I. The Teachers
Tyro. What a delightful and magnificent school! I suppose there is not in the whole academy any part more excellent.
Spud. You judge rightly; add, also, what is of more importance, that elsewhere there are no more cultured and prudent teachers, who with such dexterity pass on their learning.
Tyro. It behoves us then to repay their trouble by attaining great knowledge.
Spud. And this indeed by great shortening of the labour of learning!
Tyro. What does the schooling cost?
Spud. You can at once give up so base and unreasonable a question. Can one in a matter of so great moment inquire as to payment? The very teachers themselves do not bargain for reward, nor is it suitable for their pupils to even think about it. For what reward could be adequate? Have you never heard the declaration of Aristotle that gods, parents, and masters can never be sufficiently recompensed? God created the whole man, the parents gave the body birth, the masters form the mind.
Tyro. What do those masters teach, and for how long?
Spud. Each one has his separate class-room and the masters are for various subjects. Some impart with labour and drudgery the whole day long the elements of the art of grammar; others take more advanced work in the same subject; others propound rhetoric, dialectic, and the remaining branches of knowledge, which are called liberal or noble arts.
Tyro. Why are they so-called?