]
A sketch of a Platonic Censor re-editing Homer is given in Books ii.
and iii. of the _Republic_: his methods are drastic.

But Plato’s chief denunciation is reserved for the “mimetic” or
imitative aspect of poetry. The poet teaches “posing.” Homer, when he
described the siege of Troy, is posing as a skilled tactician (as his
admirers often claimed that he was), when really the silence of
history proves that he was nothing of the sort. So too the painter who
represents a plough is posing as an authority upon agriculture:
question him, and he will prove to be completely ignorant of the
subject. Both poetry and painting are a fraud and a deception; by
their pretence of knowledge, they encourage the mind in the habit, to
which it is so prone, of accepting vague opinions as certainties
without testing their truth.[712] They foster that belief in the
sense-perceptions which it is the object of Platonic education to
destroy.

But the poet not only poses himself: he makes his audience, his
reader, his performer pose. The boy who recites the dying speech of
Aias in Sophocles’ play is posing as Aias, pretending to be Aias, and
adopting the tone and the traits of Aias. The boy who dances in the
dithyramb _Semelé_ is trying to enter into Semelé’s feelings and
moods, being helped by the music and the gestures and the words.[713]
Such posing, if begun in early years, will invade the character and
change it: the boy will become like the personages whom he is
accustomed to act. Hence Plato lays down strict laws dealing with the
recitations and dances of the young.[714] “If they speak in character,
it must only be in the character of those who are, what they
themselves must be when they are grown up, brave, temperate, pious
gentlemen. They must have no skill in taking unsuitable characters,
lest from their dramatic representation of what is vulgar and base
they become infected with the reality of vulgarity and baseness. For
imitation, if begun in early years and carried far, sinks into a boy’s
habits and nature, and influences his voice, his gestures, and his
ideas.… So boys must not be allowed to take the character of a woman,
young or old, abusing her husband or blaspheming against the gods or
uttering lamentations,――certainly not of a woman in sickness or in
love or in pangs; nor the character of slaves performing slavish
duties; nor of bad men, cowards, insulting or mocking one another,
using foul language, drunk or sober; nor yet of madmen.”[715] It will
be seen that this will exclude much of Hellenic drama, especially of
the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes. Comedy, according to Plato,
should only be acted by foreigners, and should serve as an awful
warning of everything that a gentleman ought not to do. The new music
is subjected to similar rules. “Boys must not imitate blacksmiths at
the forge, or craftsmen occupied in any trade, or sailors rowing, or
boatswains giving them orders, or anything of the sort; nor yet horses
neighing, or bulls roaring, or the noise of rivers or the sea or
thunder or wind or hail or chariot-wheels or pulleys or trumpets or
flutes or pipes …; nor the sounds made by dogs and sheep and birds.”
So the proper style of poetry for educational purposes will be mostly
narrative, with occasional dramatisation of virtuous men. To accompany
this simplified and purified poetry only the Dorian and Phrygian
“harmonies” will be required: all the others may be rejected. Simple
instruments alone will be wanted: many-stringed lyres and the flute
can be banished. The seven-stringed lyre and the shepherd’s pipe will
be left.

Plato finds it too difficult to carry these principles into rhythm,
since he is not an expert in the subject. But he thinks that the
metres could be regulated in accordance with his canons; the expert
Damon declared that some had a demoralising tendency.

As a whole, Plato’s aim is to restore Doric standards, to combat
amateurism and dabbling, by which boys were made Jacks-of-all-trades,
and above all to insist that the refined few ought to set the standard
of taste in matters musical, literary, and artistic, not the unrefined
many. With his view may be contrasted Perikles’ boast to the Athenian
people, “We can all criticise adequately, if we cannot all invent,”
and Aristotle’s belief that a crowd judges better than an individual
because its judgment is compounded of many judgments.

But when we come to Aristotle the creative instinct of the Hellenic
nation, apart from a few gifted individuals, is dead. To him and his
contemporaries music and painting are no longer rendered necessary
parts of education owing to the irresistible craving of an artistic
temperament for expression. Listen to his theory. Painting gives boys
an eye for beauty, and prevents them from being cheated in
art-dealing: there is no inward compulsion to paint. Boys had better
learn to sing and play, since children must needs make a noise. All
they really need is the power of criticising professional music. This
power, unluckily, cannot be acquired without personal study. But let
them drop their music as soon as they can, or they might be mistaken
for vulgar professionals. Such words could hardly have been addressed
to a nation that was still musical and artistic. So Aristotle’s
æsthetic criticism is really a study of the past, the discussion of a
dead age. He has no natural affinity for such things himself: he
prefers to sum up the opinions of experts. Consequently his remarks on
the subject are scientific but no more; for a real appreciation of the
Hellenic artistic and musical spirit it is necessary to go to Plato,
who combated it so fiercely just because he was more in sympathy with
it than suited his philosophic desires.

  [Illustration: PLATE X. A.

  IN A RIDING-SCHOOL

  From a Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre. Hartwig’s
  _Meisterschalen_, Plate 53.]

  [Illustration: PLATE X. B.

  IN A RIDING-SCHOOL

  From a Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre. Hartwig’s
  _Meisterschalen_, Plate 53.]


     [680] The characteristics are sketched in Thuc. i. 70. Cp.
     the difference between Florence and Venice in Renaissance
     Italy.

     [681] See also Thuc. i. 6; Athen. 512 B.C.

     [682] No doubt all the theorists had a fatal temptation to
     judge the harmony by the opinion which they held of the race
     which produced it. The Lydian may have recovered prestige
     during the fourth century, for it included Karian, and Karia
     became a great power under Mausolos.

     [683] Athen. 624 C.

     [684] It is the only true Hellenic harmony (Plato, _Lach._
     188 D).

     [685] Plato’s opinion of the harmonies is in _Rep._ 398-399.
     Aristotle, who professes only to summarise the views of
     experts, discusses them in _Pol._ viii. 7.

     [686] Plato apparently accepts this principle with regard to
     the Korubantic dances (_Laws_, 790 D).

     [687] Athen. 624 b.

     [688] Pind. _P._ 5. 60-63. Cp. the story of Saul and David.

     [689] Athen. 624 a.

     [690] Plut. _Luk._ 4.

     [691] _Pol._ iv. 20. 2.

     [692] Plato, _Rep._ 399 A.

     [693] Londoners must devoutly hope that the Hellenic theory
     is false.

     [694] Aristot. _Rhet._ ii. 21. 16.

     [695] Plato, _Rep._ 401 B.

     [696] A poetical education probably develops the imagination
     at the expense of the logical mind. Plato is a good instance
     of this: his imagination, against his will, outweighs his
     reason. It may be this personal experience which gives so
     much bitterness to his attack on poetry.

     [697] Plut. _Solon_, 29. 30.

     [698] Children have a natural tendency to act, and need
     little inducement or instruction.

     [699] Plato, _Rep._ 424 C.

     [700] So in the later Renaissance the “Madonna” is the
     artist’s wife.

     [701] According to Dr. Verrall.

     [702] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 1301, 1340.

     [703] Ionicism = Herakleiteanism, πάντα ῥεῖ [panta rhei].
     Doricism = Parmenideanism, τὸ πᾶν μένει [to pan menei].

     [704] Plato, _Gorg._ 501-502; _Polit._ 288 C.

     [705] Plato, _Laws_, 657-659.

     [706] _Ibid._ 656.

     [707] _Ibid._ 698-701 C.

     [708] The essence of dancing is that it is _orderly_
     movement; of singing that it is _orderly_ sound (_Laws_,
     654).

     [709] Plato, _Laws_, 669-70.

     [710] _Ibid._ 800-802.

     [711] _Ibid._ 829 c.

     [712] Consequently the painter and the poet are, in Plato’s
     opinion, allies of the Sophist.

     [713] This is true, in a less degree, of the audience. Cp.
     Plutarch’s account of the Spartans (_Lac. Inst._ 239 A):
     “They did not listen to tragedies or comedies, in order that
     neither in earnest nor in jest they might hear men
     gainsaying the laws.”

     [714] Plato, _Rep._ 395 ff.

     [715] Plato holds that no one likes to imitate his
     inferiors; so the good man will not care to imitate any but
     the good. He ascribes this attitude to the Deity.



CHAPTER X

XENOPHON: “THE EDUCATION OF KUROS”


The central figure in many parishes in England is a retired
Major-General or Colonel. He constitutes the chief pillar of the
neighbouring church, reads the Lessons on Sundays, teaches in the
Sunday School, gives away the prizes at School-treats held in his own
grounds, and heads every subscription list; while his leisure is given
to the compilation of a military memoir or two, and perhaps, if he is
very literary, of a few short stories. Just such a man was Xenophon.
On retiring from active service, he withdrew to the little village of
Skillous in Elis, where he owned a house and a park. The whole country
swarmed with fish and game, so that he and his sons could have as much
hunting as they pleased. Guests were numerous, for past his gates ran
the great high-road from Lakedaimon to Olympia. In his grounds he
built a chapel to Artemis, the expenses being defrayed from a tithe of
the spoils he had taken in the heart of the Persian Empire. The tenth
of the produce of his land was paid to the goddess, and once a year he
gave a great sacrificial feast in her honour, to which all the
neighbours were invited. In this way the retired General lived for
twenty years, devoted to his religion, his hunting, and the
composition of his books. Having two sons of his own, he naturally
gave some attention to the problems of education. His treatise on the
constitution of Lakedaimon is simply a sketch of the Spartan school
system, no doubt intended for his boys, who were brought up at Sparta.
A curious passage in his _Economics_[716] shows that he considered the
most effective mode of teaching to be a series of appeals, by means of
question and answer, to personal observation and common-sense.
Ischomachos asks Sokrates whether he knows how to plant trees.
Sokrates at first replies “No,” but when he is questioned point by
point, whether on his excursions to Lukabettos, he has noticed the
depth of the trenches in the orchards, and some similar details, and
when his common-sense has shown him that plants grow quicker through
soft than through hard soil, he finds that he is an expert nurseryman,
and decides that questioning must be the way to teach.

But the most important of Xenophon’s educational works is the
_Education of Kuros_. In this he becomes the classical Miss Edgeworth
and Henty combined. The book is really an historical novel, mostly
fiction, embodying a moral story for the young, an ideal system of
education, and a practical treatise on the whole duty of a general.
The ideal system comes first, as a sort of preface, and presents a
curious parallel to the rival schemes of his contemporary Plato.
Xenophon makes the reader suppose that his system was practised in
Persia in the time of Kuros’ boyhood, but there is no authority for
his statement. Persia is in this case a convenient title for Utopia.

The ordinary State, according to Xenophon, leaves its citizens to form
their own characters; but the Persian system definitely aims at
producing virtue. In every Persian city there is what is called the
“Free Agora.”[717] This is an open square, like the ordinary
market-place, but unlike it in being without shops or booths, for the
vulgar bustle and clamour of buying and selling is forbidden here, as
likely to disturb the peace and calm of the educated. Round it lie the
royal palace and the State buildings, so that it would be a place of
some architectural pretensions and not unlike the quadrangle of a
College at an English University. The square is divided into four
parts――one for the children, one for the epheboi, one for full-grown
men, and one for the old; for men of all ages have their place in this
College. Any Persian is at liberty to send his son to school here, but
only the rich can afford to support their sons while they attend the
classes: the poor man’s children, in Utopian Persia as in modern
England, must needs work for their living at an early age. The schools
are apparently only for boys: Xenophon has nothing to say here about
feminine education, although he approves of the Spartan system.

All boys under sixteen are ranged together in twelve companies,
according to the number of Persian tribes; of arrangement in classes
by age or intelligence nothing is said. They have to be in their
quarter of the Free Agora at daybreak. Their education is under the
control of twelve masters chosen from the elder men. What they learn
in school is _Justice_, as boys elsewhere learn letters. The system is
as curious as the subject. A sort of miniature law-court is
constituted, where the masters act as judges and the boys accuse one
another before them. The accusations must not be concocted for the
occasion, for any one found guilty of bringing a false charge against
a schoolfellow is severely punished. Smith Major has stolen Brown’s
bow and arrows, or Jones has called Robinson various opprobrious
names; the offenders are hauled up before the tribunal, duly tried,
and, if convicted, flogged.[718] Ingratitude is regarded as a
particularly heinous crime. It appears that promising pupils were
allowed to act as judges sometimes. The boy Kuros tells his mother how
he received this honour and once gave a wrong verdict, to his own
discomfiture. “The case was like this, mother,” he is made to say. “A
big boy wearing a small coat met a small boy wearing a big coat, and
compelled him to exchange. I was told to decide the case, and said
that it was best that each should have the coat which fitted him. Then
the master flogged me. For the point was, To whom did the big coat
belong? not, Whom did it fit best? It belonged to the boy who bought
or made it, not to the boy who took it by force, breaking the law.”

Besides “Justice,” the children were taught the properties of plants,
in order that they might avoid those that were harmful and use those
which were good.[719] This seems a curious anticipation of
“Nature-study,” with a strictly utilitarian object, and Xenophon
deserves credit for an original suggestion.

The boys are assisted in the formation of good habits by the sight of
their elders in the adjacent quarter of the Free Agora, setting them
an example in temperance and obedience and self-restraint. They also
learn not to be greedy, by taking their meals, when ordered, in the
school, under supervision, off the very simple fare of bread, water,
and a sort of seed resembling the modern mustard, which is all that
they are allowed to bring with them from home for the purpose. What is
more, this probably constituted the only meal which the children had
on such days. It must have been a pretty stiff lesson in abstinence!
How they would have hated a master who ordered it too often! For games
and exercise they had shooting with the bow and hurling the
javelin――that is, military training.

The other three ages are also organised each under twelve masters in
its own quarter of the Agora of Education. The epheboi, who in Utopia
include all from sixteen to twenty-six, even sleep there, acting as a
standing army and a police force to guard the palace and the State
buildings. Xenophon thinks it well that the men of this age, who need
more attention, in his opinion, than even the boys, should be always
under the eye of the authorities. They are organised into twelve
companies, one from each of the Persian tribes. Their time is largely
occupied in police-work, such as catching brigands, and in hunting.
Xenophon attaches great importance to hunting of all sorts, as being
the best training for war.[720] For it involves exposure to heat and
cold and other hardships, training in marching and running, and skill
with bow and javelin;[721] it also requires courage, to meet the
sudden charge of a panther; and long and patient strategy, to catch
birds and hares.[722] So, several times a month, the king goes out
hunting and takes six companies of the epheboi with him, armed with
bows and arrows, a dagger, a light shield, and two spears――one for
throwing and one for stabbing. When not engaged in hunting or in
police-work, the epheboi revise what they learned as boys, and
practise shooting, competing with one another; there are also public
contests, with prizes. Prizes are also given to the officer in charge
of the company which shows itself the most intelligent, courageous,
and trustworthy; the master who taught this company in its school-days
is also commended.

The men from twenty-six to fifty occupy the third, and the elders the
fourth, quarter of the Agora. The former act as a standing army of
heavy infantry; the latter as a reserve force for home defence, as
Judges, as the electors to the offices of State, and as the teachers
of the children. The other offices are filled by the third age. Any
freeborn Persian can climb this four-runged Ladder of Education to the
very top; but no one may enter a higher class without having served
his full time in those below it. To Xenophon, it appears, belongs the
credit of being the first theorist to recognise the merits of this
Thessalian custom of the “Free Agora,” the State-provided centre of
culture, afterwards adopted so extensively in Alexandria, where the
educated classes of all ages might meet in an intellectual atmosphere
and amid beautiful surroundings, and provide that exchange and mart of
ideas by personal intercourse which Newman considered to be the
essence of a University. In the Free Agora of Utopian Persia all the
educated spend their days, influencing one another by talk and
example, exchanging and criticising ideas, competing in warlike
exercises――and all in an atmosphere untainted by the vulgarity of
money-making. On the other hand, culture there does not mean idleness;
to Xenophon, as to Plato, education seemed to entail great
responsibilities, and the educated classes provide the sole standing
army of the State and have to give their countrymen the benefit of
their intelligence by serving as Rulers and Judges.

But Xenophon’s University provides only legal and military
instruction; intellectual culture is not recognised in his “Persia.”
The boys learn the principles of their national law; for, as Xenophon
is careful to proclaim, the Justice which they are taught is no
Platonic elaboration, but simple conformity to the law of the
land.[723] Their other lessons aim solely at the soldier’s life: this
is the object of their severe diet, their botany, and their training
in arms. General morality is to be imbibed from contact in the Agora
with their exemplary seniors, not by ethical contemplation. The system
has the merit of being extremely practical, as would be expected from
a man of Xenophon’s stamp. The boys are to be soldiers all their
lives, and Rulers and Judges in their old age. Consequently they are
to be taught only what is essential to this calling. The soldier must
be well versed in the use of arms and capable of enduring hardships;
so the boys are taught to use the bow and javelin and lead a sternly
simple life. The chief essential to the Ruler and Judge is a sound
knowledge of the national law: the boys are taught law from the first,
in a highly practical way, and even learn to administer it, acting as
judges to their schoolfellows. No better means could be devised for
teaching boys the legal procedure of their native land than this of
constituting them into a miniature Court.[724] It is a scheme,
however, which would be repugnant to the whole idea of an English
public school, where the boys are expected to fight their own battles
and set their own tone without calling in the master’s assistance
except in grave cases. But the Hellenic boy was never left without
supervision: the paidagogos, or some elder, was always in
attendance.[725] Probably the chief criticism which it would have
occurred to an Athenian of that age to urge against Xenophon’s system
would be, not that it encouraged tale-bearing, nor that it failed to
teach self-reliance, but that his countrymen were quite sufficiently
litigious already without any teaching. The absence of literature and
music would also have seemed a fatal objection.

The “Persian” schools are apparently open, free of charge, to any boy
whose father chooses to send him. For the only expense which the
parents are mentioned as incurring is the loss of any wages which
their son might have been earning if set to a trade instead of being
sent to school. Xenophon thus institutes free education without
compulsion. Pupils may be withdrawn at any age; if they or their
families have enough private means to enable them to live in leisure
all their lives they can rise through the various stages to the
highest offices of the State, provided that they are not rejected as
unfit during their upward passage. Theoretically the educational
ladder is open to all; practically it is closed to all but those who
are well-to-do and fairly capable to boot. But the education provided
is not a general culture, intellectually and morally good for all
children, nor yet utilitarian knowledge, such as arithmetic or
writing, which will serve as a useful, or even necessary, basis for a
trade or profession: it is a strictly technical education in the work
of War and Government. Few parents, therefore, would send their boys
to Xenophon’s schools, at any rate for a longer period than would be
required for learning just the rudiments of national law and morality,
unless they designed them for a public career.

Thus Xenophon, like his beloved Spartans, has made war the main object
of education, and, like the Romans, uses law as the chief instrument
of instruction. But he has seen the demerits of the Spartan
“Mess-clubs,” and his boys take their meals and sleep, as a rule, at
home; only the epheboi, as in Crete, dine and sleep always in the
agora. His chief merit is that he recognised that an educational
atmosphere, εὐκοσμία τῶν πεπαιδευμένων [eukosmia tôn pepaideumenôn],
free from the associations of money-making, is essential to an
educational establishment.

After this deeply interesting sketch of Xenophon’s educational ideals,
the _Education of Kuros_ becomes a historical novel with a purpose, an
idealised Kuros acting as example throughout. In Book i. there is the
description of him as the model boy, courteous to his elders, quick
and eager to learn, brave, impetuous, loved by all, but rather a prig.
The description is full of improving anecdotes and little sermons. The
book concludes with a lecture on the duties of a general, dealing with
tactics and the best means of training the army and providing
supplies. Xenophon puts all his personal experience into this, and
there is plenty of adventure to make the book palatable to his young
readers.

A few extracts will make the characteristics of this curious work
plain.

When quite young, Kuros went with his mother Mandané to stay with his
grandfather Astuages, King of Media. The old man, thinking that the
boy would be homesick and wishing to comfort him, sent for him at
dinner the first evening and set all sorts of rich meats and sauces
before him. Then Kuros said, “Grandfather, you must find it a great
nuisance, if you have to help yourself to so many courses and taste so
many kinds of food.” His grandfather replied, “Why, don’t you think
this a much finer dinner than what you get at home?” “No,
grandfather,” replied Kuros; “at home we satisfy our appetites by a
short-cut, just bread and meat, but here, although your object is the
same, you wind in and out so much on the way that it takes you ever so
much longer to reach it.” “But, my boy, the delay is only so much
pleasure, as you will see if you try.” Kuros, however, persisted in
refusing the unwholesome dainties, so his grandfather compensated him
by giving him an enormous help of meat. “Is all this meant for me,”
asked Kuros, “to do what I like with?” “Yes, my boy.” Then Kuros took
the meat and distributed it to the servants who were waiting at table,
saying to one, “This is because you taught me to ride”; to another,
“This is because you gave me a javelin”; to a third, “This is for
waiting on my grandfather so nicely.” From this example the young
reader doubtless learned not to desire too many courses or too rich
sweets at table, and perhaps also to be grateful to every one, even
servants. After this Kuros remained in Media, while his mother
returned home. “He soon won the love of his schoolfellows, and quite
charmed their parents when invited to their houses by the affection
which he showed for their sons.” A good moral, this, for little boys
who go out to parties.

This model boy does not die young, but grows up. He had been rather a
chatterbox when small (a warning to the young readers), but only owing
to his desire for knowledge and his readiness to answer questions;
besides, he chattered in such a nice way that it was a pleasure to
hear him. But as he grew older, he grew more bashful. “He always
blushed when he met his elders, and he talked in a quieter tone. When
he played with his schoolfellows, he chose the games where he expected
to be beaten, not those in which he expected to win; and he was always
ready to lead the laugh against himself when beaten.” Model youth! Of
course, he soon became the champion at every form of sport, just as in
a modern book of the kind he would have won at least five “Blues.”

Kuros next appears as a mighty hunter, and then at the age of fifteen
takes a leading part in a battle against the Assyrians; in fact, it is
his strategy and prowess that decide the day. What more could be
wanted in a book for boys? The modern author would give him a grizzly
bear, a lion, and a V.C.: Xenophon gives him the Persian equivalents.

After this, little more is said of Kuros’ boyhood. He is next
introduced as a man of twenty-six, just put into command of a Persian
expedition to help Media against the Assyrians.[726] Henceforth
Xenophon’s object is no longer to point a moral, but to instruct
budding generals and princes in strategy and government. The remaining
books are a “Handbook of Tactics, with hints on the proper treatment
of inferiors”; so they fitly begin with a long lecture by Kuros’
father on the whole duty of a general.[727] There is, however, a good
deal of moral advice and occasional allegory interspersed amid the
tactics. For instance, a certain Gobruas came to dine with the Persian
army. “Seeing how plain the food was, he regarded the Persians as
rather _bourgeois_. But then he observed what good manners the guests
had. No educated Persian would allow himself to be seen staring at a
dish, or helping himself hurriedly, or acting at table without proper
deliberation. For they think it piggish to be excited by the presence
of food or drink. He noticed, too, that they never asked one another
questions which might cause pain, that their jests were never
malicious nor their wit rude, that everything that they did was in the
best taste, and that they never lost their tempers with one another.”
And so on. “Manners for men,” we might call it, by Xenophon.

A curiously interesting case of allegory, which well shows how
imaginary most of the history is, may be found in the third book.[728]
The son of the king of Armenia had had for a companion and tutor a
certain Sophist, of whose wisdom he was very proud. But his father
condemned the Sophist for corrupting[729] the boy. When he was being
led to execution, the man showed what a saint and hero he was by
calling the boy and saying, “Do not be angry with your father for
putting me to death. For it is no wicked purpose which makes him do
it, but only ignorance. All sins which men commit in ignorance I rank
as involuntary errors.” Later, the father confesses that he put the
Sophist to death for stealing away his son’s affections, “for I feared
that my boy might love him more than he loved me.” Kuros admits that
such jealousy is an explanation and regards it as pardonable.

The analogy to Sokrates is obvious to any one. The half-apology for
the Athenian people is very interesting in the mouth of the old
Socratic companion Xenophon.

But the object of the _Education of Kuros_ is, after all, to teach
generalship. A couple of examples of the way in which this is done
will suffice. On one occasion[730] Kuros orders the foot-cuirassiers
to lead the way in a forced march, and kindly explains the object of
such a manœuvre. “This command I give,” he says, “because they are the
heaviest part of the army. When the heaviest part is in the van,
obviously it is quite easy for the other arms, being lighter, to keep
up. But if the quickest detachment is in front on a night march, it is
not surprising if the army straggles, for the vanguard goes faster
than the rest.” Again, Kuros could call all his officers by name, to
their great surprise.[731] “For he thought it very absurd that
tradesmen should know the names of all their tools, and yet a general
should be so stupid as not to know the names of his officers whom he
must use as his tools in the most serious emergencies. Soldiers who
thought that their general knew their names would, he considered, be
more eager to do heroic deeds in his presence, and less eager to play
the coward. It seemed also to be foolish to be obliged to give orders,
when he wanted something done, in the way some masters do in their
households, ‘Fetch me some water, Somebody’; or ‘Cut some firewood,
Someone.’ For when the order is addressed to no one in particular,
each stands looking at his neighbour and expecting him to carry it
out.”

The military part is exceedingly well done. Xenophon was one of the
few good strategists whom Hellas produced, and his remarks on tactics,
the hygiene of an army, and discipline are sound and useful. What is
more, his novel is interesting and occasionally witty: it is
distinctly good reading. He has disguised his powder in the most
appetising jam, and so has achieved with success the difficult task of
writing a novel with a purpose. Had books been common then, his work
would have been both popular and useful in Boys’ Libraries, and have
done good service as a school prize. But from Plato it only provoked
the malicious and not very deep criticism that it was unhistorical and
unsound.[732] “Of Kuros,” he says, “I conjecture that, though he was a
good general and a patriot, he had not come across the merest scrap of
sound education, and never applied his mind to the art of managing a
household.[733] For, being absent on campaigns all his life, he
allowed the women to bring up his children. The women spoilt the boys,
letting no one gainsay them, and made them effeminate, not teaching
them the Persian habits or their father’s profession, but Median
luxury. Hence the collapse of Persia under Kambuses.”


     [716] Xen. _Econ._ 19.

     [717] Aristotle (_Pol._ vii. 12) says that “Free Agoras”
     were customary in Thessaly. He adopts the system for his
     ideal state――a clear compliment to Xenophon.

     [718] Floggings were apparently to be frequent. “Tears are a
     master’s instruments of instruction” (ii. 2. 14).

     [719] viii. 8. 14.

     [720] Hence his treatise on hunting.

     [721] i. 2. 10.

     [722] i. 6. 39-40.

     [723] i. 3. 17.

     [724] Cp. the experiment which was, I believe, tried in an
     American school, where the boys learned the national
     constitution by themselves electing in due form a President,
     Congress, etc.

     [725] “The perpetual presence of masters,” according to
     Xenophon, “best inculcates proper modesty and discipline.”

     [726] i. 5. 5.

     [727] i. 6. 1-46.

     [728] iii. 1. 38.

     [729] διαφθείρειν [diaphtheirein], the word used in
     Sokrates’ accusation.

     [730] v. 3. 37.

     [731] v. 3. 46. Notice the Socratic comparison.

     [732] Plato, _Laws_, 694 C-D.

     [733] A hit at Xenophon’s _Economics_.



PART III



CHAPTER XI

CONCLUDING ESSAY: THE SCHOOLS OF HELLAS


The preceding chapters have sufficiently established, as it seems to
me, that Hellenic education alike at Sparta and at Athens, in theory
and in practice, aimed at producing the best possible citizen, not the
best possible money-maker; it sought the good of the community, not
the good of the individual. The methods and materials of education
naturally differed with the conception of good citizenship held in
each locality, but the ideal object was always the same.

The Spartan, with his schoolboy conception of life, believed that the
whole duty of man was to be brave, to be indifferent to hardships and
pain, to be a good soldier, and to be always in perfect physical
condition; when his Hellenic instincts needed æsthetic satisfaction,
he made his military drill into a musical dance and sang songs in
honour of valour. Long speaking and lengthy meditation he regarded
with contempt, for he preferred deeds to words or thoughts, and the
essence of a situation could always be expressed in a single sentence.
This Spartan conception of citizenship fixed the aim of Spartan
education. Daily hardships, endless physical training, perpetual tests
of pluck and endurance, were the lot of the Spartan boy. He did not
learn to read or write or count; he was trained to speak only in
single words or in the shortest of sentences, for what need had a
Spartan of letters or of chattering? His imagination had also to be
subordinated to the national ideal: his dances, his songs, his very
deities, were all military.

The Athenian’s conception of the perfect citizen was much wider and
much more difficult of attainment. Pluck and harmony of physical
development did not satisfy him: there must be equal training of mind
and imagination, without any sacrifice of bodily health. He demanded
of the ideal citizen perfection of body, extensive mental activity and
culture, and irreproachable taste. “We love and pursue wisdom, yet
avoid bodily sloth; we love and pursue beauty, yet avoid bad taste and
extravagance,” proclaims Perikles in his summary of Athenian ideals.
Consequently Athenian education was triple in its aims; its activities
were divided between body, mind, and taste. The body of the young
Athenian was symmetrically developed by the scientifically designed
exercises of the palaistra. At eighteen the State imposed upon him two
years of physical training at public cost. In after life he could
exercise himself in the public gymnasia without any payment; there was
no actual compulsion, except the perpetual imminence of military
service, which, however, almost amounted to compulsion.

As to mental instruction, every boy had to learn reading, writing,
arithmetic, and gain such acquaintance with the national literature as
these studies involved. The other branch of primary education, playing
and singing, intended to develop the musical ear and taste, was
optional, but rarely neglected. The secondary education given by the
Sophists, rhetors, and philosophers was only intended for the
comparatively few who had wealth and leisure.

Taste and imagination were cultivated in the music- and art-schools,
but the influences of the theatre, the Akropolis, the temples and
public monuments, and the dances which accompanied every festival and
religious occasion, were still more potent, and were exercised upon
all alike. This æsthetic aspect of education was regarded as
particularly important in Hellas owing to the prevalent idea that art
and music had a strong influence over character.

For the training of character was before all things the object of
Hellenic education; it was this which Hellenic parents particularly
demanded of the schoolmaster. So strongly did they believe that virtue
could be taught, that they held the teacher responsible for any
subsequent misdemeanour of his pupils. Alkibiades and Kritias had
ruined Athens: they were Sokrates’ pupils: therefore execute Sokrates;
this seemed perfectly logical to an Athenian. If a Sophist sued a
defaulting pupil for an unpaid bill, he was regarded as ridiculous,
for it was his business to teach justice, and if those who had learned
under him behaved unjustly, it was clearly because his teaching had
been worthless.

Since the main object of the schools of Hellas was to train and mould
the character of the young, it would be natural to suppose that the
schoolmasters and every one else who was to come into contact with the
boys were chosen with immense care, special attention being given to
their reputation for virtue and conduct. At Sparta this principle was
certainly observed. Education was controlled by a paidonomos, selected
from the citizens of the highest position and reputation, and the
teaching was given, not by hired foreigners or slaves, but by the
citizens themselves under his supervision. But then the teaching at
Sparta dealt mostly with the manners and customs of the State, or with
bodily and military exercises, known to every grown man, and the
citizens had plenty of leisure. The Athenians were in a more difficult
position. There were more subjects for the boy to learn, and some of
them the parents might have neither the capacity nor the time to
teach. Owing also to the day-school system at Athens and the
peculiarities of Hellenic manners, the boys needed some one always at
hand to take them to and from school and palaistra. Thus both paid
teachers and attendants were needed. But it was also necessary not to
let education become too expensive, lest the poor should be unable to
afford it. Consequently the paidagogoi came often to be the cheapest
and most worthless slaves, and the schoolmasters as a class to be
regarded with supreme contempt. No doubt careful parents chose
excellent paidagogoi, schoolmasters, and paidotribai for their sons,
and made the choice a matter of much deliberation: the teachers at the
best schools and palaistrai were often men of position and repute. But
that the class as a whole was regarded with contempt there can be
little doubt. The children went into a school as they would have gone
into any other shop, with a sense of superiority, bringing with them
their pets, leopards and cats and dogs, and playing with them during
lesson-times. Idlers and loungers came into the schools and
palaistrai, as they came into the market-booths, to chatter and look
on, seriously interrupting the work. The schoolmasters and paidotribai
at Athens were, in fact, too dependent upon their public for
subsistence to take a strong line, and, in spite of their power, often
exercised, of inflicting corporal punishment, they seem to have been
distinctly at the mercy of the pupils and their friends. The
paidagogoi too, though they seem to have kept their pupils in order,
were often not the right people to control a boy’s conduct; they were
apt to have a villainous accent, and still more villainous habits. It
must be confessed that the Athenians, in their desire to make
education cheap, ran a very great risk of spoiling what in their
opinion was its chief object, the training of character.

Otherwise, they sought this end whole-heartedly. The games, physical
exercises, and hardships of a boy’s life were meant to develop his
pluck, fortitude, and endurance. For, according to the Hellenic view,
now too much neglected in many quarters, the condition and treatment
of the body had a very important effect both upon mental activities
and upon character. It was for this reason that physical training
formed at least half of every system of education practised in
Hellenic states or recommended by Hellenic philosophers. A National
School which trained the minds only, and neglected the bodies of the
pupils, would have been inconceivable to a Hellene. It was not merely
that physical infirmities interrupted the free exercise of thought, or
led to peevishness and lack of decision. Man was a whole to the
Hellenes, and one part of him could not be sound if the other parts
were not. So strongly did they hold this opinion, that they more than
half believed that physical beauty was a sign of moral beauty; it was
this latent idea which added an additional significance to the
exercises of the palaistra with their symmetrical development of the
body, and to the competitions for manly beauty which were prevalent
throughout the country; it lent, moreover, a nobler aspect to that
passion for the outward loveliness of youth which the vases,
sculpture, and literature of ancient Hellas reveal so surprisingly.
But, besides this vaguer and more doubtful connection with character,
bodily exercise and development were supposed to have a special and
indubitable effect in strengthening the resolution and will-power. The
object of physical training was only in a minor degree to keep the
body in good condition; its main aim was to develop strength of
character, determination, fortitude, endurance, pluck, and energy.
But, in accordance with that Hellenic canon of “moderation in all
things,” which was worked out so thoroughly by Aristotle, there might
be too much, as well as too little, of all these ethical qualities.
Consequently physical exercise must be taken only in due moderation,
and carefully balanced by artistic and musical training, which
militated in an opposite direction, leading, if pursued in excess, to
weakness of character, indecision, effeminacy, cowardice, and sloth. A
scientifically arranged symmetry between the two would produce the
perfect character.

In the literary and æsthetic schools there were two elements of the
subjects taught, both with an ethical effect, matter and form. The
literature studied in the schools was expected to be full of improving
suggestions and life-histories of heroes worthy of imitation, couched
in the form most attractive to young minds, in order that they might
appreciate and love its teaching and examples. The music which the
boys played or heard, the songs which they sang, the dances which they
performed or watched, the art which they copied or observed, must be
such as would influence their characters for good――mould them, that
is, in accordance with the national ideal. For Hellenic morality was
æsthetic; they followed the course which appealed to their imagination
and sense of beauty. It was therefore the object of education to make
the children see and feel beauty in virtue, and good art in good
ethics, in order that they might find satisfaction for their æsthetic
cravings――the dominant instinct of a Hellene――in living good and
upright lives.

For the unanimous feeling of Hellas based ethics not upon duty, but
upon happiness――upon the satisfaction, that is, of the instincts. But
this eudæmonistic attitude was qualified by an important consideration
which is often forgotten. Owing to the solidarity of Hellenic life,
the happiness which was sought was primarily not that of the
individual but that of the community. The readiness of the average
Hellene, during the best period of the country, to sacrifice
everything on behalf of his city is very remarkable. The real, if
unformulated, basis of his ethics came thus to be not personal
pleasure, but duty to the State. When the individualism of the
Socratic age overthrew this basis, the Hellenes fell back from the
happiness of the State to the happiness of the self, and both
patriotism and personal morality suffered from the change.

It was the sense of duty to the State, the resolution to promote the
happiness of the whole citizen-body, which made parents willing to
undergo any sacrifice in order to have their sons educated in the way
which would best minister to this ideal. The bills of the masters of
letters and music and of the paidotribai, and the lengthy loss of the
son’s services in the shop or on the farm in Attica, the break-up of
family life at Sparta, must have been a sore trial to the parents and
have involved many sacrifices. Yet there is no trace of grumbling. The
Hellene felt that it was quite as much his duty to the State to
educate her future citizens properly as it was to be ready to die in
her cause, and he did both ungrudgingly. If the laws which made the
teaching of letters compulsory at Athens fell into desuetude, it was
only because the citizens needed no compulsion to make them do their
duty. Nor had the State to pay the school bills; for every citizen,
however poor, was ready to make the necessary sacrifices of personal
luxuries and amusements in order to do his duty to the community by
having his children properly taught. The State only interfered to make
schooling as cheap and as easy to obtain as possible.

The solidarity of Hellenic life, which converted eudæmonism into
patriotism, was carefully encouraged by the educational system.
Sparta, with this object, invented the boarding-school, where boys
learnt from early years to sink their individualities in a community
of character and interests. The Athenians and most of the other
Hellenes, on the other hand, had day-schools. This fact might seem to
militate against the principle which I have stated. But Hellenic
custom qualified the system of day-schools in a particular way. There
were no home-influences in Hellas. The men-folk lived out of doors.
The young Athenian or Ephesian from his sixth year onwards spent his
whole day away from home (excepting possibly for an interval for the
mid-day meal), in the company of his contemporaries, at school or
palaistra or in the streets. When he came home, there was no
home-life. His father was hardly ever in the house. His mother was a
nonentity, living in the women’s apartments; he probably saw little of
her. His real home was the palaistra, his chief companions his
contemporaries and his paidagogos. He learned to dissociate himself
from his family and associate himself with his fellow-citizens. No
doubt he lost much by this system, but the solidarity of the State
gained.

The duties of citizenship were also impressed upon the boys in other
and more direct ways, especially its supreme duty, at any rate in
those days, of military service. The schools of Sparta and Crete were
one long training for war. The other States set apart two years of the
boy’s life, those from eighteen to twenty, as a period of
conscription, during which he was at the service of his city and under
the orders of the military authorities, learning tactics and the use
of arms, and being practised in the life of camps and forts. The young
recruit took a solemn oath of allegiance to his country and its
constitution: the sacredness of his civic duties was impressed upon
him from the first. The first function of his new officers was to take
him on a personally conducted tour, so to speak, of the national
temples, that he might realise something of the religious life and
history of his country. His weapons were solemnly presented to him in
the theatre of Dionusos, before the assembled people; they were
sacred, and to lose them in battle or disgrace them by cowardice was
not only dishonourable, it was impious. Nor were the boys allowed to
grow up in ignorance of the constitution of their city: the ephebos of
eighteen had to be acquainted with the laws, some of which he had
probably learnt in the music-school, set to a tune. Every means was
taken of making the boys realise that they were members of a
community, to whose prosperity and happiness their own advantage or
pleasure must be subordinated. In this way grew up the strong Hellenic
sense of an obligation of utter self-sacrifice on behalf of the State.

But education had also to consult the happiness of the children as
well as the happiness of the community, although in a lesser degree.
This may seem a startling statement to make with regard to Spartan
education. Nevertheless, I believe it to be strictly true. It must be
remembered that all our accounts of the rigours and horrors of Spartan
methods come from Athenian writers who in all probability had never
been to Lakedaimon. Xenophon, who had his sons educated there, gives a
much milder, and wholly eulogistic, account. The somewhat hedonistic
Attic visitor must have watched Spartan games and exercises with much
the feelings of a French visitor at an English public school; he found
it difficult to realise that the boys underwent such hardships of
their own free will. Then we must remember what the Spartan boys were.
They were a picked breed of peculiar toughness, strength, and health;
for centuries every invalid had been exposed at birth or rejected as
incapable of the school-system. Generation after generation had been
trained to be thick-skinned and stout-hearted; pluck and endurance
were hereditary, and asceticism was a national characteristic. The
whole system, with its perpetual fighting, its rough games, its
hardships, its fagging and “roughing-it” in the woods, is just what
boys of this sort might be expected to evolve for themselves because
they liked it. I have already pointed out, in my account of the
Spartan schools, how very similar are many of the customs which grew
up at the older English public schools, mainly on the boys’ own
initiative. If English boys, brought up on the whole much less
roughly, evolved such customs of their own free will, the young
Spartans may reasonably be supposed to have accepted them gladly. One
significant token of this survives. The violent and sometimes fatal
floggings of the epheboi at the altar of Artemis Orthia were entirely
voluntary on the part of the victims; yet there was no lack of
candidates even in Plutarch’s days. The Spartan school-system was, in
fact, an exact expression of the national characteristics, and
accordingly was entirely acceptable to the Spartan boys.

That the Athenian system was designed to suit the wishes of the
Athenian children is less difficult to establish. It is only necessary
to think what the primary schools were like. When once the letters and
rudiments of reading and writing had been mastered, the process
perhaps being aided by metrical alphabets and dramatised spelling, the
boys began to read, learn by heart, and write down the fascinating
stories of adventure and the romantic tales of Homer. There was no
grammar to be studied; that, when invented, came at a later age as a
voluntary subject. There were no years wasted over “Primary Readers”
consisting of dull and second-rate stories. The boys began at once
upon the best and most attractive literature in their language, and it
remained their study for many years, and was still remembered and
loved in after life. Nor can it be doubted that the music- and
art-schools were attractive to Athenian boys, sons of a people who
filled their whole city with art, and made their year a round of
musical festivals. A large part, too, of Athenian schooling was what
now would be called play; for the Hellene recognised the importance of
physical exercise in the upbringing of the young, and included it in
his conception of education.

The effect upon Hellenic culture of thus making education attractive
was far-reaching. Instead of regarding with aversion or a bored
indifference the subjects which they had studied at school, the
Hellenes had an affection for them and continued to practise and
improve themselves in them. Throughout their lives they were eager to
hear recitations of Homer. At banquets they sang the songs and played
the music on the lyre which they had learnt at school. Elderly men
would return to a music-master, to improve their style, or rush off to
hear a Sophist lecture on geography or astronomy. The exercises of the
palaistra were pursued till old age made them impossible. Grown
citizens retained throughout an affection for education, and went on
educating themselves all their lives. Thus an Hellenic city formed a
centre of widely diffused culture, a home where literature and art and
music and research could flourish surrounded by appreciation and
capable criticism. Children, too, seeing how much their elders were
preoccupied with education, found it even more attractive than its
designers had made it, since they were not constrained by
nursery-logic to see in it one of the plagues of youth from which
“grown-ups” were set free. No doubt the Hellenic schoolmaster was much
assisted in his endeavour to make education attractive by the
intellectual curiosity which was a feature of all those States where
the intellect was systematically trained. The young Athenian or young
Chian was exceedingly eager to learn. In fact, his eagerness was
excessive; he was too much in a hurry; he desired to have his
information given to him ready-made, not having the patience to think
or to undertake researches on his own account. Hence the phenomenal
success and educational unsoundness of those prototypes of the modern
“crammer,” the Sophists, who supplied their pupils with a superficial
knowledge of many subjects ready-made, and already dressed in striking
phraseology. This intellectual appetite for the accumulation of facts
made secondary education at Athens attractive without much effort on
the part of the teachers, but it was not allowed to influence the
primary schools; a sound and symmetrical development of mind and body,
artistic taste and moral character, had to precede the accumulation of
facts. This latter stage too was universally treated as optional. In
unintellectual districts it found no place, and even in Athens it was
only for those who felt a desire for it; it was not forced upon the
unwilling and incapable. For education was regarded as the development
of the latent powers of the individual personality, it was no vain
attempt to excite or implant non-existent faculties. Every one had a
body, which he must make as efficient as possible, for the service of
the State; every one, in an æsthetic people, had a taste which could
be developed; every one had enough intellect to learn his letters; and
every one, above all, had a character to be formed. But not every one
could be an international athlete or a first-class artist or musician,
and not every one had sufficient mental gifts to combine the
accumulation of facts with profit or enjoyment.

In fact, Hellenic sentiment was distinctly adverse to great
development in any one direction: the Hellenes had a reasonable horror
of undue specialisation at school. The object of education was to make
symmetrical, all-round men, sound alike in body, mind, character, and
taste, not professional athletes who were mentally vacuous and without
any appreciation of art, nor great thinkers of stunted physique, nor
celebrated musicians who lacked brains. Opponents of the Spartan
system tried to condemn it on this ground, as a specialisation
intended only to produce good soldiers; but the pro-Spartans seemed to
have claimed in return that it developed both character and good taste
in judging art and music, even if it produced small capacity for
painting or playing, while Laconian terseness involved a greater depth
of mental exercise than Athenian verbosity.

Thus Hellenic education was not intended to produce professional
knowledge of a single subject; such technical instruction was deemed
unworthy of the name of education, and was excluded from the schools.
The subjects studied were for the most part a means, not an end. Just
as a walk is sometimes taken not for the sake of reaching any
particular place, but in order to keep the muscles of the body in good
condition, so education in Hellas was meant to develop and exercise
the muscles of mind, imagination, and character, not to inculcate
so-called “useful” information. The literature read at school was
imaginative poetry, like that of Homer or Simonides, not the practical
prose treatises upon Agriculture and Economics which utilitarian
motives would have demanded. For the poetry was both attractive to the
boys and improving for their characters, while the handbooks, however
excellent, only enhanced their financial prospects. The immediate
future of the individual boy may, it is true, depend somewhat largely
upon the utilitarian knowledge which he has learnt at school, although
a sound education in the Hellenic sense of the word will prove more
advantageous to him in the long run; but the future of a State depends
upon the character of its citizens. Thus a truly national education
like that of Sparta or of Athens seeks to train the characters of the
future citizens; having formed their characters, it leaves them with
well-justified confidence to gain what technical instruction they need
for themselves. At a national crisis it was not skill in trade or
profession, not good cobbling, nor good weaving, that Athens required
of her citizens; but pluck, energy, self-sacrifice, obedience, and
loyalty. Money was, it is true, required for building the triremes and
for fortifying the city: it was therefore well that Athenian trade and
manufactures should prosper. But Athens recognised, and rightly, that
her financial resources would be better served if she trained her boys
to be industrious and thrifty and ascetic, if she made it repugnant to
their taste to fling their money away upon luxury and self-indulgence,
than if she founded the finest system of technical instruction
possible.

But whether Sparta and Athens could have ignored technical and
utilitarian subjects so wholly in their schools, if they had been
educating the whole population of the State, is another question. It
must be remembered that the Spartan and Athenian citizens who attended
the schools were only a fraction of the inhabitants of Laconia and
Attica. They corresponded pretty closely to the upper classes, the
aristocracy and gentlemen, of a modern State. The bulk of the middle
and lower classes in a Hellenic State were either foreign immigrants,
who possessed no civic rights and did not usually attend the schools,
or serfs and slaves. Athens, like mediæval Florence, was only a
democracy in the very limited sense that her full citizens――a
governing class, that is, and a mere fraction of the population――had
equality of civic rights among themselves: the rest had no rights at
all. Sparta was a “mixed constitution”; but that did not mean that the
middle and lower classes, the Perioikoi and Helots, had any share in
it whatever.

Consequently education in Hellas is the education of a small upper
class, not of the whole population of the State. The schools of Hellas
were not necessarily for the wealthiest inhabitants of the country,
for there were plenty of rich Metoikoi and poor citizens at Athens;
not necessarily for the boys who had most leisure, for the
sausage-seller goes to school as well as a Nikias or Alkibiades; but
for a hereditary aristocracy of birth, for that is what Hellenic
“citizenship” means. The boys who attended the lessons of Dionusios or
Elpias were the sons and grandsons of a cultured class, no matter how
humble their circumstances might be; their families had lived in
Attica, they believed, from time immemorial, and were probably
descended from the local deities. They had the views of an hereditary
caste, including a certain preoccupation with physical and military
activities, and a contempt for trade.

For the duties of such an aristocracy did not consist in heaping up
riches; their position was comparatively independent of their
financial successes. Their work was, in brief, to govern and to fight.
They composed the electorate of the State, which chose the
magistrates; they alone were members of the public Assembly; they
alone were eligible for office. They sat as dikastai――jurymen and
justices in one――in the law-courts; they made the laws and they
administered them. The national honour and morality lay in their
hands, for they controlled alike the foreign and the home policy of
the State. They formed, too, the cultured circle which governed
natural taste; it was their criticism which shaped the art of the
vase-painters, the architects, the sculptors, the bronze-makers, and
the countless other artistic tradesmen, the style of the orators, the
literature of dramatists and dithyrambists, the music of the choric
composers. When governors and administrators were needed for the
outlying districts of the Athenian or Spartan Empires, or if officers
were required to lead local levies to battle, any citizen, rich or
poor, might be sent. The citizens, too, formed the core of the fleets
and armies in the best days of Hellas. The object of Hellenic
education was to produce this type of citizen――a man capable of
governing, of fighting, and of setting the taste and standards of his
country.

Thus the schools of Hellas correspond in England not to the national
schools, but to the “public schools.” I do not mean to assert that the
English public-school boy stands, in after life, in the position of
the Hellenic citizen to the bulk of the population. English democracy
rests on a wider basis than Athenian or Florentine, and, in theory at
any rate, the exclusive power of the “upper classes” is at an end.
None the less it is true that from among the boys educated at the
public schools comes a very considerable part of the generals and
military officers, of the clergy, of the squires, of the Justices of
the Peace and other administrators of the law, of the governors and
officials required by the Indian Empire and the various dependencies
and Crown Colonies, of the members of Parliament and statesmen at
home. If the influence of the public schools of England upon the
governing and fighting of the nation is less than that which the
schools of Hellas were able to exercise, their influence upon national
taste and standards in art and culture and literature is probably in
no way inferior. It is therefore their duty to train their pupils’
characters, that they may be fit and able administrators, governors,
and justices; and their tastes, that their criticism and demands may
rightly direct the culture of the nation. In striving after these
ends, the public schools of England may, I think, take not a few hints
from the like-motived schools of Hellas.



INDEX


  Abacus, illustrated, 104

  Aegina pediment, 5

  Aeolian harmony, 240, 241

  Aeschylus, 245

  Aesop, 49, 96

  Agesilaos, 13, 138, 236

  Aglauros, temple of, 210

  Aineias Tacticus, 208

  Aischines, father of, an usher, 83

  Akademeia, 125
    description of scene in, 134-142
    Plato’s teaching in the, 196-207
    Plato’s lectures in the, described by Epikrates, 199
    Plato’s lectures, reference by Ephippos and Antiphanes, 200
    Plato’s lectures in the, reference by Amphis, 201
    Plato’s lectures in the, references in Comedy, 201
    Plato’s lectures in the, reference by Alexis, 200-201
    Plato’s pupils described by Ephippos, 200

  Alexander, 2, 203

  Alexis, 207
    his catalogue of a school library, 95
    on the Akademeia, 200-201

  Alkibiades, 207, 277
    plays the flute, 111
    in the pankration, 133

  Alphabet, metrical, 88

  Amphis, on the Akademeia, 201

  Anaxagoras, 81, 158, 209, 230

  Angelo, Michel, 5

  Anthology, on wrestling, 132

  _Antidosis_ of Isokrates, 190

  Antigenes, palaistra of, 60

  Antipater, 192

  Antiphanes, on the Akademeia, 200

  Antiphon the Sophist, 172-173

  Apelles, 115

  Apollodoros, 208

  Apprenticeship, 44-45

  Arcadia, 243

  Archephebos, 220

  Archon Eponumos, 71 _n._

  _Areiopagitikos_ of Isokrates, 190

  Areiopagos, supervision of the young, 70
    and the epheboi, 213

  Ares, 211

  Argos, 12 _n._
    foot-races for girls at, 142

  Aristophanes, supports athleticism, 123
    criticism of Sophists in the _Clouds_, 166-167
    attacks new artistic standards, 251

  Aristotle, 202
    condemns professional athletes, 123
    at Plato’s lecture on “The Good,” 198
    his school in the Lukeion, 203
    views on art in education, 117, 258

  Aristoxenos, 171

  Arithmetic, teaching of, 100-107

  Arkadia, schools in, 77, 243

  Art, characteristics of Greek, 237-239
    teaching of, in primary schools, 114-117

  Artemis Koruthalia, 40

  Artemis Orthia, 29, 285

  Artistic education, 237-258
    Aristotle on, 117

  Art-schools, date of the rise of, 115

  Aster, Plato’s pupil, 201-202

  Astupalaia, school in, 77

  Athleticism at Sparta, 11-34
    in Crete, 36-38
    at Athens and the rest of Greece, 118-156
    revolt against excessive, 75
    excessive addiction to, 119-132

  Autokrator, 192

  Autolukos, 75-76

  Auxo, 211

  Axiothea, 197


  Barbitos, 108

  Bathing-room in the gymnasium, 137

  Boiotia, schools in, 76

  Books, use of, in education, 204-209
    Isokrates’ opinion of, 204
    Plato’s opinion of, 205
    rare before the Periclean age, 207
    trade in, 207
    prices of, 208-209
    variety of, 208

  _Bousiris_ of Isokrates, 185, 187, 195

  Boxing in the palaistra, 132-133

  Bribery, among professional athletes, 121


  Cavalry, training for, 143, 149-152

  Chabrias, 202

  Chancellor (Kosmetes) of the epheboi, 212-213

  Chares, 208

  Charondas, 62

  _Cheiron, Precepts of_, 96

  Chess (πεσσοί [pessoi]), 105

  Children, exposure of Spartan, 13

  Chios, Isokrates in, 181
    collapse of a school of letters in, 76
    girls wrestling in, 142

  Choirilos, 95, 207

  Choregia, description of, 148-149

  Choregos, 60, 148

  Competitions, local, 62-65

  Conscription, 283
    at Athens, 55-56

  Cookery-book, 207
    by Simos, 96
    by Mithaikos, 208

  Cookery-schools, 45

  Corporal punishment, 18, 29, 66, 68, 98-100, 262 and _n._, 285

  Crete, education at, 34-38


  Damon, a music-teacher, 113, 249

  Dancing at Sparta, 22, 30-32
    dithuramboi, 144-145
    religious aspect of, 143-144, 248
    dramatic aspects of, 144-145
    systems of, 145
    the War-dance, 146-147
    the Naked-dance, 31, 147
    universal throughout Hellas, 143
    educational importance of, 143

  Delphoi, educational endowments at, 62

  Demosthenes, 195, 202

  Derkulos, 71

  Diaulos, 133

  Dictation, 87

  Diodotos, 192

  Dion, 202

  Dionusia, epheboi at, 214

  Dionusios, Plato’s master, 158, 160
    Plato’s pupil, 202, 203

  Dionusodoros the Sophist, 173

  Dionusos, 144, 283

  Diskos in the palaistra, 134

  Dorian harmony, 240-241

  Douris, Vase of, 52, 86, 92

  Drama, influence of, in education, 248-249

  Drawing, teaching of, in primary schools, 114

  Dresden Gallery, 5

  Dusting-room in the gymnasium, 137


  Edgeworth, Maria, 74, 260

  Egypt, in Plato’s _Laws_, 102-103

  Eleusis, education at, 71

  Elgin marbles, 3, 5

  Elpias, school of, 83

  Empedokles, 230

  Enualios, 211

  Epaminondas, 245

  Ephebarchos, 220

  Ephebic inscriptions, 221-223

  Epheboi, 37, 263
    examination and oath, 210-211
    decline in number, 219-220

  Ephippos, on the Akademeia, 200

  Epicharmos, 95, 207

  Epikrates, on Plato’s lectures, 199

  Eponumos, Archon, 71 _n._

  Eretria, school in, 77

  Eros, 135

  Eruthrai, school in, 77

  Euagoras, 191

  Eudikos, son of Apemantos, 98

  Euenos of Paros, 168, 176

  Euhemeros, 229 _n._

  Euripides, his alphabetical puzzle, 90
    denunciation of athleticism, 122
    his rationalism, 230

  Euthudemos the Sophist, 173

  Euthudemos, companion of Sokrates, 207

  Eutuchides, 155

  Exposure of Spartan children on Taügetos, 13


  Fees, 62, 278, 281
    paid to schoolmasters, 81
    of the paidotribes, 134
    paid to Sophists, 168-169
    of permanent secondary teachers, 182
    in the Akademeia, 202-203
    to the Sophronistai, 213

  Festivals, school, 80-81

  Flute, teaching of, 110
    condemned by Pratinas, 110
    condemned by Plato, 242
    particulars of, 112

  Flute-girls, professional, 111

  “Foreign Legion,” 216, 218


  Gelon of Syracuse, 228

  Gesticulation, 129-130

  Girls at Sparta, 29-30
    wrestle at Chios, 142
    foot-races for, at Argos, 142

  Gorgias the Sophist, 168, 169, 174-176, 208
    his euphuistic style, 176
    his influence on later writers, 176

  Grammatistes, 50

  Gumnasiarchos, 213-214, 220
    excursus on, 154-156

  Gumnastes, distinct from paidotribes, 126 _n._

  Gumnopaidia, 31, 146-147

  Gymnasium, description of, 124
    cost, 124
    description of scene in, 134-142
    ἀποδυτήριον [apodytêrion], 135
    patron deities, 135
    the oil-room, 136
    the dusting-room, 137
    the bathing-room, 137
    the punch-ball room, 137
    Sophists’ lectures, 138
    central courtyard, 138-139
    the xustos, 141

  Gymnastics, excessive addiction to, 119-123
    professional, disadvantages of, 120


  Haltêres, 128

  Hegemone, 211

  _Helen_ of Isokrates, 185, 195

  Hellas, educator of the world, 2-3

  Hellenism, two currents of, 6
    spread by Alexander, Rome, and the Renaissance, 2-3
    spirit of, 3
    methods of teaching, 4, 275-291

  Henty, G. A., 260

  Hephaisteia, 155

  Herakleides of Pontos, 36 _n._, 198, 202, 241

  Herakleitos, 229

  Hermann, K. F., an emendation of, 125

  “Hermes” of Praxiteles, 5, 250

  Herondas, third Mime of, 98-100

  Hesiod, 207
    authority of, 228
    teaching of, in primary schools, 95

  Hestiaios, 198

  Hippias of Elis, 97, 168, 169, 172

  Hippokleides, 129

  Hippokrates, 208, 215

  Hippothontid tribe, 215

  Holidays, on festivals, 80-81

  Homer, 207
    teaching of, in primary schools, 93-95
    authority of, 228

  Horace, 2

  Hunting, 142-143, 259

  Hupereides, 202

  Hypo-Dorian harmony, 241


  Iliaca, Tabula, 84

  Ink, 85, 87

  Inscriptions, ephebic, 221-223

  Inukos, 168

  Ion, the rhapsode, 97

  Ionian harmony, 240-241

  Iphikrates, 202

  Isaios, 195

  Isokrates, 161
    pupil of Gorgias, 169
    his school near the Lukeion, 180
    teaching in Chios, 181
    on the theory of education, 182
    on the nature of philosophy, 184
    his school described, 185-195
    his methods, 186-190
    his pupils, 191, 192
    on theory of education, 192
    definition of the educated man, 192-193
    on religious myths, 230-231


  Javelin and spear throwing in the palaistra, 134

  Jiu-jitsu, 131

  Jump, long, in the palaistra, 133


  Kallias, his metrical alphabet, 88
    his spelling drama, 88-90

  Kameiros, in Rhodes, 53

  Karia, 241 _n._

  Karneia, 40

  Kekropid tribe, 215, 219

  Kikunna, 166

  Kitharistes, 50

  Klazomenai, 81

  Kleinias, 243

  Kleon, 113

  Knucklebones, 65, 99, 105

  Kolonos, 196

  Konnaros, 65

  Konnos, his music-school, 113

  Korax, 208

  Korubantic dances, 242 _n._

  Kôrukoi, 128, 137

  Kos, 215

  Kosmetes of the epheboi, 212-213

  Kottalos, in Herondas, 99-100

  Kritias, 63, 277
    plays the flute, 111

  Kunaitha, 243

  Kuretic dance in Crete, 36, 146

  _Kuros, The Education of_, 259-272


  Lampriskos, in Herondas, 99-100

  Lampros, a music-teacher, 113, 164

  Lastheneia, 197

  Laughter, statue of, in Sparta, 12

  Leap-frog in the palaistra, 130

  Lectures in primary schools, 97

  Leitourgiai, 60-61, 148
    excursus on gumnasiarchoi, 154-156

  Leokrates, 219

  Lesbos, schools in, 77

  Leschai at Sparta, 11

  Libanius, 178

  Libraries of Euthudemos, 207
    of Peisistratos at Athens, 207
    of Polukrates at Samos, 207

  Library, a school, 95

  Likumnios the Sophist, 176

  Linos, 207

  Literature, teaching of, in primary schools, 93-97
    in secondary schools, 161-162

  Logographoi, 180-181, 193

  Long jump in the palaistra, 133

  Lukeion, 125
    description of scene in, 134-142

  Lukourgos the orator, 202, 211

  Lusandros, 16

  Lusias, the logographos, 193

  Lusis, 54

  Lydian harmony, 240-242

  Lyre, and lyric-schools, 107-114


  Mantitheos, 60

  Marathon, 3

  Marriage customs, 48

  Mathematics, teaching of, 100-107
    in secondary schools, 159

  Meals, hours of, 80

  Medical beliefs, 243

  Menander, 250

  Menedemos, 196

  Metrodoros, 230

  Metrotimé, in Herondas, 98-100

  Michel Angelo, 5

  Mikkos, 138 n.

  Mithaikos, 208

  Mixed-Lydian harmony, 241

  Moderators (Sophronistai), 70, 212-213, 220

  Mounuchia, 213

  Mousaios, 164

  Mukalessos, schools at, 76

  Muronides, 218

  Music, 240-244
    in Crete, 36-37
    in primary schools, 107-114

  Music, Plato on the value of, 113
    Aristotle on the value of, 114
    characteristics of Greek, 240-244
    Greek views of the properties of, 243
    in Arkadia, 243

  Music-schools, experiments in, 110


  “Nature-study,” 262

  Nikeratos, 94

  Nikostratos, archonship of, 212


  Oberammergau, 249

  Oil-room in the gymnasium, 136

  Oinopides, 158

  Orpheus, 95, 164, 207

  Oxurhunchos, fragment on wrestling unearthed at, 131


  Paidagogos, 266, 278-279
    duties of, 66-69

  Paidonomos, 277

  Paidotribes, 50, 278
    duties of, 126
    his symbol of office, 128
    his fee, 134

  Painting, teaching of, in primary schools, 114

  Palaistra, distinct from gymnasium, 124
    life in the, 124-134
    teaching of gesticulation (τὸ χειρονομεῖν) [to cheironomein], 129
    wrestling (πάλη) [palê], 130-132
    leap-frog, 130
    rope-climbing, 130
    boxing, 132
    pankration, 132-133
    long jump, 133
    running, 133
    javelin and spear, 134
    diskos, 134
    fees of the paidotribes, 134

  Pamphilos the Macedonian, 115

  Panathenaic festival, 148, 152, 155

  _Panathenaikos_ of Isokrates, 187, 189

  Pankration in the palaistra, 132-133

  Parthenon, 244, 245
    the “Theseus” of the, 5

  Peiraieus, 213

  Peisistratos, 247
    popularisation of Homer by, 52

  Pencils, 84

  Perikles, 3, 246, 276

  Peripoloi, 214 and n., 215

  Permanent secondary schools, 179-209
    their natural growth at Athens, 179
    fees, 182
    of Isokrates, 185-195

  Phaüllos, 139

  Pheidias, 245, 250

  Pheiditia at Sparta, 13-15

  Pheidostratos, schoolroom of, 98

  Pherekrates, _The Slave-Teacher_, 45

  Philosophy, schools of, 195-207
    their feuds, 203-204

  Philoxenos, 242

  Phokion, 202

  Phrunichos, 215

  Phrunis, 12

  Phrygian harmony, 240

  Physical education, 279
    in Athens and the rest of Hellas, 118-156
    contemporary criticism of excess, 119-123
    dancing, 143-149

  Pindar, eulogy of athleticism, 121-122

  Pittalos, 45

  Plataea, oath of the army at, 211

  Plato, denounces excessive athleticism, 123
    criticism of Sophists, 174
    his teaching in the Akademeia, 196-207
    his teaching in the Akademeia described by Epikrates, 199
    teaching in the Akademeia: his affection for his pupils, 201-202
    teaching in the Akademeia: names of his pupils, 202
    teaching in the Akademia, gratuitous, 203
    on the theory of education, 205-206
    criticism of religious myths, 231-233
    on the value of myths, 235
    on the educative value of artistic environment, 246
    his excessive imagination, 247
    on the Athenian drama, 253
    criticism of art, 255-258
    on Xenophon’s Kuros, 272

  Playgrounds, 83

  Plecktron, 107

  Poetry, place of, in education, 247-249

  Polemon, 201

  Polos the Sophist, 168, 176, 208

  Polugnotos, 115

  Polybios, on Arcadian music, 243

  Pratinas, on the flute, 110

  Praxiteles, the “Hermes” of, 5, 250

  Prizes, 65

  Prodikos the Sophist, 168, 171-172
    _Choice of Herakles_, 96, 98, 171-172

  Propulaia, 245

  Protagoras the Sophist, 167-168, 170, 230

  Proverbs, Greek, 45, 57 _n._, 110, 111, 152

  Public schools, English, compared, 23, 212 _n._, 265

  Punch-ball, 137

  Pyrrhic dance, 36


  Raphael, 5

  Rationalism, spread of, 229-230

  Reading, teaching of, 87-92

  Religious education, 228-236
    Plato’s revision, 231-233

  Rhetoric in secondary schools, 160-161
    weaknesses of Greek, 174-175

  Riding, 143, 149-152

  Rope-climbing in the palaistra, 130

  Rowing, 143, 153-154

  Running, long-distance, 133
    in the palaistra, 133


  Salmudessos, 207

  Schoolmaster, status of, 81

  Secondary education, 157-209
    secondary classes in primary schools, 157-158
    Sophists, 157-178
    permanent schools, 179-209
    variety of subjects, 159
    rhetoric, 160-161
    literary subjects, 161
    the education voluntary, 163

  _Semelé_, 145, 256

  Shakespeare, 249

  Shelley, translation of epigram, 202

  Siburtios, palaistra of, 60

  Sicily, education in Chalcidian cities of, 62

  Sikinnos, 67

  Simon, 208

  Simos, his cookery-book, 96

  Sistine Chapel, 5

  Skias, council-chamber at Sparta, 12

  Skillous, 259

  _Slave-Teacher, The_, of Pherekrates, 45

  Sokrates, 167, 230, 270, 277

  Solon, 57, 247
    enactment on handicraft, 45
    regulations about paidagogoi, 67
    enactments to safeguard morality, 68-69
    archaic phrases in his laws, 95
    on courtiers, 104
    metrical version of Athenian laws, 109
    ? on gumnasiarchai, 155

  Sophists, 157-178, 286
    and mathematics, 102
    subjects taught, 165
    criticism of Aristophanes, 166
    criticism of Plato, 174
    scale of fees, 169
    secret of their power, 170
    their undemocratic influence, 177
    their rationalism, 177
    criticised by Isokrates, 182

  Sophokles, 3

  Sophronistai, 70, 212-213, 220

  Sparta, education at, 11-34
    character of people, 11
    importance of education at, 12
    details of Pheiditia, 13-15
    the State a military machine, 12
    conservatism of, 12
    strictness of discipline, 13
    Spartan nurses, 13
    system of State schools, 14
    Syssitia, 39-40
    ideals in education, 275
    educational methods, 285

  Spelling, teaching of, 88-90

  Spelling-book, terra-cotta fragment of, 89 _n._

  Speusippos, 202

  Stadion, 133

  Stesimbrotos, 230

  Swimming, 143, 152-153

  Syntono-Lydian harmony, 242

  Syssitia at Sparta, 39-40, 267
    at Crete, 40-41


  Tabula Iliaca, 84

  Taügetos, exposure of Spartan children on, 13

  Taureas, palaistra of, 60

  Technical instruction, 44-46
    of the logographoi, 180-181

  Teles, 115, 160

  Tennyson, quoted, 235

  Teos, 220
    educational endowments in, 62
    prizemen in competitions, 63
    recitations of boys at, 96

  Tertiary education, 210-223

  Thales (Cretan poet), 243

  Thallo, 211

  Thargelia, 148, 155

  Theodoros, 160, 176

  Theognis, 96

  Theophanes, 212

  Theophrastos, 243

  Theory of education, 227-272, 275-291
    Plato’s views on, 205-206
    Xenophon’s views on, 259-272

  Thermopylae, 3

  “Theseus,” of the Parthenon, 5, 245

  Thespis, 247

  Thrasuboulos of Kaludon, 215

  Thrasumachos, 177, 208

  Timeas, palaistra of, 60

  Timotheos, 12, 145

  Timotheos the general, 196

  Timotheos of Herakleia, 192

  Tisias, 208

  Tithenidia, 40

  Torch-race, 155

  Trade, Greek views on, 43

  Troizen, schools in, 77, 220


  Undressing-room in the gymnasium, 135


  Virgil, 2


  Wax, tablets of, 84

  Women, gymnastics for, at Sparta, 30
    seclusion of, 46
    duties of, 47
    excluded from athletics in Athens, 142
    admitted to the Akademeia, 197
    position of, 282

  Wrestling in the palaistra described, 130-132

  Writing, teaching of, 85-87


  Xenokrates, 196, 201, 202, 203

  Xenophanes, 229

  Xenophanes of Kolophon, criticises athleticism, 121

  Xenophon, treatise on _The Horse_, 208
    handbooks on educational subjects, 208
    _The Education of Kuros_, 259-272
    character of, 259-260

  Xerxes, 61, 239

  Xustos, in the gymnasium, 141


  Zeuxippos of Heraklea, 114


  ἄβακος [abakos], 104

  ἀγέλαι [agelai], 37

  ἀλειπτής [aleiptês], 126 _n._

  ἀνδρεῖα [andreia], 35

  ἀπεργάζεσθαι [apergazesthai], 116

  ἀπόδρομοι [apodromoi], 38

  ἀποδυτήριον [apodytêrion], 135


  γραμμαί [grammai], 86

  γραμματιστής [grammatistês], 165

  γυμνασιαρχεῖν [gymnasiarchein], 155

  γυμνοπαιδία [gymnopaidia], 146


  ἐλαιοθέσιον [elaiothesion], 136 _n._

  ἐξαλείφειν [exaleiphein], 116

  ἔπαικλον [epaiklon], 39

  ἐπίκροτος [epikrotos], 151


  ἦθος [êthos], 244


  κάθαρσις [katharsis], 242

  κατάστεγος δρόμος [katastegos dromos], 136

  κιθαριστής [kitharistês], 165

  κοπίδες [kopides], 40

  κρυπτοί [kryptoi], 215, 220


  ληξιαρχικὸν γραμματεῖον [lêxiarchikon grammateion], 210


  μεγαλόψυχος [megalopsychos], 236

  μειράκιον [meirakion], 53, 191

  μέτοικοι ἰσοτελεῖς [metoikoi isoteleis], 216


  ξηραλοιφεῖν [xêraloiphein], 136 _n._


  ὁμόνοια [homonoia], 172

  ὄρμος [hormos], 30 _n._


  παιδαγωγεῖον [paidagôgeion], 84

  παιδονόμος [paidonomos], 36

  πάλη [palê], 130-132

  πεμπάζειν [pempazein], 104

  περιγραφή [perigraphê], 116

  περιτόλια [peripolia], 215

  πεσσοί [pessoi], 105

  πλέξον [plexon], 131


  σκιαγραφία [skiagraphia], 116

  σοφιστής [sophistês], 164, 165

  στλεγγίς [stlengis], 142

  σχῆμα [schêma], 131


  ὑπαίθριοι [hypaithrioi], 215

  ὑπογραμμός [hypogrammos], 85

  ὑπογράφειν [hypographêin], 116

  ὑπογραφή [hypographê], 86


  φορβέια [phorbeia], 112, 128


  χειρονομεῖν [cheironomein], 129

  χυτλοῦσθαι [chytlousthai], 136 _n._



THE END

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.



Transcriber’s Note

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the
end of the chapter in which related anchors occur. Dialect, obsolete
words and misspellings were left unchanged. Final stops missing at
the end of sentences were added. Transliterations of words and phrases
in Greek follow within brackets.

The following items were noted or changed:

  There are two anchors to Footnotes [28], [291], [449], [537], and
    [548]. Footnote [585] has 3 anchors.
  Unprinted “I.” added at the beginning of the list of Illustrations.
  In Footnote [513], reference letter after 384 is unclear; it could be
    either E or B.
  In Footnote [651], changed stop to comma in list: “… 466, 470”.





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