Wholly different from these, however, were the fables[[526]] properly so called, which, invented apparently by Hesiod,[[527]] (at least his Hawk and Nightingale is the oldest example extant in Hellenic literature,) were afterwards sprinkled by the greatest poets, through their writings, or spontaneously uttered in pressing emergencies to warn their countrymen against the approaches of tyranny. Archilochos’ Eagle and Fox[[528]] was famous throughout antiquity, as was likewise the Horse and the Stag, related by Stesichoros[[529]] to the people of Himera, to put them on their guard against the Machiavellian policy of Gelon. But the most complete, perhaps, of these ancient compositions is the fable of the lion, delivered by Eumenes to the Macedonian generals under his order, when they had been tampered with by Antigonos, who would have persuaded them to disband.[[530]]

“It is said,” observed the Prince, “that once upon a time a lion falling in love with a young maiden came to make proposals of marriage to her father. The old man replied that he was quite ready to bestow on him his daughter upon one condition, namely, that he should pluck out his teeth and his claws, for that he feared his majesty might upon the wedding night forget himself and unwittingly destroy the bride. To these terms the lion consented, and allowed his teeth and claws to be pulled out, upon which the father seeing he had lost the only things which rendered him terrible fell upon him with a club and beat him to death.” The Æsopic fables[[531]] which Socrates a few days before his death amused himself by turning into verse,[[532]] are known to us solely by comparatively modern imitations, and of those which were denominated Sybaritic we know nothing[[533]] beyond the name; for though one scholiast informs us that the Sybaritic fables brought men upon the scene, as the Æsopic did animals, another states the direct contrary. In the earlier and ruder ages of Greece, however, these compositions were in great repute, as they are still among the people of the East. To the infancy of nations as of individuals the wisdom they contain is, in fact, always palatable; for which reason they were highly esteemed by Martin Luther as particularly adapted to the spirit of his times.

Doubtless we know too little of how the foundation of the republican character was laid in the ancient commonwealths; but it was laid by woman, and for centuries cannot have been laid amiss, as the glorious superstructure of virtue and patriotism erected upon it fully demonstrates. On this point we must reject the testimony of Plato’s academic dream. The historic fields of Marathon, Platæa, Thermopylæ, and a thousand others confute his fanciful theorising, proving incontestably that the love of glory and independence[independence] could, in the very polities which lie least esteemed, achieve triumphs unknown to the subjects of other governments.

At seven years[[534]] old boys were removed from the harem and sent under the care of a governor to a public school, which, from the story of Bedreddin Hassan, we find to have been formerly the practice among the Arabs, even for the sons of distinguished men and Wezeers. “When seven years had passed over him his grandfather, (Shemseddeen, Wezeer of the Sultan of Egypt,) committed him to a schoolmaster, whom he charged to educate him with great care.”[[535]]

Mischievous no doubt the boys of Hellas were, as boys will everywhere be, and many pranks would they play in spite of the crabbed old slaves set over them by their parents; on which account, probably, it is that Plato considers boys, of all wild beasts the most audacious, plotting, fierce and intractable.[[536]] But the urchins now found that it was one thing to nestle under mamma’s wing at home, and another to delve under the direction of a didaskalos, and at school-hours, after the bitter roots of knowledge. For the school-boys of Greece tasted very little of the sweets of bed after dawn. “They rose with the light,” says Lucian, “and with pure water washed away the remains of sleep, which still lingered on their eyelids.”[[537]] Having breakfasted on bread and fruit, to which through the allurements of their pædagogues they sometimes added wine,[[538]] they sallied forth to the didaskaleion, or schoolmaster’s lair as the comic poets jocularly termed it,[[539]] summer and winter, whether the morning smelt of balm, or was deformed by sleet or snow, drifting like meal from a sieve down the rocks of the Acropolis.

Aristophanes has left us a picture, dashed off with his usual grotesque vigour, of a troop of Attic lads marching on a winter’s morning to school.[[540]]

“Now will I sketch the ancient plan of training,

When justice was in vogue and wisdom flourished.

First, modesty restrained the youthful voice

So that no brawl was heard. In order ranged,