“Fourthly (the most important point) he is not spoilt or puffed up nor is his head turned by success, but he continues throughout to behave like a wise man, taking less pleasure in the good things which chance has given him at birth than in the products of his own talents and intelligence.
“Those whose soul is well tuned to play its part in all these ways, those I call wise and perfect men, and declare to possess all the virtues; those I regard as truly educated.”[560]
Thus the object of Isokrates was rather to impart culture and polish to his pupils than to teach them rhetoric; it is in this point that he differs from the other professors who taught the same sort of rhetoric as he did at Athens and have now been forgotten, and from the logographoi, who taught the kind of speaking which suited the Athenian law-courts, without professing to supply anything but a technical knowledge of their particular subject.
In an Athenian trial the prosecutor and defendant had each to deliver a speech for themselves; afterwards, regular advocates might address the jury in some cases, but this was rare. So the duty of an Athenian lawyer was simply to write speeches for his clients to deliver, not to speak himself. Thus the metic Lusias, who had no right to speak in a court himself, was a famous lawyer, or logographos, speech-writer, as the Hellenes called him.
Mantitheos, say, finds himself involved in a lawsuit. He comes to Lusias and explains the circumstances. Lusias masters the details, looks up the laws on the question, and studies his client’s age, character, and so forth. He then writes a speech sufficiently dramatised to come naturally from Mantitheos’ mouth. In composing it he will simulate the indignation which he supposes his client to feel, he will adopt the nonchalant air of injured innocence which Mantitheos showed in telling the story, and so on, till the speech is a real bit of dramatisation like the speeches in a tragedy. When composed, the speech would be carried off by Mantitheos, learnt by heart, and duly recited. It is all a bit of acting on Lusias’ part. The habit of simulating feelings when writing speeches was dangerous, when the logographos came forward to speak in his own person on some question. Demosthenes never quite escapes the suspicion of acting and posing, even in his most impressive moments.
Besides these clients, the Athenian lawyers had permanent pupils, who either intended to be lawyers themselves or thought the study would help them in a political life. Their methods of teaching, as may be seen from Plato’s Phaidros, resembled those of Isokrates. In the dialogue called by his name, Phaidros is going out to walk off the effects of sitting indoors too long.[561] He had been listening to Lusias, “the cleverest speech-writer of the age,” reciting one of his speeches, on which he had spent much labour. Phaidros had made him repeat it several times, and has now borrowed the book in order to learn it by heart during his walk. Sokrates persuades him to read it aloud, in doing which he is quite carried away by its eloquence.[562] Sokrates then proceeds to criticise the style and matter of the speech,[563] and to compose one of his own on the same subject to show how it ought to be treated.
This reveals the method of teaching. The teacher, as here and in Isokrates’ case, recites a speech of his own, explaining how it was done and asking for criticism from the pupils. Then the pupil would learn it by heart and declaim it in some solitary place. On other occasions, as Sokrates does here, the master would take the speech of some rival professor and criticise it severely, composing a better speech himself. The Bousiris and Helen of Isokrates show this method. Or else the pupil replied to the teacher, or the teacher wrote two speeches on opposite sides of the question. The extant work of Antiphon and the lost work of Gorgias[564] are of this type.
Most of the Attic orators seem to have taken pupils. Isaios taught Demosthenes. Demosthenes in his turn seems to have had great popularity as a teacher. He “promises to teach young men the art of speaking”;[565] “he filled Aristarchos with empty hopes of becoming the prince of orators all in a moment”;[566] “he invited some of his pupils to come and listen to the speech On the False Embassy, promising to show them how to cheat and mislead the audience”;[567] “later on he will brag before his boys of his tricks.” These passages give an interesting picture of Demosthenes and his pupils, as seen through his opponent’s green spectacles.
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In opposition to the schools of Rhetoric stood the schools of Philosophy, leading their pupils towards the life of retirement and contemplation and away from the strenuous life of political and social activity.[568] We have seen that there were many professors of Philosophy at Athens in Isokrates’ time, charging fees of three or four mnai for their course. But only one of them is known to posterity, and he gave lessons gratis. Otherwise, Plato must be taken as a member of a class, albeit the most brilliant member. The teaching of Plato centred, as is well known, round the Akademeia. Plato possessed a house and garden, which he bequeathed to his school, between that gymnasium and Kolonos. When he and his pupils wished to be private they could withdraw into his gardens; otherwise they frequented the Akademeia, from which their school took its name. It was not every one who could obtain admission to the school, for, as Plato taught gratuitously, he could pick and choose his pupils. He expected would-be students to be well grounded in Geometry: there must have been some sort of entrance-examination. His successor, Xenokrates, finding that an applicant was ignorant of Music, Geometry, and Astronomy, told him to go away: “for you give philosophy no chance of getting a grip upon you.”[569] The inner circle of the school had their meals in common: the banquets were extremely plain. Timotheos, the Athenian general, who was accustomed to rich living, after having been a guest at one of these meals, remarked, on meeting Plato next day, “Your suppers are more pleasant on the following day than they are at the time.”[570] After the meal, a larger number of friends probably came in; this, at any rate, was a custom at the similar meetings held by the philosopher Menedemos a generation later.[571] The discourse often went on all night. There was a fixed code of rules to regulate these meals,[572] which is suggestive of Plato’s pleasantries in the Laws about the educational value of strictly regulated bouts of intoxication. But drunkenness was, of course, not allowed: Plato had a particular objection to it, and used to tell drunkards to look in the looking-glass and they would never err in that way again.[573] It offended his strict canons of physical beauty and propriety. It is interesting to note that the author of the Republic admitted women on terms of equality to this inner circle of the Akademeia, in defiance of Athenian prejudice. Lastheneia of Mantineia and Axiothea of Phlious, who dressed in male attire, are the first champions of women’s rights to a University education who appear in history.[574] The discussions of this clique were probably conducted after the model of the Platonic dialogue, and doubtless were in Plato’s mind when in the Laws he constructed his curious ethical and political debating-society for the older and wiser members of his state.