Though the Greek word music (μουσική) came in later times to have an extended meaning, in the epoch of which we are treating, it included only music in our sense, and poetry, two things which were not then separated. Aristophanes, as late as b.c. 422, can still count upon an audience ready to laugh at the idea of giving instruction in astronomy and geometry, as things too remote from human interests (Clouds, vv 220 sqq.). The poetry consisted chiefly of the epics of Homer and Hesiod, the elegiacs of Tyrtæus, Solon, Theognis, etc., the iambics of Archilochus, Simonides, etc., and the songs of the numerous lyrists, Terpander, Arion, Alcæus, Alcman, Sappho, Simonides, etc. The music was simple, meant to "sweeten" (ἡδύνειν) the words and bring out their meaning. In fact, the music and the poetry were always composed together, so that the poet was necessarily also a musician. What we call "harmony" was unknown in Greek music at all times, and instrumental music was almost entirely confined to solo-playing.
In treating of Athenian, and, indeed, of all Greek, education, it is of the utmost importance to realize that the intellectual and moral part of it has music and poetry for its starting-point. This is the core round which everything else gathers; this is what determines its character, influence, and ideal. Culture, as distinguished from nature, is the material of Athenian intellectual and moral education; and by this is meant, not the history or theory of culture, as it might be set forth in prose, but culture itself, as embodied in the ideals and forms of music-wedded poetry, appealing to the emotions that stir the will, as well as to the intelligence that guides it.
By making the works of the great poets of the Greek people the material of their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the ancient poetry of Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and characters, its accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its manliness and pathos, its directness and simplicity, its piety and wisdom, its respect for law and order, combined with its admiration for personal initiative and worth, furnished, in the hands of a careful and genial teacher, a material for a complete education such as could not well be matched even in our own day. What instruction in ethics, politics, social life, and manly bearing could not find a fitting vehicle in the Homeric poems, not to speak of the geography, the grammar, the literary criticism, and the history which the comprehension of them involved? Into what a wholesome, unsentimental, free world did these poems introduce the imaginative Greek boy! What splendid ideals of manhood and womanhood did they hold up for his admiration and imitation! From Hesiod he would learn all that he needed to know about his gods and their relation to him and his people. From the elegiac poets he would derive a fund of political and social wisdom, and an impetus to patriotism, which would go far to make him a good man and a good citizen. From the iambic poets he would learn to express with energy his indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and tyranny, while from the lyric poets he would learn the language suitable to every genial feeling and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or singing all these, how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his sense of poetic beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed! With what a treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund of epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! How familiar he would be with the character and ideals of his nation, how deeply in sympathy with them! And all this was possible even before the introduction of letters. With this event a new era in education begins. The boy now not only learns and declaims his Homer, and sings his Simonides or Sappho, he learns also to write down their verses from dictation, and so at once to read and to write. This, indeed, was the way in which these two (to us) fundamental arts were acquired. As soon as the boy could trace with his finger in sand, or scratch with a stylus on wax, the forms of the letters, and combine them into syllables and words, he began to write poetry from his master's dictation. The writing-lesson of to-day was the reading, recitation, or singing-lesson of to-morrow. Every boy made his own reading-book, and, if he found it illegible, and stumbled in reading, he had only himself to blame. The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, laid the greatest stress upon reading well, reciting well, and singing well, and the youth who could not do all the three was looked upon as uncultured. Nor could he hide his want of culture, since young men were continually called upon, both at home and at more or less public gatherings, to perform their part in the social entertainment.
The strictly musical instruction of this period was almost entirely confined to simple, strong Doric airs, sung to an accompaniment which was played on an instrument closely resembling the modern guitar (λύρα, κίθαρις). Complicated and wind instruments were unpopular, and the softer or more thrilling kinds of music, Lydian, Phrygian, etc., had not yet been introduced, at least into schools. Anything like the skill and execution demanded of professional players, who were usually slaves or foreigners, was considered altogether unworthy of a free man and a citizen, and was therefore not aimed at. Fond as the Athenians were of the fine arts, they always held professional skill in any of them, except poetry and musical composition, to be incompatible with that dignity and virtue which they demanded of the free citizen. A respectable Athenian would no more have allowed his son to be a professional musician than he would have allowed him to be a professional acrobat.
It is difficult for us to understand the way in which the Greeks regarded music. Inferior as their music was to ours in all technical ways, it exerted an influence upon their lives of which we can form but a faint conception. To them it was a dæmonic power, capable of rousing or assuaging the passions, and hence of being used for infinite good or evil. No wonder, then, that in their education they sought to employ those kinds which tended to "purgation" (κάθαρσις), and to avoid those that were exciting, sentimental, or effeminate! No wonder that they disapproved of divorcing music from the intellectual element contained in the words, and allowing it to degenerate into a mere emotional or sensual luxury! Music the Greeks regarded, not indeed as a moral force (a phrase that to them, who regarded morality as a matter of the will, would have conveyed no meaning), but as a force whose office it was, by purging and harmonizing the human being, to make him a fit subject for moral instruction. Music, they held, brought harmony, first into the human being himself, by putting an end to the conflict between his passions and his intelligent will, and then, as a consequence, into his relations with his fellows. Harmony within was held to be the condition of harmony without.
In the period of which I am speaking, no distinction was yet made between music and literature (γράμματα), both being taught by the citharist (κιθαριστής). Indeed, the term for teacher of literature (γραμματιστής) was not then invented. But the citharist not only taught literature: he also taught the elements of arithmetic, a matter of no small difficulty, considering the clumsy notation then in use. This was done by means of pebbles, a box of sand, or an abacus similar in principle to that now used by billiard players to keep count of their strokes.
As to the schoolrooms in ancient Athens, they were apparently simple in the extreme; indeed, rather porches open to sun and wind than rooms in the modern sense. They contained little or no furniture. The boys sat upon the ground or upon low benches, like steps (βάθρα), while the teacher occupied a high chair (θρόνος). The benches were washed, apparently every day, with sponges. The only decorations permitted in the schoolrooms, it seems, were statues or statuettes of the Muses and Apollo, and the school festivals or exhibitions were regarded as festivals in honor of these. Indeed, in Greece every sort of festival was regarded as an act of worship to some divinity. The chief school festival seems to have been the Musēa (μουσεῖα), at which the boys recited and sang.
(β) Gymnastics or Bodily Training.
Under the term Gymnastics (γυμναστική), the Greeks generally included everything relating to the culture of the body. The ends which the Athenians sought to reach through this branch of education were health, strength, adroitness, ease, self-possession, and firm, dignified bearing. A certain number of boys, intending to take part in the Olympic and other great games, were allowed to train as athletes under a gymnast (γυμναστής, ἀλείπτης) in the public gymnasia, and under the direction of the State; but these were exceptions. The athlete was not an ideal person at Athens, as he was at Thebes and Sparta.
Gymnastic exercises were conducted partly in the palæstras, or wrestling schools, partly on the race-courses, both of which were under the direction of professional trainers (παιδοτρίβαι). In early times, the palæstra and race-course were simply an open space covered with sand and probably connected with the school (διδασκαλεῖον), thus corresponding to our playground. Later, this space was partly covered over and furnished with dressing-rooms, a bath, seats for spectators, an altar for sacrifices, statues, etc. Of the five gymnastic exercises in which boys were trained, all except wrestling seem to have been conducted on the race-course, so that the palæstra was reserved for what its name implied. It is by no means certain that every palæstra had a race-course connected with it, at least in the time of which we are speaking, and possibly in many cases the boys took part of their exercises in the public race-course running from the agora to beyond the walls. Just as the schoolroom was decorated with images of Apollo and the Muses, so the palæstra was decorated with images of Hermes, Heracles, and Eros, symbolizing, respectively, adroitness, human strength, and youthful friendship. The special patron of the palæstra was Hermes, and the gymnastic exhibition took the form of a festival to him, the Hermæa, at which a sacrifice was offered and the boys were allowed the use of the building to play games in, the victors wearing crowns.