SCHOOLS OF HELLAS

AN ESSAY ON THE PRACTICE AND THEORY
OF ANCIENT GREEK EDUCATION

IN A RIDING-SCHOOL
From a Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre.
Hartwig’s Meisterschalen, Plate 53.

Schools of Hellas

AN ESSAY ON THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF ANCIENT GREEK EDUCATION

FROM

600 TO 300 B.C.

BY

KENNETH J. FREEMAN

SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; BROWNE UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR; CRAVEN UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR; SENIOR CHANCELLOR’S MEDALLIST, ETC.

EDITED BY

M. J. RENDALL

SECOND MASTER OF WINCHESTER COLLEGE

WITH A PREFACE BY A. W. VERRALL, Litt.Doc.

ILLUSTRATED

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1907

All rights reserved

ΦΙΛΟΚΑΛΟΙΣ

ΚΑΙ

ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΙΣ

PREFACE

The Dissertation here published was written by the late Mr. K. J. Freeman, in the course of the year following his graduation at Cambridge as a Bachelor of Arts, with a view to his candidature for a Fellowship of Trinity College, for which purpose the rules of the College require the production of some original work. In the summer of 1906, three months before the autumn election of that year, his brilliant and promising career was arrested by death.

We have been encouraged to publish the work, as it was left, by several judgments of great weight; nor does it, in my opinion, require anything in the nature of an apology. It is of course, under the circumstances, incomplete, and it is in some respects immature. But, within the limits, the execution is adequate for practical purposes; and the actual achievement has a substantive value independent of any personal consideration. No English book, perhaps no extant book, covers the same ground, or brings together so conveniently the materials for studying the subject of ancient Greek education—education as treated in practice and theory during the most fertile and characteristic age of Hellas. It would be regrettable that this useful, though preliminary, labour should be lost and suppressed, only because it was decreed that the author should not build upon his own foundation.

Novelty of view he disclaimed; but he claimed, with evident truth, that the work is not second-hand, but based upon wide and direct study of the sources, which are made accessible by copious references.

The subject is in one respect specially appropriate to a youthful hand. Perhaps at no time is a man more likely to have fresh and living impressions about education than when he has himself just ceased to be a pupil, when he has just completed the subordinate stages of a long and strenuous self-culture. It will be seen, in more than one place, that the author is not content with the purely historical aspect of his theme, but suggests criticisms and even practical applications. It may be thought that these remarks upon a matter of pressing and growing importance are by no means the less deserving of consideration because the writer, when he speaks of the schoolboy and the undergraduate, is unquestionably an authentic witness.

But, as I have already said, the work will commend itself sufficiently to those interested in the topic, if only as a conspectus of facts, presented with orderly arrangement and in a simple and perspicuous style.

It is not my part here to express personal feelings. But I cannot dismiss this, the first and only fruit of the classical studies of Kenneth Freeman, without a word of profound sorrow for the premature loss of a most honourable heart and vigorous mind. He was one whom a teacher may freely praise, without suspicion of partiality; for, whatever he was, he was no mere product of lessons, as this, his first essay, will sufficiently show. It is not what he would have made it; but it is his own, and it is worthy of him.

A. W. VERRALL.

Trinity College, Cambridge,

January 1907.

EDITOR’S STATEMENT

It has fallen to my lot to edit this essay, the first, and last, work of Kenneth John Freeman, a brilliant young Scholar of Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, whose short life closed in the summer of 1906.

He was born in London on June 19, 1882, and died at Winchester on July 15, 1906,—a brief span of twenty-four years, the greater part of which was spent in the strenuous pursuit of truth and beauty, both in literature and in the book of Nature, but above all among the Classics.

Scholarly traditions and interests he inherited in no small measure: he was the son of Mr. G. Broke Freeman, a member of the Chancery Bar, and a Classical graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the grandson of Philip Freeman, Archdeacon of Exeter, himself a Scholar of the same great Foundation, Craven University Scholar and Senior Classic in 1839. He was also a great-grandson of the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber, for many years Principal Librarian of the British Museum, and Editor of the editio princeps of the Codex Alexandrinus. From them he inherited a passion for Classical study, a keen sense of form, and a determined pursuit of knowledge, which nothing could daunt, not even the recurrent shadow of a long and distressing illness.

Through his mother, a daughter of Dr. Horace Dobell, of Harley Street, London, he was also a great-nephew of the poet Sydney Dobell; and thus he may well have derived that poetic feeling which distinguished a number of verses found among his papers, since printed for private circulation.

His School and University career was uniformly successful. At Winchester he won prizes in many subjects and several tongues, and carried off the Goddard Scholarship, the intellectual blue ribbon, at the age of sixteen.

At Cambridge he was Browne University Scholar in 1903, and in the first “division” of the Classical Tripos in 1904, in which year he also won the Craven Scholarship. The senior Chancellor’s medal fell to him in the following year.

There is no need to enumerate his other distinctions, but the epigram with which he won the Browne Medal in 1903 is so beautiful in itself and so true an epitome of the boy and the man, that I am tempted to quote it here:

ξεῖνε, καλὸν τὸ ζῆν καταγώγιόν ἐστιν ἅπασιν

νηπυτίους γὰρ ὅμως νυκτιπλανεῖς τε φιλεῖ,

δῶρα χαριζόμενον φιλίας καὶ τερπνὸν ἔρωτα

καὶ πόνον εὔανδρον φροντίδα τ’ οὐρανίαν·

τρυχομένους δ’ ἤδη κοιμᾷ τὸν ἀκήρατον ὕπνον

πέμπει δ’ ὥστε λαθεῖν οἰκάδ’ ἐληλυθότας.

He was always an optimist, who regarded life as a “fair Inn,” which provided much good cheer. Shyness and ill-health limited sadly the range of his friends, but not his capacity and desire for “friendship.” “Manly toil,” both physical and intellectual, was dear to his soul: thus, though no great athlete, he was an ardent Volunteer both at School and College, and declared that, had he not chosen the teacher’s profession, he would have wished to be a soldier: he writes of Sparta and Xenophon with evident sympathy. Also he fought and won many an intellectual battle against great odds; to quote one instance, he wrote the papers for his Craven Scholarship while convalescent in his old nursery. His poems, to complete the parallel, may justly be described as the “aspiring thoughts” of a singularly pure and reverent heart.

It is a simple, uneventful record: six happy years as a Winchester Scholar; three as a Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge; one year of travel and study, mainly devoted to the subject of Education, which always had a special attraction for him; and lastly, one year, the happiest of his life, when he returned to teach at his old school.

All appeared bright and promising; he was doing the work he desired at the school of his choice, health and vigour seemed fully restored, and a strenuous life as a Winchester Master lay before him, when an acute attack of the old trouble, borne with perfect patience, cut him off in the prime of his promise.

Then, to quote his own translation of his epigram:

When I was aweary, last and best

They gave me dreamless rest;

And sent me on my way that I might come

Unknown, unknowing, Home.

The work itself was never finished for the press; indeed, some chapters, dealing with Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle, did not appear sufficiently complete to justify publication: these, therefore, we have withheld. But this book is in substance what he left it, and he was fully aware that the omitted chapters were in need of further revision.

In any case, it would have been a labour of love to me to edit this dissertation; but the labour has been lightened at every turn by the ungrudging help and friendship of many Scholars. Dr. Verrall, besides contributing a Preface, has contributed much advice in general and in detail; Dr. Sandys has revised the proofs and given me the benefit of his comprehensive knowledge of the subject; Dr. Henry Jackson went through some of the later chapters and discussed points of general interest. The original Essay or the proofs have in addition been revised, from different points of view, by Mr. Edmund D. A. Morshead, late Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Mr. F. M. Cornford, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Mr. G. S. Freeman (brother of the author) is responsible for the Index; while Mr. W. R. H. Merriman has spent much pains upon verifying the numerous quotations. In a few cases Dr. F. G. Kenyon’s erudition came to the rescue. To all these my best thanks are due. Mr. A. Hamilton Smith of the British Museum was most helpful in identifying the vases from which the illustrations are derived. The author, who was a considerable draughtsman, had drawn scenes from Greek vases with his own hand; but of course our illustrations are derived from published reproductions, with two exceptions. The two British Museum vase-scenes (Illustrations III. and IV.) were specially drawn for this book: they have never been carefully reproduced before. I must thank the Syndics of the Pitt Press at Cambridge for their kind permission to reproduce their print of Douris’ Educational Vase from Dr. Sandys’ History of Classical Scholarship. The design which appears on the cover of this volume is also adapted from this vase.

It remains to add a few sentences from a Statement which the author himself drew up:

“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

ILLUSTRATIONS

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dittenberger, W. De Ephebis Atticis Dissertatio. Dieterich, Göttingen, 1863.

Dumont, A. Essai sur l’Éphébie Attique. 2 vols. Didot, Paris, 1875-76.

Girard, P. L’Éducation Athénienne au vᵉ et au ivᵉ siècle avant J.-C. Hachette, Paris, 1889.

Grasberger, L. Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum. 3 vols. Würzburg, 1864-81.

Laurie, S. S. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education. 2nd Edition. Longmans, London, 1900.

Mahaffy, J. P. Old Greek Education. Kegan Paul, 1883.

Müller, K. O. Dorians. Edition 1824. English translation; Oxford, 1830.

Nettleship, H. In Hellenica. 2nd Edition. Longmans, 1898.

Sidgwick, A. Essay in Teachers’ Guild Quarterly, No. 8.

Ussing, J. L. (Danish.) German translation. Erziehung bei den Griechen (und Römern). Altona, 1870.

Wilkins, A. S. National Education in Greece (Hare Prize, Cambridge). Isbister, London, 1873.

INTRODUCTION

The meeting-place of two streams has always a curious fascination for the traveller. There is a strange charm in watching the two currents blend and lose their individuality in a new whole. The discoloured, foam-flecked torrent, swirling on remorselessly its pebbles and minuter particles of granite from the mountains, and the calm, translucent stream, bearing in invisible solution the clays and sands of the plains through which its slow coils have wound, melt into a single river, mightier than either, which has received and will carry onward the burdens of both and lay them side by side in some far-off delta, where they will form “the dust of continents to be.”

To the student of history or of psychology the meeting-place of two civilisations has a similar charm. To watch the immemorial culture of the East, slow-moving with the weight of years, dreamy with centuries of deep meditation, accept and assimilate, as in a moment of time, the science, the machinery, the restless energy and practical activity of the West is a fascinating employment; for the process is big with hope of some glorious product from this union of the two. Those who live while such a union is in progress cannot estimate its value or its probable result; they are but conscious of the discomforts and confusion arising from the ending of the old order that passes away, and can hardly presage the glories of the new, to which it is yielding place. It is in past history, not in the contemporary world, that such combinations must be studied.

The chief historical instance of two distinct civilisations blending into one is the Renaissance, that mighty union of the spirit of ancient Hellas and her pupil Rome with the spirit of medieval Europe, which has hardly been perfected even now. But it is often forgotten that there were at least two dress-rehearsals for the great drama of the Renaissance, in the course of which Hellenism learnt its own charm and adapted itself to the task of educating the world. Alexander carried the arts, the literature, and the spirit of Hellas far into the heart of Asia; and, though his great experiment of blending West with East was interrupted by his early death and the consequent disruption of his world-empire, yet, even so, something of his object was effected in the Hellenistic culture of Alexandria, Syria, and Asia Minor. Within a century of his death began the second dress-rehearsal, this time in the West. Conquered Hellas led her fierce conqueror captive, and the strength of Rome bowed before the intellect and imagination of the Hellene. Once more the great man who designed to unite the two currents into one stream without loss to either was cut off before his plans could be carried out, and the murder of Julius Cæsar caused incalculable damage to this earlier Renaissance, for the education of Rome, the second scholar of Hellas, was not too wisely conducted. Yet the schooling produced Virgil and Horace and that Greco-Roman civilisation in which the Teutonic nations of the North received their first lessons in culture. After several premature attempts, medieval Europe rediscovered ancient Hellas and her pupil Rome at the time of the Renaissance. Since that time the influence exerted by Hellenism upon modern civilisation has been continuous and incalculable. How much of that influence remains unassimilated, how far it is still needed, may perhaps be realised best by passing straight from the Elgin marbles or a play of Sophocles to a modern crowd or to modern literature.

Hellas has thus been the educator of the world to an extent of which not even Perikles ever dreamed. How then, it may naturally be asked, did the teacher of the nations teach her own sons and daughters? If so many peoples have been at school to learn the lessons of Hellenism, what was the nature of the schools of ancient Hellas? How did those wonderful city-states, which produced in the course of a few centuries a wealth of unsurpassed literature, philosophy and art, whose history is immortalised by the names of Thermopylae and Marathon, train their young citizens to be at once patriots and art-critics, statesmen and philosophers, money-makers and lovers of literature? They must have known not a little about education, those old Hellenes, it is natural to suppose. Have the schools, like the arts and literature and spirit, of Hellas any lesson for the modern world? These are the questions which the present work will attempt in some measure to answer.

In some measure only; for the spirit of Hellas cannot be caught at second hand: it consists in just those subtler elements of refined taste and perfect choice of expression which cannot but be lost in a translation or a photograph. In like manner, the secret of Hellenic education cannot be reproduced by any mere accumulation of bald facts and wiseacres’ deductions. It is easy for the modern theorist to give an exact account of his ideal school; he has only to tabulate the subjects which are to be studied, the books which are to be read, and the hours at which his mechanical children are to be stuffed with the required mass of facts. But the Hellenic schoolmaster held that education dealt not with machines but with children, not with facts but with character. His object was to mould the taste of his pupils, to make them “love what is beautiful and hate what is ugly.” And because he wished them to love what is beautiful in art and literature, in nature and in human life, he sought to make his lessons attractive, in order that the subjects learnt at school might not be regarded with loathing in after life. Education had to be charming to the young; its field was largely music and art and the literature which appeals most to children, adventure and heroism and tales of romance expressed in verse. The music is all but gone, and of the art only a few fragments remain; the primary schools of Hellas have left to modern research only portions of their literature. Their attractiveness must be judged from the poems of Homer. But the charm of education lies mainly in the methods of the teacher; and of these posterity can know little. Scholars may piece together the books which were read and the exercises which were practised, but of the method in which they were taught, of their order and arrangement and respective quantities, nothing can be known. There is the raw material, the human boy, and of the tools wherewith the masters fashioned him, some relics are left; but of the way in which the artist used those tools, of the true inwardness of his handicraft and skill, not all the diligence of Teutonic research can recover a trace. The young art-student will learn little of Michel Angelo or Raphael, if he focusses his attention simply on the materials and the tools which they employed: to grasp their spirit he must go to the Sistine Chapel or to the Dresden Gallery, and contemplate their masterpieces. In like manner the student of Hellenic education ought to consider not its materials and tools, but rather its results and ideals. He must look with his own eyes and imagination upon the Aegina pediment or the “Hermes” of Praxiteles, if he wishes to comprehend the objects of the Doric and Ionic schools. This he must do for himself, since no book can do it for him. All that this work can hope to do is to furnish some few ideas about the tools wherewith the Hellenic schoolmasters tried to fashion the boys at their disposal into the masterpieces bodied forth in the “Hermes” and the Aeginetan figures: the skilled fingers and the imaginative brains which used the tools are for ever beyond the reach of the scholar and the archæologist.

The “Hermes,” with his physical perfection and his plenitude of intellect, with the features of an artist and the brow of a thinker, may be taken as the ideal of the fully developed Athenian education of the early fourth century B.C. The Aeginetan figures stand in the same relation to the Spartan and Cretan schools; these heroic figures have the bodily harmoniousness, the narrow if deep thought, the hardness of the Dorian temper. Perhaps it is not fanciful to see in the so-called “Theseus” of the Parthenon an earlier ideal of Athenian training, when it aimed at rather less of dreamy contemplation, at a less sensuous and more strenuous mode of life. If this be so, that glorious figure bodies forth the very ideal of Periclean and Imperial Athens at her grandest moment, before the ruin caused by the long war with Sparta.

The stream of Hellenism ran in two currents. Underlying the local diversity, which made every little town ethically and artistically distinct from its neighbour, was the fundamental difference between Dorian and Ionian. Clearly marked in every aspect of life, this difference was most marked in the schools. Sparta and Crete on the one hand, and Athens, followed closely by her Ionian and Aeolic allies and at a greater distance by the rest of civilised Hellas, on the other, develop totally different types of education. The young Spartan is enrolled at a fixed age in a boarding-school: everything he learns or does is under State-supervision. Perfect grace and harmony of body is his sole object: he is hardly taught his letters or numbers. The young Athenian goes to school when and where his parents like; learns, within certain wide limits, what they please; ends his schooling when they choose. He learns his letters and arithmetic, studies literature and music, and, at a later date, painting, besides his athletic exercises, at a day-school. When he grows older, he may add rhetoric or philosophy or science or any subject he pleases to this earlier course. The State interferes only to protect his morals, and to enforce upon him two years of military training between the ages of eighteen and twenty.

The superficial differences between the Athenian and the Spartan type of school are so striking that at first sight they appear to have no one principle in common. It will therefore be necessary to keep the two types apart at first and discuss their details separately. But the Hellenic thinkers recognised certain deep-seated similarities beneath the superficial contradictions, and it became the object of educational philosophy to blend the two types into a perfect system. As soon as a deeper study has been made of the theory of education in Hellas, the distinctions of practice begin to vanish away and the similarities of ideal and aim become more and more apparent. When the survey of both practice and theory, which is the object of this work, has been completed, it should be possible to grasp and estimate the common principles, which, amid much variety of detail, governed the schools of Hellas.

PART I

THE PRACTICE OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER I

EDUCATION AT SPARTA AND IN CRETE

According to a current legend, which Herodotos, owing to his Ionian patriotism, is eager to contradict, Anacharsis the Scythian, on his return from his travels, declared that the Spartans seemed to him to be the only Hellenic people with whom it was possible to converse sensibly, for they alone had time to be wise.[1] The full Spartan citizen certainly had abundant leisure. He was absolutely free from the cares of money-making, for he was supported by an hereditary allotment which was cultivated for him by State-serfs. He had no profession or trade to occupy him. His whole time was spent in educating himself and his younger countrymen in accordance with Spartan ideas, and in practising the Spartan mode of life. The Spartans divided their day between various gymnastic and military exercises, hunting, public affairs, and “leschai” or conversation-clubs, at which no talk of business was permitted; the members discussed only what was honourable and noble, or blamed what was cowardly and base.[2] They were on the whole a grave and silent people, but they had a terse wit of their own, and there was a statue of Laughter in their city. They were always in a state of perfect training, like the “wiry dogs” of Plato’s Republic. They were strong conservatives; innovation was strictly forbidden. The unfortunate who made a change in the rules of the Ball-game was scourged. In the Skias or Council-chamber still hung in Pausanias’ time the eleven-stringed lyre which Timotheos had brought to Sparta, only to have it broken;[3] and the nine-stringed lyre of Phrunis met the same fate. Having once accepted the seven-stringed lyre from Terpander, the Spartans never permitted it to be changed. They had also a talent for minute organisation; both their army and their children were greatly subdivided. Every one at Sparta was a part of a beautifully organised machine, designed almost exclusively for military purposes.

In this strangely artificial State, it was essential that the future citizens should be saturated with the spirit of the place at an early age. There were practically no written laws. Judges and rulers acted on their own discretion.[4] This was only possible if a particular stamp of character, a particular outlook and attitude, were impressed upon every citizen. Consequently, education was the most important thing at Sparta. It was both regulated and enforced by the State. It was exactly the same for all. The boys were taken away from home and brought up in great boarding-schools, so that the individualising tendencies of family life and hereditary instincts might be stamped out, and a general type of character, the Spartan type, alone be left in all the boys. For boarding-schools have admittedly this result, that they impose a recognisable stamp, a certain similarity of manner and attitude, upon all the boys who pass through them.

Therefore, as soon as a child was born at Sparta, it was taken before the elders of the tribe to which its parents belonged.[5] If they decided that it was likely to prove sickly, it was exposed on Mount Taügetos, there to die or be brought up by Helots or Perioikoi. Sparta was no place for invalids. If the infant was approved, it was taken back to its home, to be brought up by its mother. Spartan women were famous for their skill in bringing up children. Spartan nurses were in great demand in Hellas. They were eagerly sought after for boys of rank and wealth like Alkibiades. The songs which they sang to their charges and the rules which they enforced made the children “not afraid of the dark” or terrified if they were left alone; not addicted “to daintiness or naughty tempers or screaming”; in fact, “little gentlemen” in every way.

No doubt the discipline of the children was strict, but then the parents lived just as strictly themselves. There were no luxuries for any one at Sparta: the houses and furniture were as plain as the food. But there is a charming picture of Agesilaos riding on a stick to amuse his children; and the Spartan mothers, if stern towards cowardice, seem to have been keenly interested in their children’s development; they were by no means nonentities like Athenian ladies.

The children slept at home till they were seven; but at an early age were taken by their fathers to the “Pheiditia” or clubs where the grown men spent those hours during which they stayed indoors and took their meals. About fifty men attended each of these clubs. The children sat on the floor near their fathers. Each member contributed monthly a “medimnos” of barley-meal, eight “choes” of wine, five “mnai” of cheese, two and a half “mnai” of figs,[6] and some very cheap relish; if he sacrificed to a god, he gave part of the victim to his “mess,” and if he was successful in hunting (which was a frequent occupation), he brought his spoils to the common table. There was also the famous black broth, made by the hereditary guild of State cooks, which only a life of Spartan training and cold baths in the Eurotas could make appetising; yet elderly Spartans preferred it to meat. Perhaps a fragment of Alkman represents a high-day at one of these clubs: “Seven couches and as many tables, brimming full of poppy-flavoured loaves, and linseed and sesamum, and in bowls honey and linseed for the children.”[7]

A Spartan who became too poor to pay his contribution to his club lost his rights as a citizen, and so could not have his children educated in the State-system. But as long as the allotments were not alienated, such cases were not common. The contribution was κατὰ κεφαλήν,[8] that is, the fixed quantity of provisions had to be supplied for every member of the family who attended a club, i.e. for every male, since the women took their meals at home. There is no reason whatever for supposing that the boys, either before or after they went to the boarding-schools, were fed at the expense of the State. It is expressly stated that the number of foster-children, who accompanied their benefactors’ sons to school, varied according to the extent of their patron’s means.[9] Parents must therefore have paid something for their boys while they were at school. The teaching involved no expenses; hence it must have been the food for which they paid. Thus, only those boys could attend the Spartan schools whose parents could afford to pay the customary subscription in kind for their own and their children’s food at the common meals. Xenophon, the admirer of all things Spartan, adopts the same system in his State, since he makes the children of the poor drop out automatically from the public schools. It must be remembered that at Sparta families were always small, and the population tended to decrease steadily; the number of males for whom subscriptions had to be paid by the head of the family can rarely have been large.

Generally speaking, therefore, the Spartan schools were only for the sons of “Peers” (ὅμοιοι),[10] that is, those who paid the subscriptions. But a certain number of other boys were admitted, provided that their food was paid for. A rich Spartan might, if he chose, select certain other boys to be educated with his own son or sons, and pay their expenses meanwhile.[11] The number of these school-companions depended on the number of contributions in kind which he was capable of supplying. The school-companions could thus attend the Spartan schools; but they did not become citizens when they grew up, unless they revealed so much merit that the Spartan State gave them the franchise.

From what classes were these school-companions drawn? Sometimes they were foreigners, sons either of distinguished guest-friends of leading Spartans, or of refugee-settlers in Laconia. Thus Xenophon’s two sons were educated at Sparta. These foreign boys were called τρόφιμοι or Foster-children. Xenophon mentions “foreigners from among the τρόφιμοι.”[12] If these Foster-children, when grown up, remained in Sparta they possessed no civic rights. A passage in Plato refers to the difficulty which was experienced in getting these Foster-children to accept this humble position.[13] It is interesting to note that Sparta thus precedes Athens as an educational centre to which boys from foreign cities came to receive their schooling.

More often Spartan parents chose Helots to be school-companions of their sons. Thus Plutarch speaks of “two of the foster-brothers of Kleomenes, whom they call Mothakes.”[14] The name Mothax was applied to these educated Helots. They seem to have been notorious for the way in which they presumed upon their position, if we may assume a connection between Mothax and Mothon, a term which is used for the patron deity of impudence in Aristophanes, and elsewhere is the name of a vulgar dance.[15] They were not enfranchised when their school-days were over, and had to settle down to slavish duties, unless they showed peculiar merit. But several of the most distinguished Spartans, including Lusandros, were enfranchised Mothakes.

Xenophon, in a passage which has already been quoted, mentions “gentlemen-volunteers of the Perioikoi and certain foreigners of the so-called Foster-children and bastards of the Spartiatai, very goodly men and not without share in the honourable things in the State.”[16] If most of the authorities are right in regarding “the honourable things”[17] as a Spartan phrase for their educational system—and there is good ground for this view—then this passage shows that illegitimate sons, and perhaps eminent Perioikoi, passed through the public schools at Sparta although, however, neither were called Foster-children, a name reserved for distinguished foreigners. The Helots who shared the education were known as Mothakes, and sometimes as σύντροφοι, school-companions; but they do not seem to have been called τρόφιμοι, “Foster-children.”

During the best period of Spartan history, none of these extra pupils, τρόφιμοι, Mothakes, illegitimate children, and eminent Perioikoi, were enfranchised unless they showed peculiar merit. At a later date, perhaps, any one who passed through the schools became a Spartan citizen. Plutarch makes this a part of Lukourgos’ system; but that is improbable. Such a custom would only arise in the days of Spartan decay and depopulation. On the other hand, any Spartan boys who flinched before the hardships of their national education, lost their status, and were disfranchised, if they did not persevere.[18]

Till they were seven, the boys were taken to their fathers’ clubs: the girls had all their meals with their mothers at home, for the women did not have dining-clubs. By seeing the hardships which their fathers endured, and hearing their discussions on political subjects and their terse humour, the boys were already being trained in the Spartan mode of life; for the clubs served as an elementary school. There, too, they learnt to play with their contemporaries, and to exchange rough jests without flinching. To take a jest without annoyance was part of the Spartan character; but if the jester went too far for endurance, he might be asked to stop.

At seven the boys were taken away from home, and organised in a most systematic way into “packs” and “divisions.” These were the “ilai,” which probably contained sixty-four boys, and the “agelai,” whose numbers are unknown.[19] These packs fed together, slept together on bundles of reeds for bedding, and played together. The boys had to go barefoot always, and wore only a single garment summer and winter alike. They were all under the control of a “Paidonomos” or “Superintendent of the boys,” a citizen of rank, repute, and position, who might at any moment call them together, and punish them severely if they had been idle: he had attendants who bore the ominous name of Floggers.[20] So, as Xenophon grimly remarks, a spirit of discipline and obedience prevailed at Sparta. In order that the boys might not be left without control, even when the Paidonomos was absent, any citizen who might be passing might order them to do anything which he liked, and punish them for any faults which they committed. The most sensible and plucky boy in each pack was made a Prefect over it, and called the Bouâgor, or “Herd-leader”; the rest obeyed his orders and endured his punishments.[21]

The elder men stirred up quarrels among the boys in order to see who was plucky. Over every school was set one of the young men over twenty who had a good reputation both for courage and for morality.[22] He was called the Eiren. He kept an eye on their battles, and used them as servants at home for his supper; he ordered the bigger boys to bring him firewood, and the smaller to collect vegetables. The only way by which such supplies could be obtained was by stealing them from the gardens and the men’s dining-clubs. Apparently, then, the boys dined with him in his house;[23] they were supplied with a scanty meal by their parents to eat there, and were encouraged to make up the deficiency by stealing. “When the Eiren had finished supper, he ordered one of the boys to sing, and to another he propounded some question which needed a thoughtful answer, such as, ‘Who is the best of the grown-ups?’ For such particular questions are more stimulating than generalities like ‘What is virtue?’ or ‘What is a good citizen?’ The answer had to be accompanied by a concise reason; failure was punished by a bite on the hand. Elder men watched, saying nothing at the time, but rebuking the Eiren severely afterwards if he was too strict or too lenient.”

Thus we find at Sparta a prefect-system and fagging. But the sense of responsibility produced in the elder boys at English public schools and the practice which they acquire in exercising authority were prevented at Sparta by the perpetual presence of grown men, which made Laconian schools more like French Lycées. There is no class of professional schoolmasters; the Eiren, the Paidonomos, and any elder who chooses, give the instruction freely and gratuitously. Education, being so simple, cost nothing at Sparta.

From Plutarch’s mention of stealing from the men’s dining-clubs it may safely be inferred that boys of this age dined apart. Whether it was always in the Eiren’s house cannot be ascertained. After the age of sixteen they must have come into the men’s syssitia; for Xenophon implies that the visitor to Sparta could see lads of that age at dinner and ask them questions: and a visitor would certainly not have dined in a dining-room meant only for boys. Whether the election of members took place at that age, or whether they still went to their fathers’ clubs, is unknown.

The education was almost entirely physical. Plutarch, it is true, says that they learnt “letters, because they were useful.”[24] This may have been a later introduction, or perhaps the amount learnt was so little as to justify Isokrates in saying that the Spartans “do not even learn their letters, which are the means to a knowledge of the past, as well as of contemporary events”;[25] he also thought it highly improbable that even “the most intelligent of them would hear of his speeches, unless they found some one to read them aloud.”[26] They had, indeed, little reason to learn to read. Their written laws were very few, and these they learnt by heart, set to a tune. They had nothing to do with commerce or even with accounts; very few of them knew how to count.[27] Hippias, the Sophist, found that all they cared to listen to, were “genealogies of men and heroes, foundations of cities, and archæology generally.” Probably, like the Dorian philosopher Pythagoras, and like Plato, the admirer of all things Dorian, they held that memory was all-important, and that the use of writing weakened it.[28] Besides the State-laws set to music there were songs which praised dead heroes and derided cowards: the diction was plain and simple, the subjects grave and moral; many of them were war-marches; all were incentive to pluck and energy.

Rhetoric was, of course, utterly forbidden: a young man who learnt it abroad and brought it home was punished by the Ephors.[28] Spartans learned to be silent as a rule; when they spoke, their remarks were short and much to the point, for they thought it wrong to waste a word.[29] This was definitely taught to the boys, as has been shown above. “If you converse with quite an ordinary Laconian,” says Plato,[30] “at first he seems a mere fool; then suddenly, at the critical point, he flings forth a pithy saying, and his companions seem no better than children compared with him.” This epigrammatic wisdom Plato ironically ascribes to the fact that Laconians really attend Sophists on the sly, and are greater philosophers than any one knows. Many echoes of their terse and grim humour have come down to modern times: such as Leonidas’ remark to his troops at Thermopylae, “Breakfast here: supper in Hades”; and the Spartan’s description of Athens, “All things noble there,” by which he meant that nothing, however base, was counted ignoble.

The Spartans must not be regarded as wholly averse to literature. They knew Homer, and thought him the best poet of his class, although the manner of life he inculcated was Ionic, not Doric.[31] Alkman spent his life at Sparta, and has left one splendid song for a chorus of Laconian girls. Aristophanes could put a fine chorus into the mouths of Laconians, though its subject is noticeably warlike. For it was war-poems that the Spartans liked. “They care naught for the other poets,” says the Athenian orator, Lukourgos, “but for Turtaios they care so exceedingly that they made a law to summon every one to the king’s tent, when they are on a campaign, to hear the poems of Turtaios, considering that this would make them most ready to die for their country.”[32]

After all, the objects of the Spartan education were not intellectual acuteness and the accumulation of knowledge, but discipline, endurance, and victory in war. Discipline was taught by the perpetual presence of authority, and by very severe punishments. Spartan boys were practically never left to their own devices: perhaps that is the secret of the moral failure of nearly every Spartan who was given a position of authority outside Lakedaimon; for responsibility requires practice. Endurance was taught by their whole mode of life. They went barefooted, with a single garment, played and danced naked under the hot Laconian sun;[33] there were no ointments or luxurious baths for their bodies, only the Eurotas for a swim, and a bundle of reeds for a bed. The food which the boys received was very scanty: often they were turned out into the country in the early morning to provide food for themselves for the whole day by stealing.

This organised stealing was a feature of Spartan education. At an early age, as we have seen, the small boys were sent out to steal firewood and vegetables for the Eiren who had charge of them. Later they were driven out into the country, to forage for themselves at the expense of the farms. There was a definite age at which it was customary to begin stealing.[34] The articles which might be stolen were fixed by law, and the legal limits might not be transgressed.[35] It must be remembered that much property in Laconia was held in common. Any one, for instance, who was belated while hunting might take what food he pleased from a country house, and even break open seals to get at provisions. The Spartans also used one another’s dogs and horses freely, without permission. It is therefore absurd to say that the system taught the boys to be dishonest. If the State agrees to declare certain articles to be common property, it is no longer stealing if one citizen removes them from the house of another: he is no more dishonest than a man who picks blackberries or buttercups in England. At one of the English public schools, tooth-mugs used to be a recognised article of plunder. The small fags were expected to keep their particular dormitory supplied with them, at the expense of others. They were punished by the wronged dormitory if caught in the act of removing them: but ingenuity in such thefts was regarded as praiseworthy. There was a certain number of these mugs belonging to the whole house; they were common property, and could therefore be purloined without dishonesty.

Moreover, this system of legalised robbery had a valuable educational object at Sparta. It was excellent training in scouting, laying ambushes, and foraging, all of which it is very important that a future soldier should learn. Xenophon, a soldier himself, notices this, and in the Anabasis, when he needs a clever strategist, he selects a Spartan because he has been educated in this way. Since this was the object of the system, the boys, if caught, were flogged, not for stealing, but for stealing clumsily. Isokrates declares that skill in robbery was the road to the highest offices at Sparta. “If any one can show that this is not the branch of education which the Lacedaemonians regard as the most important,” he adds, “I admit that I have not spoken a word of truth in my life.”[36]

These foraging expeditions of the boys prepared them for the similar, if more arduous, duties of “Secret Service”[37] which awaited them between eighteen and twenty. Young men of this age were sent in bands to the different districts of Laconia for long periods, during which they hid in the woods, slept on the ground, attended to their own wants without a servant, and wandered about the country by day and night.[38] When it appeared good to them or their chiefs they made sudden attacks on the Helots, and slaughtered those who seemed ambitious enough to be dangerous, the Ephors declaring war on their serfs yearly in order that there might be no blood-guiltiness attached to these assassinations.[39] There was a regular officer set over this secret police, who no doubt directed where the particular youths should go.[40] At a critical moment of the Peloponnesian War, 2000 of the bravest and most ambitious Helots suddenly “disappeared,” probably by this means.[41] But Plato recognised the educational value of such a system, if the murders were omitted. In his Laws[42] he institutes a force of κρυπτοί, 720 in number, who patrol the whole country, taking the twelve districts in turn, so as to gain a complete acquaintance with it. They have all the farm-servants and beasts at their disposal, for digging trenches, making fortifications, roads, embankments, and reservoirs, for irrigation works and the like. The similarity of name suggests similarity of functions, but how much of this the κρυπτοί at Sparta did cannot be fixed. Probably their chief work was to keep watch over the subject populations, Perioikoi and Helots, who were otherwise left almost entirely to their own devices.

In their institutions of the foraging parties and Secret Service, the Spartans show a clear appreciation of boy-nature, as well as a keen eye for methods of military training. Moderns are beginning to realise that the average boy has so much of the primitive and natural man in him that, unless he is permitted to “go wild” and live the savage life at intervals, he is apt to become riotous and lawless. Hence in recent days the institution of camps for boys in England and “Seton Indians” in America. The Spartans, alone of Hellenes, fully recognised this peculiarity of boys, and met it with the foraging expeditions and secret service. The Athenian boy was not thus provided for until he became an ephebos; hence the Athenian streets were full of young Hooligans, while the aristocratic lads developed more refined, if more vicious, methods of giving vent to their instincts. In these country-expeditions alone the Spartan boys had an opportunity of escaping from the presence of their elders and developing habits of self-reliance and responsibility. Had Sparta made better use of these opportunities, the fate of her Empire after Aigospotamoi might have been different.

A frequent occupation of all ages at Sparta was hunting. This, too, they recognised to be an excellent training for soldiers, since it involved courage in meeting wild beasts, skill and ingenuity in tracking them, and hardships of all sorts in the forests and on the mountains. Laconia was full of game, and Laconian hounds were famous. The successful huntsman gave what he had killed to enrich the meals of his dining-club, and so won much popularity.

Spartan boys must also have learnt to ride, for they had to go in procession on horseback at the festival of Huakinthos.[43] They were taught to swim, too, by their daily plunge in the Eurotas. A great part of their time was spent in gymnastics, under the close inspection of their elders. Boxing and the pankration were forbidden to the young Spartan, probably because they developed a few particular muscles at the expense of the others.[44] For wrestling no scientific trainers were allowed; the Spartan type depended solely on strength and activity, not on technical skill; so a Spartan, when beaten by a wrestler from another country, said his opponent was not a better man, but only a cleverer wrestler.[45] Gladiators, such as those mentioned in Plato’s Laches as teaching the use of arms, were not permitted at Sparta; these, however, seem to have been unpractical theorists, quite useless in battle, as General Laches shows by a funny anecdote about one of them.[46] No lounging spectators were permitted in Spartan gymnasia; the rule was “strip or withdraw.”[47] The eldest man in each gymnasium had to see that every one took sufficient exercise to work off his food and prevent him from becoming puffy.[48] The physical condition of the boys was inspected every ten days by the Ephors,[49] while the competitions of the epheboi seem to have been controlled by a special board, the Bidiaioi, who figure in inscriptions.[50] Aristotle says of the whole Spartan discipline that it made the boys “beast-like,”[51] but admits that it did not produce the one-sided athlete, so common in Hellas, who looked solely to athletics, and was too much specialised to be good for anything else. Xenophon[52] says that it would be hard to find anywhere men with more healthy or more serviceable bodies than the Spartiatai. The most beautiful man in the Hellenic army at Plataea was a Spartan.[53] The Spartan boys’ manners were in some ways surprisingly maidenlike. When they went along the highway, they kept their hands under their coat, and walked in silence, keeping their eyes fixed on the ground before their feet. They spoke as rarely as a statue and looked about them less than a bronze figure: they were as modest as a girl. When they came into the mess-room, you could rarely hear them even answer a question.[54]

Fighting was encouraged at all ages; there were organised battles, somewhat resembling football matches, for the epheboi, in a shady playing-field surrounded by rows of plane trees and encircled by streams, access to it being given by two bridges. After a night spent in sacrifice, two teams of epheboi proceeded to this field. When they came near it, they drew lots, and the winners had the choice of bridges by which to enter the ground, selecting no doubt in accordance with the direction of sun and wind, as a modern football captain, who has won the toss, selects the end of the ground from which he will start playing. The epheboi fought with their hands, kicked, bit, and even tore out one another’s eyes, in the endeavour to drive the opposing team back into the water.[55]

The grown men were also encouraged to fight by the following device. The Ephors selected three of them, who were called Hippagretai. Each of these three selected one hundred companions, giving a public explanation in each case why he chose one man and rejected the others. So those who had been rejected became foes to those who were selected, and kept a close watch over them for the slightest breach of the accepted code of honour. Each party was always trying to increase its strength or perform some signal service to the State, in order to strengthen its own claims. The rivals also fought with their fists whenever they met.[56]

This systematised pugnaciousness at Sparta presents an interesting parallel to the German University duels and to the fights which used to be almost daily occurrences in the life of an English schoolboy. Most of the older English public schools can still show the special ground which was the recognised scene of these battles.

Floggings were exceedingly common at Sparta. Any elder man might flog any boy. It was not etiquette for boys to complain to their parents in these cases; if they did so, they received a second thrashing. But the triumph of this system was the flogging of the “epheboi” yearly at the altar of Artemis Orthia, in substitute for human sacrifice. Entrance for the competition was quite voluntary, but competitors seem always to have been forthcoming even down to Plutarch’s days. They began by practice of some sort in the country.[57] The altar was covered with blood; if the floggers were too lenient to some “ephebos” owing to his beauty or reputation, the statue, according to the legend, performed a miracle in order to show its displeasure.[58] The competitors were often killed on the spot; but they never uttered a groan.[59] The winner was called the “altar-victor” (βωμονίκης) and an inscription still records such a victory.[60]

The girls at Sparta were also organised into agelai or “packs.”[61] They took their meals at home, but otherwise lived a thoroughly outdoor life. They had to train their bodies no less than the boys, in order that they might bear strong children, so they took part in contests of strength as well as of speed.[62] They shared in the gymnasia and in the musical training. Among their sports were wrestling, running, and swimming; they were exposed to sun and dust and toil.[63] They learned to throw the diskos and the javelin;[64] they wore only the short Doric “chiton” with split sides.[65] They went in procession at festivals like the boys; at certain festivals they danced and sang in the presence of the young men, praising the brave among them and jeering at the cowards. At the Huakinthia the maidens raced on horseback. Theokritos makes a band of 240 maidens, “all playmates together, anoint themselves like men and race beside the Eurotas.”[66] That passage also gives wool-work to Laconian maidens (which is probably untrue, being contradicted by Plato),[67] and lyre-playing, which is contradicted by a Laconian in Plutarch, who says that “such rubbish is not Laconian.” The result of all this outdoor training was great physical perfection: Lampito, the Spartan woman in Aristophanes’ Lusistrata, is greatly admired by the women from other cities for her beauty, her complexion, and her bodily condition: “she looks as though she could throttle a bull.” She ascribes it to her gymnastics and vigorous dancing.[68] The girls till they married wore no veil, and mixed freely with the young men; in fact, there was one dance where they met in modern fashion; first the youth danced some military steps, and then the maiden danced some of a suitable sort.[69] Consequently love-matches were far more possible at Sparta than elsewhere in Hellas. After marriage the women had to wear veils, and remained at home; gymnastics, dances, and races ceased.

The Spartans were intensely fond of dancing, but it must be remembered that they often called dancing what moderns would call drill. For war was almost a form of dance; they marched or charged into battle to the notes of the flute, crowned and wearing red cloaks. The march tunes were in frequent use in Sparta, no doubt at military exercises. Every day the epheboi were drawn up in ranks, one behind the other, and went through military evolutions and dancing figures alternately, while a flutist played to them and beat time with his foot.[70] This is simply musical drill. The great national festival of the Gumnopaidia was very similar. Three great battalions, consisting respectively of old men, young men, and boys, drawn up in rank and file, exhibited various movements, chiefly of a gymnastic sort, singing the songs of Thaletas and Alkman and Dionusodotos the while and indulging in impromptu jesting at one another’s expense, after the fashion of a rustic revel-chorus in Attica. Sometimes the battalions appeared one by one, and were “led out” like an army, by the Ephors.[71] On other occasions all three were drawn up in crescent formation side by side, with the boys in the middle. The festival must have closely resembled the public parades of the gymnastic clubs in Switzerland. There were posts of honour and dishonour, as in battle, cowards usually receiving the latter. But Agesilaos, the king, once received an inferior station after his victory at Corinth, and turned the insult by a jest, “Well thought of, chorus-leader: that’s the way to give honour to the post.”[72] Then there was the war-dance, imitating all the actions of battle, a sort of manual and bayonet exercise, but accompanied by much acting and by music. Every Spartan boy began to learn this as soon as he was five.[73] It was done in quick time, if we may judge by the “Pyrrhic” or war-dance foot ( _{˘ ˘} ). There was also a wrestling-dance,[74] and most gymnastics were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In fact, chorus-dancing was a regular part of the education of Spartans and Cretans: the only experience of singing which most of them possessed was acquired in this way.[75] It is true that elegiacs were sung as solos before the king’s tent on campaigns, and at meals, when the victor got a particularly good slice of meat; but probably this accomplishment was confined to a few. Aristotle asserts that the Laconians did not learn songs, but claimed nevertheless to be able to distinguish good from bad.

* * * * *

Such was the Spartan system of education. To an Englishman their schools have a greater interest than those of any other ancient State. Sparta produced the only true boarding-schools of antiquity. The “packs” of the Spartan boys, like the English public schools, formed miniature States, to whose corporate interests and honour each boy learned to make his own wishes subservient. Spartan boys, too, like our own, had the smaller traits of individuality rubbed off them by the publicity and perpetual intercourse with others involved in the boarding-school system, in order that the racial characteristics might the more emerge in them. They, too, learnt endurance by hardship, and were early trained both to rule and to obey by means of the institution of prefects and fagging. But here the resemblance stops short. The Spartans, like most other nations, were not prepared to pay the price at which alone an education in responsibility can be obtained, the price which lies in the possible ruin of all the boys who are not strong enough to be a law to themselves. They very rarely left the boys to themselves without grown men to look after them. They were always interfering and supervising, instead of leaving the prefects to exercise their authority. And so, when Spartans were sent abroad to govern cities or command armies, having had no practice in responsibility, they failed shamefully and ignominiously. But this is equally true of the Athenians and of other Hellenes. The Spartans deserve all credit for their experiments with the boarding-school system.

But the system which they adopted had many faults, besides that which has already been noticed. There was no individual attention for the boys. The hardships were excessive and brutalising. While the boys’ bodies were developed and trained almost to perfection, their minds were almost entirely neglected: hence the stupidities of Spartan policy and the lack of imagination which their statesmen showed. It was impossible to over-eat or over-drink under the Spartan system, so the young Spartan had no experience in self-restraint.[76] The gymnasia and dining-clubs caused a great deal of quarrelling (which the Spartan authorities welcomed), and of immorality (which was very strictly forbidden); the Spartan gymnasia erred less, however, in this latter respect than the Athenian. In war the Spartans were only invincible so long as they were the only trained troops in Hellas; the rise of professional armies ruined them, for they could not adapt themselves to new circumstances. They produced no art and very little literature, if any. But their whole State was as much a work of art as a Doric temple, and of very much the same order, with its symmetry and regularity, its sacrifice of detail to the whole, its strength and restraint. It was also the inspiration of at least one great piece of literature, Plato’s Republic.

If courage was their sole object, as perhaps it was, they succeeded in obtaining it. The coward was a rare, and a most unhappy bird at Sparta. Mothers on several occasions killed sons who returned home from a campaign disgraced. “No one would mess with a coward, or consort with him. When rival teams were chosen for the game of ball, he was omitted. In dances he received the post of dishonour. He was avoided in the streets. No one would sit next to him. He could not find a husband for his daughters or a wife for himself,” and was punished for these offences. “He was beaten if he imitated his betters in any way.”[77] If the Hellenes were a nation of children, as the old Egyptian called them, the Spartans were at least a manly sort of schoolboy. They deified the schoolboy virtues, pluck and endurance. If we wish to see how far their education, in its best days, enabled them to prove true to their ideals, let us consider those 300 at Thermopylae waiting, with jests on their lips, for the onset of Oriental myriads, and remember that finest of all epitaphs, of which English can give no rendering, written upon their memorial in the pass in honour of their obedience unto death—

Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by,

That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

* * * * *

The Cretan system of education was very similar in many ways to the Spartan. In both localities the teaching was given by any elder member of the community who chose, not by a professional and paid class of masters. But in Crete education cost the parent even less than at Sparta; for the boys were fed largely at public cost.[78] But so was every other Cretan, male and female alike. Each community possessed large public estates, cultivated by public serfs.[79] The revenues thus accruing to the State were applied to the expenses of government, which were small, and to the food-supply of all citizens. Thus men, women, and children were all fed mainly at public cost. It may be noted, however, that there is no question of providing the children of improvident parents with meals at the expense of more provident citizens. Moreover, the heads of families, who each possessed an allotment, as at Sparta, had to contribute a tenth of the produce of their estates.

The women-folk took their meals at home,[80] although the cost of their food was mainly defrayed by the public revenues. The men took their meals in dining-clubs (ἀνδρεῖα). The whole population of each community was divided into clubs of this sort, apparently on the family basis, so that two or three families made up a club between them, to which their children and descendants would in turn belong. All the males of the family attended these meals; small children, boys, and young men as well as elders are all mentioned as being present at the same dinners.[81] The club is only an enlarged family party. The small children sat on the ground behind their fathers; they waited on themselves and on their elders, but the general superintendence of cooking and attendance was in the hands of a woman with three or four public slaves and some underlings in her control.[82] As they grew older, the sons sat beside their fathers. Boys ordinarily received half what their parents had; but orphans were allowed the full quantity at their dead father’s club.

Thus the Cretan club was an amalgamation of several families into a sort of clan, whose male members all dined together. All the boys of the clan formed one boarding-school. They all slept in one room, perhaps attached to the dining-hall; there was always a dormitory attached to each of these buildings for visitors from other cities, so it would be natural to expect a dormitory for the children also. The boys took their meals in the club dining-hall, in the presence of their elders, by whose improving conversations upon politics and morals they were supposed to be educated. These elder members elected one of their number to serve as παιδονόμος or “Superintendent of the boys” of their club.[83] Under his directions the boys learned letters “in moderation”: they were constantly practised in gymnastics, in the use of arms, especially the bow, which was a great Cretan weapon, and in the war-dances, the Kuretic and Pyrrhic, both indigenous in Crete. They learned the laws of their country set to a sort of tune, in order that their souls might be drawn by the music, and also, that they might more easily remember them. In this way, if they did anything which was forbidden, they had not the excuse of ignorance.[84] Besides this, they were taught hymns to the gods, and praises of good men. The favourite metre for these purposes was the Cretic (– _˘ –), which was regarded as “severe” and so suitable for teaching courage and restraint.[85] The Pæan was their chief national form of song. Cretan boys were also practised in that terse and somewhat humorous style of speaking which we have already seen at Sparta.[86]

Cretan boys were always fighting either single combats or combined battles against the boys of another club-school. They were taught endurance by many hardships. They wore only a short coat in summer and winter alike. They learnt to despise heat and cold and mountain paths and the blows which they received in gymnasia and in fighting.

They remained in the club-schools till their seventeenth year,[87] when they became epheboi and celebrated their escape from the garb of childhood by a special festival.[88] Like their contemporaries at Athens, the epheboi took a special oath of allegiance to the State and hatred towards its enemies. A fragment still survives of the oath taken by the epheboi of Dreros, near Knossos.[89] At seventeen the epheboi were collected into “packs” (ἀγέλαι) by private enterprise. A rich and distinguished young ephebos would gather round him as large a pack of his contemporaries as he could; their numbers no doubt depended partly on his wealth, and still more on his personal popularity. The aristocratic element in this arrangement is very noticeable, as in all the institutions of Crete as contrasted with Sparta. The father of this young chief usually acted as leader of the pack (ἀγελάτης); he possessed full authority over them and could punish them as he pleased. He led them out on hunting expeditions and to the “Runs” (δρόμοι), that is, the gymnasia of the epheboi. Cretans who had not yet entered a pack of epheboi were excluded from these runs (ἀπόδρομοι); when they entered, they were called “members of packs” (ἀγέλαστοι).[90] The pack-leader could collect his followers where he pleased;[91] very possibly the epheboi did not attend the club dinners ordinarily, but fed or slept either at their patron’s house (whence the need of a rich pack-leader) or in some special room. They thus corresponded closely to the Spartan boys of a younger age under their Eiren. Their food was supplied, like that of all Cretans, largely out of the public revenues. On certain fixed days “pack” joined battle with “pack” to the sound of the lyre and flutes and in regular time, as was the custom in war; fists, clubs, and even weapons of iron might be used. It was a regular institution, half dance, half field-day, with fixed rules and imposed by law. These battles must have closely resembled the contests of the Spartan epheboi in the shady playing-fields. The life of the boys was surrounded with a military atmosphere throughout. They wore military dress and counted their weapons their most valuable possessions. Young Cretans remained in the packs till after marriage. Then they returned to their homes and the clubs.

Of the practical results of Cretan education nothing can be said. From the day when Idomeneus sets sail from Troy, Crete almost disappears from Hellenic history. Too strong to be attacked by their neighbours, too much weakened by intestine feuds to assume the aggressive, the Cretans remained aloof from their compatriots on the mainland and in the archipelago till the close of the period of Hellenic independence.

APPENDIX A

SPARTAN SYSSITIA

These dining-clubs were organised like “diminutive states.”[92] It was enacted who was to recline in the most important place, who in the second, and so on, and who was to sit on the footstool, which was the place of dishonour, usually assigned only to children. “Each man is given a portion to himself, which he does not share with any one. They have as much barley bread as they like, and there is an earthenware cup of wine standing by each man, for him to put his lips to when he feels disposed. The chief dish is always the same for all, boiled pork. There is plenty of Spartan broth, and some olives, cheese, and figs.[93]

“Each contributes to his mess about 18 gallons of barley meal, 60 or 70 pints of wine, and a small quantity of figs and cheese, and 10 Aeginetan obols for extras.” This contribution no doubt covered expenses, for the quantity sent by an absentee king, probably representing the average consumption of an individual, falls well within this estimate (cf. Herod. vi. 57). After the regular meal[94] an ἔπαικλον or extra meal might be served. It would be provided by a member of the mess, consisting either of the results of hunting or the produce of his farm, for nothing might be bought. The ordinary components of such a meal were pigeons, geese, fieldfares, blackbirds, hares, lambs, and kids, and wheaten bread, a welcome change from the usual barley loaves. The cooks proclaimed the name of the giver, so that he might get the credit. ἔπαικλα were often exacted as fines for offences from rich members; the poor had to pay laurel leaves or reeds. There was also a special sort of ἔπαικλον designed for the children, barley meal soaked in olive oil—a sort of porridge, in fact. According to Nicocles the Laconian, this was swallowed in laurel leaves—which does not sound very inviting.

There were also banquets independent of the messes. These were called κοπίδες.[95] Tents were set up in the sacred enclosure round the temple of the deity in whose honour the feast was given. Heaps of brushwood covered with carpets served for couches. The food consisted of slices of meat, round buns, cheese, slices of sausage, and for dessert dried figs and various beans.

At the Tithenidia, or Nurses’ Feast, a κοπίς was given at the temple of Artemis Koruthalia by the stream Tiassos.[96] The nurses brought the boy-babies to it. The sacrifice was a sucking pig, and baked loaves were served. The κοπίδες were evidently a feature of Spartan life: Epilukos makes his “laddie” (κωράλισκος) remark, “I will go to the κοπίς in Amuklai at Appellas’ house, where will be buns and loaves and jolly good broth”: which shows that the children’s parties at Sparta were regarded as attractive.

The Karneia, the great Spartan festival, was an imitation of camp-life.[97] The sacrificial meal was served in tents, each containing nine men, and everything was done to the word of command.

APPENDIX B

CRETAN SYSSITIA

The chief authorities for the attendance at these meals are the two historians, Dosiades and Purgion, quoted in Athenaeus (143). Dosiades states that an equal portion is set before each man present, but to the younger members is given a half portion of meat, and they do not touch any of the other things. Purgion says: “To the sons, who sit on lower seats by their fathers’ chairs, they give a half portion of what is supplied to the men; orphans receive a full share.” The comparison of the two passages shows that the “younger members” mentioned by Dosiades are what Purgion calls the orphans, and that they are not yet full-grown men. Thus they must be either the boys or the epheboi. It is not, however, at all likely that the epheboi, who were of military age and engaged in violent exercises, would be given only half rations, so these younger members are the boys not yet included in the ἀγέλαι. Dosiades continues: “On each table is set a drinking vessel, of weak wine. This all who sit at the common table share equally. The children have a bowl to themselves,” that is, the boys who sat beside their fathers but not at the table. “After supper first they discuss the political situation, and then recall feats in battle, and praise those who have distinguished themselves, encouraging the youngers to heroism.” The quotation shows that not merely the small children are in question, but boys of an age to understand politics and war.

[1] Herodotos, 4. 77.

[2] Plutarch, Lukourgos, 25. Kratinos (Athen. 138) ridicules these clubs and says that the attraction of them was that sausages hung there on pegs to be nibbled.

[3] Pausanias, 3. 12. A similar event happened at Argos. Plutarch, On Music, 37.

[4] Aristot. Pol. ii. 9, 10.

[5] Plutarch, Luk. 16.

[6] Say, 1½ bushels of meal, 5 gallons of wine, 5 lbs. of cheese, and 2½ lbs. of figs.

[7] Smyth, Melic Poets, “Alkman,” 26, if the emendation παίδεσσι be correct.

[8] Aristot. Pol. ii. 9.

[9] Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271).

[10] Xen. Anab. iv. 6. 14; Aristot. Pol. ii. 9. 31.

[11] Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271 e).

[12] Xen. Hellen. v. 3. 9.

[13] Plato, Rep. 520 D.

[14] Plut. Kleom. 8.

[15] Aristoph. Knights, 635, 695 (with Schol. on 697, φορτικὸν ὀρχήσεως εῖδος); Eurip. Bacch. 1060.

[16] Xen. Hellen. v. 3. 9.

[17] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii. 3; Hellen. v. 4. 32.

[18] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii. 3.

[19] “Agelai” of young men are mentioned by inscriptions at Miletos and Smurna [Böckh, 2892, 3326]; there may have been boarding-schools somewhat resembling those of Sparta at these towns for young men.

[20] μαστιγόφοροι. Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 2. Aristotle calls Paidonomoi an aristocratic institution. They existed in Crete, and inscriptions mention them in Karia, Teos, and many other places.

[21] Plut. Lukourgos, 16. Hesychius declares that the Bouâgor was a boy, so the word cannot mean the Eiren, who was over twenty.

[22] Plut. Lukourgos, 17; Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 11.

[23] In which case the Eiren corresponds closely to the Cretan Agelates.

[24] Lukourgos, 16; Lac. Institutions, 247.

[25] Isok. Panath. 276 D.

[26] Panath. 285 C.

[27] Plato, Hippias Maj. 285 C.

[28] Sext. Empir. Mathem. 2, § 21.

[29] Plut. Lukourgos, 19-20.

[30] Plato, Protag. 342 E.

[31] Plato, Laws, 680 D. Crete repudiated Homer altogether.

[32] Luk. against Leokrates, 107. The Polemarchos was judge in these singing competitions, and the winner received a bit of meat (Philochoros in Athen. 630 f.).

[33] Plato, Laws, 633 E.

[34] Plut. Apoph.

[35] Xen. Anab. iv. 6. 14.

[36] Isok. Panath. 277.

[37] κρυπτεία, κρυπτή.

[38] Plato, Laws, 633 C.

[39] Plut. Lukourgos, 28. Isokrates merely mentions that the Ephors could kill as many Helots as they liked (Panath. 271 B).

[40] Plut. Kleom. 28.

[41] Thuc. iv. 80.

[42] Plato, Laws, 763 B. Some have supposed that κρυπτοί is an interpolation. If so, the resemblance must have been close enough to strike a commentator who knew Lakedaimon, in spite of the fact that the ages in the two systems are different.

[43] Polukrates (in Athen. 139 e).

[44] Aristot. Pol. viii. 4; Plut. Luk. 19.

[45] Plut. Apoph. 233 E. Plato adopts the Spartan views about wrestling in the Laws.

[46] Plato, Laches, 183 D, E.

[47] Plato, Theait. 162 B and 169 B.

[48] Xen. Constit. of Lak. v. 8.

[49] Athen. xii. 550 d. Their dress and bedding was inspected at the same time.

[50] Pausan. 11 2. βίδεος, Böckh, 1241, 1242; βίδυος, 1254.

[51] Aristot. Pol. viii. 4. 1.

[52] Xen. Constit. of Lak. v. 9.

[53] Herod. ix. 72.

[54] Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 4.

[55] Paus.iii. 14. 2.

[56] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iv.

[57] Hesychius, Φούαξιρ.

[58] Paus. iii. 16. 11.

[59] Plut. Lukourgos, 18; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 27.

[60] Böckh, 1364.

[61] Pindar, Frag. Hyporch. 8 Λάκαινα παρθένων ἀγέλα.

[62] Xen. Constit. of Lak. i. 4.

[63] Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. 15.

[64] Plut. Lukourgos, 14.

[65] Whence they were called φαινομήριδες. This chiton may be seen in the conventional statues of Artemis.

[66] Theok. Idyll 18. 23.

[67] Laws, 806 A.

[68] Lusistrata, l. 80 onwards. In the play Lampito is married. Aristophanes has either made a mistake or the gymnastics are meant to be in the past only.

[69] The ὄρμος dance. Compare the dance at the end of the Lusistrata, where “man stands by woman, and woman by man.”

[70] Lucian, Dancing, 274.

[71] Xen. Hellen. vi. 4. 16.

[72] Xen. Ag. ii. 17.

[73] Athen. 630 a.

[74] Athen. 678 b.

[75] Plato, Laws, 666 D.

[76] Laws, 634-635.

[77] Xen. Constit. of Lak. ix. 5.

[78] Aristot. Pol. ii. 10. 8.

[79] Additional revenues for the same objects were derived from the taxes paid by Perioikoi and serfs (Athen. 143 a, b).

[80] Plato, Laws, 781 A.

[81] Historians quoted by Athen. 143 e.

[82] Ibid.

[83] Strabo, x. 4. 483 (on authority of Ephoros), and Herakleides Pont. iii. (who provide most of the details about Crete).

[84] Aelian, True History, ii. 39.

[85] Strabo, x. 4. 480.

[86] Sosikrates (in Athen. 261 e), speaking of Phaistos.

[87] Hesychius, ἀπάγελος.

[88] ἐκδύσια, Antoninus Liberalis, 18.

[89] Mahaffy, p. 81; Grasberger, iii. 61.

[90] Eustathius on Il. ix. 518.

[91] Herakl. Pont. iii. 3.

[92] Persaeus ap. Athen. 140 f.

[93] Dicaearchus ap. Athen. 141 a.

[94] Sphaerus ap. Athen. 141 c, d.; and Molpis, ibid.

[95] Polemon ap. Athen. 56 a, and 138-139.

[96] Cp. the crèche temples in Plato’s Laws, 794 A.

[97] Demetrius of Scepsis (ap. Athen. 141 e).

CHAPTER II

ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS:
GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Laconia and Crete were mainly agricultural countries that had little concern with trade or manufactures. Their citizens comprised a landed aristocracy, supported by estates which were cultivated for them by a subject population; there was no necessity, therefore, for them to prepare their boys for any profession or trade, or even to instruct them in the principles of agriculture. The young Spartan or Cretan no more needed professional or technical instruction of any sort than the richer absentee Irish landlords of the present day. He could give the whole of his school-time, without any sacrifice of his financial prospects, to the training of his body and of his character.

But the rest of Hellas was for the most part the scene of busy manufactures and extensive trade. It would be natural to expect that great commercial peoples, like the Athenians or the Ionians of Asia Minor, would have set great store by the commercial elements of education, and to assume that business methods and utilitarian branches of study would have occupied a large place in their schools. But this was very far from being the case. To a Hellene education meant the training of character and taste, and the symmetrical development of body, mind, and imagination. He would not have included under so honourable a name either any course of instruction in which the pupils mastered their future trade or profession, or any accumulation of knowledge undertaken with the object of making money. Consequently technical training of all sorts was excluded from Hellenic schools and passed over in silence by Hellenic educationalists. Information concerning it must be pieced together from stray facts and casual allusions, and the whole idea of “utilitarian” instruction, in the modern sense of the word, must be carefully put aside during any consideration of Hellenic schools.

For the Hellenes as a nation regarded all forms of handicraft as bourgeois (βάναυσος) and contemptible. Herodotos says that they derived this view from the surrounding peoples, who all held it.[98] To do anything in order to extract money from some one else was, in their opinion, vulgar and ungentlemanly. The lyric poets and the Sophists were alike blamed for taking fees. The cheapness and abundance of serf- or slave-labour made it possible for a large proportion of the free population to live in idleness, and devote their time to the development of the body by physical exercises, of the mind by perpetual discussions, and of the imagination by art and music. Citizenship required leisure, in the days before representative government came into vogue. It was owing to this principle that the Athenian received pay for a day’s attendance in the Law Courts or the Assembly, for by this means the poorest citizen obtained an artificial leisure for the performance of his duties. Otherwise true citizenship was impossible. Plato regards a tradesman as unfit to be an acting citizen.[99] Aristotle rejects as unworthy of a free man all trades which interfere with bodily development or take time which ought to be devoted to mental improvement.[100] Xenophon explains the reason of this attitude. The discredit which attaches to the bourgeois occupations is quite natural; for they ruin the physical condition of those who practise them, compelling them to sit down and live in the shade, and in some cases to spend their day by the fire. The body thus becomes effeminate, and the character is weakened at the same time. Tradesmen, too, have less leisure for serving their friends and the State. In some communities, especially the most warlike, the citizens are not allowed to practise sedentary trades.[101] The owner of a factory or a farm worked by slave-labour was exempt from corrupting influences: it was only actual work which was degrading.

A large number, however, from among the poorer classes were compelled to work with their own hands; so these, as well as the slaves, required technical instruction. Some indications survive as to the manner in which this was imparted. Trades were mostly hereditary; “the sons of the craftsmen learn their fathers’ trade, so far as their fathers and their friends of the same trade can teach it.”[102] But others might also learn. Xenophon mentions such cases. “When you apprentice a boy to a trade,” he says, “you draw up a statement of what you mean him to be taught,”[103] and the fees were not paid unless this agreement was carried out. The Kleitophon[104] mentions as the two functions of the builder or the doctor the practising of their profession and the teaching of pupils. The Republic[105] says: “If owing to poverty a craftsman is unable to provide the books and other requisites of his calling, his work will suffer, and his sons and any others whom he may be teaching will not learn their trade so well.” The teaching of building is mentioned in the Gorgias.[106] In the Republic[107] Plato states that the παῖδες of the potters—a word which will include both sons and apprentices—act as servants and look on for a long time before they are allowed to try their hands themselves at making pots. “To learn pot-making on a wine-jar” was a proverb for beginning with the most difficult part of a subject. The pupils of a doctor named Pittalos are mentioned in the Acharnians of Aristophanes.[108] The comic poets of the early third century contain several references to cookery-schools. Sosipater makes one cook say that his pupils must learn astrology, architecture, and strategy before they come to him, just as Plato had exacted a preliminary knowledge of mathematics from his disciples. Euphron gives ten months as the minimum length of a course of cookery. Aristotle mentions a man at Syracuse who taught slaves how to wait at table, and perform their household duties: perhaps the play of Pherekrates[109] entitled The Slave-Teacher may have dealt with a similar case. From these fragments a picture can be drawn of a regular system of apprenticeship by which the knowledge of the trades was handed down. Solon, wishing to encourage Athenian manufactures, had enacted that if a father did not have his son taught some trade, he could not legally demand to be supported in his old age.[110] But the general opinion of Hellas still maintained that “technical instruction and all teaching which aimed only at money-making was vulgar and did not deserve the name of education. True education aimed solely at virtue, making the child yearn to be a good citizen, skilled to rule and to obey.”[111] For all the gold on the earth and under it, according to Plato, could not pay the price of virtue, or deserve to be given in exchange for a man’s soul. Thus the Spartans and Cretans did not stand alone, but had the support of all Hellas, in banishing from their schools any idea of technical or professional instruction.

* * * * *

But in one notable point their idea of education differed from that which was prevalent in most of the Hellenic States. The regular course of education in Athens and in most Hellenic States was for boys alone: no girls need apply. The women lived in almost Oriental seclusion;[112] the duty of an Athenian mother was, according to Perikles,[113] to live so retired a life that her name should never be mentioned among the men either for praise or blame. Listen to the description which an Athenian country gentleman gives of his wife.[114] “What was she likely to know when I married her? Why, she was not yet fifteen when I introduced her to my house, and she had been brought up always under the strictest supervision; as far as could be managed, she had not been allowed to see anything, hear anything, or ask any questions. Don’t you think that it was all that could be expected of her, if she knew how to take raw wool and make it into a cloak, and had seen how wool-work is served out to handmaidens?” Sokrates, however, to whom this question is addressed, seems to think that she might have learnt “from her father and mother the duties which would belong to her in after life.” These, however, in this case her husband had to teach her. He explains to her that she must see that everything has a place to itself and is always put there; she must also give out the stores, teach the slaves their duties and nurse them when they are ill, and tend the young children. The summary of the explanation is that Heaven has appointed a fair division of labour between husband and wife: the wife manages everything indoors and the husband everything out of doors. A stay-at-home husband or a gad-about wife equally offend against respectability. As a rule, apparently, the women simply sat in the house, “like slaves,” as it seemed to the ordinary athletic Hellene. Xenophon’s model husband suggests that his wife should take exercise by walking about the house to see how the supplies were given out, to inspect the arrangements of the cupboards, and to watch the washing and the wringing-out of the clothes: this exercise will give her health and an appetite. But Xenophon was an admirer of Spartan customs and the athletic Spartan women: probably these ideas would not have occurred to the ordinary Athenian husband.

Another picture may be quoted from Hellenic literature to show the extent of education which an ordinary woman received.[115] A certain Aristarchos comes to Sokrates in great distress. A number of female relatives, quite destitute, have been thrown upon his hands owing to various circumstances, and he must support them; but he has not the requisite means. Sokrates naturally suggests that he should make them work for their living. But they do not know how to, says Aristarchos. However, by dint of questioning, Sokrates elicits the fact that they can make men’s and women’s garments, and also pastry and bread. These, then, were apparently the accomplishments which an ordinary girl in Hellas, brought up without any idea of having to earn her own living, would acquire. Plato also mentions weaving and cooking as the provinces in which women excel,[116] and describes the women of Attika as “living indoors, managing the household and superintending the loom and wool-work generally.”[117]

Thus the Athenian girl spent her time indoors, learning to be a regular “Hausfrau,” skilled in weaving, cooking, and household management. She had her special maid to wait on her,[118] as her brothers had their paidagogos. She would, as a rule, be married young, and would naturally be very shy after such an upbringing; the marriage was arranged between the bridegroom and the parents, and, owing to the seclusion of the women at Athens, love-matches were well-nigh impossible. The match was mainly a question of the dowry. Xenophon[119] gives a vivid picture of one of these girl-wives gradually “growing accustomed to her husband and becoming sufficiently tame to hold conversation with him.” To keep their beauty under such conditions they employed rouge and white, and high-heeled shoes. Such mothers would be quite incapable of giving any literary or musical education to their children; hence the boys went away to school as soon as possible. Their school-life usually began when they were about six years old, the exact age being left to the parents’ choice.[120] Before this, they learnt in the nursery the various current fables and ballads, and the national mythology.[121] “As soon as the child understands what is said, the nurse and the mother and the paidogogos, yes, and the father himself, strive with one another in improving its character, in every word and deed showing it what is just and what is unjust, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what is holy and what is unholy. It is always ‘Do this’ and ‘Don’t do that.’ If a child is disobedient, it is corrected with threats and blows.”[122] Besides this purely moral training there might, no doubt, be a certain amount of technical or of literary instruction at home,[123] and bits of poetry might be learnt. Up to this age boys and girls lived together.

The sons of rich parents apparently went to school earliest: their poorer fellow-citizens went later.[124] This was natural. The poor could not keep their sons at school for a long time, for they wanted their services in the shop or on the farm, and the fees were a burden: so they did not send them till they were old enough to pick up instruction quickly. The rich, on the other hand, to whom money was no object, sent their boys to school at an early age, when they could do little more than look on, while their elders worked. Aristotle commends this custom, and imposes two years of such “playing at school” upon the boys of his ideal State.[125]

The ordinary system of primary education at Athens consisted of three parts, presided over respectively by the “grammatistes,” “kitharistes,” and “paidotribes.”[126] The grammatistes taught reading, writing, and some arithmetic, and made his pupils read and learn by heart the great poets, Homer and Hesiod and others. The kitharistes taught the boys how to play the seven-stringed lyre and sing to it the works of the lyric poets, which they would incidentally have to learn. The paidotribes presided over their physical development in a scientific way; he taught them wrestling, boxing, the pankration, running, jumping, throwing the diskos and javelin, and various other exercises; his school-room was the palaistra. To this triple system some boys added drawing and painting;[127] but this subject seems to have been an extra till late in the fourth century. Literature, music, and athletics composed the ordinary course at Athens.

Which of the three branches of education began first? Probably they were all taught simultaneously. The order in which they are usually mentioned does not point to a fixed sequence. Letters were naturally mentioned first, because all citizens alike learned this subject. Gymnastics were put last, because, owing to the public gymnasia, these exercises were carried on long after the other schooling had ceased. Moreover, most of the recognised exercises of the palaistra were not taught to small boys; from the nature of the exercises and from the pictures on the vases it may be deduced that the average boy did not learn them till his twelfth year at the earliest. But physical training of an easier sort of course commenced much earlier, and boys seem to have attended a palaistra from their sixth year onwards to receive it. Both Plato and Aristotle demand that it should begin several years before any intellectual instruction; and Plato, making athletics such as shooting and riding begin at six, defers letters till ten and lyre-playing till thirteen. Gymnastics would naturally occupy a part of the day for a healthy young Hellene during the whole time from his sixth year till manhood. It is thus that the Charmides mentions “quite tiny boys” as present in the palaistra, as well as older lads and young men.

Lyre-playing may have been deferred, as a harder subject, till the boy had learned letters for several years; but the seven-stringed lyre, with the simple old Hellenic music, was probably not a very difficult instrument to master. The chief factor which determined the arrangement of subjects in an ordinary family was no doubt the paidagogos. If there was only one son, he could go to whatever school his parents pleased; but if there were several, elders and youngers had all to go to the same school at the same time, for there was only one paidagogos to a whole family as a rule, and he could never allow any of his charges to go out of his sight.

That the three subjects were usually taught simultaneously may be inferred from a passage of Xenophon. “In every part of Hellas except Sparta,” he says, “those who claim to give their sons the best education, as soon as ever the child understands what is said to him, at once make one of their servants his paidagogos, and at once send him off to school to learn letters and music and the exercises of the Palaistra.”[128] The emphasis upon the word “at once” certainly implies that the three subjects began simultaneously.

On the vases letters and music are seen being taught side by side in the same school; this was a convenient and natural arrangement. Writing-tablets and rulers are also seen suspended on the walls of music-schools and palaistrai, and lyres on the walls of letter-schools[129]; which suggests that the boys went from one building to another in the day, taking their property with them. Plato states that three years apiece was a reasonable time for learning letters and the lyre.[130] The eight years between six and fourteen, the ordinary time devoted at Athens in the fourth century to the primary triple course, would give space for these six years, with two years to spare for elaboration. Gymnastics are meant to go on during the whole period in Plato, and so do not require a special allowance of time to themselves.

This system of primary education at Athens may reasonably be traced back to the beginning of the sixth century. Solon is credited with a regulation which made letters compulsory, and with certain moral enactments dealing with existing schools and palaistrai. The much-disputed popularisation of Homer at Athens by Peisistratos was probably connected with the growth of the Schools of Letters. Of the existence of music-schools at this date there is evidence from a sixth-century vase in the British Museum,[131] which represents a youth amusing himself with a dog, behind a seated man who is playing a lyre. This might not seem very conclusive in itself; but now compare it with the two “amphorai” of the fifth century,[132] which undoubtedly

represent scenes in a music-school. The situation is almost identical; each alike shows the boy playing with the animal behind his master’s chair. Curiously enough, all three vases come from Kameiros in Rhodes, although they are of Athenian manufacture. Thus the music-school may also be traced back well into the sixth century, in company with the school of letters and the palaistra; and the antiquity of the system of Primary Education is thus established.

PLATE I. A.

THE FLUTE LESSON, THE WRITING LESSON (ABOVE A WRITING-ROLL, A FOLDED TABLET, A RULING SQUARE, ETC.)
From the Kulix of Douris, now at Berlin (No. 2285).
Monumenti dell’ Instituto, ix. Plate 54.

PLATE I. B.

THE LYRE LESSON, AND THE POETRY LESSON (ABOVE IS AN ORNAMENTAL MANUSCRIPT BASKET)
From a Kulix by Douris, now in Berlin (No. 2285).
Monumenti dell’ Instituto, ix. Plate 54.

In earlier days this primary course had no doubt sometimes lasted till the boy was eighteen: but towards the end of the fifth century a secondary stage of education arose, occupying the years immediately preceding eighteen. This secondary stage is recognised in the pseudo-Platonic Axiochos and in the fragment of Teles quoted by Stobaeus. More important evidence is supplied by Plato. In the Republic he assigns an elaborate system of mathematics to the age just before ἐφηβεία, which he sets at seventeen or eighteen, the natural age varying with the individual, while the legal age remained fixed.

When did this Secondary Education begin? Aristotle, counting back from ἐφηβεία, assigns three years to it.[133] He has just commended the arrangement of education, not on hard and fast lines, but in accordance with the natural growth of the individual: so he must mean his ἐφηβεία to vary from seventeen to eighteen.[134] Thus he puts the beginning of secondary education at fourteen or fifteen, the average age of ἥβη in Hellas, as in Rome. From ἥβη till twenty-one the young Athenian was a μειράκιον. Thus in point of age the παῖς of the primary schools corresponds to the Roman “impubes,” and the μειράκιον to the “adolescens”; but μειράκιον and παῖς are used very loosely, and the former word is often replaced by νεανίσκος. We shall, as a rule, call the pupils of the primary schools boys, and those of the secondary lads.

Fourteen did not, however, represent an exact point at which it was compulsory to leave the primary school. Sons of the poor left earlier; rich or unoccupied Athenians might remain later: Sokrates even attended a lyre-school among the boys when he was middle-aged. The primary schoolmasters started advanced classes in astronomy and mathematics to suit elder pupils.[135] In the palaistrai there were separate classes of boys and lads, who were only supposed to meet on feast-days;[136] in the Charmides, however, grown men, lads, boys, and quite tiny boys are all exercising together.

Many lads, especially in earlier times, did not attend the schools at all, but gave their time to gymnastics and whatever else they pleased.[137] Xenophon relates this as one of the demerits of the Athenian system.[138]

The mental attainments of a lad who is apparently but little over fourteen are sketched in Plato’s Lusis. The lad Lusis knows how to read and write, and how to string and play the lyre. He recognises a quotation from Homer, and has even come across the “prose treatises of the very wise, who say that like must always be friendly to like; these are the men who reason and write about the Universe and Nature.”[139]

This secondary education, beginning soon after fourteen, was only for the rich: the poor could not afford to keep their sons away from the farm or trade any longer. It might be scattered over the whole of the next six or seven years; but there was a serious interruption, which usually terminated it. At eighteen the young Athenian became in the eye of the law an ephebos and was called out to undergo two years of military training. During this period of conscription it was no doubt possible, especially in the laxer days of the fourth century, to do some intellectual work; but Plato is probably only accepting the usual custom when he frees the epheboi of his State from all mental studies and makes them give their whole energies to military and gymnastic training. And when the ephebos returned to civil life, he was a full citizen and was hardly likely to return to school; he might attend an occasional lecture or so, but that was all.

Thus secondary education usually occupied the years between fourteen and eighteen, although the latter limit was in no way definitely fixed, and the same subjects might be studied at any age. In earlier days no doubt lads spent their time in continuing their musical studies: primary education could be conducted in a more leisurely fashion when there was still little to be learnt, and the lyre may have been deferred till this age, as Plato in similar circumstances defers it in the Laws. But in the days of Perikles knowledge began to increase and boys had more to learn. So the lyre was crowded into the first period of education, and a new series of secondary subjects arose. It was these years which were usually devoted to the four years’ course which was customary in the school of Isokrates. Before this date the time was, as a rule, spent in attending the lectures of the wandering Sophists or in picking up a smattering of philosophy. Among the subjects which thus formed a part of secondary education were mathematics of various kinds, more advanced literary criticism, a certain amount of natural history and science, a knowledge of the laws and constitution of Athens, a small quantity of philosophy, ethical, political, and metaphysical, and above all, rhetoric. Plato in his Republic, developing this Athenian system of secondary education, assigns to the years immediately preceding eighteen the theory of numbers, geometry, plane and solid, kinetics and harmonics, and expressly excludes dialectic as more suitable to a later age;[140] in the Laws, prescribing for the whole population, not for a few selected intellects, he orders practical arithmetic, geometry, and enough astronomy to make the calendar intelligible. The pseudo-Platonic Axiochos[141] ascribes to Prodikos the statement that “when a child grows older, he endures the tyranny of mathematicians, teachers of tactics, and ‘critics.’” These last are the professors of that curious criticism of poetry which is found, for instance, in the Protagoras as a subject of the lectures of that Sophist as well as of Hippias.

At eighteen the young Athenian partially came of age. He then had to submit to a two years’ course of military training, of which the first year was spent in Athens and the second in the frontier forts and in camp. During this period he probably had little time for intellectual occupations. But when the military power of Athens collapsed under the Macedonian dominion, the military duties of the epheboi became voluntary, and their training was replaced by regular courses of philosophy and literature. The military system became a University, attended by a few young men of wealth and position and a good many foreigners. As the forerunner of the first University, the two years’ training of the epheboi may fitly receive the name of Tertiary Education, in spite of the fact that till the third century it involved only military instruction.

Thus we have Athenian education divided into three stages: Primary from six to fourteen, Secondary from fourteen to eighteen, and Tertiary from eighteen to twenty; while gymnastic training extended over the whole period.

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Of these three stages the third alone was compulsory and provided by the State. The second was entirely voluntary, and only the richest and most leisured boys applied themselves to it. Gymnastics of some sort were rendered almost obligatory by the liability of every citizen to military and naval service at a moment’s notice; but they needed little encouragement. Of the primary subjects, letters were probably compulsory by law, and music was almost invariably taught. An old law, ascribed to Solon,[142] enacted that every boy should learn swimming and his letters; after which, the poorer might turn their attention to trade or farming, while the richer passed on to learn music, riding, gymnastics, hunting, and philosophy. In the Kriton of Plato the personified Laws of Athens, recounting to Sokrates the many services which they had done him, mention that they had “charged his father to educate him in Music and Letters.”[143] But the Laws in Hellas include the customs, as well as the constitution, of a State. It was certainly customary for nearly every citizen at Athens to learn some music; but it was not compulsory. We meet no Athenian in literature who is ignorant of his letters; we meet several who know no music. In Aristophanes, Demosthenes and Nikias are on the lookout for the most vulgar and low-class man in Athens, in order that he may oust Kleon from popular favour, by outdoing him in vulgarity. They find a sausage-seller. But even this man knows his letters, though not very well.[144] Of music, however, he is ignorant, and he has never attended the lessons of a paidotribes,[145] though Kleon seems to expect him to have done so. Kleon, who is represented as an utter boor, is yet said to have attended a lyre-school.[146] In the Theages[147] literature and lyre-playing and athletics are mentioned as the ordinary education of a gentleman. In fiercely democratic Athens every parent was eager to bring up his sons as gentlemen, and no doubt sent them through the whole course if he could possibly afford it. But the State attitude towards education, as distinct from the voluntary customs of the citizens, may be summarised in the words of Sokrates to Alkibiades: “No one, so to speak, cares a straw how you or any other Athenian is brought up.”[148]

The schoolmasters opened their schools as private enterprises, fixing for themselves the fees and the subjects taught. The parents chose what they thought a suitable school, according to their means and the subjects which they wished their sons to learn. Thus Sokrates says to his eldest son, Lamprokles,[149] “When boys seem old enough to learn anything, their parents teach them whatever they themselves know that is likely to be useful to them; subjects which they think others better qualified to teach they send them to school to learn, spending money upon this object.” This suggests that the poor may frequently have passed on their own knowledge of letters to their sons without the expense of a school. But all this was a private transaction between parent and teacher. The State interfered with the matter only so far as to impose certain moral regulations on the schools and the gymnasia, to fix the hours of opening and closing, and so forth, and to suggest that every boy should be taught his letters.

The teaching of the elementary stages of Letters, that is, the three R’s, was, as will be shown later on, cheaply obtained, and was within the reach of the poorest. Music and athletics would naturally be more expensive, for they required much greater study and talents upon the part of their teachers. The State did take some steps to make these branches of education cheaper, and so throw them open to a larger number.

Gymnasia and palaistrai were built at public expense,[150] that any one might go and exercise himself without charge. These buildings were also open to spectators, so that any one could acquire at any rate a rudimentary knowledge of boxing, wrestling, and the other branches of athletics, by watching his more proficient fellow-citizens practising them. The epheboi received instruction in athletic exercises at the cost of the State. But the children, so far as they received physical training in schools, must have received it in private palaistrai; their lessons are described as taking place “in the house of the paidotribes,” ἐν παιδοτρίβου—an idiom which always implies ownership or special rights; and the majority of palaistrai were private buildings, called by their owners’ names. Thus we hear of the palaistrai of Siburtios, of Taureas,[151] and so forth: Siburtios and Taureas were no doubt the paidotribai who taught there. In a later age, when the boys of different palaistrai ran torch races against one another, the palaistra of Timeas is victorious on two occasions, that of Antigenes once.[152]

By the system of leitourgiai rich citizens were made chargeable for the expenses of the epheboi of their tribe who were training for the torch races. These races seem to have been the only branch of athletics which was thus endowed; however, they were numerous, even in the smaller country districts, so that many epheboi must have profited by this free training.[153] “Leitourgiai” also provided free instruction in chorus-dancing (which included singing as well as dancing) for such boys as were selected for competition. The rich “choregos” appointed for the year had to produce a chorus of boys belonging to his tribe for some festival, paying all the expenses of teaching and training them himself.[154] It is to this free school that the Solonic law refers when it mentions the “joint attendance of the boys and the dithyrambic choruses”; for it goes on to state that the ordinance with regard to this matter was that the “choregos” should be over forty.[155] In Demosthenes,[156] a certain Mantitheos, who had not been acknowledged by his father at the usual time, “attended school among the boys of the Hippothontid tribe to learn chorus-dancing”: had he been acknowledged, he would have gone to the Acamantid, his father’s tribe. No doubt, if the choregos was keen about gaining a victory, he would give a trial to more than the fifty boys required for a dithyrambic contest. In any case, provided that all the tribes competed, this one contest (and there were several in the course of a year) gave a free education to 500 boys. Xenophon notices that it was the “demos,” the poor majority, who mainly got the advantage of free training under gumnasiarchoi and choregoi:[157] the rich naturally preferred to send their boys to more select schools.[158]

Thus the more elementary stages of letters alone were compulsory at Athens, but music and gymnastics were almost universally taught, and the cost of instruction in these subjects was reduced in various ways by State action: the greater part might be learned for nothing. But parents needed little compulsion or encouragement to get their children taught. So much did the Hellenes regard education as a necessity for their boys, that when the Athenians were driven from their homes by Xerxes, and their women and children crossed over to Troizen, the hospitable Troizenians provided their guests with schoolmasters, so that not even in such a crisis might the boys be forced to take a holiday.[159] And when Mitulene wished to punish her revolted allies in the most severe way possible, she prevented them from teaching their children letters and music.[160]

Of State action with regard to education in Hellas elsewhere than in Sparta, Crete, and Athens, little is known. But the Chalcidian cities in Sicily and Italy are said to have provided literary education at public expense and under public supervision.[161] The law enacting this is ascribed to the great lawgiver, Charondas, and, although he is a somewhat shadowy figure,[162] there must have been some foundation for the story, at any rate at a later date. During the Macedonian period kings and other rich men often bequeathed large sums of money to their favourite cities, in order to endow the educational system. We hear of this happening in Teos and at Delphi: in these places the parents, if they paid any fees at all, cannot have paid much. But there is no authority for any such endowments during the period which we are considering.

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But if education was neither enforced nor assisted to any considerable degree by the State, it was certainly encouraged by the prizes which were offered. Every city, and probably most villages, had local competitions annually, and in many cases more frequently still, in which some of the “events” were reserved for citizens, while others were open to all comers. There were separate prizes for different ages; the ordinary division was into boys and grown men, an intermediate class of “the beardless” being sometimes added. But in some Attic inscriptions the boys are divided into three groups, and in Chios the epheboi were so distributed.

These competitions were no doubt largely athletic. But music was usually provided for as well, and in many places there were literary competitions also. At Athens the different φρατρίαι seem to have offered prizes annually on the Koureotis day of the Apatouria to the boys who recited best, the piece for recitation being chosen by each competitor. Kritias took part in the competition when ten years old.[163] From Teos we have a list of prizemen, belonging, it is true, to a later date; but it may be quoted, to give some idea of what the subjects might be.[164]

From Chios we have the following[165]:—