CHAPTER VI
SECONDARY EDUCATION: II. THE PERMANENT SCHOOLS
Athens was the place in which the fluid educational system of the Sophists would naturally begin to crystallise. Not only were the Athenians the keenest and most intellectual of the Hellenes: owing to the vast trade of their city, merchants, astronomers, inventors, poets, thinkers of all sorts, poured into it, and men of all trades and all tongues collected there. Many stayed there for a few days only, in passing; for Athens was a sort of Clapham Junction in those days. All these brought a perpetual supply of new ideas into the city, which the inhabitants were quick to assimilate.
But, possessing all the advantages of a commercial centre, Athens was free from the disadvantages. The clamour and vulgarity of trade were confined to the Peiraieus: in the gymnasia or the streets or the colonnades of Athens the philosopher and the thinker could teach and meditate in peace, in an atmosphere ennobled by her treasures of architecture and art and sculpture, which subdued the most blatant visitor, amid the literary circles which her dramatic contests attracted and encouraged. Here was an ideal spot for the meeting-place of the best minds in Hellas and the growth of a great educational system. The city was an education in itself. Perikles had called Athens the school of Hellas; the name was now to be justified in its most literal sense.
Early in the fourth century there arose established secondary schools in Athens. Plato began to teach Logic and Philosophy, Isokrates Rhetoric, not for a few weeks at a time, but permanently: their courses lasted three or four years. Characteristically, there was no State organisation or interference; Isokrates taught in his own house, near the Lukeion, Plato in his garden near Kolonos and in the Akademeia. Their pupils came from all parts of the civilised world, staying in Athens during their course of study. Plato imposed a preliminary examination in mathematics upon his pupils; Isokrates only commended a knowledge of such subjects. The students of these two schools became recognised features of Athenian life.
Plato led his pupils towards intellectual research and a life of retirement; the tendency of the school was markedly aristocratic, and several of the lads became tyrants in after life. Isokrates inculcated the practical life: his teaching was meant as a preparation for success in society and politics. But as his school naturally was only for the comparatively wealthy and leisured classes, it also tended to be aristocratic; however, it produced some of the leading democratic statesmen of the day.
Besides these two great schools others grew up. It is hard to distinguish exactly between the boys who went to Isokrates in order to learn political speaking and those who went to a “logographos” like Lusias or Demosthenes to learn forensic oratory. The “logographoi” do not seem to have claimed to impart culture, but only technical instruction: they are thus on the boundary line of education. But Demosthenes went to the “logographos” Isaios to get precisely the instruction which Isokrates had refused him: so it is hard to make a clear distinction. I shall therefore give a short sketch of the “logographoi” also.[529]
By the time that these schools began to establish themselves the Sophists were beginning to die out. Times were harder in the fourth century, and fewer people had money to spend on these expensive teachers. The intellectual movement of the Periclean age had spent itself, and the desire for universal knowledge was no longer so keen. Moreover, it is quite probable that settled schools, like that of Isokrates at Athens, were forming in many of the great centres: it is known that Isokrates himself taught for a while in Chios. The great demerit of the Sophists’ teaching, namely, that it was too much in a hurry and gave no time for personal endeavour on the part of the pupil, had been recognised: and the result was that the Sophists settled down in a single place and gave continuous courses of instruction.
But a good many Sophists of the old type remained, to vex Isokrates by their criticisms and rivalries. They still came to Athens at the great festivals, and gave hurried lectures.[530] But they had not the originality of their predecessors, and people preferred to read the works of Protagoras or Gorgias for themselves to hearing them repeated as original by a lecturer. Books were already a serious rival to lecturing, and were a cause of much searching of heart to Plato: Isokrates, however, preferred to write himself and so advertise his school.
Besides the wandering Sophists there were probably a good many teachers, both of Philosophy and of Rhetoric, established permanently at Athens. Isokrates mentions casually that all the schools[531] produce only two or three first-class speakers. In his educational prospectus, Against the Sophists, he criticises these rivals freely. “They merely try to attract pupils by low fees and big promises. The speeches which they write themselves are worse than the improvisations of the wholly untrained, yet they promise to make a complete orator out of any one who comes to them; for they make no allowance for natural talent or for experience, but regard eloquence as an exact science, just like the A B C and equally communicable; whereas it is really a progressive art, where the same thing must never be said twice, and its rules must be relative to the occasion and the circumstances.”[532] It is clear that these rivals committed the serious crime of underselling Isokrates and also of issuing more attractive prospectuses; perhaps, too, they are the captious critics to whom he is always referring.
Isokrates is still more severe on various philosophical teachers; he cannot mean Plato alone, for he mentions their fees, and Plato made no charge. There must have been a large number of philosophical professors, of whom Plato was only the most brilliant. But in many points Isokrates no doubt meant his denunciations to apply to Plato also. The summary of his attack is as follows:—“They make impossible offers, promising to impart to their pupils an exact science of conduct, by means of which they will always know what to do. Yet for this science they charge only 3 or 4 μναῖ (£12 or £16), a ridiculously small sum. They try to attract pupils by the specious titles of the subjects which they claim to teach, such as Justice and Prudence. But the Justice and the Prudence which they teach are of a very peculiar sort, and they give a meaning to the words quite different from that which ordinary people give; in fact, they cannot be sure about the meaning themselves, but can only dispute about it. Although they profess to teach Justice, they refuse to trust their pupils, but make them deposit the fees with a third party before the course begins.”[533] Here we have a picture of a distinct group of ethical teachers all trying to work at that Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge, and imparting their results to pupils for low fees.
All these Professors of Ethics seem to have made Mathematics and Astronomy a part of their course, just as Plato did. “To the old Athenian education, of Letters and Music and Gymnastics, they have added a more advanced course, consisting of Geometry and Astronomy and such subjects, together with eristic dialogues,” that is, Dialectic.[534] This course seems to have been much criticised as being a mere waste of time, since it was of no practical use and the knowledge so obtained was soon forgotten in after life. But Isokrates, although these subjects played no part in his own school, was sufficiently good an educationalist to see their merits: the study of subtle and difficult matters like Astronomy and Geometry “trains a boy to keep his attention closely fixed upon the point at issue and not to allow his mind to wander; so, being practised in this way and having his wits sharpened, he will be made capable of learning more important matters with greater ease and speed.”[535] But all these unpractical, if improving, studies should be abandoned before the nineteenth year: for they dry up the human nature and make men unbusinesslike. “Some of those who have become so adept in these subjects that they teach them to others, show themselves in the practical conduct of life less wise than their pupils, not to say than their servants.”[536] Consequently, those who care to study mathematics and eristic should confine them to the years between fourteen and eighteen: and then pass on to learn rhetoric with Isokrates; the rest can come to his school as lads, as many did.
But, although he differentiated himself so carefully from what moderns would call the philosophical schools, Isokrates styled himself a teacher of philosophy quite as much as they did. To him, as to the Romans, philosophy was the art of living a practical life. “That which is of no immediate use either for speech or for action does not deserve the name of Philosophy.”[537] The true philosopher is not the dreamer who neglects what is practical and essential, but the man of the world who learns and studies subjects which will make him able to manage his household and govern his state well; for this is the object of all labour and all philosophy.[537] With this practical end in view he ridicules the metaphysical researches of “the old Sophists, of whom Demokritos said that the number of realities was infinite, and Empedokles declared for four, and Ion for not more than three, and Alkmaion for only two, and Parmenides and Melissos for one, while Gorgias asserted that nothing existed at all.”[538]
In the promises which he makes of imparting to his pupils this practical wisdom which he calls philosophy, Isokrates is characteristically cautious. An exact science, which will embrace all possible questions and circumstances which may arise in domestic and political matters, is an impossibility; men must be content with a general capacity of forming a right judgment in view of each particular case when it arises. Consequently he defines as “wise men,” σοφοί, “those whose judgment usually hits upon the right course of action,” and as “seekers after wisdom” or philosophers, φιλόσοφοι, “those who occupy themselves with those studies and pursuits from which they will most quickly obtain this practical wisdom,”[539] or capacity of forming correct judgments. But a judgment can only be formed properly after a proper deliberation: so the work of Philosophy is to practise her pupils in this deliberation.[540]
This practice is, of course, provided in the school of Isokrates; for his school was, in fact, a debating or deliberating society, in which the pupils wrote and recited carefully composed speeches on given themes, or listened to the harangues of their master. Sometimes they discussed events of the day and matters of general interest[541] at the moment; at another time their topic was some constitutional or historical question, or the comparative merits of different nations and governments.[542] At another time, as may be seen from the example of Isokrates’ own orations, they dealt with those mythical characters who were historical realities as well as sacred personages to the average Hellene, Theseus and Helen and Bousiris: this in their eyes was almost equivalent to religious instruction and they were virtually writing theological essays. No doubt also the pupils wrote and recited those “commonplaces” or short essays on general topics, composed in a most elaborate style, which ancient orators kept in stock, ready to be inserted in a speech when a suitable opening presented itself. Isokrates’ own works are particularly full of these highly finished little essays:[543] so it is at least extremely probable that he insisted upon their composition in his school. Before his pupils, too, Isokrates would recite those fine sermons of his, like the Demonikos; and effective pieces of moral exhortation they must have been.
Thus the Isocratean school claimed to be, and was, a school of morals: it was also a school of good style and composition. The boys’ essays had to be written in a particular style, grandiloquent and ornate, to suit their themes. “For it is absurd to suppose that the matter and manner of ordinary conversation or of forensic oratory are suitable to Pan-Hellenic themes; on the contrary, in this kind of speech the thoughts must be more original and more lofty, the style more striking, and the diction more poetical and elaborate.”[544] Style, diction, and matter must, in fact, be that which Isokrates worked out in his own speeches. That style[545] I do not mean to discuss here. The fact that he wrote in a study and never spoke in public, has made him exaggerate the merits of the artistic prose-style of which he was the first really great exponent; but of its popularity with an Hellenic audience there can be no question. The pupils of Isokrates became the most eminent politicians and the most eminent prose-writers of the time; his house, as Cicero puts it, was the school of Hellas and the manufactory of eloquence.
To acquire this kind of oratory, there was need both of natural ability and of diligent study. Isokrates professes to supply, first an exact science of all the rhetorical devices and the various forms which speech can take, and then practice in the right employment and arrangement of these several parts. To learn the technique of rhetoric is comparatively easy, if the aspirant applies to the right man; but the right use of the technique can never be brought under any set of rules, or taught by one man to another: it can only be learnt by experience. The future orator must try the effect of each arrangement and combination of technique on the audience, and so draw up his own system.[546] The requisite audience for these experiments will be provided by the other pupils of the school, with the master as chief critic. A good master is essential. By his personal influence he will be able to communicate those finer elements of style which cannot be communicated in formal teaching. If he is worth his salt, all his pupils will bear the stamp of his own manner, and will easily be distinguished from every one else by the similarity of their style to his and to one another’s.[547] Education in rhetoric at Isokrates’ school seems to have begun with the study of his own works. In the Panathenaikos he describes himself as reading the speech over with two or three of his regular pupils; they revise and criticise it as they go along. This would give Isokrates the opportunity of expounding his own views of technique, with his own works before him as illustrations. It may be inferred from the beginning of the Bousiris that the written speeches of other Sophists were also studied, and their faults, or aberrations from Isocratean canons, pointed out, in order that they might be avoided in future. At any rate, Isokrates complains that other professors of the same sort of Rhetoric at Athens made use of his writings for teaching their own pupils, though, of course, according to him, they did so in order to show the boys what to admire, not what to avoid. When this technique had been fully mastered Isokrates set his pupils to write speeches on their own account, choosing for them some great and improving theme: in these speeches they had to apply the rules which they had learnt, and the subtler influences which they had imbibed, from their teacher. But they had also to think out the subject-matter, and in this lies much of the merit of the whole system. For, as Isokrates observes, the essayist who writes upon such themes will have to think noble thoughts, and select noble deeds as his instances and illustrations. This contemplation of what is noble will be a greater incentive to virtue than any so-called science of ethics:[548] for there is no science which can create goodness in wicked natures, but exhortation and persuasion can work wonders. Moreover, since the orator’s best argument is, after all, a good reputation, the young orator will see that his conduct and character are as excellent as possible.[548] And the practice of weighing just what thoughts and actions are suitable to the speech involves that faculty of sound deliberation which is necessary for the formation of right judgments. In fact, Isocratean “Philosophy” does more to form character than it does to produce eloquence.[549]
The pupils practised themselves, as we have seen, by delivering their harangues before Isokrates and their fellow-pupils. The school formed a select clique of trained critics of Rhetoric; the encouragement of criticism by this means must have been valuable. To this council Isokrates submitted his own orations before publication; former pupils were also invited to attend on these occasions. There is an interesting account of such an assembly at the end of the Panathenaikos. “I was revising the speech as it stands down to this point,” Isokrates says, “with three or four of the lads who are accustomed to study with me. On reading it through, we were satisfied with it and thought it only needed a peroration. I determined, however, to send for one of those among my pupils who had been brought up in an oligarchy and had set themselves to praise Lakedaimon, so that he might notice any false charge which we had unwittingly brought against the Spartans.” The pupil comes, and, while praising the speech enthusiastically, makes an unguarded criticism of its matter which led to a long discussion, in the course of which he and Isokrates deliver lengthy harangues. Finally, the pupil is crushed. The boys who had been present throughout the discussion were completely convinced by Isokrates and applauded him warmly. But the master himself was not satisfied. So three or four days later he called together all his old pupils who were in Athens, and the speech was submitted to their judgment, and received with enthusiastic applause. The former critic then delivered a brilliant harangue, trying to elucidate a hidden meaning in the speech. “The crowd of pupils, which is usually ready to applaud, shouted, flocked round him, and congratulated him, thoroughly agreeing with his eulogy of me,” says Isokrates. “I praised him too, but did not reveal whether he had hit off my secret meaning or not.”
The whole tone of the passage suggests that such an appeal to the pupils for criticism and advice was common, the only extraordinary feature being the presence of the “old boys.” This view is supported by other passages. In the Areiopagitikos[550] Isokrates tells his imaginary audience that “Some who heard me on a former occasion describe this constitution which Athens once enjoyed, while praising it enthusiastically and calling our ancestors happy,… told me that I was not likely to persuade you to adopt it.” On another occasion his speech made such an impression upon this preliminary audience that “No one praised the beauty of the style, as they usually do, but all admired the truth of the argument.” When he first told his pupils that he meant to send an advisory speech to Philip, “they all thought he was mad, and had the impudence to rebuke him, a thing which they had never done before.… But when they had heard the speech, they changed their minds completely and thought that Philip, Athens, and all Hellas would alike be grateful to him.”[551]
Isokrates’ great political pamphlets, with their wonderfully polished style and their striking themes, naturally served him as an excellent advertisement, as he naïvely admits in the Antidosis. Those who required further information about his educational methods and aims would turn to the prospectus Against the Sophists, which he published at the beginning of his career. Owing to these attractions, pupils came to him from all parts of the Hellenic world, from Pontos, Sicily, and Cyprus;[552] he had “more than all the other teachers of philosophy put together.”[553] They were not merely private citizens, but statesmen, generals, kings, and tyrants.[554] Probably the age at which they came varied greatly, but most of his actual pupils would probably be between fifteen and twenty-one. He often speaks of μειράκια as among them. Moreover, he speaks of parents bringing their sons to him,[555] which they certainly would not do if the boys were over eighteen. Public life in the average Hellenic state began at twenty; so boys would wish to be ready for it by that age. The course at Isokrates’ school lasted for three or four years.[556] The Athenian lad was more or less busy with his military duties from eighteen to twenty, so he would probably take the course between fourteen and eighteen; natives of other states would fit it in according to their local customs. The fee for the whole course was 10 mnai, or £40.[557] The story[558] goes that Demosthenes, having only £8, offered to pay that sum for one-fifth of the course. But Isokrates replied that he could not sell his philosophy in slices; the customer must take the whole fish or none at all. Probably, however, the tale is a fiction: Isokrates himself claims not to have made any money out of his countrymen, and only to have charged his foreign pupils.
Since, soon after the opening of his school, he had a hundred pupils, the accounts of his great wealth, which he repudiated so indignantly, cannot have been far wrong, especially as he received 20 talents (nearly £5000) for his panegyric on Euagoras. His own comparison of his wealth with that of Gorgias, who left only £800 at his death, is curious, if the above statements are true.
But his pupils, drawn from a class that had sufficient substance to live at leisure,[559] seem to have been well satisfied with what they got for their money. “At the end of their time, when they were on the point of sailing home to their friends, they so loved their life in Athens that they parted from it with tears and sighs.” Isokrates kept on friendly terms with them afterwards. Thus he writes to Timotheos, tyrant of Herakleia and an old pupil, to congratulate him on his accession and commend to him another old pupil, Autokrator. Then there is the charming letter in which he introduces Diodotos, another of his pupils, to the Macedonian Antipater, at some personal risk, for there was war between Athens and Macedon at the time. “I have had many pupils,” the letter runs, “some of whom have become great orators, some men of action, some great thinkers, some, with no particular talents, have at any rate become upright and cultured gentlemen: Diodotos combines all these qualities.”
The chief boast of the school of Isokrates was that it produced gentlemen. Isokrates defines education not as a knowledge of metaphysics and a contemplation of the Good, nor yet as technical ability in some particular profession, art, or trade, but as a sort of culture and polish. “This is my definition of the educated man,” he says. “First, he is capable of dealing with the ordinary events of life, by possessing a happy sense of fitness and a faculty of usually hitting upon the right course of action.
“Secondly, his behaviour in any society is always correct and proper. If he is thrown with offensive or disagreeable company, he can meet it with easy good-temper; and he treats every one with the utmost fairness and gentleness.
“Thirdly, he always has the mastery over his pleasures, and does not give way unduly under misfortune and pain, but behaves in such cases with manliness and worthily of the nature which has been given to us.
“Fourthly (the most important point) he is not spoilt or puffed up nor is his head turned by success, but he continues throughout to behave like a wise man, taking less pleasure in the good things which chance has given him at birth than in the products of his own talents and intelligence.
“Those whose soul is well tuned to play its part in all these ways, those I call wise and perfect men, and declare to possess all the virtues; those I regard as truly educated.”[560]
Thus the object of Isokrates was rather to impart culture and polish to his pupils than to teach them rhetoric; it is in this point that he differs from the other professors who taught the same sort of rhetoric as he did at Athens and have now been forgotten, and from the logographoi, who taught the kind of speaking which suited the Athenian law-courts, without professing to supply anything but a technical knowledge of their particular subject.
In an Athenian trial the prosecutor and defendant had each to deliver a speech for themselves; afterwards, regular advocates might address the jury in some cases, but this was rare. So the duty of an Athenian lawyer was simply to write speeches for his clients to deliver, not to speak himself. Thus the metic Lusias, who had no right to speak in a court himself, was a famous lawyer, or logographos, speech-writer, as the Hellenes called him.
Mantitheos, say, finds himself involved in a lawsuit. He comes to Lusias and explains the circumstances. Lusias masters the details, looks up the laws on the question, and studies his client’s age, character, and so forth. He then writes a speech sufficiently dramatised to come naturally from Mantitheos’ mouth. In composing it he will simulate the indignation which he supposes his client to feel, he will adopt the nonchalant air of injured innocence which Mantitheos showed in telling the story, and so on, till the speech is a real bit of dramatisation like the speeches in a tragedy. When composed, the speech would be carried off by Mantitheos, learnt by heart, and duly recited. It is all a bit of acting on Lusias’ part. The habit of simulating feelings when writing speeches was dangerous, when the logographos came forward to speak in his own person on some question. Demosthenes never quite escapes the suspicion of acting and posing, even in his most impressive moments.
Besides these clients, the Athenian lawyers had permanent pupils, who either intended to be lawyers themselves or thought the study would help them in a political life. Their methods of teaching, as may be seen from Plato’s Phaidros, resembled those of Isokrates. In the dialogue called by his name, Phaidros is going out to walk off the effects of sitting indoors too long.[561] He had been listening to Lusias, “the cleverest speech-writer of the age,” reciting one of his speeches, on which he had spent much labour. Phaidros had made him repeat it several times, and has now borrowed the book in order to learn it by heart during his walk. Sokrates persuades him to read it aloud, in doing which he is quite carried away by its eloquence.[562] Sokrates then proceeds to criticise the style and matter of the speech,[563] and to compose one of his own on the same subject to show how it ought to be treated.
This reveals the method of teaching. The teacher, as here and in Isokrates’ case, recites a speech of his own, explaining how it was done and asking for criticism from the pupils. Then the pupil would learn it by heart and declaim it in some solitary place. On other occasions, as Sokrates does here, the master would take the speech of some rival professor and criticise it severely, composing a better speech himself. The Bousiris and Helen of Isokrates show this method. Or else the pupil replied to the teacher, or the teacher wrote two speeches on opposite sides of the question. The extant work of Antiphon and the lost work of Gorgias[564] are of this type.
Most of the Attic orators seem to have taken pupils. Isaios taught Demosthenes. Demosthenes in his turn seems to have had great popularity as a teacher. He “promises to teach young men the art of speaking”;[565] “he filled Aristarchos with empty hopes of becoming the prince of orators all in a moment”;[566] “he invited some of his pupils to come and listen to the speech On the False Embassy, promising to show them how to cheat and mislead the audience”;[567] “later on he will brag before his boys of his tricks.” These passages give an interesting picture of Demosthenes and his pupils, as seen through his opponent’s green spectacles.
* * * * *
In opposition to the schools of Rhetoric stood the schools of Philosophy, leading their pupils towards the life of retirement and contemplation and away from the strenuous life of political and social activity.[568] We have seen that there were many professors of Philosophy at Athens in Isokrates’ time, charging fees of three or four mnai for their course. But only one of them is known to posterity, and he gave lessons gratis. Otherwise, Plato must be taken as a member of a class, albeit the most brilliant member. The teaching of Plato centred, as is well known, round the Akademeia. Plato possessed a house and garden, which he bequeathed to his school, between that gymnasium and Kolonos. When he and his pupils wished to be private they could withdraw into his gardens; otherwise they frequented the Akademeia, from which their school took its name. It was not every one who could obtain admission to the school, for, as Plato taught gratuitously, he could pick and choose his pupils. He expected would-be students to be well grounded in Geometry: there must have been some sort of entrance-examination. His successor, Xenokrates, finding that an applicant was ignorant of Music, Geometry, and Astronomy, told him to go away: “for you give philosophy no chance of getting a grip upon you.”[569] The inner circle of the school had their meals in common: the banquets were extremely plain. Timotheos, the Athenian general, who was accustomed to rich living, after having been a guest at one of these meals, remarked, on meeting Plato next day, “Your suppers are more pleasant on the following day than they are at the time.”[570] After the meal, a larger number of friends probably came in; this, at any rate, was a custom at the similar meetings held by the philosopher Menedemos a generation later.[571] The discourse often went on all night. There was a fixed code of rules to regulate these meals,[572] which is suggestive of Plato’s pleasantries in the Laws about the educational value of strictly regulated bouts of intoxication. But drunkenness was, of course, not allowed: Plato had a particular objection to it, and used to tell drunkards to look in the looking-glass and they would never err in that way again.[573] It offended his strict canons of physical beauty and propriety. It is interesting to note that the author of the Republic admitted women on terms of equality to this inner circle of the Akademeia, in defiance of Athenian prejudice. Lastheneia of Mantineia and Axiothea of Phlious, who dressed in male attire, are the first champions of women’s rights to a University education who appear in history.[574] The discussions of this clique were probably conducted after the model of the Platonic dialogue, and doubtless were in Plato’s mind when in the Laws he constructed his curious ethical and political debating-society for the older and wiser members of his state.
But admission to these mysteries must have been reserved for comparatively few, personal friends and mature thinkers: the members formed rather a private club than an educational system. The young Athenian who wished, when his primary education was finished, to study philosophy under Plato, had two means open to him: there were lectures in various public places; there was also a school for lads in the Akademeia.
The only lecture,[575] of which any very definite trace is left, was not a great success from the educational point of view. Plato announced beforehand that his subject would be “The Good.” A great crowd collected, expecting to hear a neat Isocratean discussion of such things as Health, Wealth, Friendship, which were popularly considered to be rival claimants for the title of the Good. But Plato began to talk about arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, and discussed the One as the Good. The whole lecture was couched in enigmatical language. The majority of the audience went away in despair.[576] Only practised Platonists like Aristotle and Herakleides and Hestiaios did their best to understand the lecture, and took notes. The whole idea of a “popular lecture” must have been repugnant to Plato. In his view, knowledge was only for the few, who, starting with great natural abilities, could devote themselves for years at a time to continual study and research. The pupil must be talented to start with: he must undergo a long course of preparatory studies in Logic and Mathematics: only when middle-aged might he approach the inner mysteries of Philosophy. Holding such educational ideas as these, Plato naturally made his lectures unintelligible to all but a few: his main subject for public exposition seems to have been that curious mathematical metaphysic which Aristotle combats as Platonic, although it is nowhere found in the extant dialogues. By reading the Metaphysics of Aristotle the modern inquirer can perhaps realise how difficult Plato’s lectures must have been.[577]
At the school in the Akademeia, Plato seems to have instructed his lads chiefly in Logic and Mathematics. Logic consisted chiefly of definitions, such as those for which Sokrates was always hunting, and that curious process of “division” which is exemplified at such length in the Sophist and Politikos. Diogenes Laertius[578] gives a long catalogue of such divisions, of which only a few can be found in extant works: the rest must have figured in the school, and survived as traditions in the commentaries. A comic poet has left a picture of the logic school at work[579]:—
“A. What of Plato and Speusippos and Menedemos? Upon what are they now engaged? What is their thought? What argument is investigated among them? Tell me, I pray, if you know.
“B. I can tell you clearly. For at the Panathenaia I saw a herd (ἀγέλη: note the Spartan word) of lads in the gymnasium of the Akademeia, and listened to strange, portentous arguments. They were drawing up definitions about natural history. They separated the life of animals and the nature of trees and the tribes of vegetables: then, among these last, they inquired to what tribe the cucumber belonged.… First of all they stood speechless, and, putting their heads down, thought for a long time. Then suddenly, while the lads still had their heads down, and were thinking, one of them said it was a circular vegetable, another declared that it was a herb, another suggested a tree. A Sicilian Doctor who was present ridiculed them most rudely. But the lads took no notice; and Plato, very gently and without losing his temper at all, told them to try again to define the species to which it belonged. So they began their divisions again.”
In the Sophist the mysterious stranger divides Art into (1) creative or productive, (2) acquisitive. Then acquisitive art into (1) acquisition by exchange, (2) acquisition by capture. Then the art which acquires its object by capture is divided into public or competitive and secret or hunting. Then, when hunting has been duly divided and subdivided, a definition of angling is obtained. In the parody by Epikrates, the same process is employed in order to define “cucumber,” although the stages are, of course, confused. A cucumber is a form of life. Life is divided into animals and vegetation: vegetation into trees and vegetables. Then the doubt arises, to which half does the cucumber belong. Some of the pupils say it is a vegetable, some a tree. So the lesson begins again.
Plato’s pupils seem to have been expected to take great care of their personal appearance: their neatness is a common butt of contemporary comedians[580]:—
Then rose a smart young man from the Akademeia
Of Plato.…
His hair was neatly smoothed, his foot was neatly
Laced in the sandal, bound with even lengths
Of shoe-lace curved about his ankle-bones:
And neat the corselet of his weighty cloak.
And again:
A. Who’s that old fellow yonder, do you know?
B. He looks a Hellene, wears a mantle white,
A fair grey tunic, little soft felt hat,
A well-tuned[581] staff, in fact, to put it short,
’Tis like a glimpse of the “Academy.”[582]
Of Plato himself, as he walked up and down among his pupils, wrestling with intellectual difficulties, several pictures survive in literature. A character in Alexis[583] remarks to a friend who has come to visit him:
You’ve come in the nick of time. I’m in a fix.
Though walking up and down, like Plato, I’ve
Found nothing clever: but my legs are tired.[584]
Amphis, in his Dexidemides, said:
Plato, all you can do is to frown, drawing up your eyebrows severely, like a shellfish.[585]
The psychological yearning of the Phaidon, perpetually interrupted by cold currents of scepticism, must have found an echo in Plato’s school-teaching, as the following dialogues from Comedy show[585]:—
A. My mortal frame grew dry:
My deathless part rushed forth into the air.
B. Why, bless us, are we in the school of Plato?
And
A. You’re a man, clearly, and have got a soul.
B. Like Plato, I don’t know but I suspect it.[585]
Of discipline in the Akademeia under Plato nothing is known: the following story[586] belongs to the school a little after his death. A certain Polemon agreed with some young friends of his, who attended the school, that he would rush into the room during the lesson, drunk and garlanded. This he carried out. But the teacher, Xenokrates, went calmly on with his lecture, which happened to deal with Sobriety. This conduct quite overcame Polemon, and he became a most diligent pupil, and finally succeeded Xenokrates as teacher.
Of Plato’s affection for his pupils, his own poems afford sufficient proof. One of them was named Aster, or Star. One day, as the lad was studying the heavens, his master wrote the following epigram about him:—
Star of my soul, thou gazest
Upon the starry skies;
I envy Heaven, that watches
Thy face with countless eyes.
And when he died, Plato wrote his epitaph:
Thou wert the morning Star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled:
Now, being dead, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.[587]
Additional evidence is given by his efforts on behalf of Dionusios and Dion, which led him into so many perils in Sicily.
Plato was teaching in Athens almost continually from 388 till 347. His pupils included, no doubt, many of the chief men of the day: Chabrias, Iphikrates, Hupereides, Phokion, Lukourgos, and Demosthenes are mentioned, besides the philosophers Speusippos, Xenokrates, Herakleides of Pontos, and Aristotle. But posterity ascribed pupils recklessly to all the great teachers of antiquity, so the catalogue carries little weight. It is interesting to observe that the school as a whole was attacked for producing tyrants: the bitter description of the miseries of tyranny in the Republic are at once a sad reflection upon former pupils and a warning to those whom he was instructing at the time. But the Philosopher-king, who embodied Plato’s ideal form of Government, may well have had a corrupting influence upon the pupils. Dion, the philosopher and patriot who became a tyrant, is an interesting commentary upon the Republic.
Teaching in the Akademeia was given gratuitously; but those who were so disposed might give presents to their teacher. Dionusios presented Plato with over 80 talents.[588]
The school of Aristotle in the Lukeion differed little in its methods from the school of Plato in the Akademeia. He had been a pupil of Plato for twenty years before he began to teach on his own account. He used to give instruction walking up and down in the walks of the Lukeion. In his earlier period, at any rate, he seems to have taught rhetoric, and taught it in Isocratean fashion: we hear of him setting a theme, on which he and the pupils delivered harangues “in rhetorical fashion.” Later the school became a home of universal knowledge and research; in this respect Aristotle is the heir of the much-abused Sophists. He adopted Xenokrates’ custom of appointing one of the pupils to be Archon of the school for ten days, and then another: this system must have relieved him of much petty business.[589] He delivered two courses of lectures daily: one in the morning on abstruse subjects to picked pupils; and the other in the afternoon, open to all comers and more intelligible in matter and manner.[590] His fame as a teacher was sufficient to win him the honour of being chosen to be Alexander’s tutor, and he seems to have retained his pupil’s respect, if not perhaps his affection. Aristotle, dreaming of a tiny city-state, and Alexander, dreaming of a world-empire and carrying out his dream, are an ill-assorted pair. What would Plato have given for the chance of educating such a Philosopher-king?
That there were bitter feuds between the various educational leaders in Athens, goes without saying. A Hellene could no more brook a rival than could an Italian of the Renaissance. Isokrates attacks Plato,[591] Plato Isokrates, and then their pupils take the quarrel on into the next generation. Both attack with equal animus the wandering Sophists and the Eristics, who retaliated with vigour. A would-be pupil must have found it hard to choose a professor under whom to study, when so much evil had been spoken of them all.[592]
* * * * *
The schools of Rhetoric and of Philosophy were only for the rich and the leisured classes: the poor had neither the time nor the money requisite for attending them. But they were not wholly debarred from the higher knowledge. There were still Sophists lecturing for advertisement in public places. Still more, there were books, which were beginning to be both numerous and cheap: every Athenian could read. How important a part books were beginning to take in national education may be seen from the works of Isokrates and Plato, who are both excessively indignant at the intrusion of such a rival.
“I know that what is read has less power of persuasion than what is heard. It is universally believed that a speech, if actually delivered, deals with serious and important subjects; but if only written and never spoken, it is supposed to aim merely at effect and the fulfilment of a contract. This opinion is quite reasonable. For the written speech is deprived of the prestige of the author’s presence and of his voice and of the proper rhetorical delivery: it is read when the occasion which called it forth is past, and the points which it discusses are consequently less interesting. The slave who reads it aloud puts no character into it, but drones it out as though he were reckoning up the items of a bill.” Such is Isokrates’ view, somewhat freely translated, of “the written word,” which his shyness compelled him to use instead of the spoken, and he beseeches Philip of Macedon, whom he is addressing, to put aside the usual prejudice against writings.
Plato regarded the written word with even greater contempt. To him it is the cause of forgetfulness; those who employ writing learn to rely on their notes, not on their memory, and are accustomed to register their impressions on tables of wax, not of the mind.[593] Again, it is impossible for an author to control the circulation of his works; they may reach those for whom they are not intended.[594] For Plato expects speaker and writer alike to express only what is suitable to their audience; the teacher must, by a study of psychology, know what arguments will do good and what will do harm to each particular pupil. But a book cannot impart knowledge, in the Platonic sense of the word, at all; for it is unable to answer questions or to explain its author’s meaning when the reader fails to follow.[595] Comprehension of a fact or of a statement made on a writer’s authority, without comprehension of the meaning and the explanation, is not knowledge.[596] Consequently, not even a lecture[597] or a sermon, far less a book whose author is absent or dead, can impart knowledge; to gain this, long study and a severe course of dialectic are essential. The possessor of true knowledge must be able to defend his view against any opposing arguments and to support it by discussion himself:[598] neither book nor lecture can give this intimate acquaintance with every point of view. Moreover, teaching is like agriculture. There are different soils and different minds. The seed of knowledge will bear different fruit in different soils, and there are types of minds in which some particular seeds must not be sown at all. Thus the same teacher will produce quite different philosophical results in different minds: just as Sokrates did with his various pupils. It is the development of the individual intellect and aptitudes of each pupil, not the inculcation of his own theories, that is the teacher’s true object.[599] Consequently, even a consistent scheme of dogmas is wrong for educational purposes; for it may suit the intellect of the teacher himself, but it cannot suit all his pupils.
Hence, in order to be consistent with his own educational ideals, Plato makes his works inconsistent: they are not a body of rigid dogmas. Also, he provides in them just that discussion which he notes as lacking in most books; it is possible to ask his books a certain number of questions, for he anticipates and answers them himself in the dialogue. In this way he makes his words pass through the alembic[600] of each pupil’s brain, and come out according to the type of mind through which they have passed. There is no enforcement of authority in true Platonism.
Plato refused to publish any philosophy in his own name. By speaking through the mouth of others, he could vary his attitudes just as he wished. The written word, he declares, must necessarily contain much trifling. Its composition is a good amusement for leisure hours.[601] Its one use is that it serves to remind the writer of what he knows already, when the forgetfulness of old age comes upon him. But the writer is quite worthless if he possesses nothing better in his mind than what he has written on paper,[602] “twisting words up and down, glueing them together and pulling them apart.”[603]
Books, however, were already serious rivals to personal intercourse, as a means of education. The libraries founded by Peisistratos at Athens and by Polukrates at Samos were, it is true, almost certainly fabulous; for Euripides was satirised for possessing a collection of books, so it must have been a novelty in his time. Books were probably very rare before the Periclean age, but then they multiplied with great rapidity. The children used them in the schools. Schoolmasters were expected to possess them: Alkibiades beat one for not having a copy of Homer. The comic poet Alexis makes Herakles’ master, Linos, possess copies of Orpheus, Hesiod, the tragedians, Choirilos, Homer, Epicharmos, and all sorts of prose works, including a cookery-book. A cargo of books was wrecked at Salmudessos,[604] a fact which points to a large book-trade in Hellenic waters. Euthudemos, the companion of Sokrates, possessed a fine collection of the best-known poets and Sophists, including the works of Homer.[605] Sokrates suggests that he may be collecting his books in order to learn Medicine, on which subject there were many treatises, or Architecture or Geometry or Astronomy. This shows how handbooks dealing with all manner of subjects were multiplying.
Xenophon’s treatise on The Horse had been preceded by a similar work by Simon;[606] he himself also wrote on Hunting, on The Duties of a Cavalry Officer, on The Management of a Farm, and The Constitution of Sparta, besides his more definitely historical and philosophical works. His Education of Kuros conceals a treatise on the duties of a general. The subjects are significant of the new movement; for earlier Hellenes had supposed that Homer and Hesiod taught the whole art of agriculture and generalship. Other agricultural treatises, containing much theory but very little practical knowledge, were also in circulation.[607] Later in the fourth century Aineias the Tactician contributed a manual for generals. Medical treatises emanated in great numbers from the school of Hippokrates, and probably from elsewhere. Chares and Apollodoros published works on Husbandry,[608] Mithaikos a Sicilian Cookery-Book,[609] Metrodoros a book of Homeric allegories. Books of travels and geography are also mentioned by Aristotle.[610] Handbooks on “Rhetoric” were first compiled by Korax and Tisias: they dealt with the subject of “arguments from probability.” Show pieces were written by Antiphon and Gorgias. A treatise by Polos upon the systematic arrangement of a speech was read by Sokrates. Thrasumachos published a work upon Appeals to Compassion.
The prices were probably not high, for the labour of copying could be cheaply performed by means of slaves. Sokrates, in the Platonic Apology,[611] mentions that a copy of Anaxagoras could sometimes be picked up for a drachma; and there is no reason to suppose that Anaxagoras was particularly cheap. If this was an average price, books must have been within the reach of most Athenians.
[529] Isokrates clearly felt them to be his educational rivals. See Antid. 310 A, and the end of the Paneg.
[530] There is a sketch of them in Isok. Panath. 236 C; to a lecture on Homer three or four of them had appended an attack upon Isokrates.
[531] Isok. Antid. 99.
[532] Isok. Soph. 10. 293 A.
[533] Isok. Soph. 4. 291 D. Cp. the modern “caution-money.”
[534] Isok. Pan. 26. 238 A.
[535] Isok. Antid. 118. 265.
[536] Isok. Panath. 238 D.
[537] Isok. Antid. 118. 266.
[538] Ibid. 118. 268.
[539] Isok. Antid. 118. 268.
[540] Ibid. 91.
[541] Isok. letter to Alexander.
[542] Isok. Panath. 275. It is noticeable how many of his pupils became historians—Ephoros, Theopompos, Androtion, Asklepiades.
[543] See, for example, “On Slander “(Antid. 313 E), “On Speech” (115. 255).
[544] Isok. Antid. 48.
[545] For a complete analysis of it, see Jebb’s Attic Orators.
[546] Isok. ag. Soph. 294 C; Antid. 91-93, etc.
[547] Ibid. 294 E.
[548] Isok. Antid. 121.
[549] Isok. ag. Soph. 295 D.
[550] Isok. Areiop. 151 B.
[551] Isok. Philip, 85, 86.
[552] Isok. Antid. 106.
[553] Ibid. 318 C.
[554] Ibid. 316 C.
[555] Isok. Antid. 110.
[556] Ibid. 62.
[557] [Demos.] Lakritos, 15 and 42.
[558] [Plutarch] Ten Orators, 837.
[559] Isok. Antid. 129.
[560] Isok. Panath. 239.
[561] Plato, Phaedr. 227-228.
[562] Ibid. 234 D.
[563] The criticisms do not suit Lusias; they fit Isokrates much better.
[564] Cicero, Brutus, xii. 46-47.
[565] Aischines, Timarch. 171, 173.
[566] Ibid. 171.
[567] Ibid. 175.
[568] Plato, Gorg. 484-486; end of Euthud. ; Theait. 172-177; Rep. 496.
[569] Diog. Laertius iv. 2. 6.
[570] Athen. 419 d.
[571] Ibid. 419 e and 55 d.
[572] Athen. 186 b.
[573] Diog. Laertius iii. 26.
[574] Ibid. iii. 31.
[575] See for this lecture Simplikios (on Aristot. Physics, p. 202 B, 36), and Aristoxenos, Harmon, beg. of Bk. ii. On one occasion, at least, it was delivered in the Peiraieus (Themist. Orat. 21. 245).
[576] The popular attitude may be seen in Amphis’ Amphrikates (Diog. Laertius iii. 25): “I no more know what good you’ll get than I know what Plato’s Good is.”
[577] Plato seems also to have recited his dialogues in public. Favonius asserted that Aristotle alone of the audience stayed to the end when Plato thus delivered the Phaidon (Diog. Laertius iii. 25).
[578] Diog. Laertius iii. 45, etc.
[579] Epikrates (in Athen. 59 d, e).
[580] Ephippos, Shipwrecked Man (Athen. 509).
[581] εὔρυθμος, probably a hit at Plato’s demand for “rhythm.”
[582] Antiphanes, Antaros (Athen. 545 a).
[583] Alexis, Meropis (Diog. Laertius iii. 22).
[584] This walking up and down was characteristic of Hellenic teaching. Compare the Peripatetics, and Archutas in the temple-gardens at Tarentum (Athen. 545 b).
[585] Diog. Laertius iii. 22.
[586] Ibid. iv. 3. 1.
[587] The first translation is my own, the second Shelley’s.
[588] Saturos and Onetor in Diog. Laertius iii. 11.
[589] The above details are mainly from Diog. Laertius v.
[590] Aul. Gell. xx. 5. 4.
[591] Plato had also his feuds with Antisthenes, who wrote a dialogue against him, calling him Satho, with Aristippos, and with Aischines the Sokratic (Diog. Laertius iii. 24).
[592] Kriton feels this difficulty in Euthud. 306 D, E.
[593] Plato, Phaedr. 275 A.
[594] Ibid. 275 E.
[595] Plato, Phaedr. 275 D; Theait. 164; Protag. 329 A, and 347 E.
[596] So book-knowledge is a hothouse plant which has sprung up unnaturally all in a moment, and very delicate when exposed to the open air of criticism (Phaedr. 276-7).
[597] Plato, Sophist, 230 A.
[598] Plato, Menon, 97; Rep. 534 B, C.
[599] Plato, Rep. 518.
[600] Plato, Phaidr. 277 A.
[601] Plato, Phaidr. 276 D, E.
[602] Plato apparently regarded his dialogues as mere trifles compared with what he taught to his inner circle.
[603] Plato, Phaedr. 278 D.
[604] Xen. Anab. vii. 5. 14.
[605] Xen. Mem. iv. 2.
[606] Xen. Horsemanship, i.
[607] Xen. Econ. xvi.
[608] Aristot. Pol. i. 11. 7.
[609] Plato, Gorg. 518 B.
[610] Aristot. Pol. ii. 3. 9.
[611] Plato, Apol. 26 D.