CHAPTER III

ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS:
PRIMARY EDUCATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ἔστ’ ἄλφα, βῆτα, γάμμα, δέλτα τ’, εἶ τε, καί

ζῆτ’, ἦτα, θῆτ’, ἴωτα, κάππα, λάβδα, μῦ,

νῦ, ξεῖ, τὸ οὖ, πεῖ, ῥῶ, τὸ σίγμα, ταῦ, τὸ ὖ,

πάροντα φεῖ τε χεῖ τε τῷ ψεῖ εἰς τὸ ὦ.[236]

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

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

BetaAlphaBA
BetaEiBĔ
BetaEtaBĒ
BetaIotaBI
BetaOuBŎ
BetaUBU
BetaOBŌ[239]

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

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

First, such a circle as is measured out

By compasses, a clear mark in the midst.

The second letter is two upright lines,

Another joining them across their middles.

The third is like a curl of hair. The fourth,

One upright line and three crosswise infixed.

The fifth is hard to tell: from several points

Two lines run down to form one pedestal.

The last is with the third identical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Metrotimé. Flog him, Lampriskos,[266]

Across the shoulders, till his wicked soul

Is all but out of him. He’s spent my all

In playing odd and even: knucklebones

Are nothing to him. Why, he hardly knows

The door o’ the Letter School. And yet the thirtieth

Comes round and I must pay—tears no excuse.

His writing-tablet, which I take the trouble

To wax anew each month, lies unregarded

I’ the corner. If by chance he deigns to touch it,

He scowls like Hades, then puts nothing right

But smears it out and out. He doesn’t know

A letter, till you scream it twenty times.

The other day his father made him spell

Maron; the rascal made it Simon; dolt

I thought myself to send him to a school:

Ass-tending is his trade. Another time

We set him to recite some childish piece;

He sifts it out like water through a crack,

“Apollo,” pause, then “hunter.”

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

Yet he knows

The seventh and the twentieth of the month,

Whole holidays, as if he read the stars.

He lies awake o’ nights adreaming of them.

But, so may yonder Muses prosper you,

Give him in stripes no less than——

Lampriskos. Right you are.

Here, Euthias, Kokkalos, and Phillos, hoist him

Upon your backs.[267] I like your goings on,

My boy. I’ll teach you manners. Where’s my strap,

The stinging cow’s-tail!

Kottalos. By the Muses, Sir,

Not with the stinger.

Lamp. Then you shouldn’t be

So naughty.

Kott. O, how many will you give me?

Lamp. Your mother fixes that.

Kott. How many, mother?

Metr. As many as your wicked hide can bear.

Kott. Stop, that’s enough, stop.

Lamp. You should stop your ways.

Kott. I’ll never do it more, I promise you.

Lamp. Don’t talk so much, or else I’ll bring a gag.

Kott. I won’t talk, only do not kill me, please.

Lamp. Let him down, boys.

Metr. No, leather him till sunset.

Lamp. Why, he’s as mottled as a water-snake.

Metr. Well, when he’s done his reading, good or bad,

Give him a trifle more, say twenty strokes.

Kott. Yah!

Metr. I’ll go home and get a pair of fetters.

Our Lady Muses, whom he scorned, shall see

Their scorner hobble here with shackled feet.

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

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

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

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

Simple counting was done on the fingers. “Reckon on your fingers,” says a character in Aristophanes,[275] “not with pebbles.” A common word for counting was πεμπάζειν, “to reckon on the five fingers”; the division of the month into three periods of ten days can be traced to the same custom. But by various devices it was possible to count up to very large numbers on the fingers. Pebbles were also employed to assist in arithmetic. In the case of complicated accounts a reckoning board (ἄβακος or ἄβαξ) was used, on which the pebbles varied in value according to their position. Such boards go back to early days at Athens, for Solon compared the life of a courtier to a pebble upon them, since he was now worth much and now little.[276] A character in a fourth-century comedy[277] sends for an abacus and pebbles, in order that he may do his accounts. The pebbles were arranged in grooves,

being worth one or ten or a hundred and so forth, according to the groove in which they were placed. If they were put on the left-hand side of the board, their value was multiplied by five.[278] The various games of πεσσοί, which somewhat resembled chess, were played on a somewhat similar board to this, and these chess-boards were known as ἄβακες. Now the art of playing with πεσσοί is more than once coupled by Plato with arithmetic or mathematics generally in such a way as to show that the game must have involved mathematical skill.[279] As was usual in Athens, instruction went hand in hand with amusement, and, in playing games, the boys learned arithmetic willingly. A similar value seems to have attached to the game of knucklebones, which the boys in the Lusis are found playing during their whole holiday. Each boy carried a large basket of knucklebones, and the loser in each game paid so many of them over to the winner. The art of playing this game is also coupled with mathematics by Plato;[280] so it must at any rate have encouraged the study of arithmetic, in his opinion. In the school scene of the British Museum amphora, a little bag, usually supposed to contain knucklebones, is figured: so they may even have been used in schools for teaching arithmetic. In another school scene this bag is present with a lyre and ruler; so it was evidently part of the school furniture.

PLATE III.

MUSIC-SCHOOL SCENES
From a Hudria in the British Museum (E 171).

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

PLATE IV.

IN A LYRE-SCHOOL
From a Hudria in the British Museum (E 172).

As soon as his pupils knew how to play, the master taught them the works of the great lyric poets,[292] which were not taught in the school of letters. These were set to music, and the boys sang them and played the accompaniment. Every gentleman at Athens was expected to be able to sing and play in this manner when he went out to a dinner-party. The custom,

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

He may have stolen. But acquit him, for

He doesn’t know the way to play the lyre.[298]

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

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

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

A flutist’s brains can never stay:

He puffs his flute, they’re puffed away.

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[207] Lucian, Loves, 44-45.

[208] Aischin. ag. Timarch. 12; Thuc. vii. 29; Plato, Laws.

[209] Lucian, Paracite, 61.

[210] Aischin. ag. Timarch. 12.

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

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

[213] Mahaffy, Greek Education, p. 54.

[214] Lucian, Nekuom. 17.

[215] Dem. de Cor. 315.

[216] Theoph. Char. 30.

[217] Ibid. 30.

[218] Herondas, iii. 3.

[219] Demos. ag. Aphobos, i. 828.

[220] Demos. Crown, 312.

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

[222] Ibid. 313.

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

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

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

[226] Plut. Alkib. 7.

[227] Herondas, iii. 83. 96.

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

[229] Plato, Protag. 326 D.

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

[231] Aeschylus, Choeph. 209.

[232] Illustr. [Plate I. A].

[233] Xen. Econ. xv. 5.

[234] Demosth. de Cor. 313.

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

[236] Athen. 453 d.

[237] Giles’ Manual of Comparative Philology, § 604.

[238] Athen. 453 c, d.

[239] A fragment of terra-cotta has been found at Athens, containing on it:

αρ βαρ γαρ δαρ

ερ βερ γερ δερ

which must have belonged to some spelling-book—perhaps the brick formed part of the wall of a schoolroom.—Quoted by Girard, p. 131.

[240] Athen. 454 f.

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

[242] Plato, Polit. 278 A, B.

[243] Ibid.

[244] Ibid. 285 C.

[245] Xen. Econ. viii. 14.

[246] See Illustr. [Plate I. A].

[247] Case E 190.

[248] Plato, Protag. 325 E.

[249] Plato, Laws, 811.

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

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

[252] Plato, Laws, 802, 811.

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

[254] Xen. Banquet, iii. 5.

[255] Ibid.

[256] Ibid. iv. 6.

[257] Aristoph. Frogs, 1035.

[258] From the Banqueters.

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

[260] Aristoph. Frogs, 1032.

[261] Athen. 164.

[262] Aristoph. Birds, 471; Wasps, 1446. 1401.

[263] Plato, Hipp. Maj. 286 B.

[264] Xen. Banquet, iv. 27. School friendships are also mentioned in Aristot. Eth. viii. 12; Aristoph. Clouds, 1006.

[265] Athen. 242 d.

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

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

[268] Plato, Laws, 809 C.

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

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

[271] Plato, Protag. 318 D.

[272] So Theodoros in the Theaitetos.

[273] Xen. Econ. viii. 14.

[274] Xen. Mem. iv. 4. 7.

[275] Aristoph. Wasps, 656.

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

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

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

[279] e.g. Polit. 299 D. πεττείαν ἢ ξύμπασαν ἀριθμητικήν.

[280] Plato, Phaid. 274.

[281] Plato, Laws, 819 B.

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

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

[284] Plato, Rep. 526 B.

[285] Plato, Laws, 747.

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

[287] Illustr. [Plate I. B].

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

[289] Xen. Econ. ii. 13.

[290] Ibid. xvii. 7.

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

[292] Plato, Protag. 326 B.

[293] Aristoph. Clouds, 1356.

[294] Aristoph. fragment of Banqueters.

[295] Aristoph. Knights, 526.

[296] Plut. Solon, iii.

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

[298] Aristoph. Wasps, 959.

[299] Ibid. 989.

[300] Aristot. Pol. viii. 6. 11.

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

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

[303] Aristot. Pol. viii. 6. 11.

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

[305] Not a respected profession at Athens.

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

[307] Athen. 337 f.

[308] Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities.

[309] φορβεία. It belonged to professionals.

[310] γλωσσοκομεῖον.

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

[312] See Illustr. [Plate II.]

[313] Athen. 20 f.

[314] Plato, Laches, 180 D.

[315] Plato, Euthud. 272 C.

[316] Ibid. 295 D.

[317] Aristoph. Knights, 987-996.

[318] Plato, Protag. 326 B.

[319] Aristot. Pol. viii. 3. 7.

[320] Ibid. viii. 3. 1.

[321] Plato, Protag. 318 B.

[322] Ibid. 311 C.

[323] Plin. Hist. Nat. 35.

[324] Stob. Floril. 98, p. 535.

[325] Plato, Laws, 769 B.

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

[327] Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1329.

[328] Plato, Theait. 208 E.

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

[330] Aristot. Pol. viii. 3. 12.

[331] θεωρητικὸν τοῦ περὶ τὰ σώματα κάλλους.