It was a great step to recognize this human character in the divine,—and the Greek mind rejoiced in the consciousness that his gods were so nearly of his own nature that they could and did dwell in human bodies.
This idea furnishes us the first phase of Greek education—the education of the body by gymnastic games, so as to make it perfectly beautiful and graceful. Cultivation of the body was a religious exercise, for it was a celebration of the divine by realizing it in the form of the beautiful. The East Indian ascetic sought by all means to mortify and deform the body. The Greek sought to perfect it.
There were games for all the Greek States—the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemæan, and Isthmian—international expositions of strength and beauty.
When the ideal of beauty had been fixed, there came the sculptor who conceived the forms and expressions of the gods of Olympus, taking his hints from human models that he saw all around him. The national culture in gymnastics first, the plastic arts second, these conspired to produce the ideals of beauty which educated the Greek people, and furnish an essential element in the education of all subsequent time. Preceding all plastic art was the poetry of Homer, out of which the Greek civilization seems to have been breathed.
The second book of the Iliad furnished the staple of school education, giving the history and geography of ancient Greece with the most wonderful of literary forms. The Odyssey extended the education in the same direction, and gave under a thin veil of allegory, the Greek moral code.
The general character of Greek education may be said to be æsthetic—a cultivation of the sense of the beautiful, and a training of the body into symmetry and grace. Gymnastics, music, and grammatical art were the staples of their pedagogy. By music they meant not only a sense of rhythm and measure, but spiritual culture in general—including the several branches over which the Nine Muses presided—whence its name “music.” Poetry and music and mathematics were all included under this designation. Grammatical training included reading, writing, and language studies.
In the development of individuality, the mutual independence of the Greek States and difference in their races or stocks were both causes and results. The Æolian, Dorian, and Ionian stocks manifested different tendencies, the Æolians preferring ear-culture, or music; the Dorians, bodily culture; the Ionians, poetry. The Dorians at Sparta educated boys and girls in the same way, although in separate institutions. There was, indeed, in Sparta, a tendency toward the Persian form of education, with important differences in regard to truth-speaking and honesty. The child was educated solely for the needs of the State, being trained to endure heat and cold and fatigue, and every year being obliged to conform to a more severe discipline, until at thirty years he had become a complete Spartan veteran soldier. Nevertheless the Spartan preserved his Greek individuality even under his Oriental forms of despotism.
The Spartans, though agreeing with the Athenians in certain general characteristics, were in sharp contrast to the latter in the spirit of their education. It was their aim to produce able warriors that led them to train their youth carefully in bodily strength and agility, capacity of endurance, personal bravery, and patriotism. Up to the seventh year the boy was educated in the family; after that time in public, and fed at the common table, and trained with other youth in the disciplines above mentioned, as well as in the art of skillful theft. Every year there was a general public flogging in order to test their strength of endurance and sense of honor. He who bore all the pain without uttering a cry was crowned with garlands. Spartan youth sometimes died under these tortures without uttering a sound. From year to year the discipline became more and more severe. The Spartan girls were trained to be companions of heroes, and had their own gymnasia wherein they learned to run, to wrestle, to jump, and ride the chariot.
At Athens, the chief seat of the Ionian stock, we find the purest type of Greek nationality.
The education of Spartans was designed, as has been said, to fit youth for citizens that could defend the State. That of Athens was for free individuality. The laws of Solon enjoined upon each father in Athens to teach his son a trade, whereby he could earn his living. If the father neglected this the son was absolved from the duty of supporting him in old age. The law of Solon decreed that the boy, before all else, should learn how to read and how to swim. It was a maritime State, and the Greek lived much upon the water. The son of poor parents should be taught music, horsemanship, and gymnastics, hunting and philosophy. It was left to the father to decide whether these higher studies should be undertaken or not. But public opinion was so strong that no father dared to refuse a higher education to his son if his means allowed it. For the first seven years the Athenian boy was under the care of the women. During this period he played with rattles, balls, wooden horses, dice and tops, the skipping of stones in the water, etc. The games and plays of Greek children are interesting, when we study the development of his individuality,—interesting also in hints as to the modern experiment of the kindergarten.