“I have,” he says, “confined my attention very largely for several years to original texts and eschewed the aid of commentaries.” This will be patent to the reader.

“As to accepted interpretations, I have, purposely and on principle, neither read nor heard much of them, since I wished, in pursuance of the bidding of Plato himself, not to receive unquestioningly the authority of those whom to hear is to believe, but to develop views and interpretations of my own. For I have always believed that education suffers immensely from the study of books about books, in preference to the study of the books themselves. M. Paul Girard’s book in French (L’Éducation Athénienne) and Grasberger’s in German (Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum), the latter of which I have only read in part, have set me on the track of authorities whom I should otherwise have missed, but I believe that my acknowledgments in the text and in the notes fully cover my direct obligations to them in other respects, although my indirect obligations to M. Girard’s stimulating book, which are great, remain unexpressed.

“An apology is, perhaps, needed for the peculiar, and not wholly consistent, spelling of the Greek words. I had meant to employ the Latinised spelling. But when I came to write Lyceum, Academy, and pedagogue, my heart failed me. For I did not wish to suggest modern music-halls, modern art, and, worst of all, modern ‘pedagogy.’ In adopting the ancient spelling I had Browning on my side. But again, when I wrote Thoukudides, my heart sank, for I could hardly recognise an old friend in such a guise. So I decided, perhaps weakly, to steer a middle course, and preserve the Latinised forms in the case of the more familiar words. Thus I put Plato, not Platon, but Menon and Phaidon.” We have adhered to this principle in the main; we need hardly say that Lakedaimon is the transliteration of a Greek word: Lacedaemonian is an English adjective. So a citizen of Troizen is a Troezenian, and of Boiotia a Boeotian. “I have,” the author concludes, “preferred Hellas and Hellene to Greece and Greek. For a rose by any other name does not always smell as sweet.”

M. J. RENDALL.

Winchester College,

March 1907.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Bibliography[xvii]
Introduction[1]

PART I
THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
Sparta and Crete[11]
CHAPTER II
Athens and the Rest of Hellas: General Introduction[42]
CHAPTER III
Athens, etc.: Primary Education[79]
CHAPTER IV
Athens, etc.: Physical Education[118]
CHAPTER V
Athens, etc.: Secondary Education—I. The Sophists[157]
CHAPTER VI
Athens, etc.: Secondary Education—II. The Permanent Schools[179]
CHAPTER VII
Athens, etc.: Tertiary Education—The Epheboi and the University[210]

PART II
THE THEORY OF EDUCATION
CHAPTER VIII
Religion and Education in Hellas[227]
CHAPTER IX
Art, Music, and Poetry[237]
CHAPTER X
Xenophon[259]

PART III
CHAPTER XI
General Essay on the Whole Subject[275]

INDEX[293]