CHAPTER II
ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS:
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Laconia and Crete were mainly agricultural countries that had little concern with trade or manufactures. Their citizens comprised a landed aristocracy, supported by estates which were cultivated for them by a subject population; there was no necessity, therefore, for them to prepare their boys for any profession or trade, or even to instruct them in the principles of agriculture. The young Spartan or Cretan no more needed professional or technical instruction of any sort than the richer absentee Irish landlords of the present day. He could give the whole of his school-time, without any sacrifice of his financial prospects, to the training of his body and of his character.
But the rest of Hellas was for the most part the scene of busy manufactures and extensive trade. It would be natural to expect that great commercial peoples, like the Athenians or the Ionians of Asia Minor, would have set great store by the commercial elements of education, and to assume that business methods and utilitarian branches of study would have occupied a large place in their schools. But this was very far from being the case. To a Hellene education meant the training of character and taste, and the symmetrical development of body, mind, and imagination. He would not have included under so honourable a name either any course of instruction in which the pupils mastered their future trade or profession, or any accumulation of knowledge undertaken with the object of making money. Consequently technical training of all sorts was excluded from Hellenic schools and passed over in silence by Hellenic educationalists. Information concerning it must be pieced together from stray facts and casual allusions, and the whole idea of “utilitarian” instruction, in the modern sense of the word, must be carefully put aside during any consideration of Hellenic schools.
For the Hellenes as a nation regarded all forms of handicraft as bourgeois (βάναυσος) and contemptible. Herodotos says that they derived this view from the surrounding peoples, who all held it.[98] To do anything in order to extract money from some one else was, in their opinion, vulgar and ungentlemanly. The lyric poets and the Sophists were alike blamed for taking fees. The cheapness and abundance of serf- or slave-labour made it possible for a large proportion of the free population to live in idleness, and devote their time to the development of the body by physical exercises, of the mind by perpetual discussions, and of the imagination by art and music. Citizenship required leisure, in the days before representative government came into vogue. It was owing to this principle that the Athenian received pay for a day’s attendance in the Law Courts or the Assembly, for by this means the poorest citizen obtained an artificial leisure for the performance of his duties. Otherwise true citizenship was impossible. Plato regards a tradesman as unfit to be an acting citizen.[99] Aristotle rejects as unworthy of a free man all trades which interfere with bodily development or take time which ought to be devoted to mental improvement.[100] Xenophon explains the reason of this attitude. The discredit which attaches to the bourgeois occupations is quite natural; for they ruin the physical condition of those who practise them, compelling them to sit down and live in the shade, and in some cases to spend their day by the fire. The body thus becomes effeminate, and the character is weakened at the same time. Tradesmen, too, have less leisure for serving their friends and the State. In some communities, especially the most warlike, the citizens are not allowed to practise sedentary trades.[101] The owner of a factory or a farm worked by slave-labour was exempt from corrupting influences: it was only actual work which was degrading.
A large number, however, from among the poorer classes were compelled to work with their own hands; so these, as well as the slaves, required technical instruction. Some indications survive as to the manner in which this was imparted. Trades were mostly hereditary; “the sons of the craftsmen learn their fathers’ trade, so far as their fathers and their friends of the same trade can teach it.”[102] But others might also learn. Xenophon mentions such cases. “When you apprentice a boy to a trade,” he says, “you draw up a statement of what you mean him to be taught,”[103] and the fees were not paid unless this agreement was carried out. The Kleitophon[104] mentions as the two functions of the builder or the doctor the practising of their profession and the teaching of pupils. The Republic[105] says: “If owing to poverty a craftsman is unable to provide the books and other requisites of his calling, his work will suffer, and his sons and any others whom he may be teaching will not learn their trade so well.” The teaching of building is mentioned in the Gorgias.[106] In the Republic[107] Plato states that the παῖδες of the potters—a word which will include both sons and apprentices—act as servants and look on for a long time before they are allowed to try their hands themselves at making pots. “To learn pot-making on a wine-jar” was a proverb for beginning with the most difficult part of a subject. The pupils of a doctor named Pittalos are mentioned in the Acharnians of Aristophanes.[108] The comic poets of the early third century contain several references to cookery-schools. Sosipater makes one cook say that his pupils must learn astrology, architecture, and strategy before they come to him, just as Plato had exacted a preliminary knowledge of mathematics from his disciples. Euphron gives ten months as the minimum length of a course of cookery. Aristotle mentions a man at Syracuse who taught slaves how to wait at table, and perform their household duties: perhaps the play of Pherekrates[109] entitled The Slave-Teacher may have dealt with a similar case. From these fragments a picture can be drawn of a regular system of apprenticeship by which the knowledge of the trades was handed down. Solon, wishing to encourage Athenian manufactures, had enacted that if a father did not have his son taught some trade, he could not legally demand to be supported in his old age.[110] But the general opinion of Hellas still maintained that “technical instruction and all teaching which aimed only at money-making was vulgar and did not deserve the name of education. True education aimed solely at virtue, making the child yearn to be a good citizen, skilled to rule and to obey.”[111] For all the gold on the earth and under it, according to Plato, could not pay the price of virtue, or deserve to be given in exchange for a man’s soul. Thus the Spartans and Cretans did not stand alone, but had the support of all Hellas, in banishing from their schools any idea of technical or professional instruction.
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But in one notable point their idea of education differed from that which was prevalent in most of the Hellenic States. The regular course of education in Athens and in most Hellenic States was for boys alone: no girls need apply. The women lived in almost Oriental seclusion;[112] the duty of an Athenian mother was, according to Perikles,[113] to live so retired a life that her name should never be mentioned among the men either for praise or blame. Listen to the description which an Athenian country gentleman gives of his wife.[114] “What was she likely to know when I married her? Why, she was not yet fifteen when I introduced her to my house, and she had been brought up always under the strictest supervision; as far as could be managed, she had not been allowed to see anything, hear anything, or ask any questions. Don’t you think that it was all that could be expected of her, if she knew how to take raw wool and make it into a cloak, and had seen how wool-work is served out to handmaidens?” Sokrates, however, to whom this question is addressed, seems to think that she might have learnt “from her father and mother the duties which would belong to her in after life.” These, however, in this case her husband had to teach her. He explains to her that she must see that everything has a place to itself and is always put there; she must also give out the stores, teach the slaves their duties and nurse them when they are ill, and tend the young children. The summary of the explanation is that Heaven has appointed a fair division of labour between husband and wife: the wife manages everything indoors and the husband everything out of doors. A stay-at-home husband or a gad-about wife equally offend against respectability. As a rule, apparently, the women simply sat in the house, “like slaves,” as it seemed to the ordinary athletic Hellene. Xenophon’s model husband suggests that his wife should take exercise by walking about the house to see how the supplies were given out, to inspect the arrangements of the cupboards, and to watch the washing and the wringing-out of the clothes: this exercise will give her health and an appetite. But Xenophon was an admirer of Spartan customs and the athletic Spartan women: probably these ideas would not have occurred to the ordinary Athenian husband.
Another picture may be quoted from Hellenic literature to show the extent of education which an ordinary woman received.[115] A certain Aristarchos comes to Sokrates in great distress. A number of female relatives, quite destitute, have been thrown upon his hands owing to various circumstances, and he must support them; but he has not the requisite means. Sokrates naturally suggests that he should make them work for their living. But they do not know how to, says Aristarchos. However, by dint of questioning, Sokrates elicits the fact that they can make men’s and women’s garments, and also pastry and bread. These, then, were apparently the accomplishments which an ordinary girl in Hellas, brought up without any idea of having to earn her own living, would acquire. Plato also mentions weaving and cooking as the provinces in which women excel,[116] and describes the women of Attika as “living indoors, managing the household and superintending the loom and wool-work generally.”[117]
Thus the Athenian girl spent her time indoors, learning to be a regular “Hausfrau,” skilled in weaving, cooking, and household management. She had her special maid to wait on her,[118] as her brothers had their paidagogos. She would, as a rule, be married young, and would naturally be very shy after such an upbringing; the marriage was arranged between the bridegroom and the parents, and, owing to the seclusion of the women at Athens, love-matches were well-nigh impossible. The match was mainly a question of the dowry. Xenophon[119] gives a vivid picture of one of these girl-wives gradually “growing accustomed to her husband and becoming sufficiently tame to hold conversation with him.” To keep their beauty under such conditions they employed rouge and white, and high-heeled shoes. Such mothers would be quite incapable of giving any literary or musical education to their children; hence the boys went away to school as soon as possible. Their school-life usually began when they were about six years old, the exact age being left to the parents’ choice.[120] Before this, they learnt in the nursery the various current fables and ballads, and the national mythology.[121] “As soon as the child understands what is said, the nurse and the mother and the paidogogos, yes, and the father himself, strive with one another in improving its character, in every word and deed showing it what is just and what is unjust, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is holy and what is unholy. It is always ‘Do this’ and ‘Don’t do that.’ If a child is disobedient, it is corrected with threats and blows.”[122] Besides this purely moral training there might, no doubt, be a certain amount of technical or of literary instruction at home,[123] and bits of poetry might be learnt. Up to this age boys and girls lived together.
The sons of rich parents apparently went to school earliest: their poorer fellow-citizens went later.[124] This was natural. The poor could not keep their sons at school for a long time, for they wanted their services in the shop or on the farm, and the fees were a burden: so they did not send them till they were old enough to pick up instruction quickly. The rich, on the other hand, to whom money was no object, sent their boys to school at an early age, when they could do little more than look on, while their elders worked. Aristotle commends this custom, and imposes two years of such “playing at school” upon the boys of his ideal State.[125]
The ordinary system of primary education at Athens consisted of three parts, presided over respectively by the “grammatistes,” “kitharistes,” and “paidotribes.”[126] The grammatistes taught reading, writing, and some arithmetic, and made his pupils read and learn by heart the great poets, Homer and Hesiod and others. The kitharistes taught the boys how to play the seven-stringed lyre and sing to it the works of the lyric poets, which they would incidentally have to learn. The paidotribes presided over their physical development in a scientific way; he taught them wrestling, boxing, the pankration, running, jumping, throwing the diskos and javelin, and various other exercises; his school-room was the palaistra. To this triple system some boys added drawing and painting;[127] but this subject seems to have been an extra till late in the fourth century. Literature, music, and athletics composed the ordinary course at Athens.
Which of the three branches of education began first? Probably they were all taught simultaneously. The order in which they are usually mentioned does not point to a fixed sequence. Letters were naturally mentioned first, because all citizens alike learned this subject. Gymnastics were put last, because, owing to the public gymnasia, these exercises were carried on long after the other schooling had ceased. Moreover, most of the recognised exercises of the palaistra were not taught to small boys; from the nature of the exercises and from the pictures on the vases it may be deduced that the average boy did not learn them till his twelfth year at the earliest. But physical training of an easier sort of course commenced much earlier, and boys seem to have attended a palaistra from their sixth year onwards to receive it. Both Plato and Aristotle demand that it should begin several years before any intellectual instruction; and Plato, making athletics such as shooting and riding begin at six, defers letters till ten and lyre-playing till thirteen. Gymnastics would naturally occupy a part of the day for a healthy young Hellene during the whole time from his sixth year till manhood. It is thus that the Charmides mentions “quite tiny boys” as present in the palaistra, as well as older lads and young men.
Lyre-playing may have been deferred, as a harder subject, till the boy had learned letters for several years; but the seven-stringed lyre, with the simple old Hellenic music, was probably not a very difficult instrument to master. The chief factor which determined the arrangement of subjects in an ordinary family was no doubt the paidagogos. If there was only one son, he could go to whatever school his parents pleased; but if there were several, elders and youngers had all to go to the same school at the same time, for there was only one paidagogos to a whole family as a rule, and he could never allow any of his charges to go out of his sight.
That the three subjects were usually taught simultaneously may be inferred from a passage of Xenophon. “In every part of Hellas except Sparta,” he says, “those who claim to give their sons the best education, as soon as ever the child understands what is said to him, at once make one of their servants his paidagogos, and at once send him off to school to learn letters and music and the exercises of the Palaistra.”[128] The emphasis upon the word “at once” certainly implies that the three subjects began simultaneously.
On the vases letters and music are seen being taught side by side in the same school; this was a convenient and natural arrangement. Writing-tablets and rulers are also seen suspended on the walls of music-schools and palaistrai, and lyres on the walls of letter-schools[129]; which suggests that the boys went from one building to another in the day, taking their property with them. Plato states that three years apiece was a reasonable time for learning letters and the lyre.[130] The eight years between six and fourteen, the ordinary time devoted at Athens in the fourth century to the primary triple course, would give space for these six years, with two years to spare for elaboration. Gymnastics are meant to go on during the whole period in Plato, and so do not require a special allowance of time to themselves.
This system of primary education at Athens may reasonably be traced back to the beginning of the sixth century. Solon is credited with a regulation which made letters compulsory, and with certain moral enactments dealing with existing schools and palaistrai. The much-disputed popularisation of Homer at Athens by Peisistratos was probably connected with the growth of the Schools of Letters. Of the existence of music-schools at this date there is evidence from a sixth-century vase in the British Museum,[131] which represents a youth amusing himself with a dog, behind a seated man who is playing a lyre. This might not seem very conclusive in itself; but now compare it with the two “amphorai” of the fifth century,[132] which undoubtedly
represent scenes in a music-school. The situation is almost identical; each alike shows the boy playing with the animal behind his master’s chair. Curiously enough, all three vases come from Kameiros in Rhodes, although they are of Athenian manufacture. Thus the music-school may also be traced back well into the sixth century, in company with the school of letters and the palaistra; and the antiquity of the system of Primary Education is thus established.
PLATE I. A.
THE FLUTE LESSON, THE WRITING LESSON (ABOVE A WRITING-ROLL, A FOLDED TABLET, A RULING SQUARE, ETC.)
From the Kulix of Douris, now at Berlin (No. 2285).
Monumenti dell’ Instituto, ix. Plate 54.
PLATE I. B.
THE LYRE LESSON, AND THE POETRY LESSON (ABOVE IS AN ORNAMENTAL MANUSCRIPT BASKET)
From a Kulix by Douris, now in Berlin (No. 2285).
Monumenti dell’ Instituto, ix. Plate 54.
In earlier days this primary course had no doubt sometimes lasted till the boy was eighteen: but towards the end of the fifth century a secondary stage of education arose, occupying the years immediately preceding eighteen. This secondary stage is recognised in the pseudo-Platonic Axiochos and in the fragment of Teles quoted by Stobaeus. More important evidence is supplied by Plato. In the Republic he assigns an elaborate system of mathematics to the age just before ἐφηβεία, which he sets at seventeen or eighteen, the natural age varying with the individual, while the legal age remained fixed.
When did this Secondary Education begin? Aristotle, counting back from ἐφηβεία, assigns three years to it.[133] He has just commended the arrangement of education, not on hard and fast lines, but in accordance with the natural growth of the individual: so he must mean his ἐφηβεία to vary from seventeen to eighteen.[134] Thus he puts the beginning of secondary education at fourteen or fifteen, the average age of ἥβη in Hellas, as in Rome. From ἥβη till twenty-one the young Athenian was a μειράκιον. Thus in point of age the παῖς of the primary schools corresponds to the Roman “impubes,” and the μειράκιον to the “adolescens”; but μειράκιον and παῖς are used very loosely, and the former word is often replaced by νεανίσκος. We shall, as a rule, call the pupils of the primary schools boys, and those of the secondary lads.
Fourteen did not, however, represent an exact point at which it was compulsory to leave the primary school. Sons of the poor left earlier; rich or unoccupied Athenians might remain later: Sokrates even attended a lyre-school among the boys when he was middle-aged. The primary schoolmasters started advanced classes in astronomy and mathematics to suit elder pupils.[135] In the palaistrai there were separate classes of boys and lads, who were only supposed to meet on feast-days;[136] in the Charmides, however, grown men, lads, boys, and quite tiny boys are all exercising together.
Many lads, especially in earlier times, did not attend the schools at all, but gave their time to gymnastics and whatever else they pleased.[137] Xenophon relates this as one of the demerits of the Athenian system.[138]
The mental attainments of a lad who is apparently but little over fourteen are sketched in Plato’s Lusis. The lad Lusis knows how to read and write, and how to string and play the lyre. He recognises a quotation from Homer, and has even come across the “prose treatises of the very wise, who say that like must always be friendly to like; these are the men who reason and write about the Universe and Nature.”[139]
This secondary education, beginning soon after fourteen, was only for the rich: the poor could not afford to keep their sons away from the farm or trade any longer. It might be scattered over the whole of the next six or seven years; but there was a serious interruption, which usually terminated it. At eighteen the young Athenian became in the eye of the law an ephebos and was called out to undergo two years of military training. During this period of conscription it was no doubt possible, especially in the laxer days of the fourth century, to do some intellectual work; but Plato is probably only accepting the usual custom when he frees the epheboi of his State from all mental studies and makes them give their whole energies to military and gymnastic training. And when the ephebos returned to civil life, he was a full citizen and was hardly likely to return to school; he might attend an occasional lecture or so, but that was all.
Thus secondary education usually occupied the years between fourteen and eighteen, although the latter limit was in no way definitely fixed, and the same subjects might be studied at any age. In earlier days no doubt lads spent their time in continuing their musical studies: primary education could be conducted in a more leisurely fashion when there was still little to be learnt, and the lyre may have been deferred till this age, as Plato in similar circumstances defers it in the Laws. But in the days of Perikles knowledge began to increase and boys had more to learn. So the lyre was crowded into the first period of education, and a new series of secondary subjects arose. It was these years which were usually devoted to the four years’ course which was customary in the school of Isokrates. Before this date the time was, as a rule, spent in attending the lectures of the wandering Sophists or in picking up a smattering of philosophy. Among the subjects which thus formed a part of secondary education were mathematics of various kinds, more advanced literary criticism, a certain amount of natural history and science, a knowledge of the laws and constitution of Athens, a small quantity of philosophy, ethical, political, and metaphysical, and above all, rhetoric. Plato in his Republic, developing this Athenian system of secondary education, assigns to the years immediately preceding eighteen the theory of numbers, geometry, plane and solid, kinetics and harmonics, and expressly excludes dialectic as more suitable to a later age;[140] in the Laws, prescribing for the whole population, not for a few selected intellects, he orders practical arithmetic, geometry, and enough astronomy to make the calendar intelligible. The pseudo-Platonic Axiochos[141] ascribes to Prodikos the statement that “when a child grows older, he endures the tyranny of mathematicians, teachers of tactics, and ‘critics.’” These last are the professors of that curious criticism of poetry which is found, for instance, in the Protagoras as a subject of the lectures of that Sophist as well as of Hippias.
At eighteen the young Athenian partially came of age. He then had to submit to a two years’ course of military training, of which the first year was spent in Athens and the second in the frontier forts and in camp. During this period he probably had little time for intellectual occupations. But when the military power of Athens collapsed under the Macedonian dominion, the military duties of the epheboi became voluntary, and their training was replaced by regular courses of philosophy and literature. The military system became a University, attended by a few young men of wealth and position and a good many foreigners. As the forerunner of the first University, the two years’ training of the epheboi may fitly receive the name of Tertiary Education, in spite of the fact that till the third century it involved only military instruction.
Thus we have Athenian education divided into three stages: Primary from six to fourteen, Secondary from fourteen to eighteen, and Tertiary from eighteen to twenty; while gymnastic training extended over the whole period.
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Of these three stages the third alone was compulsory and provided by the State. The second was entirely voluntary, and only the richest and most leisured boys applied themselves to it. Gymnastics of some sort were rendered almost obligatory by the liability of every citizen to military and naval service at a moment’s notice; but they needed little encouragement. Of the primary subjects, letters were probably compulsory by law, and music was almost invariably taught. An old law, ascribed to Solon,[142] enacted that every boy should learn swimming and his letters; after which, the poorer might turn their attention to trade or farming, while the richer passed on to learn music, riding, gymnastics, hunting, and philosophy. In the Kriton of Plato the personified Laws of Athens, recounting to Sokrates the many services which they had done him, mention that they had “charged his father to educate him in Music and Letters.”[143] But the Laws in Hellas include the customs, as well as the constitution, of a State. It was certainly customary for nearly every citizen at Athens to learn some music; but it was not compulsory. We meet no Athenian in literature who is ignorant of his letters; we meet several who know no music. In Aristophanes, Demosthenes and Nikias are on the lookout for the most vulgar and low-class man in Athens, in order that he may oust Kleon from popular favour, by outdoing him in vulgarity. They find a sausage-seller. But even this man knows his letters, though not very well.[144] Of music, however, he is ignorant, and he has never attended the lessons of a paidotribes,[145] though Kleon seems to expect him to have done so. Kleon, who is represented as an utter boor, is yet said to have attended a lyre-school.[146] In the Theages[147] literature and lyre-playing and athletics are mentioned as the ordinary education of a gentleman. In fiercely democratic Athens every parent was eager to bring up his sons as gentlemen, and no doubt sent them through the whole course if he could possibly afford it. But the State attitude towards education, as distinct from the voluntary customs of the citizens, may be summarised in the words of Sokrates to Alkibiades: “No one, so to speak, cares a straw how you or any other Athenian is brought up.”[148]
The schoolmasters opened their schools as private enterprises, fixing for themselves the fees and the subjects taught. The parents chose what they thought a suitable school, according to their means and the subjects which they wished their sons to learn. Thus Sokrates says to his eldest son, Lamprokles,[149] “When boys seem old enough to learn anything, their parents teach them whatever they themselves know that is likely to be useful to them; subjects which they think others better qualified to teach they send them to school to learn, spending money upon this object.” This suggests that the poor may frequently have passed on their own knowledge of letters to their sons without the expense of a school. But all this was a private transaction between parent and teacher. The State interfered with the matter only so far as to impose certain moral regulations on the schools and the gymnasia, to fix the hours of opening and closing, and so forth, and to suggest that every boy should be taught his letters.
The teaching of the elementary stages of Letters, that is, the three R’s, was, as will be shown later on, cheaply obtained, and was within the reach of the poorest. Music and athletics would naturally be more expensive, for they required much greater study and talents upon the part of their teachers. The State did take some steps to make these branches of education cheaper, and so throw them open to a larger number.
Gymnasia and palaistrai were built at public expense,[150] that any one might go and exercise himself without charge. These buildings were also open to spectators, so that any one could acquire at any rate a rudimentary knowledge of boxing, wrestling, and the other branches of athletics, by watching his more proficient fellow-citizens practising them. The epheboi received instruction in athletic exercises at the cost of the State. But the children, so far as they received physical training in schools, must have received it in private palaistrai; their lessons are described as taking place “in the house of the paidotribes,” ἐν παιδοτρίβου—an idiom which always implies ownership or special rights; and the majority of palaistrai were private buildings, called by their owners’ names. Thus we hear of the palaistrai of Siburtios, of Taureas,[151] and so forth: Siburtios and Taureas were no doubt the paidotribai who taught there. In a later age, when the boys of different palaistrai ran torch races against one another, the palaistra of Timeas is victorious on two occasions, that of Antigenes once.[152]
By the system of leitourgiai rich citizens were made chargeable for the expenses of the epheboi of their tribe who were training for the torch races. These races seem to have been the only branch of athletics which was thus endowed; however, they were numerous, even in the smaller country districts, so that many epheboi must have profited by this free training.[153] “Leitourgiai” also provided free instruction in chorus-dancing (which included singing as well as dancing) for such boys as were selected for competition. The rich “choregos” appointed for the year had to produce a chorus of boys belonging to his tribe for some festival, paying all the expenses of teaching and training them himself.[154] It is to this free school that the Solonic law refers when it mentions the “joint attendance of the boys and the dithyrambic choruses”; for it goes on to state that the ordinance with regard to this matter was that the “choregos” should be over forty.[155] In Demosthenes,[156] a certain Mantitheos, who had not been acknowledged by his father at the usual time, “attended school among the boys of the Hippothontid tribe to learn chorus-dancing”: had he been acknowledged, he would have gone to the Acamantid, his father’s tribe. No doubt, if the choregos was keen about gaining a victory, he would give a trial to more than the fifty boys required for a dithyrambic contest. In any case, provided that all the tribes competed, this one contest (and there were several in the course of a year) gave a free education to 500 boys. Xenophon notices that it was the “demos,” the poor majority, who mainly got the advantage of free training under gumnasiarchoi and choregoi:[157] the rich naturally preferred to send their boys to more select schools.[158]
Thus the more elementary stages of letters alone were compulsory at Athens, but music and gymnastics were almost universally taught, and the cost of instruction in these subjects was reduced in various ways by State action: the greater part might be learned for nothing. But parents needed little compulsion or encouragement to get their children taught. So much did the Hellenes regard education as a necessity for their boys, that when the Athenians were driven from their homes by Xerxes, and their women and children crossed over to Troizen, the hospitable Troizenians provided their guests with schoolmasters, so that not even in such a crisis might the boys be forced to take a holiday.[159] And when Mitulene wished to punish her revolted allies in the most severe way possible, she prevented them from teaching their children letters and music.[160]
Of State action with regard to education in Hellas elsewhere than in Sparta, Crete, and Athens, little is known. But the Chalcidian cities in Sicily and Italy are said to have provided literary education at public expense and under public supervision.[161] The law enacting this is ascribed to the great lawgiver, Charondas, and, although he is a somewhat shadowy figure,[162] there must have been some foundation for the story, at any rate at a later date. During the Macedonian period kings and other rich men often bequeathed large sums of money to their favourite cities, in order to endow the educational system. We hear of this happening in Teos and at Delphi: in these places the parents, if they paid any fees at all, cannot have paid much. But there is no authority for any such endowments during the period which we are considering.
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But if education was neither enforced nor assisted to any considerable degree by the State, it was certainly encouraged by the prizes which were offered. Every city, and probably most villages, had local competitions annually, and in many cases more frequently still, in which some of the “events” were reserved for citizens, while others were open to all comers. There were separate prizes for different ages; the ordinary division was into boys and grown men, an intermediate class of “the beardless” being sometimes added. But in some Attic inscriptions the boys are divided into three groups, and in Chios the epheboi were so distributed.
These competitions were no doubt largely athletic. But music was usually provided for as well, and in many places there were literary competitions also. At Athens the different φρατρίαι seem to have offered prizes annually on the Koureotis day of the Apatouria to the boys who recited best, the piece for recitation being chosen by each competitor. Kritias took part in the competition when ten years old.[163] From Teos we have a list of prizemen, belonging, it is true, to a later date; but it may be quoted, to give some idea of what the subjects might be.[164]
| Senior Class (by age). |
| For rhapsody, Zoïlos, son of Zoïlos. |
| For reading, Zoïlos, son of Zoïlos. |
Middle Class. |
| For rhapsody, Metrodoros, son of Attalos. |
| For reading, Dionusikles, son of Metrodoros. |
| For general knowledge, Athenaios, son of Apollodoros. |
| For painting, Dionusios, son of Dionusios. |
Junior Class. |
| For rhapsody, Herakles. |
| For reading. |
| For caligraphy. |
| For torch race. |
| For playing lyre with fingers. |
| For playing lyre with plektron. |
| For singing to lyre. |
| For reciting tragic verse (tragedy). |
| For reciting comedy. |
| For reciting lyric verse. |
From Chios we have the following[165]:—
When Hermesileos, Dinos, and Nikias were gumnasiarchoi, the following boys and epheboi were victorious in the competitions and offered libations to the Muses and Herakles from the sums which were given to them in accordance with the decree of the people, when Lusias was taster of the offerings:—
| For reading, Agathokles. | |
| For rhapsody, Miltiades. | |
| For playing lyre with fingers, Xenon. | |
| For playing lyre, Kleoites. | |
| Long Distance Race (varied from 2¼ miles to about ¾ mile). | |
| Boys | Asklepiades. |
| Junior epheboi | Dionusios. |
| Middle ” | Timokles. |
| Senior ” | Moschion. |
| Men ” | Aischrion. |
Stadion (200 yards). | |
| Boys | Athenikon. |
| Junior epheboi | Hestiaios. |
| Middle ” | Apollonios. |
| Senior ” | Artemon. |
| Men ” | Metrodoros. |
Diaulos (400 yards). | |
| Boys | Athenikon. |
| Junior epheboi | Hubristos. |
| Middle ” | Melantes. |
| Senior ” | Apollonios. |
| Men ” | Menis. |
| (Apollonios seems to have been sogood that, though a middle ephebos,he competed in and won thesenior ephebos’ race here, unlessthere were two boys of the samename.) | |
Wrestling. | |
| Boys | Athenikon. |
| Junior epheboi | Demetrios. |
| Middle ” | Moschos. |
| Senior ” | Theodotos. |
| Men ” | Apellas. |
Boxing. | |
| Boys | Herakleides. |
| (The rest is wanting.) | |
| (Notice the three victories of the boy Athenikon.) | |
At Thespiai in Boiotia[166] there were prizes for senior and junior boys in the various races, and in boxing, wrestling, pankration, and pentathlon, besides open prizes for poetry and music of all kinds. Attic inscriptions arrange the events thus[167]:—
| Stadion. | |
| Junior | Boys. |
| Middle | Boys. |
| Senior | Boys. |
| Boys | Open. |
| Men. | |
| Diaulos. | |
| Junior | Boys. |
| Middle | Boys. |
| Senior | Boys. |
| Boys | Open. |
| Men. | |
| Fighting in Heavy Arms. | |
| Junior | Boys. |
| Middle | Boys. |
| Senior | Boys. |
| Epheboi. | |
The Olympian and Pythian festivals, however, had only a single series of contests for boys:—
| Olympia. | |
| Boys. | Stadion (Pind. Ol. xiv.). |
| Boxing (Pind. Ol. x., xi.). | |
| Wrestling (Pind. Ol. viii.). | |
| (only in 628 B.C.) | Pentathlon. |
| (not till 200 B.C.) | Pankration. |
| Pythia. | |
| Boys. | Long Distance Race. |
| Diaulos (400 yards) (Pind. Puth. x.). | |
| Stadion (200 yards) (Pind. Puth. xi.). | |
| Boxing. | |
| Wrestling (Bacchul. xi.). | |
| Pankration (not till 346 B.C.). |
But at Nemea both pentathlon[168] and pankration[169] for boys had already been established by Pindar’s time, as well as the more usual contests.[170]
How far individual schoolmasters, as distinct from the State, gave prizes to their pupils, is little known; an epigram in the Anthology supplies the only evidence, by narrating that “Konnaros received eighty knucklebones because he wrote beautifully, better than the other boys.”[171] But probably as a general rule the task of rewarding merit was left to the public contests.
* * * * *
Thus the State did much to encourage, if it did little to assist or enforce, education. With such splendid rewards before them, boys were probably quite eager to attend school, or at any rate the palaistra. As soon as they were old enough to go to school,[172] they were entrusted to an elderly slave,[173] who had to follow his master’s boys about wherever they went and never let them go out of his sight.[174] This was the paidagogos—a mixture of nurse, footman, chaperon, and tutor—who is so prominent a figure on the vases and in the literature of classical Hellas. There was only one for the family, so that all the boys had to go about together and to attend the same schools and the same palaistrai at the same time.[175] He waited on them in the house, carried their books or lyres to school, sat and watched them in the schoolroom, and kept a strict eye upon their manners and morality in the streets and the gymnasia. Thus, for instance, in Plato, Lusis and Menexenos have their paidagogoi in attendance at the palaistra, who come and force them away from the absorbing conversation of Sokrates, when it is time for them to go home.[176] On a vase these attendants may be seen sitting on stools behind their charges, in the schools of letters and music, with long and suggestive canes in their hands.[177] A careful parent would, of course, see that a slave who was to occupy so responsible a position was worthy of it: but great carelessness seems often to have been shown in this matter. The paidagogoi of Lusis and Menexenos, boys of rank and position, had a bad accent, and on a festival day, it is true, were slightly intoxicated.[178] Plutarch notices that in his time parents often selected for this office slaves who were of no use for any other purpose.[179] Xenophon, feeling the demerits of the Athenian custom, commends the Spartans, who entrust the boys not to slaves, but to public officials of the highest rank.[180] But in well-regulated households the paidagogos was often a most worthy and valuable servant. Sikinnos, who attended the children of Themistokles in this capacity, was entrusted by his master with the famous message to Xerxes, which brought on the battle of Salamis; he was afterwards rewarded with his freedom, the citizenship of Thespiai, and a substantial sum of money.[181] The custom of employing these male-nurses dated back to early times at Athens: for Solon made regulations about them.[182]
Boys were entrusted to paidagogoi as soon as they went to school at six. This tutelage might last till the boy was eighteen[183] and came of age; but more frequently it stopped earlier. Xenophon,[184] in his wish to disparage everything not Spartan, declares that in all other States the boys were set free from paidagogoi and schoolmasters as soon as they became μειράκια, i.e. at about fourteen or fifteen. The conjunction of schoolmasters suggests the explanation of the variations in age. When an elder brother ceased to attend school, and his younger brothers were still pursuing their studies, there being only one paidagogos, he had to be left unattended. But in cases where there was only one son, or where the eldest of several stayed on at school until he came of age, he would have the paidagogos to attend him until he was his own master.
The life of such an attendant must have been an anxious one in many cases. Plato compares his relations towards his charges with the relations of an invalid towards his health: “He has to follow the disease wherever it leads, being unable to cure it, and he spends his life in perpetual anxiety with no time for anything else.”[185] With unruly boys of different ages, and consequently of different tastes and desires, the slave must have been often in a difficult position. He had, however, the right of inflicting corporal punishment.
The chief object of the paidagogos was to safeguard the morals of his charges. Boys were expected to be as modest and quiet in their whole behaviour, and as carefully chaperoned, as young girls. Parents told the schoolmasters to bestow much more attention upon the boy’s behaviour than upon his letters and music.[186] This attitude was characteristic of Athens from the first. The school laws of Solon, as quoted by Aischines, deal wholly with morality. He gives the following account of them[187]:—
“The old lawgivers stated expressly what sort of life the free boy ought to lead and how he ought to be brought up; they also dealt with the manners of lads and men of other ages.” “In the case of the schoolmasters, to whom we are compelled to entrust our children, although their livelihood depends upon their good character, and bad behaviour is ruinous to them, yet the lawgiver obviously distrusts them. For he expressly states, first, the hour at which the free boy ought to go to school; secondly, how many other boys are to be present in the school; and then at what hour he is to leave. He forbids the schoolmasters to open their schools and the paidotribai their palaistrai before sunrise, and orders them to close before sunset, being very suspicious of the empty streets and of the darkness. Then he dealt with the boys who attended schools, as to who they should be and of what ages; and with the official who is to oversee these matters. He dealt too with the regulation of the paidagogoi, and with the festival of the Muses in the schools and of Hermes in the palaistrai. Finally, he laid down regulations about the joint attendance of the boys and the round of dithyrambic dances; for he directed that the Choregos should be over forty.”
“No one over the age of boyhood might enter while the boys were in school, except the son, brother, or son-in-law of the master: the penalty of infringing this regulation was death. At the festival of Hermes the person in charge of the gymnasium[188] was not to allow any one over age to accompany the boys in any way: unless he excluded such persons from the gymnasium, he was to come under the law of corrupting free boys.”
It will be noticed that these regulations are entirely concerned with morality: they safeguard an existing system. They prescribe neither the methods nor the subjects of education; for with such matters the Athenian government did not interfere. But over the question of morals it becomes unexpectedly tyrannous, and makes the most minute regulations worthy of the strictest bureaucracy. It interfered on this point in other ways also. The solemn council on the Areiopagos had a special supervision over the young, from Solon’s time onward; this was partially taken away from it by Ephialtes and Perikles, but the Axiochos shows that, though in abeyance, it continued to exist; in the middle of the fourth century, however, Isokrates laments that it had fallen into disuse.
The Axiochos also states that the ten Sophronistai, elected to guard the morals of the epheboi, exercised control over lads also. These officials probably took their rise in the days of Solon: the regulation that they must be over forty harmonises with the other enactments of those days; and, although they died out at the end of the fourth century, they were revived under the Roman Empire. Now it is most unlikely that the archaistic legislators of imperial times would have revived an office which had only existed during the closing decades of the fourth century. Solon is known to have appointed a magistracy specially to deal with the children;[189] and, if these magistrates were not the Sophronistai, all trace of his creation has been lost, which is most unlikely to have happened. So the Sophronistai probably date from early times. Their duty was a general supervision of the morals of the young; their chief function would be to prosecute, on behalf of the State, parents and schoolmasters who infringed Solon’s moral regulations. But such prosecutions would usually be undertaken by private individuals concerned in the case, and so this magistracy tended to become a sinecure. It may even have ceased to exist after the fall of the Areiopagos. But it seems to have revived under the restored democracy
for a while (if the Axiochos belongs to Aischines the Sokratic), to sink again in the middle of the century. At the close of the century it revives once more with the changes in the ephebic system, and finally perishes when the epheboi became too few to need ten officers to supervise their morals. An account of the Sophronistai of this later period will be given in connection with the epheboi.
PLATE II.
THE FLUTE LESSON—THE BOY’S TURN
Wiener Vorlegeblätter, Series C, Plate 4.
From a Kulix by Hieron, now at Vienna.
The strategoi[190] exercised a superintendence over the epheboi during their two years’ training as recruits, as would naturally be expected. Late in the fourth century they appear also to have been connected with the local schools in Attica; an inscription at Eleusis, which Girard assigns to 320 B.C., thanks the strategos Derkulos for the diligence which he had shown in supervising the education of the children there.[191] Whether they exercised such functions in the days when their military duties were more important, is more than doubtful. But any Athenian magistrate could interest himself in the schools, no doubt, and intervene to check abuses.[192]
* * * * *
In the period of juvenile emancipation and increasing luxury and indulgence for children which marked the closing decades of the fifth century, it became customary for conservative thinkers to look back with longing, and no doubt idealising, eyes to the “good old times.” The sixth and early fifth centuries came, probably unjustly, to be regarded as the ideal age of education, when children learned obedience and morality, and were not pampered and depraved; when they were beautiful and healthy, not pale-faced, stunted, and over-educated.
Listen to Aristophanes,[193] yearning for “the good old style of education, in the days when Justice still prevailed over Rhetoric, and good morals were still in fashion. Then children were seen and not heard; then the boys of each hamlet and ward walked in orderly procession along the roads on their way to the lyre-school,—no overcoats, though it snowed cats and dogs. Then, while they stood up square—no lounging—the master taught them a fine old patriotic song like ‘Pallas, city-sacker dread,’[194] or ‘A cry that echoes afar,’[195] set to a good old-fashioned tune. If any one tried any vulgar trills and twiddles and odes where the metre varies, such as Phrunis and Co. use nowadays, he got a tremendous thrashing for disrespect to the Muses.” While being taught by the paidotribes, too, they behaved modestly, and did not spend their time ogling their admirers. “At meals children were not allowed to grab up the dainties or giggle or cross their feet.” “This was the education which produced the heroes of Marathon.… This taught the boys to avoid the Agora, keep away from the Baths, be ashamed at what is disgraceful, be courteous to elders, honour their parents, and be an impersonation of Modesty—instead of running after ballet-girls. They passed their days in the gymnasia, keeping their bodies in good condition, not mouthing quibbles in the Agora. Each spent his time with some well-mannered lad of his own age, running races in the Akademeia under the sacred olives, amid a fragrance of smilax and leisure and white poplar, rejoicing in the springtide when plane-tree and elm whisper together.” All the voices of generations of boys, bound down to indoor studies when wood and field and river are calling them, the complaint of ages of fevered hurry and bustle, looking back with regret on the days of “leisure” and “springtide,” seem to echo in Aristophanes’ lament for the ways that were no more.
“This education,” he goes on, “produced a good chest, sound complexion, broad shoulders, small tongue; the new style produces pale faces, small shoulders, narrow chest, and long tongue, and makes the boy confuse Honour with Dishonour: it fills the Baths, empties the Palaistra.”
The next witness to be called is Isokrates. He is somewhat prejudiced by his dream of restoring the Areiopagos to its old power, but he is an educational expert and his evidence is supported by that of many others. In the days when the Areiopagos had the superintendence of morals, he says,[196] “the young did not spend their time in the gambling dens, and with flute-girls and company of that sort, as they do now, but they remained true to the manner of life which was laid down for them.… They avoided the Agora so much, that, if ever they were compelled to pass through it, they did so with obvious modesty and self-control. To contradict or insult an elder was at that time considered a worse offence than ill-treatment of parents is considered now. To eat or drink in a tavern was a thing that not even a self-respecting servant would think of doing then; for they practised good manners, not vulgarity.”
Call Plato next.[197] “In a democratic state the schoolmaster is afraid of his pupils and flatters them, and the pupils despise both schoolmaster and paidagogos. The young expect the same treatment as the old, and contradict them and quarrel with them. In fact, seniors have to flatter their juniors, in order not to be thought morose old dotards.”
The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. The old regime had strictly forbidden luxury. Warm baths had been regarded as unmanly, and were even coupled with drunkenness by Hermippos.[198] The boys had only worn a single garment, the sleeveless chiton, a custom which survived till late times in Sparta and Crete; but at Athens they began to wear the ἱμάτιον or overcoat as well. Xenophon, blaming parents “in the rest of Hellas” (i.e. elsewhere than in Sparta), says: “They make their boy’s feet soft by giving him shoes, and pamper his body with changes of clothes; they also allow him as much food as his stomach can contain.”[199] Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters. Alkibiades even smacked a literature-master. A similar change came over the position of children in England during the latter half of the nineteenth century. If Maria Edgeworth could have met a modern child, she would have uttered quite Aristophanic diatribes against the decay of good manners.
With this change went a more serious matter, a change of tone. Whether the old days were as moral as the conservatives supposed, may be doubted; but the atmosphere of Periclean and Socratic Athens, as represented by all its literary lights, was certainly most unsuitable for the young. Perhaps general morality was no worse, but the immorality was no longer concealed from the children. The old laws which had excluded unsuitable company from the schools and palaistrai were neglected, and these educational buildings became the resort of all the fashionable loungers of Athens.
The preference given to conversation over exercise was a feature of the age. In part, it was a preference for intellectual as against purely physical education. The free discussion with children of ethical subjects probably ceased with the death of Sokrates; this can hardly be regretted, if Plato’s evidence as to the nature of Socratic dialogues is to be believed. From the importance which Plato gives to gymnastics as a corrective to exclusive μουσική even in the education of his highly intellectual Philosopher-Kings, we may suspect that the revolt against excessive athletics at Athens, of which Euripides had been the leader, had gone too far, and that a reaction was needed. Certainly the Athenians do not distinguish themselves for pluck or energy in the fourth century: in Platonic phrase, the temper of their resolution had been melted away by their exclusive devotion to intellectual and artistic pursuits.
Let me close this subject, however, with a more pleasing picture of that αἰδώς or modesty at which the older education had aimed. It is taken from the midst of that brilliant but corrupt Socratic Athens.[200] Young Autolukos had won the boys’ contest for the pankration at the great Panathenaic festival. As a treat, Kallias, a friend of his father, had taken him to the horse-races, and afterwards invited him out to dinner with his father Lukon: such a dignity was rarely accorded to an Athenian boy.
The boy sits at table, while the grown men recline. Some one asked him what he was most proud of—“Your victory, I suppose?” He blushed and said, “No, I’m not.” Every one was delighted to hear his voice, for he had not said a word so far. “Of what then?” some one asked. “Of my father,” replied the boy, and cuddled up against him.
These shy, blushing boys were a feature of the age. The stricter parents, knowing the dangers which surrounded their sons, tried to keep them entirely from any knowledge or experience of the world.
* * * * *
As far as can be discovered from the somewhat fragmentary evidence, the Athenian type of education was prevalent throughout the civilised Hellenic world, with the exception of Crete and Lakedaimon, which had systems of their own. Xenophon, in praising the Spartan system and contrasting it with that which was prevalent in neighbouring countries, ascribes to what he calls “the rest of Hellas” educational customs and arrangements exactly similar to those which are found to have existed at Athens. His statement is borne out by other evidence. Chios certainly had a School of Letters before 494 B.C.; for a building of this sort collapsed in that year, destroying all but one of the 120 pupils.[201] Boiotia, byword for stupidity, had schools even in the smaller towns. A small place like Mukalessos had more than one; for a detachment of wild Thracian mercenaries in the pay of Athens fell upon the town at daybreak one morning during the Peloponnesian War, and entering “the largest school in the place,” killed all the boys.[202] Arkadia had an equally bad reputation; yet, according to Polubios,[203] in every Arcadian town the boys were compelled by law to learn to sing. Troizen must have had schools in 480, when she provided them for her Athenian guests. Aelian vouches for schools in Lesbos,[204] Pausanias[205] for a school of sixty boys in Astupalaia in 496 B.C. The poet Sophocles dined with a master of letters whose school was either in Eretria or Eruthrai.[206] The inscriptions show that before the third century there were flourishing schools in most of the islands.
Gymnastic education must have gone on in every Hellenic city, for the athletic victors at the great games come from every part. Musical training too was required for the dancing and singing which were universal throughout Hellas; but how far the lyre was taught must remain doubtful. In Boiotia the flute replaced the lyre in the schools. But it may be taken for granted that letters, some sort of music, and gymnastics were taught in every part of civilised Hellas, with the possible exception that letters may not have been taught at Sparta.
Secondary Education, as long as it was supplied by the Sophists, reached every village in the Hellenic world; later, it had a tendency to be confined to the large towns. The Tertiary system of military training and special gymnastics for the epheboi would seem, from the scanty evidence of the inscriptions, to have been well-nigh universal.
I will now proceed to give a more detailed account of the several branches of this widespread educational system. As the evidence comes almost entirely from Athens, my description will deal in the main with Athenian education; but, as the same type prevailed throughout the greater part of Hellas, the description may be taken as applying to the other cities also.
[98] Herod. ii. 167. Corinth was an exception.
[99] Plato, Laws, 846 D.
[100] Arist. Pol. viii. 2. 4.
[101] Xen. Econ. iv. 3. Sitting was regarded as a slavish attitude, since the free citizen mostly stood or lay down. Xen. Econ. iv. 3.
[102] Plato, Protag. 328 A.
[103] Xen. Revenues, ii. 2.
[104] Plato, Kleitophon, 409 B.
[105] Plato, Rep. 421 E.
[106] Plato, Gorg. 514 B.
[107] Plato, Rep. 467 A.
[108] Aristoph. Acharn. 1032.
[109] The fifth-century comic poet.
[110] Plutarch, Solon, 22.
[111] Plato, Laws, 643 E.
[112] Except possibly in Chios and Lokris, and of course in Sparta.
[113] Thuc. ii. 45. 4.
[114] Xen. Econ. vii. 5.
[115] Xen. Mem. ii. 7.
[116] Plato, Rep. 455 C.
[117] Plato, Laws, 805 E.
[118] As in Lusias, ag. Diogeiton, 32. 28.
[119] In the Econ. vii. 10.
[120] Thus the Axiochos (366 D) puts seven years as the age at which grammatistai and paidotribai began. Plato (Laws, 794) says six; Aristotle (Pol. vii. 17) about five; Xenophon (Constit. of Lak. ii.) “as soon as the children begin to understand.”
[121] Aesop was popular then, as now. This is the μουσική anterior to γυμναστική, so keenly criticised in the Republic.
[122] Plato, Protag. 325 C-E.
[123] Xen. Mem. ii. 2. 6.
[124] Plato, Protag. 326 C.
[125] Aristotle, Pol. vii. 17. 7.
[126] The three in this order in Plato, Protag. 312 B, 325-326; Charmid. 159 C; Kleitoph. 407 C; Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 1; Isok. Antid. 267. The first two in this order in Charmid. 160 A; Lusis, 209 B; inverted in Euthud. 276 A. Aristot. (Pol. viii. 3) gives γράμματα, γυμναστική, μουσική. Plato in the Laws 810 A makes κιθαριστική follow γραμματική; Aristophanes mentions the paidotribes just after the κιθαριστής.
[127] Aristot. Pol. viii. 3. 1.
[128] Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii.
[129] See Illustr. [Plates I. A] and [I. B].
[130] Plato, Laws, 810 A.
[131] Vase B 192.
[132] Vases E 171, 172; see [Plates III.] and [IV.]
[133] Aristot. Pol. viii. 4. 9.
[134] Ibid. viii. 1. 2.
[135] [Plato] Rivals, 132 A.
[136] Plato, Lusis, 206 D.
[137] Plato, Laches, 179 A.
[138] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii.
[139] Plato, Lusis, 214 B.
[140] Rhetoric is, of course, banished from a Platonic state.
[141] [Plato] Axiochos, 366 E.
[142] See Petit, Leges Atticae, ii. 4, compiled with great ingenuity out of many authors. Hence the proverbs ὁ μήτε νεῖν μήτε γράμματα ἐπιστάμενος, of utter dunce, and πρῶτον κολυμβᾶν δεύτερον δὲ γράμματα. The spelling-riddles of the tragedians imply a whole nation interested in spelling.
[143] Plato, Kriton, 50 D.
[144] Aristophanes, Knights, 189.
[145] Ibid. 1235-1239.
[146] Ibid. 987-996.
[147] [Plato] Theages, 122 E.
[148] Plato, Alkibiades, i. 122 B. The Athenian State, however, from the time of Solon onwards, supported and educated at public expense the sons of those who fell in battle. The endowed systems in Teos and at Delphoi belong to the third century; it is impossible to say whether such existed earlier.
[149] Xen. Mem. ii. 2. 6.
[150] [Xen.] Constit. of Athens, ii. 10.
[151] Plutarch, Alkib. 3; Plato, Charmides, 153 A.
[152] C.I.A. ii. 1. 444, 445, 446.
[153] See Excursus on γυμνιασιαρχοί.
[154] He could, and had to, use compulsion in collecting boys. This suggests that a parent could always, if he wished, get this free education for his son.
[155] This rule fell into abeyance.
[156] Dem. against Boiot. 1001.
[157] [Xen.] Constit. of Athens, i. 13.
[158] On the strength of the passages quoted from the law, and from Demosthenes, and of Aristophanes, Clouds, 964, some have maintained a theory that the Athenian tribes provided free education in dancing, and perhaps in other subjects, to all free boys, exclusive of competitions. But the quotation in Aischines, except for the actual law, which is a later interpolation, certainly refers only to the choregoi, and the passage in Demosthenes is concerned only with chorus-dancing for competitions. In Aristophanes the boys of the same neighbourhood naturally attend the same school, that is all.
[159] Plut. Themist. 10.
[160] Ael. Var. Hist. vii. 15.
[161] Diod. Sic. xii. 42.
[162] Probably lived circa 500 B.C.
[163] Plato, Tim. 21 B.
[164] Böckh, 3088.
[165] Ibid. 2214. I have omitted patronymics.
[166] C.I.G. Boeot. 1760-1766.
[167] Böckh, 232, 245.
[168] Pind. Nem. vii.
[169] Bacchul. xiii., Pind. Nem. v.
[170] Wrestling, Pind. Nem. iv., vi.
[171] Anthol. ed. Jacobs, vi. 308.
[172] Sometimes earlier. Plato, Protag. 325 C.
[173] Elderly, as in the picture of Medeia and her children given in Smith’s Smaller Classical Dictionary under “Medea,” and on Douris’ Kulix, [Plates I. A] and [I. B] (if those are paidagogoi), and on other vases.
[174] So Fabius Cunctator was called Hannibal’s paidagogos, because he followed him about everywhere.
[175] There is only one for Lusis and his brothers (Plato, Lus. 223 A), for Medeia’s two children (Eur. Med.), for two boys in Lusis, 223 A, and for Themistocles’ children (Herod. viii. 75).
[176] Plato, Lus. 208 C. He is referred to as ὅδε, showing that he is present.
[177] Illustr. [Plates I. A] and [I. B]. Perhaps only the walking-stick carried by all Athenians.
[178] Plato, Lus. 223 A.
[179] Plut. Education of Boys.
[180] Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 2.
[181] Herod. viii. 75.
[182] Aisch. ag. Timarch. 35. 10.
[183] In the guardian’s accounts given by Lusias, ag. Diogeiton, 32. 28, a paidagogos is paid for till the boy is eighteen; but there was a younger brother, for whom he may have been required, so the elder may have been free earlier. In Plautus (Bacch. 138) we find a paidogogos in attendance till his charge was twenty.
[184] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii. 1.
[185] Plato, Rep. 406 A.
[186] Plato, Protag. 325 D.
[187] Aischin. ag. Timarch. 9.
[188] γυμνασιαρχής. See Excursus on γυμνασιαρχοί. This law was totally neglected in Socratic Athens. See Plato’s Lusis.
[189] Aischin. ag. Timarch. 10. The word σωφρονιστής, in a general sense, occurs three times in Thucydides.
[190] Deinarchos, ag. Philokles, 15.
[191] Girard, L’Éducation Athénienne, pp. 51, 52.
[192] The Archon Eponumos had the control of orphans and probably intervened if their education was neglected.
[193] Aristoph. Clouds, 960 ff.
[194] By Lamprokles (476 B.C.).
[195] By Kudides (? = Kudias. Smyth, Melic Poets, p. 347).
[196] Isok. Areiop. 149 C, D.
[197] Plato, Rep. 563 A.
[198] Floruit 432 B.C. (in Athen. 18 C).
[199] Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 1.
[200] Xen. Banquet, iii. 13.
[201] Herod. vi. 27.
[202] Thuc. vii. 29.
[203] Pol. iv. 20. 7.
[204] Ael. Var. Hist. 7. 15.
[205] Pausan. vi. 9. 6.
[206] Athen. 604 a-b.