We may be sure that in the Greek primary schools, though we hear of one assistant sometimes, the master was required to teach all the subjects. This was so not long ago in England, and still more in Ireland, where the hedge schoolmasters, but lately supplanted by the national school system (not without considerable loss), were required, and were able, to teach classics, mathematics, and the old-fashioned English. It is, indeed, clearly presupposed in all the many bequests of pious benefactors, who leave forty or sixty pounds per annum for the payment of a single master to keep a school in some remote part of the country. And at Athens, as in the days of these bequests, there was no official or state test of a master’s qualifications. Each man set up on his private account; it depended on the reputation he made whether his school was well attended. The worthy pedant in Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village” gives us a fair specimen of the better class of such men.
FOOTNOTES
[18] P. 325 C. Cf. also “Axiochus,” p. 366 E: ὁπόταν δὲ εἰς τὴν ἑπταετίαν ἀφίκῃται [τὸ νήπιον] πολλοὺς πόνους διαντλῆσαν, παιδαγωγοὶ καὶ γραμματισταὶ καὶ παιδοτρίβαι τυραννοῦντες, κ.τ.λ.
[19] 961 sq.:
λέξω τοίνυν τὴν ἀρχαίαν παιδείαν, ὡς διέκειτο,
ὅτ’ ἐγὼ τὰ δίκαια λέγων ἤνθουν καὶ σωφροσύνη νενόμιστο.
πρῶτον μὲν ἔδει παιδὸς φωνὴν γρύξαντος μηδέν’ ἀκοῦσαι·
εἶτα βαδίζειν ἐν ταῖσιν ὁδοῖς εὐτάκτως εἰς κιθαριστοῦ
τοὺς κωμήτας γυμνοὺς ἀθρόους, κεἰ κριμνώδη κατανίφοι.
εἶτ’ αὖ προμαθεῖν ᾆσμ’ ἐδίδασκεν, τὼ μηρὼ μὴ ξυνέχοντας,