Bl^^v K^'^^^''^"' ^^M^H^P^ ^^^^^Hf (Jh^h^H^^H'^V" ^^^^^^^^^^^^T^^^wTvwZ^^^^HH^^^H^^H '^^^m|||HB|H||^^^^B ^Bi <|»I10^040YMEN CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY V/.C. Cornell University Library LA 75.F85 1922 Schools of Hellas; an essay on the practi 3 1924 014 354 819 DATE DUE ^^^^ TOfr muM&i JBiiAfl PRINTED IN U.S A. S^ Cornell University W Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924014354819 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS AN ESSAY ON THE PRACTICE AND THEQRY OF ANCIENT GREEK EDUCATION :m(^ MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA ■ MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED TORONTO IN A RIDING-SCHOOL From a Kulix by Euphroniot, now in the Louvre. Hartwig'a MehterKkaltn, Plate 5}, 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. KENDALL, LL.D. HEAD MASTER OF WINCHESTER COLLEGE WITH A PREFACE BY A. W. VERRALL, Litt.Doc. ILLUSTRATED THIRD EDITION MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1932 COPYRIGHT First Edition May igoy Second Impression July zgoy Third Impression January igo8 Second Edition January igu Third Edition iges Reprinted igjz PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN h'V *IA0KAA0I2 KAI *1A020#0I2 i73^7/^ l/>L^ 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 at 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, viii SCHOOLS OF HELLAS 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 arrange- ment 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 pro- duct 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 subsequently of 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 15,1 906, — 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 and prizeman 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 Harvey 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 X SCHOOLS OF HELLAS 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 he had him- self much genuine 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 1 904, 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 : ^etvt, Kakov rh (rjv Karaydyiov icmv air(uriv, VTjTTVTiovi yap ontiii vvKTinkaveii n povTCSa t ovpavCav Tpvxofievoris S tj&rj KoifJtf, rov aKij^oTov vttvov TrifiTTti S' SxTTt Xaditv oiKoCS' iXrfXvdora^. 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 EDITOR'S STATEMENT xi 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 premising ; 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 xii SCHOOLS OF HELLAS 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 compre- hensive 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 re- sponsible 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 repro- duced before. I must thank the Syndics of the Pitt Press at Cambridge for their kind permission to re- produce their print of Douris' Educational Vase from Dr. Sandys' History of Classical Scholarship. The EDITOR'S STATEMENT xlil 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' Education athinienne) and Grasberger's in German {Erxiehung 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 stimu- lating 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 xiv SCHOOLS OF HELLAS Thoukudides, my heart sank, for I could hardly recog- nise an old. friend in such a guise. So I decided, per- haps 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. I SHOULD like to add a few lines to accompany this third edition of the Schools of Hellas. The vitality of this boyish essay, first published fifteen years ago, is indeed remarkable, and proves, if proof were needed, that the Greeks have still many things to say to our generation. It was among the first of many attempts to recapture the spirit of Hellas for modern readers ; and the breath of Greek life which animates it is so strong and fresh that it is still, I hope, spreading "health " in the "fair places " of England. The modest and scholarly enthusiast who penned it could hardly have anticipated that so many (jtiXoicaXoi and ^iXoao^oi would be found to ponder over his essay. I am sure that he would have wished for no higher reward. M. J. R. Winchester, yu/y 1922. CONTENTS PAGE Bibliography ... . . xix Introduction . . , . . . i 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 XV xvi SCHOOLS OF HELLAS CHAPTER VI FAGE Athens, etc. : Secondary Education — II. The Permanent Schools . . . . . • '79 CHAPTER Vn 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 *59 CHAPTER X Xenophon ...... 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 Lb. Kulix by Douris, Berlin (No. 228 5) — 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 r 120 V. B. Kulix attributed to Euphronios, at Munich — Scenes I in a Palaistra j VI. A. Wrestlers, etc., in the Palaistra "i L . . . 128 VI. B. Boxers, etc., in the Palaistra J VIL The Stadion at Delphi . . .132 VIIL Kulix signed by Euphronios, at Berlin — Scenes in the Palaistra . . . • -174 xviii SCHOOLS OF HELLAS AFTER PAGE IX. Vase attributed to Euphronios, at Munich — A Riding- Lesson : Mounting . . . .214 X. A. Kuliz by Euphronios, now in the Louvre — Scene in" a Riding-School X. B. Kuliz by Euphronios, now in the Louwre — Scene in a Riding-School 258 NOTE TO THE THIRD IMPRESSION The two vases, Nos. III. and IV., in the British Museum, there catalogued as E 171 and E 172, have been at present (Jan. 19) removed to the Room of Greek and Roman Life, and, owing to the frequent rearrangement of the Vases in the British Museum, the student who wishes to find any particular vase without delay is recommended to refer directly to one of the officials. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY DiTTENBERGER, W. De Ephebis Atticis Dissertatio. Dieterich, Gottingen, 1863. DuMONT, A. Essai sur I'dphebie attique. 2 vols. Didot, Paris, 1875-76. GiRARD, P. L'Education ath^ienne au ^ et au iv" siecle avant J.-G. Hachette, Paris, 1889. Grasberger, L. Erzieluing und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum. 3 vols. Wiirzburg, 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. MuLLER, K. O. Dorian^. Edition 1824. English translation; Oxford, 1830. Nettleship, H. In Hei/enica. 2nd Edition. Longmans, 1898. SiDGvncK, A. Essay in Teachers' Guild Quarterly, No. 8. UssiNG, J. L. (Danish.) German translation. Erziehung bei den Griechen (und Romem). Altona, 1 870. WiLKiNS, A. S. National Education in Greece (Hare Prize, Cambridge). Isbister, London, 1873. XIX 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 gldrious product from this union of the two. Those who live while such a union is in progress cannot esti- mate its value or its probable result ; they are but 2 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS 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 con- temporary world, that such combinations must be studied. The chief historical instance of two distinct civilisa- tions 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 for- gotten 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 ex- periment 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 Caesar caused incalculable damage to this earlier Re- naissance, 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 INTRODUCTION 3 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 in- fluence 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 Hellenisrh, 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, states- men 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 4 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS 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 onass 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 INTRODUCTION 5 inwardness of his handicraft and skill, not all the dili- gence 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 master- pieces. In like manner the student of Hellenic educa- 'tion 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 school- masters 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 imagina- tive brains which used the tools are for ever beyond the reach of the scholar and archaeologist. 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 e.g. The Aeginetan figures stand in the same relation to the Spartan and Cretan schools ; these heroic figures have the bodily harmonious ness, 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 6 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS 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 neigh- bour, 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 simi- INTRODUCTION 7 larities 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.^ 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 * Herodotos, 4. 77. ' Plutarch, Luiourgos, 25. Kratinos (Athen. 138} ridicules these clubs and says that the attraction of them was that sausages hung there on pegs to be nibbled. II 12 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 con- servatives ; 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 ; ^ and the nine-stringed lyre of Phrunis met the same fate. Having once accepted the seven- stringed lyre from Terpander, the Spartans never per- mitted 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.^ 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 hgve admittedly this result, that they impose a recognis- > Pausanias, 3.12. A similar event happened at Argos. Plutarch, On Music, 37. ^ Aiistot. Pol. ii. 9, JO. CHAP. I AT SPARTA AND IN CRETE 13 able 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.^ If they decided that it was likely to prove sickly, it was exposed on Mount Taiigetos, 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 arid 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 thpy stayed, indoors and took their meals. About fifty men attended each of these clubs. The children sat on the floor near their fathers. 1 Plutarch, L«^. i6. 14 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti Each member contributed monthly a " medimnos " of barley-meal, eight " choes " of wine, five " mnai " of cheese, two and a half " mnai " of figs,'^ 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, brim- ming full of poppy-flavoured loaves, and linseed and sesamum, and in bowls honey and linseed for the children." 2 A Spartan who became too poor to pay his contribu- tion 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 Karh Ke^aXrjv^ 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 what- ever 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.* Parents must there- ' Say, I \ bushels of meal, J gallons of wine, 5 lbs. of cheese, and 2} lbs. of figs. 2 Smyth, Melic Poets, " Alkman," 26, if the emendation valSeaai be correct. => Aristot. Po/. ii. 9. * Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271). CHAP. I AT SPARTA AND IN CRETE 15 fore 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 sub- scription 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 " (o/moioi),^ 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.^ 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 ^ Xen. Anah. iv. 6. 14 ; Aristot. Pol. ii. 9. 31. ' Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271 e). 1 6 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti two sons were educated at Sparta. These foreign boys were called Tp6tfjLot or Foster-children. Xenophon mentions " foreigners from among the rpotjiifioi." ^ 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.2 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." * 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.* 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." * If most of the authorities are 1 Xen. Hellen. v. 3. 9. > Plato, Rep. 520 D. » Plut. Kleom. 8. * Aristoph. Knights, 635, 695 (with Schol. on 697, i/j,oi, 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.^ 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 \ 1 Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii. 3 i Hellen. v. 4. 32. ^ Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii. 3. 1 8 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti exchange rough jests without flinching. To take a jest without annoyance was part of the Spartan char- acter ; 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.^ 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.^ 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 Bouigor, or " Herd- leader " ; the rest obeyed his orders and endured his punishments.* ^ " Agelai " of young men are mentioned by inscriptions at Miletos and Smuma [BSckh, 2892, 3326] ; there may have been boarding-schools somewhat resembling those of Sparta at these towns for young men. ' Haanyooi)afip. ' Paus. iii. i6. ii. ' Plut. Lukourgos, i8 ; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 27. * Bockh, 1364. ^ Pindar, Frag. Hyporch. 8 A.6.KaLva TrapBiviav ay4\a. ' Xen. Constit. of Lak. i. 4. ' Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. 15. ' Plut. Lukourgos, 14. ' Whence they were called individual, falls well within this estimate (cf. Herod, vi. 57). After the regular meal ' an ewaiKkov 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. eiraiKXa 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 eTraiKXov designed for the children, barley meal soaked in olive oil — a sort of porridge, in * Persaeus af. Athen. 140 f. ' Dicaearchus af>. Athen. 141 a. * Sphaerns ap. Athen. 141 c, d ; and Molpis, ihid. 40 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 KOTrlSei.^ 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 kottis was given at the temple of Artemis Koruthalia by the stream Tiassos.^ The nurses brought the boy-babies to it. The sacrifice was a sucking pig, and baked loaves were served. The kottiSes were evidently a feature of Spartan life : Epilukos makes his " laddie " (KiopaXia-Kos) remark, " I will go to the kottIs 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.' 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, Dosiadesand Purgion, quoted in Athenaeus(i43). 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 ' Polemon a/>. Athen. 56 a, and 138-139. " Cp. the criche temples in Plato's Lams, 794 a. ' Demetrius of Scepsis (a/). Athen. 141 e). CHAP. I AT SPARTA AND IN CRETE 41 two passages shows that the " younger members " mentioned by Dosiades are what Purgion calls the orphans, and that they are not yet full-grown nien. 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 dyiXai. 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 dis- tinguished 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. 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 profes- sional 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 lonians 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. T To a Hellene education 42 ^ CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 43 meant the training of character and taste, and the symmetrical development of body, mind, and imagina- tion.) 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 {fidvavao,' 206 D. ' Plato, Lades, 179 a. « Xen. Const:'/, of Lak. iii. ' Plato, Lusis, J 14 jj. CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 55 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 re- turned 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 know- ledge began to increase and boys had more to learn. So the lyre was crowded into the first period of educa- tion, 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 56 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti secondary education were mathematics of various kinds, more advanced literary criticism, a certam 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 ;^ in the Laws, prescribing for the whole population, not for a few selected in- tellects, he orders practical arithmetic, geometry, and enough astronomy to make the calendar intelligible. The pseudo-Platonic Axiochos^ 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 ' Rhetoric is, of course, banished from a Platonic state. ' [Plato] Axiochos, 366 e. CHAP. 11 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 57 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 ce'ntury it involved only military instruction. Thus we have Athenian education divided into three stages : Primary from six to fourteen. Secondary v 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 neededJittle encouragement. Of the primary subjects, letters were probably compulsory by law, and music was almost invariably taught. An old law, ascribed to Solon,^ 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." ^ 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 ' See Petit, Leges Atticae, ii. 4, compiled with great ingenuity out of many authors. Hence the proverbs d /I'^e viiv liitre ypdniMTa imffTa/ievm, of an utter dunce, and wpuiTov Kd\vfi^dv Seirepov Sk ypd/xfiara' The spelling-riddles of the tragedians imply a whole nation interested in spelling. ' Plato, Kriton, 50 D. 58 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 look- out 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.^ Of music, however, he is ignorant, and he has never attended the lessons of a paidotribes,^ 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.^ In the Theages*^ 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." ^ The schoolmasters opened their schools as private enterprises, fixing for themselves the fees and the sub- jects 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,^ " When ^ Aristophanes, ATn/^^fs, 189. ' Ihid. 1235-1239. » Ibid. 987-996. « [Plato] Theages, 122 E. ' Plato, Alkibiades, i. 122 a. 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 Oelphoi belong to the third century ; it is impossible to say whether such existed earlier. " Xcn. Mem. ii. 2. C. CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 59 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,^ 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 instruc- tion 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 1 [Xen.] Cottstit. of Athens, ii. lo. 6o SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti house of the paidotribes," eV iraiZorpl^ov — 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,^ 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.^ 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.' " 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.* 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.* In Demosthenes,' a certain Mantitheos, who had not been acknowledged by his father at the usual time, " attended school among » Plutarch, Alkib. 3 ; Plato, Charmides, 153 A. " C./.^. ii. I. 44.4, 44S, 446. 3 sgg Excursus on ^wnaWapxoi. * 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. ' This rule fell into abeyance. • Dera. agaimt Boiot. looi. CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 6i 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 : ^ the rich naturally preferred to send their boys to more select schools.^ Thus the more elementary stages of letters alone were compulsory at Athens, but music and gymnastics were almost universally taught, and the cost of instruc- tion 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 .3 And when Mitulene wished to punish her ^ [Xen.] CottStit. of Athens, i. 13. ^ 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, Snd 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. ' Plut. Themist, 10. 62 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti revolted allies in the most severe way possible, she prevented them from teaching their children letters and music.i 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.^ The law enact- ing this is ascribed to the great lawgiver, Charondas, and, although he is a somewhat shadowy figure,^ 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 con- sidering. 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 compe- titions 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 ' Ael, Far. Hist. vii. 15. " Died. Sic. xii. 42. ' Probably lived circa 500 B.C. CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 63 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 ^parpLai 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.^ 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.^ Senior Class (by age). Junior Class. For rhapsody, Zoilos, son of For rhapsody, Herakles. Zoilos. For reading. For reading, Zojflos, son of For calligraphy. Zoilos. For torch race. For playing lyre with fingers. Middle Class. For playing lyre with plektron. For rhapsody, Metrodoros, son For singipg to lyre. of Attalos. For reciting tragic verse (tragedy) . For reading, Dionusikles, son of For reciting comedy. Metrodoros. For reciting lyric verse. For general knowledge, Athe- naios, son of Apollodoros. For painting, Dionusios, son of Dionusios. From Chios we have the following ' : — When Hermesileos, Dinos, and Nikias were gumnasiarchoi, the following boys and epheboi were victorious in the compe- titions 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 vras taster of the offerings : — 1 Plato, Tim. 2i B. « Bockh, 3088. ^ Ibid. 2214. I have omitted patronymics. 64 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS PART I For reading, Agathokles. For rhapsody, Miltiades. For playing lyre with Xenon. For playing lyre, Kleoites. fingers. Stadion ( ^200 yards). Boys Athenikon. Junior epheboi Hestiaios. Middle „ AfoUonios. Senior j> Artemon. Men Metrodoros, ■ Long Distance Race (varied from z\ miles to about | mile). Boys . . . Asklepiades. Junior epheboi Dionusios. Middle „ Timokles. Senior „ Moschion. Men „ Aischrion. 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 ephe- bos, he competed in and won the senior ephebos' race here, unless there were two boys of the same name.) Wrestling. Boxing. Boys . . . Athenikon. Boys . . . Herakleides. Junior epheboi Demetrios. (The rest is wanting.) Middle „ Moschos. Senior „ Theodotos. (Notice the three victories of the Men „ Apellas. boy Athenikon.) At Thespiai in Boiotia ^ there were prizes for senior and junior boys in the various races, and in boxing, wrestHng, pankration, and pentathlon, besides open prizes for poetry and music of all kinds. Attic inscrip- tions arrange the events thus ^ : — 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. 1 C.l.G. Boeot. 1760-1766. * BSckh, 232, 245. CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 65 The Olympian and Pythian festivals, however, had only a single series of contests for boys : — Olympia. Boys. Stadion (Pmd. 01. xiv.). Boxing (Find. 01. i., xi.). Wrestling (Find. 01. viii.). (only in 628 b.c.) Pentathlon, (not till -200 B.C.) Pankration. PytAia. Boys. Long Distance Race. Diaulos (400 yards) (Find. PutA. x.). Stadion (200 yards) (Find. PuiL xi.). Boxing. Wrestling (Bacchul. xi.). Pankration (not tiU 346 B.C.). But at Nemea both pentathlon^ and pankration^ for boys had already been established by Pindar's time, as well as the more usual contests.* 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 knuckle- bones because he wrote beautifully, better than the other boys." * 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,^ they 1 Pind. Nem. vii. * Bacchul. xiii., Find. Nem. v. ' Wrestling, Pind. Nem. iv., vi. * Anthol. ed. Jacobs, vi. 308. ' Sometimes earlier. Plato, Frotag. 325 c. F 66 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i were entrusted to an elderly slave,^ who had to follow his master's boys about wherever they went and never let them go out of his sight.^ 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.^ 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.* 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 harids.^ A careful parent would, of course, see that a slave who was to occupy so respon- sible 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.* Plutarch notices that 1 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. ^ So Fabius Cunctator was called Hannibal's paidagogos, because he followed him about everywhere. ' 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). * Plato, Lus. 208 c. He is referred to as Me, showing that he is present. = lUustr. Plates I. a and I. B. Perhaps only the walking-stick carried by all Athenians. s Plato, Lus. 223 a. CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 67 in his time parents often selected for this office slaves who were of no use for any other purpose.^ 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.^ 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 citizen- ship of Thespiai, and a substantial sum of money.' The custom of employing these male-nurses dated back to early times at Athens: for Solon made regulations about them.* Boys were entrusted to paidagogoi as soon as they went to school at six. This tutelage might last till the boy was eighteen ^ and came of age ; but more frequently it stopped earlier. Xenophon,* 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 fieipdicia, i.e. at about fourteen or fifteen. The addition of the word schoolmasters suggests the explanation of the varia- tions 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 ' Plut. Education of Boys. ^ Xen. Comtii. of Lai. ii. i. ' Herod, viii. 75. * Aischin. ag. Timarch. 35. 10. ^ In the guardian's accounts given by Lusias, ag. Dhgeiton, 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 paidagogos in attendance till his charge was twenty. " Xen. Comtii. of Lai. iii. I. 68 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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 rela- tions 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." ^ 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* 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 ^ : — " 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 l)ehaviour is ruinous to them, yet the lawgiver obviously distrusts them. For he expressly states, first, the hour at, which the free » Plato, Rep. 4.06 A. « Plato, frotag. 325 d. ' Aischin. ag. Timarch. 9, CHAP. II GENERAL INTRODUCTION 69 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 paidotrihai 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 dithyranibic 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 ^ 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 corrupt- ing 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 ihe most minute regulations worthy of the strictest bureaucracy. It interfered on ^ yvii,va<; or modesty at which the; older education had aimed. It is taken from the midst of that brilliant but corrupt Socratic Athens.^ Young Autolukos had won the boys' contest for the pankra- tion at the great Panathenaic festival. As a treat, ^ Xea. Banquet, iii, 13. 76 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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 sur- rounded 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.^ 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 * Herod, vi. 27. CHAP, n GENERAL INTRODUCTION 77 upon the town at daybreak one morning during the Peloponnesian War, and entering " the largest school in the place," killed all the boys.^ Arkadia had an equally bad reputation ; yet, according to Polubios,^ 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,* Pausanias * 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.^ 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 gym- nastics 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 * Thuc. vii. 29. ^ Pol. iv. 20. 7. ' Ael. Var. Hist. 7. 15. * Pausan. vi. 9. 6. ' Athen. 604 a-b. 78 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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. CHAPTER III ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS : PRIMARY EDUCATION We have seen that Primary Education in Hellas con- sisted 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,^ 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 con- taining the great deeds of old, or, if he is goinj 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 ^ Lucian, Loves, 44-45. 79 8o SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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.^ Solon enacted that they should not open earlier. They closed in time to allow the boys to return home to lunch,^ opened again in the afternoon, and closed before sunset.* How many of the intermediate hours were spent in work,* 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 7 th and 2oth of every month the schools were closed, these days being sacred to Apollo.^ There were also special school festivals, such as that of the Muses, and ' Aischin. ag. Timarch. 1 2 ; Thuc. vii. 29 ; Plato, Lazvs. ' Lucian, Parasite, 61. ' Aischin. ag. Timarch. 12. * Anthol. Valat. x. 43 has been quoted as evidence that six hours' work a day was a maximum. The epigram runs : " Six hours suffice for work i the rest of the day, expressed in numerals, says f^9t, ' enjoy life." " But the point is the joke that the numerals for 7, 8, 9, 10, the later hours of the day, are f, i{, $', t', which spells ^9)01. The epigram does not mean to state a fact ; the joke is its only raison tTttre. In any case schools are not mentioned. « Herondas, Schoolmaster (iii.) 53. CHAP. Ill PRIMARY EDUCATION 8i holidays in commemoration of benefactors ; thus Anax- agoras left a bequest to Klazomenai, on condition that the day of his death should be celebrated annually by a holiday in the schools.^ 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 fascin- ating 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,^ 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 ele- mentary 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 . " * The weakness of the masters ' position may ^ Mahaffy, Greek Education, p. 54. ' Lucian, Nekuom. 17. ' Dem. de Cor. 315. G 82 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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. Theo- phrastos/ 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 with- drew 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 k day or two ; ^ but this was not usually done. The bills were paid on the 30th of each month.* 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.* 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 0» the Crown, says that he went as a boy to the respectable schools ; ^ 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 1 Theoph. Char. 30. a Ibid. 30. ' Herondas, iii. 3. « Demos, ag. Aphohos, i. 828. ^ Demos. Croiun, 312. CHAP. Ill PRIMARY EDUCATION 83 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 .1 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,* " wearing big fetters and a collar," and the son was employed in " grinding the ink and sponging the forms and sweep- ing out the schoolroom (•7rafSa7(B76(oj/), 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 arrange- ment would be natural and convenient. The vases suggest it, but their evidence is uncertain. The school buildings seem often to have been surrounded by play- grounds. A passage in Aelian* 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 1 Demos. Croton, 270. This is the most probable restoration of the facts from the statements of the opposing orators. " Uid. 313. ' Aelian, far. Hist. xii. 9 (at Klazomenai). 84 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i high back ; under-masters and boys had stools without backs, but cushions were provided. For lessons in class there were benches.^ 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.^ Masters were expected to possess at any rate a copy of Homer — Alkibiades thrashed one who did not. Some- times they emended their edition themselves.^ In the music-schools hung lyres and flutes and flute-cases. The TraiSaywyeiov 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,* 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 I/tad 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 ^ Benches do not appear on vases, because a row of boys involves elaborate per- spective i 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. ' Alexis, Linos (in Athen. 164 B.C.). See lllustr. Plates I. a and 1. a. » Plut. Alkib. 7. « Herondas, iii. 83. 96. CHAP. Ill PRIMARY EDUCATION 85 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.^ 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.^ " 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 inter- preted. 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 masters writing is vTTorfpd-y^avTe';, and it is significant that the word for a " copy " in this sense is a derivative of this word, vwoypafifwi;. 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.' It is a nonsense sentence, designed to contain all the letters of the alphabet, fidpTrre 0-^17^ KXmyjr ^^vx^v^ov. 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 en the tablet as parallel straight lines, within which the boy 1 See lUustr. Plate No. I. a. ' Plato, Protag. 326 D. ' 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, 1 8 6). It consists of two lines of verse written out by the master and copied twice by a pupil. 86 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i had to write. Just such a device is often employed in English copy-books. The word used for " line&, rypafifiai, usually means " straight Unes," which supports this interpretation. But viro'ypa^rj, on the other hand, a derivative of v7roypd4>eiv, is used for irregular traces, e.g. a footstep,^ and vTroypda, /irjra, •ya/i/ta, SeAra t, eT re, KaC ^rjT, ^Ta, drJT, iiora, /cajrwa, AoySSa, /xv, vv, ^et, rh oS, irei, pQ, to (riyfia, Ta.v, t& 5, TtdpovTa ii, re ^ef re Tiji ^ei ets Tb &?■ 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 consider- ably earlier." ^ 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,' it 1 Athen. 453 d. " Giles' Manual of Comparati-ve^hihhgy, \ 604. ' /then. 453 c, d. CHAP. Ill PRIMARY EDUCATION 89 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 strophe runs as follows : — Beta Alpha BA Beta Ei BE Beta Eta BE Beta Iota BI Beta Ou BO Beta U BU Beta BOi In the corresponding antistrophe 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, 1 A fragment of terra-cotta has been found at Athens, containing on it : a/> /Sap yup Sap ■ ep /3e/) yep Sep which must have belonged to some spelling-book — perhaps the brick formed part of the wall of a schoolroom. — Quoted by Girard, p. 131. 90 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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.^ 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 Read- ing 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 con- ducted to a tune, perhaps even accompanied by dancing.* 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. » Athen. 454 f. ' 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. CHAP. Ill PRIMARY EDUCATION 91 To return to more prosaic methods. Plato gives an interesting sketch ^ 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 com- pare them with those in which they made mistakes, and, putting them side by side, show that in both combina- tions 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, CAPEj 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 thfey know already. " Finally, they learn always to give the same name to the~same letter whenever it comes." ^ 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." ^ 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.* But this will be discussed later. » Plato, VoUt. 278 A, a. " Ibid. ' Ibid. 285 c. * Xen. Econ. viii. 14. 92 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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 in- tended 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.^ 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 sam.e 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,^ 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 1 See Illustr. Plate I. B. > Case E 190. CHAP. Ill PRIMARY EDUCATION 93 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 him- self." ^ 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 w^as 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.^ A minority would pick out the leading passages,^ the '■purple patches," and certain whole speeches,* and put them together and have them committed to memory. Plato argued in favour of expurgated editions of pass- ages carefully selected according to a very strict stand- ard, since much in literature was good and much bad.^ 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." ® Vast ' Plato, Pro/a^. 325 E. ^ Pluto, Laws, Si i. ' t4 Keike the piano, the lyre re- quired great delicacy of touch and very agile fingers, and these qualities could only be obtained by continual practice.* As would naturally be expected, iridividual 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 some- * Plato, Lazes, 747. * Technically speaking, this was the \ipa, the Kidipa being a professional instrument which was not taught at school. ' Illustr. Plate I. b. * Plato, Lusis, Z09 u. On Inscriptions there are separate prizes for the two methods. ' Xen. Econ. ii. 13. * liiJ, xvii. 7. io8 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i times 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.,^ 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,^ 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 accord- ance with Aristotle's advice, to look on, although still too young to learn. As soon as his pupils knew how to play, the master taught them the works of the great lyric poets," 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, ^ Cp. British Museum Vase £ 57, on which a man is leading a leopard by a string, ^ Plato, Protag. 326 a. 55, S 9 § I a § CHAP. Ill PRIMARY EDUCATION 109 however, began to become unfashionable during the Peloponnesian War. When old Strepsiades, in the Clouds^ asked Pheidippides to take the lyre and sing a song of SimonideSj 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 grind- stone. 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 ; ^ the lyric portions of Kratinos' comedies, too, are mentioned as sung at banquets : ' 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,* and that of the legislation of Charondas, which Athenian gentlemen sang over their wine.* 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 ^ Aristoph. C/o» Anthol. Palat. xii. zo6. " Isok. Antid. 184. ' See Il]u8tr. Plate VI. b for a pankration lesson. PLATE VII Photo by Mr. R. Cottpland. Stadion at Delphi from the Fortifications of Philomelos. Length about 220 yards. Photo by Mr. R. Coiipland. Stadion at Delphi from the East End. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 133 usually wore similar gloves for this but left the fingers unfastened, only the wrists and knuckles being pro- tected : 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 unsatis- factory 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, care- fully regulated by the paidotribes and stopped when the fighting became dangerous, no doubt it was harm- less 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.^ 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,^ 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.' Even in competitions, a flute-player stood by, to give the competitors the assistance of his music : no doubt it 1 Plut. Alkih. ii. 3. '^ See lUustr. Plate VII. s See lUustr. Plate V. b. 134 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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.^ 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.^ 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 " paido- tribes," that his fee for his whole course seems to have been a ytim, about ^^ : ' 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 ' lUustr. Plate V. a. => lUuatr. Plate V. B. ' Athen. 584 c, referring to about 320 B.C. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 135 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 charg- ing in squadrons. On another side a body of heavy infantry with spear and shield are assembling for a night march into the Megarid ; ^ 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,^ 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,* we enter the gymnasium. The first room which we come to is the undressing- room.* 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 iall 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 ^ Aristoph. Peace, 357. ' Zeao in J^thea. 561 c: * Athen. 609 D. * avoSurj^pioi'. See Plato, CharmideSy 153 C 136 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 .^ In the centre of this is a large open space, with no roof. Here we meet a well-known mathematician from Kurene,* 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.* 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,* 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.^, 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 Archaeology. Throug^i the next ^ KariffTeyos SpSfios. Plato, Euthud. 273 a. 2 TJieodoroB (Plato, Theait.). ' This was often done outside (Plato, Theait. 144 c). The oil-room {(KaioBiaiov) of Vitruvius may be a later invention. This preliminary anointing was called |i;poXoi0e6'. After the baths they rubbed themselves with a mixture of oil and water ; this was xwXoOo-floi. ' See Xen. Banquet, i. 7. » Aristoph. Knighu, 492. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 137 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.^ Next perhaps will be the bathing-room — a popular place in the evening, for it was usual to take a bath before dinner.* 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 re- ceiving the whole body at once were not usual, though known to Homer.* Then we see the room of the korukos, or punch-ball, which will present a very curious appearance.* The korukos is a large sack hanging from the ceiling by a rope. The lighter korukoi are filled with fig seeds of 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 re- commended for boxers and pankratiasts : the latter ^ PhilostratuSg'On Gymnastics, 56. It was usual to be dusted before wrestling. *■ Xen. Banquet. ' For a good bathing scene, see Brit. Mus. Vase E 83. Also E 32. * Philostratus, On Gymnastics, 57. 138 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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.^ 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 fur- nished with seats, they were largely used as lecture- halls by wandering Sophists,^ 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 meta- physics, music or rhetoric, geography or history, at our pleasure. After this, we can turn our attention to the great central courtyard,^ 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.* Pairs of oiled, naked combatants will be struggling together, amid a crowd of cheering spec- ' Plato, Latos, 830 c. ' 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. " oSXi) (Plato, Lusis, 206 e). ♦ Kovlarpa. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 139 tators, 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 lengthy 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,^ 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 thern. 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 Phaiillos' great jump of 55 feet^the world's record. Everywhere are crowds of spectators,^ 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 immortal- ised by some contemporary Pindar in a song in honour of their pupil's victory. In another corner, it may be, there will be teams 1 Plato, Laws, 830 B. * For the excitement of the spectators and their shouts of encouragement see Isok. Euag. 32. I40 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i practising together. A regiment of epheboi may be undergoing their gymnastic training before service on the frontier : ^ or a team of them may be train- ing, 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.^ 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." ' 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 spec^ tators 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 ' Some gymnasia provided a large " Room of the Epheboi." So in Vitruvius' model. " Athen. 495-6. s pUto, Polit. 494 d, e. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 141 quite useless for military purposes, as we heard him telling Sokrates the other day.^ 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,^ 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.^ 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.* Games of ball are going on in the ball-court yonder .^ We may remember that the poet Sophocles was a famous player.* 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 ' But by the end of the fourth century the teacher of arms becomes an important individual in the training of the epheboi. 2 Plato, Euthud. 2y} a. ' Xen. Econ. iii. 13. * Xen. Econ. xi. 18 ; Banquet, i. 7, ix. i. * cripiupia-Tripiov. * Athen. 20 f. 142 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i sweat and dirt with the aT\eyyl,<; or scraper,^ or else hurrying to the bath-rooms. After the bath comes another anointing, with oil and water this time,^ 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.' But the gymnasia and palaistrai, though they pro- vided 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 * Brit. Mu9. E 83, for a picture of this in use. » XVT\ov(reai. a Athen. 566 e. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 143 to make it more popular in Attica,^ 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.^ Aristophanes* 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 proto- type 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.* The choral dance afforded the outlet to religious enthusiasm which else- * Hunting -with Hounds, passim. So Plato in the Laws, with reservations. ■ Plato, Lmbs, 795 e. » Aristoph. Frogs, 729. * Lucian, On Dancing, i J. 144 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti where is provided by services : any change in its char- acteristics was a change in ritual and in the inexpress- ible 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 proyiding 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.^ In such dramatic dancing the subject or plot was important. Here the weakness of the old Hellenic ^ Athen. 20 d. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 145 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 Semele, 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," ^ and so forth. They chose the commonest and coarsest scenes, just like Dutch painters. In their hands, dancing became some- thing 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 .^ 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 .^ 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.* 1 Plato, Rep. 396 A, IS. ' Antiphon, The CAoreutes, ii. ' Xen. Banquet, ii. 17. ' Lakonian and Attic (Herod, vi. 129); Persian (Xen, Anab. vi. 1. 10); Troizenian, Epizephurian Lokrian, Cretan, Ionian, Mantinean in Lucian, On Dancing, zz. h 146 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS part i 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 afms. It might celebrate the triumphant return of an Olympian victor to his native city, as did many of the dances which accom- panied 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 QyvuvoiraiSia).^ 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 leap- ing 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.^ 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." ^ The field-days, when teams of boys and " packs " of epheboi fought one another to the sound of music, were • Not necessarily nude, for yuiJt,v6s only represents the absence of the armour used in the War-dance. * Plato, iaioj, 815 *. ' Lvdatn, On Dancing, i. CHAP. IV PHYSICAL EDUCATION 147 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 " {irpoopj(7). — Xen. Revenues, 4. 52. Xo/iMrdit vimicros yviwaeiapx''"'- — Bockh, 257. * Dem. ag. Lakritos, 940 ; Aristot. 'A$. IIoX. 57. ' Bockh, 243. * ' Aesch. Tim. 12. 156 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 gumnasiarchw shall be liable to the law that prescribes penalties for those who corrupt free boys." But the orator himself only mentions, paidotribai, and special enact- ments 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.^ 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. ' Isaios, Menekles, § 4.2. 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 157 158 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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,^ the master of letters, Sokrates finds a class of lads assembled here.* 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 quot- ing the authority of Oinopides * 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 con- ceivable subject, and were all grouped together under the general name of Sophists.* 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 ^ Plato's own schoolmaster, Diog. Laert. iii. 5. ' [Plato] Lovers, 132. ° Reputed Inventor of Euclid i. I2 and 23, and a great astronomer. * 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, I2i d, 122 1). CHAP.v SECONDARY EDUCATION 159 among the subjects taught by the burlesque Sophists of the Clouds. In point of fact, secondary educa- tion 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^ 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 namifi which would embrace all these roots. " We divided all numberinto 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 » Plato, Tlieait. 147 d. i6o SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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. Theodorus 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.^ Compasses and the rule were the ordinary geometrical implements.: diagrams were drawn on the ground, on dust or sand. In Arithmetic surds ^ 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 suit- able for secondary education : the philosopher Teles,^ carrying on the same tradition, makes arithmetic and geomeOy the special plagues of the lad.* But then the philosophers despised Rhetoric. Rhetoric, from the time of Gorgias onwards, formed a very large part of secondary education. * Aristoph. Birds, 1005. * Plato, Hipp. Maj. 303 B. » Stob. 98, p. 535. ' And learning to ride. He is thinking of the aristocratic lad, who would after- wards enter the later exclusive ephebic college. cHAP.v SECONDARY EDUCATION i6i 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 interest- ing professor will be discussed later. Besides mathematics and rhetoric, there were liter- ary studies. The Axiochos gives KpiriKol among the teachers of a lad. These are the lecturers on literary subjects, who concerned themselves with interpreta- tions, 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 thkt it is a most im- portant 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 ;;^a\67ro? (hard) may mean not " difficult " but " bad." He then gives a lecture in his turn. He picks out a fiiv 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 M 1 62 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti positive harm. Sokrates also notes a philological point, that iwalvrifn 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,^ 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 ^ Among the commoa 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). CHAP.v SECONDARY EDUCATION 163 preferred : rhetoric or literature, geography or mathe- matics — 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 philoso- phers, 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 super- ficiality, wrote the Republic as a counterblast, preach- ing " 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, 1 64 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 ritilal 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 a-oipoC and (To^Lcrral are applied indiscriminately to poets.^ This sense of aoia-Ti]<; 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 de- clares that Sophist was a general title for all students of music. A second use of the word " wise man " had also existed from earliest times, by which it had been applied to those who were skilful in some particular 1 Pind./iMm. V. (iv.) 36. Antiphon cornea in Xen. Mtm. i. 6. i. cHAP.v SECONDARY EDUCATION 173 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 ^ 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 ' Plato, Eutkud. 298 D. 174 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 conversa- tion, while quite aware that what they were teaching was wrong." But they do not appear in extant litera- ture, 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.^ 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. Of the rise of Rhetoric in Hellas I need say little : the whole subject has been admirably treated elsewhere.^ For educational purposes, Hellenic rhetoric started with several fatal drawbacks and some counterbalancing advantages. The southern nature of the Hellenes pre- ferred 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 excel- lent, no matter how trivial the subject : ' mice or salt ^ It is not fair to condemn Polos and Thrasumachos on the score of the opinions which Plato puts into their mouths. • Jebb, Attic Orators. " Compare Renaissance poetry in Italy. CHAP.v SECONDARY EDUCATION 175 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 argu- ments 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 accus- tomed 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 thejustice of the Athenian courts ; their effect on Hellenic char- acter was probably equally unsatisfactory. Rhetoric also inherited the " gnome " or common- place, a general statement about ethics or politics or what not, which could be developed into a sententious little essay. Budding orators leai-ned 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 176 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 armfed strife nor beauty-loving Peace ; re- vering 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 yearn- ing 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. Theodoras and Euenos divided and sub- divided the parts of an oration into " confirmation " and " additional confirmation," and " by-blames " and CHAP.v SECONDARY EDUCATION 177 " 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 be- cause he had been the teacher of Kritias and Alkibiades that Sokrates was put to death by the restored demo- cracy. The persuasive powers which the rhetoricians gave to their pupils might be, and often were, mis- used ; 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 what- ever Existed. Their political theories were equally revolutionary, full of the idea of Social Contracts and N 178 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti the right of the one strong man. All this was ex- tremely 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. Out- wardly 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 t6 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. 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 crystal- lise. 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 colon- nades 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 en- couraged. 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 179 i8o SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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 pre- liminary examination -in mathematics upon his pupils; Isokrates only commended a knowledge of suchsubjects. 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 speak- ing 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 CHAP. VI SECONDARY EDUCATION i8i 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.^ 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.^ Bxft they had not the originality of their predecessors, and people preferred to read the works of Protagoras or Gorgias for themselves to hear- ing 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 prob- ably a good many teachers, both of Philosophy and of ' Isokrates clearly felt them to be his educational rivals. See Antid. 3 lo a, and the end of the 'Baneg. ' 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. 1 82 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti Rhetoric, established permanently at Athens. Isokrates mentions casually that all the schools ^ 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 com- plete orator out of any one who comes to them; for they make no allowance for natural talent or for experi- ence, but regard eloquence as an exact science, just like the ABC 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." ^ It is clear that these rivals committed the serious crime of undersell- ing Isokrates and also of issuing more attractive pro- spectuses ; 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 ixvai {£,11 or ;^i6), 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 ' Isok. Antid. 99. a ijok, 5„^^_ ,o_ j^^ ^ CHAP. VI SECONDARY EDUCATION 183 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 them- selves, 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." ^ 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 dialogue," that is, Dialectic.^ 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."* But all these unpractical, if improving, studies should be abandoned before the nineteenth year : for they dry up the human nature and make men ^ Isok. Soph. 4. 29 1 D. Cp. the modem " caution-money." 2 Isok. Pan. 26. 238 a. ' Isok. Antid. Ii8. 265. 1 84 SCHOOLS OF HELLAS parti 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." ^ Consequently, those who care to study mathematics ^nd eristic should confine them to the years between four- teen 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, philo- sophy 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. "^ 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.* With this practical end in view he ridicules the meta- physical researches of " the old Sophists, of whom Demokritos said that the numberof 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."^ In the promises which he makes of imparting to his pupils this practical wisdom which he calls philo- sophy, Isokrates is characteristically cautious. An exact science, which will embrace all possible questions and circumstances which may arise in domestic and political 1 I»ok. Pamli. 238 d. ' leok. Antid. 118. 266. » lUJ. ii8. 268. CHAP. VI SECONDARY EDUCATION 185 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," a-o^oi, "those whose judgment usually hits upon the right course of action," and as " seekers after wisdom " or philosophers, ^iX6a-o