Crati’nus (519-423 B.C.): called the Cup-lover from his excesses; 21 comedies; 9 prizes; with his last comedy, “the Wine-flask,” he gained the first prize, triumphing over “the Clouds” of Aristophanes.
Eu’polis: 15 plays; his first comedy was represented 429 B.C.
Crates (450 B.C.): 14 comedies; the first poet to represent drunkenness on the Athenian stage.
Meton, the Athenian astronomer (flourished 430 B.C.): founder of the Lunar Cycle of 19 solar years, which he discovered to be nearly equal to 235 revolutions of the moon round the earth. From the “Metonic Cycle” the Greeks computed their festivals; it is still used by the Western churches in fixing Easter.
Hippoc’rates (460-357 B.C.), born on the island of Cos, “the Father of Medicine:” knew little of anatomy; discovered the critical days in fevers.
NOTES ON GREEK EDUCATION, ETC.
Education recognized as all-important in ancient Greece, and even made compulsory by the great lawgivers. In Homer’s time, children taught obedience, respect for the aged, and modesty of deportment; sons instructed in the use of weapons and gymnastic exercises; daughters, in domestic economy and virtue. Homer’s epics long the chief text-books on all subjects.
Reading and writing, accomplishments of the earliest periods. An ignorant Greek an anomaly. Even among the Spartans, who affected contempt for literature, reading and writing were practised. The magistrates and their officers were provided with wooden cylinders of the same size; when one desired to communicate, he wound a strip of parchment round his cylinder and wrote his message thereon; then, removing the strip, he sent it to the other party, who was enabled to read it by rolling it upon his own cylinder in the same folds.
In the golden age, common schools were the glory of Greece; the rudiments of education everywhere taught. The importance of grammar urged by Plato, who was the first to explain the difference between nouns and verbs; articles and conjunctions distinguished by Aristotle, and also differences of number and case. The foundation of scientific grammar laid by the Stoics, who recognized eight parts of speech. Those who could afford it completed their education at the Lyceum, Academy, or some other celebrated school, often paying most extravagantly for instruction in rhetoric and philosophy. Some teachers charged their pupils as much as $2,000 apiece for a course of lectures. Foreign languages were never studied by the Greeks.