Old Greek Education

by J. P. Mahaffy

Still, we find them very far behind the English in their knowledge or taste for out-of-door games, such as cricket, football, hockey, golf, etc.—games which combine chance and skill, which combine strength with dexterity, and which intensely interest the players while keeping them in the open air. Yachting, though there were regattas, was not in fashion in ancient Greece. Rowing, which they could have practised to their heart’s content, and which was of the last importance in their naval warfare, was never thought gentlemanly, and always consigned to slaves or hirelings. There are, indeed, as above quoted from Pollux, descriptions of something like football and lacrosse, but the obscurity and rarity of any allusions to them show that they are in no sense national games. Running races round a short course was one of their chief exercises, but this is no proper out-of-door game.

§ 15. Accordingly, the Germans, in seeking to base their physical education on Greek lines, seem to make the capital mistake of ignoring that kind of exercise for boys which vastly exceeds in value any training in gymnasia. The Eton and Harrow match at Lord’s is a far more beautiful sight, and far better for the performers, than the boys’ wrestling or running at Olympia. And besides the variety of exercise at a game like cricket, and the various intelligence and decision which it stimulates, a great part of the game lies not in the winning, but in the proper form of the play, in what the Greeks so highly prized as eurythmy—a graceful action not merely in dancing and ball-playing, but in the most violent physical exertion.

But the Greeks had no playgrounds beyond the palæstra or gymnasium; they had no playgrounds in our sense; and though a few proverbs speak of swimming as a universal accomplishment which boys learned, the silence of Greek literature on the subject[12] makes one very suspicious as to the generality of such training.

With this introduction, we may turn to some details as to the education of Greek boys in their palæstra.

§ 16. In one point, certainly, the Greeks agreed more with the modern English than with any other civilized nation. They regarded sport as a really serious thing. And unless it is so regarded, it will never be brought to the national perfection to which the English have brought it, or to which the Greeks are supposed to have brought it. And yet even in this point the Greeks regarded their sports differently from us, and from all nations who have adopted Semitic ideas in religion. Seriousness of the religious kind is with us quite distinct from the seriousness of sport. With the Greeks it was not, or rather seriousness was not with them an attribute of religion in any sense more than it was of ordinary life. They harmonized religion and sports, not by the seriousness of their sports so much as by the cheerfulness—a Semite, ancient or modern, would say by the levity—of their deities; for the gods, too, love sport (φιλοπαίγμονες γὰρ καὶ οἱ θεοί), says Plato in his “Cratylus,” a remarkable and thoroughly Greek utterance. The greatest feasts of the gods were celebrated by intensifying human pleasures—not merely those of the palate, according to the grosser notion of the Christian Middle Ages, but æsthetical pleasures, and that of excitement—pleasures, not of idleness, but of keen enjoyment.

§ 17. The names applied to the exercising-places indicate their principal uses. Palæstra means a wrestling-place; gymnasium originally a place for naked exercise, but the verb early lost this connotation and came to mean mere physical training. We hear that a short race-course (δρόμος) was often attached to the palæstra, and short it must have been, for it was sometimes covered in (called ξυστός), probably with a shed roof along the wall of the main enclosure.

There is no evidence to decide the point whether the boys went to this establishment at the same age that they went to school, and at a different hour of the day, or at a different age, taking their physical and mental education separately. And even in this latter case we are left in doubt which side obtained the priority. The best authorities among the Germans decide on separate ages for palæstra and school, and put the palæstra first. But in the face of many uncertainties, and some evidence the other way, the common-sense view is preferable that both kinds of instruction were given together, though we know nothing about the distribution of the day, save that both are asserted to have begun very early. Even the theoretical schemes of Plato and Aristotle do not help us here, and it is one of those many points which are now lost on account of their being once so perfectly obvious and familiar.

We here discuss the physical side first, because it is naturally consequent upon the home games, which have been described, and because the mental side will naturally connect itself with the higher education of more advanced years. And here, too, of the great divisions of exercises in the palæstra—wrestling and dancing, more properly exercises of strength and of grace—we will place athletics first, as the other naturally leads us on to the mental side.

§ 18. In order to leave home and reach the palæstra safely as well as to return, Greek boys were put under the charge of a pædagogue, in no way to be identified (as it now is) with a schoolmaster. The text “The law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ” has suffered from this mistake. The Greek pædagogue means merely the slave who had the charge of bringing his master’s sons safely to and from school, and guarding them from mischief by the way. He was often old and trusty, often old and useless, always ignorant, and never respected. He was evidently regarded by young and gay boys as a great interference to enjoyment, insisting upon punctual hours of return, and limiting that intercourse with elder boys which was so fascinating, but also so dangerous, to Greek children.

The keeper of the palæstra and trainer (παιδοτρίβης) was not appointed by the State, but (as already mentioned) took up the work as a private enterprise, not directed by, but under the supervision of, the State, in the way of police regulation. We have, indeed, in the speech of Æschines “Against Timarchus,” very stringent laws quoted to the effect that no palæstra or school might be open before or after daylight; that no one above boys’ age might enter or remain in the building; and the severest penalties, even death, were imposed on the violation of these regulations. But we know that, even if true, which is very doubtful, the text of the laws here cited became a dead letter, for it was a favorite resort of elder men to see the boys exercising. Restrictions there were, of course; a fashionable lounge could in no way serve as a strict training-school, and we know that at Sparta, even in the gymnasia, the regulation strip or go was enforced to prevent an idle crowd.