In ordinary painting, which might be either watercolour or encaustic,[329] the first thing was to sketch in the outline (ὑπογράφειν, περιγραφή); the artist then filled in (ἀπεργάζεσθαι) the picture with his colours, with perpetual glances, now to the original, now to the copy, mixing his paints the while. Beginners would, no doubt, rub out (ἐξαλείφειν) frequently, and paint in again.
Aristotle,[330] in discussing artistic education, notices that it gave boys a good eye for appreciating art, and enabled them to exercise good taste in buying furniture, pottery, and other household requisites, which, to judge from the scanty relics, must have been masterpieces of beauty in the house of a cultivated Athenian. But still more important, it gave them “an eye for bodily beauty”:[331] which suggests that the human form, especially its proportions, formed the chief study of the art-schools. Proportion was the essence of Hellenic art; the great sculptors, as is well known, spent much time in drawing up a canon of perfect proportions for the human body. The boys may well have used their companions in the palaistrai for models, and the canons of physical proportion which they were taught by the art-master would serve to stimulate them with a desire to attain to such a perfection of body by their own athletic exercises.
[207] Lucian, Loves, 44-45.
[208] Aischin. ag. Timarch. 12; Thuc. vii. 29; Plato, Laws.
[209] Lucian, Paracite, 61.
[210] Aischin. ag. Timarch. 12.
[211] Anthol. Palat. x. 43 has been quoted as evidence that six hours’ work a day was a maximum. The epigram runs: “Six hours suffice for work; rest of the day, expressed in numerals, says ζῆθι, ‘enjoy life.’” But the point is the joke that the numerals for 7, 8, 9, 10, the later hours of the day, are ζʹ, ηʹ, θʹ, ιʹ, which spells ζῆθι. The epigram does not mean to state a fact; the joke is its only raison d’être. In any case schools are not mentioned.
[212] Herondas, Schoolmaster (iii.) 53.
[213] Mahaffy, Greek Education, p. 54.
[214] Lucian, Nekuom. 17.