When he writes a letter of exhortation to his grandson we feel that though there is something of the Greek spirit of pleasure in education, and though he says[559] that the Muses, too, must play,
Et satis est puero memori legisse libenter,
et cessare licet....
and again:
Disce libens ...
... studium puerile fatiscit,
laeta nisi austeris varientur, festa profestis,[560]
yet there is an acquiescence in an almost savage system of control. Surliness and brutality on the part of the master is accepted as one of the ills that flesh is heir to. It was not always so, he says:
sic neque Peliaden terrebat Chiron Achillem:[561]
Chiron used to guide his pupils with gentle words (though Juvenal represents Achilles as trembling before the rod).[562] But that state of things belongs to a mythological age. The only thing to do in the circumstances is to remember Vergil’s dictum: ‘Degeneres animos timor arguit’, and face the master as a brave warrior would his enemy.[563]