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But in one notable point their idea of education differed from that which was prevalent in most of the Hellenic States. The regular course of education in Athens and in most Hellenic States was for boys alone: no girls need apply. The women lived in almost Oriental seclusion;[112] the duty of an Athenian mother was, according to Perikles,[113] to live so retired a life that her name should never be mentioned among the men either for praise or blame. Listen to the description which an Athenian country gentleman gives of his wife.[114] “What was she likely to know when I married her? Why, she was not yet fifteen when I introduced her to my house, and she had been brought up always under the strictest supervision; as far as could be managed, she had not been allowed to see anything, hear anything, or ask any questions. Don’t you think that it was all that could be expected of her, if she knew how to take raw wool and make it into a cloak, and had seen how wool-work is served out to handmaidens?” Sokrates, however, to whom this question is addressed, seems to think that she might have learnt “from her father and mother the duties which would belong to her in after life.” These, however, in this case her husband had to teach her. He explains to her that she must see that everything has a place to itself and is always put there; she must also give out the stores, teach the slaves their duties and nurse them when they are ill, and tend the young children. The summary of the explanation is that Heaven has appointed a fair division of labour between husband and wife: the wife manages everything indoors and the husband everything out of doors. A stay-at-home husband or a gad-about wife equally offend against respectability. As a rule, apparently, the women simply sat in the house, “like slaves,” as it seemed to the ordinary athletic Hellene. Xenophon’s model husband suggests that his wife should take exercise by walking about the house to see how the supplies were given out, to inspect the arrangements of the cupboards, and to watch the washing and the wringing-out of the clothes: this exercise will give her health and an appetite. But Xenophon was an admirer of Spartan customs and the athletic Spartan women: probably these ideas would not have occurred to the ordinary Athenian husband.
Another picture may be quoted from Hellenic literature to show the extent of education which an ordinary woman received.[115] A certain Aristarchos comes to Sokrates in great distress. A number of female relatives, quite destitute, have been thrown upon his hands owing to various circumstances, and he must support them; but he has not the requisite means. Sokrates naturally suggests that he should make them work for their living. But they do not know how to, says Aristarchos. However, by dint of questioning, Sokrates elicits the fact that they can make men’s and women’s garments, and also pastry and bread. These, then, were apparently the accomplishments which an ordinary girl in Hellas, brought up without any idea of having to earn her own living, would acquire. Plato also mentions weaving and cooking as the provinces in which women excel,[116] and describes the women of Attika as “living indoors, managing the household and superintending the loom and wool-work generally.”[117]
Thus the Athenian girl spent her time indoors, learning to be a regular “Hausfrau,” skilled in weaving, cooking, and household management. She had her special maid to wait on her,[118] as her brothers had their paidagogos. She would, as a rule, be married young, and would naturally be very shy after such an upbringing; the marriage was arranged between the bridegroom and the parents, and, owing to the seclusion of the women at Athens, love-matches were well-nigh impossible. The match was mainly a question of the dowry. Xenophon[119] gives a vivid picture of one of these girl-wives gradually “growing accustomed to her husband and becoming sufficiently tame to hold conversation with him.” To keep their beauty under such conditions they employed rouge and white, and high-heeled shoes. Such mothers would be quite incapable of giving any literary or musical education to their children; hence the boys went away to school as soon as possible. Their school-life usually began when they were about six years old, the exact age being left to the parents’ choice.[120] Before this, they learnt in the nursery the various current fables and ballads, and the national mythology.[121] “As soon as the child understands what is said, the nurse and the mother and the paidogogos, yes, and the father himself, strive with one another in improving its character, in every word and deed showing it what is just and what is unjust, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is holy and what is unholy. It is always ‘Do this’ and ‘Don’t do that.’ If a child is disobedient, it is corrected with threats and blows.”[122] Besides this purely moral training there might, no doubt, be a certain amount of technical or of literary instruction at home,[123] and bits of poetry might be learnt. Up to this age boys and girls lived together.
The sons of rich parents apparently went to school earliest: their poorer fellow-citizens went later.[124] This was natural. The poor could not keep their sons at school for a long time, for they wanted their services in the shop or on the farm, and the fees were a burden: so they did not send them till they were old enough to pick up instruction quickly. The rich, on the other hand, to whom money was no object, sent their boys to school at an early age, when they could do little more than look on, while their elders worked. Aristotle commends this custom, and imposes two years of such “playing at school” upon the boys of his ideal State.[125]
The ordinary system of primary education at Athens consisted of three parts, presided over respectively by the “grammatistes,” “kitharistes,” and “paidotribes.”[126] The grammatistes taught reading, writing, and some arithmetic, and made his pupils read and learn by heart the great poets, Homer and Hesiod and others. The kitharistes taught the boys how to play the seven-stringed lyre and sing to it the works of the lyric poets, which they would incidentally have to learn. The paidotribes presided over their physical development in a scientific way; he taught them wrestling, boxing, the pankration, running, jumping, throwing the diskos and javelin, and various other exercises; his school-room was the palaistra. To this triple system some boys added drawing and painting;[127] but this subject seems to have been an extra till late in the fourth century. Literature, music, and athletics composed the ordinary course at Athens.
Which of the three branches of education began first? Probably they were all taught simultaneously. The order in which they are usually mentioned does not point to a fixed sequence. Letters were naturally mentioned first, because all citizens alike learned this subject. Gymnastics were put last, because, owing to the public gymnasia, these exercises were carried on long after the other schooling had ceased. Moreover, most of the recognised exercises of the palaistra were not taught to small boys; from the nature of the exercises and from the pictures on the vases it may be deduced that the average boy did not learn them till his twelfth year at the earliest. But physical training of an easier sort of course commenced much earlier, and boys seem to have attended a palaistra from their sixth year onwards to receive it. Both Plato and Aristotle demand that it should begin several years before any intellectual instruction; and Plato, making athletics such as shooting and riding begin at six, defers letters till ten and lyre-playing till thirteen. Gymnastics would naturally occupy a part of the day for a healthy young Hellene during the whole time from his sixth year till manhood. It is thus that the Charmides mentions “quite tiny boys” as present in the palaistra, as well as older lads and young men.
Lyre-playing may have been deferred, as a harder subject, till the boy had learned letters for several years; but the seven-stringed lyre, with the simple old Hellenic music, was probably not a very difficult instrument to master. The chief factor which determined the arrangement of subjects in an ordinary family was no doubt the paidagogos. If there was only one son, he could go to whatever school his parents pleased; but if there were several, elders and youngers had all to go to the same school at the same time, for there was only one paidagogos to a whole family as a rule, and he could never allow any of his charges to go out of his sight.
That the three subjects were usually taught simultaneously may be inferred from a passage of Xenophon. “In every part of Hellas except Sparta,” he says, “those who claim to give their sons the best education, as soon as ever the child understands what is said to him, at once make one of their servants his paidagogos, and at once send him off to school to learn letters and music and the exercises of the Palaistra.”[128] The emphasis upon the word “at once” certainly implies that the three subjects began simultaneously.
On the vases letters and music are seen being taught side by side in the same school; this was a convenient and natural arrangement. Writing-tablets and rulers are also seen suspended on the walls of music-schools and palaistrai, and lyres on the walls of letter-schools[129]; which suggests that the boys went from one building to another in the day, taking their property with them. Plato states that three years apiece was a reasonable time for learning letters and the lyre.[130] The eight years between six and fourteen, the ordinary time devoted at Athens in the fourth century to the primary triple course, would give space for these six years, with two years to spare for elaboration. Gymnastics are meant to go on during the whole period in Plato, and so do not require a special allowance of time to themselves.