Fourteen did not, however, represent an exact point at which it was compulsory to leave the primary school. Sons of the poor left earlier; rich or unoccupied Athenians might remain later: Sokrates even attended a lyre-school among the boys when he was middle-aged. The primary schoolmasters started advanced classes in astronomy and mathematics to suit elder pupils.[135] In the palaistrai there were separate classes of boys and lads, who were only supposed to meet on feast-days;[136] in the Charmides, however, grown men, lads, boys, and quite tiny boys are all exercising together.
Many lads, especially in earlier times, did not attend the schools at all, but gave their time to gymnastics and whatever else they pleased.[137] Xenophon relates this as one of the demerits of the Athenian system.[138]
The mental attainments of a lad who is apparently but little over fourteen are sketched in Plato’s Lusis. The lad Lusis knows how to read and write, and how to string and play the lyre. He recognises a quotation from Homer, and has even come across the “prose treatises of the very wise, who say that like must always be friendly to like; these are the men who reason and write about the Universe and Nature.”[139]
This secondary education, beginning soon after fourteen, was only for the rich: the poor could not afford to keep their sons away from the farm or trade any longer. It might be scattered over the whole of the next six or seven years; but there was a serious interruption, which usually terminated it. At eighteen the young Athenian became in the eye of the law an ephebos and was called out to undergo two years of military training. During this period of conscription it was no doubt possible, especially in the laxer days of the fourth century, to do some intellectual work; but Plato is probably only accepting the usual custom when he frees the epheboi of his State from all mental studies and makes them give their whole energies to military and gymnastic training. And when the ephebos returned to civil life, he was a full citizen and was hardly likely to return to school; he might attend an occasional lecture or so, but that was all.
Thus secondary education usually occupied the years between fourteen and eighteen, although the latter limit was in no way definitely fixed, and the same subjects might be studied at any age. In earlier days no doubt lads spent their time in continuing their musical studies: primary education could be conducted in a more leisurely fashion when there was still little to be learnt, and the lyre may have been deferred till this age, as Plato in similar circumstances defers it in the Laws. But in the days of Perikles knowledge began to increase and boys had more to learn. So the lyre was crowded into the first period of education, and a new series of secondary subjects arose. It was these years which were usually devoted to the four years’ course which was customary in the school of Isokrates. Before this date the time was, as a rule, spent in attending the lectures of the wandering Sophists or in picking up a smattering of philosophy. Among the subjects which thus formed a part of secondary education were mathematics of various kinds, more advanced literary criticism, a certain amount of natural history and science, a knowledge of the laws and constitution of Athens, a small quantity of philosophy, ethical, political, and metaphysical, and above all, rhetoric. Plato in his Republic, developing this Athenian system of secondary education, assigns to the years immediately preceding eighteen the theory of numbers, geometry, plane and solid, kinetics and harmonics, and expressly excludes dialectic as more suitable to a later age;[140] in the Laws, prescribing for the whole population, not for a few selected intellects, he orders practical arithmetic, geometry, and enough astronomy to make the calendar intelligible. The pseudo-Platonic Axiochos[141] ascribes to Prodikos the statement that “when a child grows older, he endures the tyranny of mathematicians, teachers of tactics, and ‘critics.’” These last are the professors of that curious criticism of poetry which is found, for instance, in the Protagoras as a subject of the lectures of that Sophist as well as of Hippias.
At eighteen the young Athenian partially came of age. He then had to submit to a two years’ course of military training, of which the first year was spent in Athens and the second in the frontier forts and in camp. During this period he probably had little time for intellectual occupations. But when the military power of Athens collapsed under the Macedonian dominion, the military duties of the epheboi became voluntary, and their training was replaced by regular courses of philosophy and literature. The military system became a University, attended by a few young men of wealth and position and a good many foreigners. As the forerunner of the first University, the two years’ training of the epheboi may fitly receive the name of Tertiary Education, in spite of the fact that till the third century it involved only military instruction.
Thus we have Athenian education divided into three stages: Primary from six to fourteen, Secondary from fourteen to eighteen, and Tertiary from eighteen to twenty; while gymnastic training extended over the whole period.
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Of these three stages the third alone was compulsory and provided by the State. The second was entirely voluntary, and only the richest and most leisured boys applied themselves to it. Gymnastics of some sort were rendered almost obligatory by the liability of every citizen to military and naval service at a moment’s notice; but they needed little encouragement. Of the primary subjects, letters were probably compulsory by law, and music was almost invariably taught. An old law, ascribed to Solon,[142] enacted that every boy should learn swimming and his letters; after which, the poorer might turn their attention to trade or farming, while the richer passed on to learn music, riding, gymnastics, hunting, and philosophy. In the Kriton of Plato the personified Laws of Athens, recounting to Sokrates the many services which they had done him, mention that they had “charged his father to educate him in Music and Letters.”[143] But the Laws in Hellas include the customs, as well as the constitution, of a State. It was certainly customary for nearly every citizen at Athens to learn some music; but it was not compulsory. We meet no Athenian in literature who is ignorant of his letters; we meet several who know no music. In Aristophanes, Demosthenes and Nikias are on the lookout for the most vulgar and low-class man in Athens, in order that he may oust Kleon from popular favour, by outdoing him in vulgarity. They find a sausage-seller. But even this man knows his letters, though not very well.[144] Of music, however, he is ignorant, and he has never attended the lessons of a paidotribes,[145] though Kleon seems to expect him to have done so. Kleon, who is represented as an utter boor, is yet said to have attended a lyre-school.[146] In the Theages[147] literature and lyre-playing and athletics are mentioned as the ordinary education of a gentleman. In fiercely democratic Athens every parent was eager to bring up his sons as gentlemen, and no doubt sent them through the whole course if he could possibly afford it. But the State attitude towards education, as distinct from the voluntary customs of the citizens, may be summarised in the words of Sokrates to Alkibiades: “No one, so to speak, cares a straw how you or any other Athenian is brought up.”[148]
The schoolmasters opened their schools as private enterprises, fixing for themselves the fees and the subjects taught. The parents chose what they thought a suitable school, according to their means and the subjects which they wished their sons to learn. Thus Sokrates says to his eldest son, Lamprokles,[149] “When boys seem old enough to learn anything, their parents teach them whatever they themselves know that is likely to be useful to them; subjects which they think others better qualified to teach they send them to school to learn, spending money upon this object.” This suggests that the poor may frequently have passed on their own knowledge of letters to their sons without the expense of a school. But all this was a private transaction between parent and teacher. The State interfered with the matter only so far as to impose certain moral regulations on the schools and the gymnasia, to fix the hours of opening and closing, and so forth, and to suggest that every boy should be taught his letters.