When they (our ancestors) began to enjoy leisure for thought, as the result of easy circumstances, and to cherish more exalted ideas with respect to worth, and especially when, in the period before and after the Persian Wars, they came to entertain a high opinion of themselves, on account of their achievements, they pursued all kinds of education, making no distinction, but beating about generally.—Aristotle.
In treating of Greek education subsequent to the introduction of letters and the establishment of schools, we shall be obliged, in the interest of clearness, to make three distinctions:—
(1) Between the educational systems of different periods.
(2) Between the educational systems of different peoples and states.
(3) Between the education actually imparted in the various states, and that recommended by theorists or philosophers.
In pursuance of the first, it will be convenient first to distinguish two main periods, the Hellenic, and the Hellenistic, and then to subdivide these into minor periods.
I. The Hellenic Period (776-338 b.c.). This includes, roughly speaking, the whole historic life of free Greece, from the date of the first Olympiad to that of the absorption of Greece into the Macedonian Empire. It naturally subdivides itself into two periods, (a) 776-450; (b) 450-338.
(a) That of the "Old Education," authoritative and puritanical, whose aim was the training of good citizens, god-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic, and brave.
(b) That of the "New Education," rationalistic and "liberal," whose aim was the training of formidable individuals, self-centred, law-despising, time-serving, and cunning.
It is in the struggle between the two systems, and in the practical triumph of the latter, that Greece loses her moral fibre; so that her citizens, weakened through sundering selfishness, fall an easy prey to the foreign invader.