At table, too, no stimulating dishes,
Snatched from their elders, such as fish or anis,
Parsley or radishes or thrushes, roused
The slumbering passions.”[[542]]
The object of sending boys to school was twofold: first to cultivate and harmonise their minds by arts and literature; secondly, so to occupy them that no time could be allowed for evil thoughts and habits. On this account, Aristotle enumerating Archytas’ rattle among the principal toys of children, denominates education the rattle of boys.[[543]] In order, too, that its effect might be the more sure and permanent, no holidays[[544]], or vacations appear to have been allowed, while irregularity or lateness of attendance was severely punished.[[545]] The theories broached by Montagne, Locke, and others, that boys are to be kept in order by reason and persuasion were not anticipated by the Athenians.[[546]] They believed that to reduce the stubborn will to obedience, and enforce the wholesome laws of discipline, masters must be armed with the power of correction, and accordingly their teachers and gymnasiarchs checked with stripes[[547]] the slightest exhibition of stubbornness or indocility.[[548]]
Nor did their pædagogues[[549]] or governors behave towards them with less strictness. These were persons,—slaves for the most part,—who at Athens as in the rest of Greece, Sparta not excepted, were from the earliest ages intrusted with the care of boys, and whose ministry could on no account be dispensed with. By Plato[[550]] even these precautions were deemed insufficient. In his ideal state he would have the pædagogues themselves, as at Sparta, under the strictest inspection, making it the duty of every citizen to have an eye upon them, and arming him with the power to correct their delinquencies as well as those of the boys under their charge. There was to be, moreover, a general inspector intrusted with authority to punish neglect, by whichsoever of the parties committed. Upon these points the views of the Athenians were unquestionably judicious, for since boys did not amongst them pass at once from the hands of their mothers and domestic guardianship into those of the state as at Sparta, such governors were necessary to preserve their manners from defilement and contamination.[[551]] Their principal duty consisted in leading the lad to and from school, in attending him to the theatre, to the public games, to the forum, and wherever[wherever] else it was thought fit he should go.[[552]] It has been by some conjectured that while the boys continued under the care of the schoolmaster the governors remained in the house, or in a building adjoining denominated the pædagogeion, to await their return; but the inference, drawn chiefly from the name of the edifice, is erroneous; pædagogeion was employed to signify the school itself,[[553]] and we have the testimony of Plato to prove that the pædagogue having delivered the boy to the didaskalos, usually returned to his master’s house.
On the character of these governors[[554]] antiquity appears to have transmitted us more satire than information. If we may credit some writers, it was not merely slaves who were intrusted with the care of boys, but often the meanest and vilest of slaves,—base in mind, depraved in manners,—whose guardianship, when they chanced to be crabbed and morose, could be no other than disgusting to their charges; and, when inclined to indulgence, most pernicious. Nay, were they themselves corrupt, what could be of more evil tendency than their own example? They who take this view of the matter appear to me illogical and inconsistent.[[555]] Though aware that these men were chosen by the parents to preserve their children from bad example, from the infection of corrupt manners, from the allurements of vicious companions, these writers persuade themselves that they voluntarily gave them as companions and guardians men worse than whom could not be found. It is more reasonable to conclude that when these pædagogues proved unworthy of the trust reposed in them they were sufficient masters of hypocrisy to conceal their vices at home, and only revealed themselves to their young masters gradually as their lessons produced their evil fruits. Thus, it is clear, that the father whom the comic writer Plato, in his Fellow Deceiver,[[556]] introduced reproaching the pædagogue who had corrupted his son, knew nothing of his evil ways when he delivered the lad to his keeping.
“The youth, O wretch, whom I intrusted to thee
Thou hast perverted, teaching him vile habits
Once stranger to his mind; for now he drinks