According to Plato, this education turned the Athenian boy from being "the most unmanageable of animals" into "the most amiable and divine of living beings." This change had not taken place without many a punishment of the boy, and it was a proverb that "he that is not flogged cannot be taught." Not long ago an old Greek papyrus was discovered which gives a vivid account of the discipline that was thought necessary by both parents and teachers, for the schoolboy who preferred, as he probably often did, to play games instead of learning his lessons. A mother brought her truant boy, Cottalus, to his schoolmaster, Lampriscus, to receive a flogging for his misdeeds, and she said:
Mother.
Flog him Lampriscus,
Across the shoulders, till his wicked soul
Is all but out of him. He's spent my all
In playing odd and even; knuckle bones
Are nothing to him. Why, he hardly knows
The door of 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
In 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.
* * * *
Yet he knows
The seventh and the twentieth of the month,
Whole holidays, as if he reads the stars,
He lies awake o' nights dreaming of them.
But, so may yonder Muses prosper you,
Give him in stripes no less than—
Lampriscus (briskly).
Right you are.
Here, boys, hoist him
Upon your backs. I like your goings on,
My boy! I'll teach you manners! Where's my strap,
With the stinging cow's tail?
Cottalus (in terror).
By the Muses, Sir,—Not with the stinger.
Lampriscus.
Then you shouldn't be so naughty.
Cott.