The teaching is to be simple, and common to both sexes.
The teaching of the harp and of music (occupying the three years from thirteen to sixteen, after the three preceding years of teaching letters) will not be suffered to extend to any elaborate or complicated combinations. The melody will be simple: the measure grave and dignified. The imitative movement or dancing will exhibit only the gestures and demeanour suitable to the virtuous man in the various situations of life, whether warlike or pacific:[248] the subject-matter of the songs or hymns will be regulated (as above described) by censorial authority. The practice will be consecrated and unchangeable, under the supervision of a magistrate for education.[249]
[248] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 812 C-D. Still Plato allows the exhibition, under certain conditions, of low, comic, ludicrous dances; yet not by any freemen or citizens, but by slaves and hired persons of mean character. He even considers it necessary that the citizens should see such low exhibitions occasionally, in order to appreciate by contrast the excellence of their own dignified exhibitions. Of two opposites you cannot know the one unless you also learn to know the other — ἄνευ γὰρ γελοίων τὰ σπουδαῖα καὶ πάντων τῶν ἐναντίων τὰ ἐναντία μαθεῖν μὲν οὐ δυνατόν, εἰ μέλλει τις φρόνιμος ἔσεσθαι, ποιεῖν δὲ οὐκ ἂν δυνατὸν ἀμφότερα, &c. (p. 816 E).
[249] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 813 A.
All this teaching is imparted to the youth of both sexes: to boys, by male teachers — to girls, by female teachers, both of them paid. The training in gymnastic and military exercises and in arms, is also common to girls and boys.[250] Plato deems it disgraceful that the females shall be brought up timorous and helpless — unable to aid in defending the city when it is menaced, and even unmanning the male citizens by demonstrations of terror.[251]
[250] Plato, Legg. vii. pp. 813 C-E, 814-815. πολεμικὴ ὄρχησις — εἰρηνική or ἀπόλεμος ὄρχησις.
[251] Plato, Legg. vii. p. 814 B. See Æschylus, Sept. adv. Thebas, 172-220.
Rudiments of arithmetic and geometry to be taught.
We next come to arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Plato directs that all his citizens shall learn the rudiments of these sciences — not for the reason urged by most persons, because of the necessities of practical life (which reason he discards as extravagantly silly, though his master Sokrates was among those who urged it) — but because these are endowments belonging to the divine nature, and because without them no man can become a God, Dæmon, or Hero, capable of watching over mankind.[252] In Egypt elementary arithmetic and geometry were extensively taught to boys — but very little in Greece:[253] though he intimates that both in Egypt, and in the Phenician towns, they were turned only to purposes of traffic, and were joined with sordid dispositions which a good lawgiver ought to correct by other provisions. In the Platonic city, both arithmetic and geometry will be taught, so far as to guard the youth against absurd blunders about measurement, and against confusion of incommensurable lines and spaces with commensurable. Such blunders are now often made by Greeks.[254] By a good method, the teaching of these sciences may be made attractive and interesting; so that no force will be required to compel youth to learn.[255]
[252] Plato. Legg. vii. p. 812 B-C. οὗτος πάντως τῶν λόγων εὐηθέστατός ἐστι μακρῷ. In interpreting this curious passage we must remember that regularity, symmetry, exact numerical proportion, &c., are the primary characteristics of the divine agents in Plato’s view: of Uranus and the Stars, as the first of them, compare Æschyl. Prometh. 460.