CHAPTER VII
TERTIARY EDUCATION
When he reached eighteen years, the young Athenian partly came of age. His property passed into his possession, if he had been a ward, and he could now prosecute his guardians if they had defrauded him. But he could not appear in any other sort of lawsuit, or take part in the National Assembly, nor could he be taxed, till he was twenty.
First of all, his deme or parish had to examine him to see if he was of proper parentage and of the requisite age.[612] If they rejected him, the case came before the regular Court of Athens. In the event of being again rejected, if it was on the score of age, he returned to the ranks of the boys to wait a further trial, but if on the score of parentage, he might be sold as a slave and his price put into the Treasury. If his deme accepted him he was again examined by the Boule of 500 at Athens, who might rescind their decision.[613]
When he had passed all these preliminary examinations, the boy was inscribed upon the roll of his deme, the ληξιαρχικὸν γραμματεῖον, and became in the eyes of the law an ephebos. It was then incumbent upon him to take a solemn oath in the temple of Aglauros, in the following terms[614]:—
“I will not disgrace my sacred weapons nor desert the comrade who is placed by my side. I will fight for things holy and things profane, whether I am alone or with others. I will hand on my fatherland greater and better than I found it. I will hearken to the magistrates, and obey the existing laws and those hereafter established[615] by the people. I will not consent unto any that destroys or disobeys the constitution, but will prevent him, whether I am alone or with others. I will honour the temples and the religion which my forefathers established. So help me Aglauros, Enualios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone.”
This oath and ceremony must be ancient. The orator Lukourgos[616] includes them among “the ancient laws and customs of the original founders,” and claims that the oath of the Hellenic army at Plataea in 479 was imitated from the oath of the Athenian epheboi. By this solemn act the ephebos accepted the duties and responsibilities of an Athenian citizen. So in Plato’s dialogue, the Kriton,[617] where the Laws of Athens are introduced as pleading their cause, they say, “When any one has passed his examination, and has seen the constitution of the city and us, the Laws of Athens, we bid him, if he is dissatisfied with us, to take what is his and go whither he pleases. But if he stays, we consider that he has promised to obey us.” For there is good evidence, besides that which is afforded by the above passage, to show that Athenian boys were taught what the laws of their city were, before they promised to obey them. Thus Aischines says: “When any one is inscribed upon the muster roll of his deme and knows the laws of the city.”[618] Plato puts it even more definitely: “When the children leave school,[619] the city compels them to learn the laws.”[620] So the ephebos knew what he was doing when he swore to obey the law of the land.
Meanwhile the tribes had met and each chosen three men of over forty years of age, from whom the assembled people elected one, to look after the epheboi of each tribe.[621] These supervisors were called Sophronistai or Moderators. That these Moderators probably dated back to Solonic times, and possessed a general, but rarely exercised, supervision over all education, I have endeavoured to show in Chapter II. Their province was the morality and discipline of the epheboi, whose military training was naturally controlled by the military officers, the Generals and Taxiarchoi; later, however, when the epheboi ceased to be a military body, these latter functionaries ceased to have any connection with them. Towards the close of the fourth century the people elected a single Kosmetes or Chancellor for the epheboi; he is first mentioned, if a probably spurious passage in the Axiochos is rejected, in an inscription, in which he is associated with the epheboi and Moderators of the year in awarding a crown to Theophanes in the Archonship of Nikostratos (333-332 B.C.).[622] But in 280 B.C., in the list of the officers and masters of the epheboi, the Kosmetes is mentioned, but no Sophronistai:[623] at that time the epheboi were too few to need an officer to each tribe.
These newly appointed magistrates took the epheboi of their year in charge at once. The young recruits were first taken round the temples, and then put into garrison in Mounuchia and Peiraieus. They had masters and under-masters appointed for them by the Sophronistai to teach them the use of heavy arms, and also of the bow, javelin, and catapult. There were also two Paidotribai, for gymnastics. These masters, together with later introductions such as literary teachers, chaplains, doctors, and so forth, appear regularly in the inscriptions after 300 B.C.[624] The Sophronistai were paid a drachma a day for their services. They also received four obols for every ephebos in their tribe, out of which they had to provide the rations, etc.; the ephebos did not handle the money himself. Each tribe messed together.[625]