[[4]] Theocritus: From Idyll, XXIV, translated by S. C. Calverley. (By permission of Messrs. G. Bell and Sons.)
[[5]] Xenophon: The Economist.
[[6]] Author Unknown: From Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, translated by J. W. Mackail.
[[7]] See Emily James Putnam: The Lady.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ATHENIAN SCHOOLBOY
The chief aim of Athenian education was the building of character. The Athenians were more concerned that their sons should grow up to be good citizens, loving what was beautiful and hating all that was ugly, than that they should know any great number of facts. The object of any education is to teach a child how to live, and a system of education is good or bad according as it fulfils this aim. As different states and countries, at different periods, have had different ideals as to what is meant by living, so they will all have had different kinds of education, each thought out in such a way as best to train the child for that conception of life believed in by his state or country. For example, the Spartan conception of life was that every citizen should be a good soldier, able to defend his country and to go out and fight her wars. Whether the Spartan ideal was a good one or not, may be questioned, but it cannot be denied that Spartan education was an excellent preparation for such a life.
The Athenians had a much wider ideal than the Spartans. They, too, believed in the training of the body, and in making patriotic citizens who would count it a glory to die in defence of their city, but they also believed that it was a glory to live for their city, and to this end they trained the mind and the imagination as well as the body. To an Athenian a good man was a good citizen, one who, being physically perfect, would be able to defend his city in time of war, who, being able to think, would be capable of governing, and loving all that was beautiful would set high standards of taste in art, in letters, and in conduct. Praxiteles gave outward form to this ideal in his statue of Hermes, and though the Athenian ideal was not complete, Athenian education produced a warrior like Miltiades, statesmen like Themistocles and Pericles, a poet like Sophocles, artists like Pheidias and Praxiteles, philosophers like Socrates and Plato, and a historian like Thucydides.