Part 4

Education at Athens began when the youth reached years of discretion, and the true Greek word for education is neither Paideia nor Didaskalia but rather Philosophia, love of knowledge. The real teacher was not the Grammatistes but the Sophistes, the ‘sophist’ whose business it was to train men in practical wisdom. Adult education in fact was the most, not the least, important of the three stages.

Furthermore, in the early stages of life the training of the body was regarded as more essential than the training of the mind. When his education was finished, the Athenian boy knew his elements, he could wrestle and box, he could recite Homer and play the lyre, he could swim and dance: but of ‘useful’ knowledge, so called, and especially of that horrid travesty that we call ‘technical education,’ he possessed nothing. In most of the qualities of discipline, as Plato complains, the Athenian system was lacking; but it had one great practical virtue: it kept the mean, and neither over-stimulated nor yet over-repressed a boy’s natural attitude towards imparted knowledge. An Athenian, when he emerged from boyhood and became a man, was neither a pedant nor a barbarian. In the fifth century B.C. it was realized that with growing animals the demands of the body must come before the demands of the spirit. Physical perfection, if it is to be won at all, must be secured in youth: the final training of the mind can be left to a later stage of life. The method had its obvious defects, but at least it did not create that distaste for all study which more perfect theories of education have often produced. An Athenian till the end of his life was always eager and ready to learn.

There were two systems of education known to the Greek world, that of Athens and that of Sparta; but in an Athenian, as in a Spartan, household, the first six or seven years of a child’s life were spent at home in the women’s quarter of the house. A Spartan mother, however, only received her child to rear after it had been carefully examined by the elders of the tribe to which the parents belonged: if its physical condition was unsatisfactory it was exposed on Mount Taygetus, there to die or be brought up by Helots. Consequently the Spartan women, who were famed all over Greece for their skill as nurses, had only the best material to work upon.

In both states such education as the children received at this period of life was almost entirely physical. They were taught how to stand, how to sit, and how to walk correctly: on a vase painting in the British Museum, for example, we see a small child moving unsteadily towards its mother, who waits with open arms to receive it, while an instructor with long wand stands in the background. Athenian mothers usually were inclined to delegate the care of their children to a hired nurse, and there is an implied reproof to their indifference in the elaborate precepts that Plato gives in the _Republic_ for the proper management of infants. For example, he combats the idea that a good child should be quiet, and insists upon the importance of constant motion for the young baby, who in an Athenian nursery was often closely bandaged in swaddling clothes and then left to its own resources.

‘The first principle,’ he says, ‘in relation both to the body and the soul of very young creatures is that nursing and moving about by day and night is good for them all, and that the younger they are the more they will need it. Infants should live, if it were possible, as if they were always rocking at sea. Exercise and motion in the earliest years greatly contribute to create a part of virtue in the soul: the child’s virtue is cheerfulness, and good nursing makes a gentle and a cheerful child.’

Greek ears were very sensitive to sounds, and the noise of the uncheerful infant protesting against life was doubtless very trying to the father in the few hours that he spent at home. We have no information of Plato’s practical experience of children, for, as far as we know, he never married, but both he and Aristotle love to criticize the customs of their native city. In the _Politics_, for example, as in the _Republic_, the importance of the child is emphasized.

‘Young children,’ says Aristotle, ‘should be kept healthy by exposure: to accustom children to the cold is an excellent practice which greatly conduces to health and hardens them for military service. Children should be amused till they are five years old, but the amusement should not be vulgar or tiring or riotous. Their sports should be imitations of the occupations which they will hereafter pursue in earnest. Crying and screaming should not be checked, for they contribute to growth, and in a manner, exercise the body. The Directors of Education must keep a careful eye even upon young children, who will stay at home until they are seven; and they must see that they are left as little as possible with slaves. Formal education will begin after seven years; it will be the same for all, given in public, and directed to promote the good of all. Nature requires that we should be able not only to work well but to use leisure well. Work and leisure are both necessary, but the latter is the more important; and it is the chief function of education to teach us how to use our leisure rightly. Gymnastics and music are the chief branches of education; but for children gymnastic exercises should be of a light kind. Children should not be brutalized, as they are at Sparta, by laborious toil. Music should be studied both for its intellectual and its ethical virtue. Children should be encouraged to sing and play, for it will keep them out of mischief; but the flute should be forbidden as over-exciting, and musical studies should cease at manhood.’

It will be seen that Aristotle recognizes the necessity of amusement, and Greek children seem to have had most of the toys familiar to our nurseries. Little girls played with their terra-cotta dolls, boys with their hoops and balls, and with the knuckle bones that took the place of our marbles. An Alexandrian epigram (_Anth. Pal._ VI, 309) records the dedication to Hermes of one such playbox.

‘This noiseless ball and top so round, This rattle with its lively sound, These bones with which he loved to play, Companions of his childhood’s day; To Hermes, if the god they please, An offering from Philocles.’

Of dance games too, which give exercise both to mind and body, they had an abundant variety; some simple like ‘The Wine-skin and Hatchet,’ which could be played upon the stomach of a complaisant guest, others more elaborate in their dramatic ritual, such as ‘The Swallow’ procession, of which our ‘Jack in the Green’ is a reminiscence.

At the beginning of their lives then children were treated in much the same way at Sparta and at Athens; but in the next stage of education, after the period of early childhood was past, there was a sharp divergence between Spartan and Athenian practice. At Sparta boys and girls alike, over the age of seven years, were taken in hand by the state, and given the most thorough of physical trainings. The girls were allowed their meals at home, but otherwise were subjected to the same discipline as the boys. They had to harden their bodies, so that they might bear strong children, and among their sports were wrestling, running, and swimming. They learned to throw the diskos and the javelin; and wearing only the short Doric chiton engaged in contests of speed with youths. The result we may see in the statue of the girl runner, a copy of a fifth-century original, which is now in the Vatican at Rome, and in the description of the Spartan woman envoy in Aristophanes’ play _Lysistrata_, who looked ‘as though she could throttle a bull.’ The boys, for their part, were organized in the strictest fashion into ‘packs’ of sixty-four and into divisions. Each pack fed together, slept together on bundles of reeds for bedding, and played together. They had to go barefoot always, wore only a single garment summer and winter, and provided for their own wants.

One boy in the pack was appointed as ‘Bouagor,’ or ‘Herd-leader,’ and could give orders and inflict punishment. Over him was a young man, above twenty years of age, of tried character and courage, the ‘Eiren’ who was in charge of the pack’s organization and lived always with the boys. In control of the whole system was the ‘Paidonomos,’ the minister of education, an elderly citizen of rank and repute who had the ultimate powers of discipline over boys and eirens alike. In the three ranks we see something resembling the prefects, assistant masters, and Heads of our schools: in manner of life there was a close approximation to the boy-scout movement.

This Spartan type of education in some respects was not unlike the English public school system, as we owe it to Dr. Arnold, before it was affected by the spread of competitive examinations and the demand for utilitarian knowledge. The qualities that the Spartans wished to cultivate were not intellectual acuteness or literary taste, but the moral virtues of obedience, discipline, and endurance. To obtain these the lads were kept under constant supervision by grown men, and the weakness of the system was that individual initiative was not sufficiently encouraged, and that the claims of the mind were too persistently disregarded. Of book study there was practically none. Hunting, scouting, and foraging for food took up most of the boys’ time. Fighting, both in play and in earnest, was encouraged, together with gymnastics of an unspecialized sort, especially the musical drill which the Spartans called gymnopædia. Competitions between individuals and divisions were very frequent, and in many of them girls met boys on equal terms. Above all things, the idea of military efficiency was kept before the children’s eyes, and a strict military discipline was enforced. In fact, the Spartan system had all the strength and weakness of an exclusively military regime. The young Spartans were brave, healthy, modest, hardy and obedient: on the other hand, they were stupid, quarrelsome, brutal, lacking in self-restraint, and inclined to a gross immorality when once they were free from the close restraint of Spartan law. As long as a Spartan lived in his own country he behaved well, but the vices that the system produced showed themselves unpleasantly in any dealings with others. To the rest of Greece the vices seemed more than to counterbalance the virtues, and the Athenian ideal of education became the model for most of the other Greek States.

At Athens, everything was left to the individual parent and to the private schoolmaster. The State recognized its responsibility for the maintenance of children, and if a man died in battle his orphans were reared at the public expense; but it did not recognize its responsibility for their education. Some ancient laws, attributed to Solon, did indeed enact that all free-born children should be sent to school and there taught ‘letters and how to swim.’ Other regulations fixed the school hours, and in the interests of morality forbade boys to come home from school in the dark. But as regards the methods and the subjects of education given to boys, the Athenian Government was indifferent. The keeping of a school was a private speculation, and the State required no evidence of moral or intellectual qualifications from the schoolmaster. Accordingly, schools and the fees charged varied very greatly. Poor folk sent their children to establishments where only the elements of reading and writing were taught χαχὰ χαχῶς as the sausage-seller in Aristophanes says. Richer parents not only gave their children a better training in the early stages, but kept them at school for a longer period.

The schoolmaster himself was regarded with extreme contempt. The father of Æschines belonged to the despised class, and Demosthenes draws a scornful picture of his youthful rival helping to mix the ink, scrub the forms, and sweep the schoolroom. The fees were due on the last day of the month; but they were grudgingly paid and mean parents would keep their children away from school in those months of the year when the State festivals gave the schoolmaster an opportunity of granting his pupils a holiday. Of long intervals from work, such as our summer and winter vacations, we have no trace in Athens, and the precept of the Roman poet ‘æstate pueri si valent satis discunt’ apparently went unregarded.

The school hours were arranged to suit the time of meals in the boys’ homes. After the early breakfast, taken at sunrise, the boy sets off to his teacher, with whom he remained till noon. Then came the midday meal, followed by a siesta, and then afternoon school. Discipline was lax. The schoolmaster certainly had a rod to assist him in maintaining order, but his social inferiority deprived him of any real authority. Children would bring their pet dogs to school and play with them under the master’s chair. The master usually was sitting, a position which an Athenian despised as unworthy of a free-born man, and we have the typical schoolmaster pictured for us on a vase by Euphronios. He is a small, ill-developed man, with a bald head and a prominent nose. His body twisted, he leans forward with a threatening gesture, his forefinger raised in warning. In his left hand there is a stylus, for a writing-lesson is in progress; his stick with crooked handle and formidable knobs lies convenient to his right. He is drawn by a malicious hand with something of the caricaturist’s touch, but he is thoroughly alive and evidently closely resembles a real original. We may imagine that not unlike him even in bodily form was the schoolmaster in the third mime of Herondas who beats his idle pupil with his bull’s tail strap until he is ‘black and blue like a spotted snake.’

The ordinary system of elementary education at Athens, as followed by boys from seven to fourteen, consisted of three parts: letters, music and gymnastics, presided over by the grammatiste, kithariste, and pædotribe respectively. The grammatiste taught reading, writing and simple arithmetic, and his methods, on the evidence of the papyri and ostraka which have recently been discovered in Egypt, were not very much unlike those of a modern school. We have long lists of alphabets, and of simple and difficult combinations of letters; passages for dictation and recitation, the conjugation of verbs, and elementary grammatical rules. The kithariste taught ‘music’; i.e. the words of the lyric poets and the simple lyre accompaniment which went with the words. In general estimation he ranked a little higher than the grammatiste, but they both taught under the same conditions, and usually in the same building. The pædotribe was a much more important person than the other two, and his teaching, which directed the boy’s physical development upon scientific lines, lasted usually till manhood. He taught the rules of health, ‘dancing’ in the Greek sense of the word, and especially the five exercises of the pentathlon, which aimed at producing a perfect, all-round athlete. The palæstra was his school-room, and he was always sure of eager pupils and interested spectators.

But upon the smaller boys no very arduous tasks were imposed. Deportment, how to sit, stand, and walk gracefully, the correct manner of salutation, a decorous and becoming carriage of the body; these with some easy gymnastic exercises, together with a multitude of games and an occasional cockfight, occupied most of a boy’s day. He spent much more time at the palæstra than he did anywhere else, but the border-line there between instruction and amusement was not very rigidly drawn. This was the sort of education that seemed to Aristophanes ideal, and nowhere is a better picture given of it than in the _Clouds_:

‘To hear then prepare of the Discipline rare which flourished in Athens of yore, When Honour and Truth were in fashion with youth and Sobriety bloomed on our shore; First of all, the old rule was preserved in our school that “boys should be seen and not heard”: And then to the home of the harpist would come, decorous in action and word, All the lads of one town, though the snow peppered down, in spite of all wind and all weather; And they sung an old song as they paced it along, not shambling with thighs glued together... But now must the lad from his boyhood be clad in a man’s all enveloping cloke; So that, oft as the Panathenæa returns, I feel myself ready to choke, When the dancers go by with their shields to their thigh, not caring for Pallas a jot. You therefore, young man, choose me while you can; cast in with my method your lot; And then you shall learn the forum to spurn and from dissolute baths to abstain, And fashions impure and shameful abjure, and scorners repel with disdain, And rise from your chair if an elder be there, and respectfully give him your place. And with love and with fear your parents revere, and shrink from the brand of disgrace... Not learning to prate, as your idlers debate, with marvellous prickly dispute, Nor dragged into court day by day to make sport in some small disagreeable suit: But you will below to the Academe go, and under the olives contend With your chaplet of reed, in a contest of speed, with some excellent rival and friend; All fragrant with woodbine and peaceful content and the leaf which the lime blossoms fling, When the plane whispers love to the elm in the grove in the beautiful season of spring.’ (_Clouds_, 961-1008, Rogers’ translation.)

Boyhood at Athens was a time of preparation; the real education of an Athenian, in physical and in mental studies, began when ours too often ceases, in the year when he reached manhood. Then, and not till then, did the State step in and accept responsibility for his training. The ephebe of eighteen enrolled, in his deme register, had first to take the oath:

‘I will not disgrace my sacred weapons nor desert the comrade who is placed by my side. I will fight for things holy and things profane, whether I am alone or with others. I will hand on my fatherland greater and better than I found it. I will hearken to the magistrates, and obey the existing laws and those hereafter established by the people. I will not consent unto any that destroys or disobeys the constitution, but will prevent him, whether I am alone or with others. I will honour the temples and the religion which my forefathers established. So help me Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone.’

Then under the direction of specially appointed magistrates, the ‘Sophronistai’ or ‘Moderators,’ a definite and thorough course of gymnastics and military training began. The young recruits were first taken round the temples and afterwards put into garrison at Munychia and Piræus. They had masters and undermasters to teach them the use of the hoplite’s accoutrement, and pædotribes for their gymnastic exercises. Discipline was fairly strict, but there were plenty of amusements, and many festivals in which the ephebes played a special part. When they were not engaged in military drill they were usually to be found in the gymnasia and palæstræ, and at the end of their first year of training they were reviewed in the theatre during the celebration of the greater Dionysia. After the ceremony they received a spear and shield as a gift from the State and marched out of Athens, spending most of their final year patrolling the country and garrisoning the outlying forts. Then, this first initiation into the science of physical fitness achieved, they returned to the city, and during the rest of their lives devoted a large proportion of their time to perfecting their knowledge of the laws of health and developing the strength of their body.

The academies, where these studies in a Greek city were pursued by young and old together, were of two kinds, and were called either ‘gymnasia’ or ‘palæstræ.’ A gymnasium was an open space, with trees for shelter from the sun and, if possible, near a stream of running water; and there went on those sports that required plenty of room. The two chief gymnasia at Athens were both outside the town walls, the Academy in the sacred grove of the hero Academus and the Lyceum in the precinct of the hero Lycus. They corresponded fairly closely to the playing fields about our public schools, except that they belonged to the whole community and were used by all classes and ages alike. If we could imagine Hyde Park thronged every day and all day with men and boys running, jumping, hurling quoits, and throwing javelins,

we should get some idea, although of course on a very much larger scale, of the appearance of the Lyceum in the time of Socrates.

The palæstra, on the other hand, bore more resemblance to our school gymnasium. It was a covered building used especially for the indoor sports of boxing and wrestling. Built round a central court which in fine weather was normally the scene of these competitions, it had also a large hall opening on to the court and a number of smaller rooms used for bathing, rubbing down and undressing. In the large hall the spectators gathered, and a vivid picture of the impression made upon a foreigner by the sight is given in Lucian’s dialogue _Anacharsis_. The young Scythian speaks:

‘Why do your young men behave like this, Solon? Some of them grappling and tripping each other, some throttling, struggling, intertwining in the clay like so many pigs wallowing. And yet their first proceeding, after they have stripped--I noticed that--is to oil and scrape each other quite amicably; but then I do not know what comes over them--they put down their heads and begin to push, and crash their foreheads together like a pair of rival rams. There, look! that one has lifted the other right off his legs, and dropped him on the ground; now he has fallen on top, and will not let him get his head up, but presses it down into the clay; and to finish him off he twines his legs tight round his belly, thrusts his elbow hard against his throat, and throttles the wretched victim, who meanwhile is patting his shoulder; that will be a form of supplication; he is asking not to be quite choked to death.’

(Lucian, _Anacharsis_, I, Fowler’s translation.)

There were only three gymnasia in all Athens, but there was a very large number of palæstræ, some public, some private, some frequented by men, some by boys, the majority used indifferently by men and boys together. In the public establishments the instructors were provided and paid by the State, and were probably at the head of their profession, for as the oligarch who wrote the treatise on the Athenian Republic bitterly says:

‘As for gymnasia and baths, some rich people have their own, but the people also have built palæstræ for their own use, and the mob now has far more advantages in this respect than the fortunate few.’