The teaching of the elementary stages of Letters, that is, the three R’s, was, as will be shown later on, cheaply obtained, and was within the reach of the poorest. Music and athletics would naturally be more expensive, for they required much greater study and talents upon the part of their teachers. The State did take some steps to make these branches of education cheaper, and so throw them open to a larger number.
Gymnasia and palaistrai were built at public expense,[150] that any one might go and exercise himself without charge. These buildings were also open to spectators, so that any one could acquire at any rate a rudimentary knowledge of boxing, wrestling, and the other branches of athletics, by watching his more proficient fellow-citizens practising them. The epheboi received instruction in athletic exercises at the cost of the State. But the children, so far as they received physical training in schools, must have received it in private palaistrai; their lessons are described as taking place “in the house of the paidotribes,” ἐν παιδοτρίβου—an idiom which always implies ownership or special rights; and the majority of palaistrai were private buildings, called by their owners’ names. Thus we hear of the palaistrai of Siburtios, of Taureas,[151] and so forth: Siburtios and Taureas were no doubt the paidotribai who taught there. In a later age, when the boys of different palaistrai ran torch races against one another, the palaistra of Timeas is victorious on two occasions, that of Antigenes once.[152]
By the system of leitourgiai rich citizens were made chargeable for the expenses of the epheboi of their tribe who were training for the torch races. These races seem to have been the only branch of athletics which was thus endowed; however, they were numerous, even in the smaller country districts, so that many epheboi must have profited by this free training.[153] “Leitourgiai” also provided free instruction in chorus-dancing (which included singing as well as dancing) for such boys as were selected for competition. The rich “choregos” appointed for the year had to produce a chorus of boys belonging to his tribe for some festival, paying all the expenses of teaching and training them himself.[154] It is to this free school that the Solonic law refers when it mentions the “joint attendance of the boys and the dithyrambic choruses”; for it goes on to state that the ordinance with regard to this matter was that the “choregos” should be over forty.[155] In Demosthenes,[156] a certain Mantitheos, who had not been acknowledged by his father at the usual time, “attended school among the boys of the Hippothontid tribe to learn chorus-dancing”: had he been acknowledged, he would have gone to the Acamantid, his father’s tribe. No doubt, if the choregos was keen about gaining a victory, he would give a trial to more than the fifty boys required for a dithyrambic contest. In any case, provided that all the tribes competed, this one contest (and there were several in the course of a year) gave a free education to 500 boys. Xenophon notices that it was the “demos,” the poor majority, who mainly got the advantage of free training under gumnasiarchoi and choregoi:[157] the rich naturally preferred to send their boys to more select schools.[158]
Thus the more elementary stages of letters alone were compulsory at Athens, but music and gymnastics were almost universally taught, and the cost of instruction in these subjects was reduced in various ways by State action: the greater part might be learned for nothing. But parents needed little compulsion or encouragement to get their children taught. So much did the Hellenes regard education as a necessity for their boys, that when the Athenians were driven from their homes by Xerxes, and their women and children crossed over to Troizen, the hospitable Troizenians provided their guests with schoolmasters, so that not even in such a crisis might the boys be forced to take a holiday.[159] And when Mitulene wished to punish her revolted allies in the most severe way possible, she prevented them from teaching their children letters and music.[160]
Of State action with regard to education in Hellas elsewhere than in Sparta, Crete, and Athens, little is known. But the Chalcidian cities in Sicily and Italy are said to have provided literary education at public expense and under public supervision.[161] The law enacting this is ascribed to the great lawgiver, Charondas, and, although he is a somewhat shadowy figure,[162] there must have been some foundation for the story, at any rate at a later date. During the Macedonian period kings and other rich men often bequeathed large sums of money to their favourite cities, in order to endow the educational system. We hear of this happening in Teos and at Delphi: in these places the parents, if they paid any fees at all, cannot have paid much. But there is no authority for any such endowments during the period which we are considering.
* * * * *
But if education was neither enforced nor assisted to any considerable degree by the State, it was certainly encouraged by the prizes which were offered. Every city, and probably most villages, had local competitions annually, and in many cases more frequently still, in which some of the “events” were reserved for citizens, while others were open to all comers. There were separate prizes for different ages; the ordinary division was into boys and grown men, an intermediate class of “the beardless” being sometimes added. But in some Attic inscriptions the boys are divided into three groups, and in Chios the epheboi were so distributed.
These competitions were no doubt largely athletic. But music was usually provided for as well, and in many places there were literary competitions also. At Athens the different φρατρίαι seem to have offered prizes annually on the Koureotis day of the Apatouria to the boys who recited best, the piece for recitation being chosen by each competitor. Kritias took part in the competition when ten years old.[163] From Teos we have a list of prizemen, belonging, it is true, to a later date; but it may be quoted, to give some idea of what the subjects might be.[164]
| Senior Class (by age). |
| For rhapsody, Zoïlos, son of Zoïlos. |
| For reading, Zoïlos, son of Zoïlos. |
Middle Class. |
| For rhapsody, Metrodoros, son of Attalos. |
| For reading, Dionusikles, son of Metrodoros. |
| For general knowledge, Athenaios, son of Apollodoros. |
| For painting, Dionusios, son of Dionusios. |
Junior Class. |
| For rhapsody, Herakles. |
| For reading. |
| For caligraphy. |
| For torch race. |
| For playing lyre with fingers. |
| For playing lyre with plektron. |
| For singing to lyre. |
| For reciting tragic verse (tragedy). |
| For reciting comedy. |
| For reciting lyric verse. |
From Chios we have the following[165]:—