The lower part of the Greek peninsula, known as Laconia, was settled by the Dorian branch of the Greek family, a practical, forceful, but a wholly unimaginative people. Sparta was their most important city. To the north were the Ionic Greeks, a many-sided and a highly imaginative people. Athens was their chief city. In the settlement of Laconia the Spartans imposed themselves as an army of occupation on the original inhabitants, whom they compelled to pay tribute to them, and established a military monarchy in southern Greece. The people of Attica, on the other hand, absorbed into their own body the few earlier settlers of the Attic plain. They also established a monarchy, but, being a people more capable of progress, this later evolved into a democracy. The people of Attica were in consequence a somewhat mixed race, which possibly in part accounts for their greater intellectual ability and versatility. [4]
It accounts, though, only in part. Climate, beautiful surroundings, and contact with the outside world probably also contributed something, but the real basis underneath was the very superior quality of the people of Attica. In some way, just how we do not know, these people came to be endowed with a superior genius and the rather unusual ability to make those progressive changes in living and government which enabled them to make the most of their surroundings and opportunities, and to advance while others stood still. Far more than other Greeks, the people of Attica were imaginative, original, versatile, adaptable, progressive, endowed with rare mental ability, keenly sensitive to beauty in nature and art, and possessed of a wonderful sense of proportion and a capacity for moderation in all things. Only on such an assumption can we account for their marvelous achievements in art, philosophy, literature, and science at this very early period in the development of the civilization of the world.
CLASSES IN THE POPULATION. Greece, as was the ancient world in general, was built politically on the dominant power of a ruling class. In consequence, all of course could not become citizens of the State, even after a democracy had been evolved. Citizenship came with birth and proper education, and, before 509 B.C., foreigners were seldom admitted to privileges in the State. Only a male citizen might hold office, protect himself in the courts, own land, or attend the public assemblies. Only a citizen, too, could participate in the religious festivals and rites, for religion was an affair of the ruling families of the State. In consequence, family, religion, and citizenship were all bound up together, and education and training were chiefly for citizenship and religious (moral) ends.
Even more, citizenship everywhere in the earlier period was a degree to be attained to only after proper education and preliminary military and political training. This not only made some form of education necessary, but confined educational advantages to male youths of proper birth. There was of course no purpose in educating any others. [5] From Figure 4 it will be seen what a small percentage of the total population this included. Education in Greece was essentially the education of the children of the ruling class to perpetuate the rule of that class.
Attica almost alone among the Greek States adopted anything approaching a liberal attitude toward the foreign-born; in Sparta, and generally elsewhere in Greece, they were looked upon with deep suspicion. As a result most of the foreign residents of Greece were to be found in Athens, or its neighboring port city (the Piraeus), attracted there by the hospitality of the people and the intellectual or commercial advantages of these cities. After Athens had become the center of world thought, many foreigners took up their residence in the city because of the importance of its intellectual life. Foreigners, though, they remained up to 509 B.C. (See page 40.) Only rarely before this date, and then only for some conspicuous act of patriotism, and by special vote of the citizens, was a foreigner admitted to citizenship. Unlike Rome, which received those of alien birth freely into its citizenship, and opened up to them large opportunities of every kind, the Greeks persistently refused to assimilate the foreign-born. Regarding themselves as a superior people, descended from the gods, they held themselves apart rather exclusively as above other peoples. This kept the blood pure, but, from the standpoint of world usefulness, it was a serious defect in Greek life. [6]
Beneath both citizens and foreign residents was a great foundation mass of working slaves, who rendered all types of menial and intellectual services. Sailors, household servants, field workers, clerks in shops and offices, accountants, and pedagogues were among the more common occupations of slaves in Greece. Many of these had been citizens and learned men of other City-States or countries, but had been carried off as captives in some war. This was a common practice in the ancient world, slavery being the lot of alien conquered people almost without exception. The composition of Attica, just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) is shown in Figure 4. The great number of slaves and foreigners is clearly seen, even though the citizenship had by this time been greatly extended. In Sparta and in other City-States somewhat similar conditions prevailed as to numbers [7] but there the slaves (Helots) occupied a lower status than in Athens, being in reality serfs, tied to and being sold with the land, and having no rights which a citizen was bound to respect.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF ATHENS AND
ATTICA, ABOUT 430 B.C. (After Gulick)]
Education, then, being only for the male children of citizens, and citizenship a degree to be attained to on the basis of education and training, let us next see in what that education consisted, and what were its most prominent characteristics and results.
II. EARLY EDUCATION IN GREECE
Some form of education that would train the son of the citizen for participation in the religious observances and duties of a citizen of the State, and would prepare the State for defense against outward enemies, was everywhere in Greece recognized as a public necessity, though its provision, nature, and extent varied in the different City-States. We have clear information only as to Sparta and Athens, and will consider only these two as types. Sparta is interesting as representing the old Greek tribal training, from which Sparta never progressed. Many of the other Greek City-States probably maintained a system of training much like that of Sparta. Such educational systems stand as undesirable examples of extreme state socialism, contributed little to our western civilization, and need not detain us long. It was Athens, and a few other City-States which followed her example, which presented the best of Greece and passed on to the modern world what was most valuable for civilization.