CHAPTER IV.

SCHOOL DAYS--THE MUSICAL SIDE--THE SCHOOLMASTER.

§ 24. We will approach this side of the question by quoting the famous description of Greek education in Plato’s “Protagoras,”[18] which will recall to the reader the general problem, so apt to be lost or obscured amid details. “Education and admonition commence in the very first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life. Mother and nurse and father and tutor (παιδαγωγός) are quarrelling about the improvement of the child as soon as ever he is able to understand them. He cannot say or do anything without their setting forth to him that this is just and that is unjust; that this is honorable, that is dishonorable; this is holy, that is unholy; do this, and abstain from that. And if he obeys, well and good; if not, he is straightened by threats and blows, like a piece of warped wood. At a later stage they send him to teachers, and enjoin them to see to his manners even more than to his reading and music; and the teachers do as they are desired. And when the boy has learned his letters, and is beginning to understand what is written, as before he understood only what was spoken, they put into his hands the works of great poets, which he reads at school; in these are contained many admonitions, and many tales and praises, and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in order that he may imitate or emulate them, and desire to become like them. Then, again, the teachers of the lyre take similar care that their young disciple is steady and gets into no mischief; and when they have taught him the use of the lyre, they introduce him to the works of other excellent poets, who are the lyric poets; and these they set to music, and make their harmonies and rhythms quite familiar to the children, in order that they may learn to be more gentle and harmonious and rhythmical, and so more fitted for speech and action; for the life of man in every part has need of harmony and rhythm. Then they send them to the master of gymnastics, in order that their bodies may better minister to the virtuous mind, and that the weakness of their bodies may not force them to play the coward in war or on any other occasion. This is what is done by those who have the means, and those who have the means are the rich; their children begin education soonest and leave off latest. When they have done with masters, the State, again, compels them to learn the laws, and live after the pattern which they furnish, and not after their own fancies; and just as in learning to write, the writing-master first draws lines with a stylus for the use of the young beginner, and gives him the tablet, and makes him follow the lines, so the city draws the laws, which were the invention of good lawgivers which were of old time; these are given to the young man in order to guide him in his conduct, whether as ruler or ruled; and he who transgresses them is to be corrected or called to account, which is a term used not only in your country, but in many others.”

This is the argument put by Plato into the mouth of Protagoras the sophist, to show that virtue is a thing which can be taught, and not a mere natural predisposition or a divine grace. The other _locus classicus_, which may be referred to in close connection with it, is the description of the traditional education given in Aristophanes’ “Clouds.”[19] The strict discipline of boys who were not allowed to utter a whisper before their elders; who were sent in troops early in the morning to school, in their single tunic, even in the deepest winter snow; who were kept at work with the music-master studying old traditional hymns, and in attitudes strictly controlled as regards modesty and decency--all this is contrasted by the poet with what he considers the corruption of the youth with florid and immoral music, their meretricious desire to exhibit their bodily and mental perfections, their luxury and sloth, their abandonment of sobriety and diligence.

There are peculiarities of Greek taste so openly alluded to in this passage that it will not bear literal translation into English, at least into a book for ordinary readers; and therefore it need only be remarked, in criticism of it, that too much stress has been laid by theorists on Greek life, both on the picture of over-anxious morality in the older time, and on the alleged immorality of the poet’s age. It is from such passages that German historians draw their very extravagant assertions of the rapid degeneracy of the Athenians under what they call the _ochlocracy_, which followed upon the death of Pericles. It is very easy to find in many other ages and times similar assertions of the glory of the good old times, and the degeneracy of the satirist’s own contemporaries. But there is generally no more truth in it than in the assertion of Homer that his heroes took up and threw easily great rocks which two, or five, or ten men, such as they now are, could not lift. The same sort of thing was said in poetry of the mediæval knights in comparison with modern Europe. One would imagine them of greater size and might than we are, and yet their suits of armor are seldom large enough for a man six feet high. The picture of Aristophanes is doubtless a deliberate exaggeration, and would have been readily acknowledged as such by the poet himself. But it, of course, gives us the extremes possible in real life, as he knew it, and is therefore of use in forming our ideas on the question, if we use common sense and caution.

§ 25. With the exception of this feature, that Greek parents showed a greater apprehension for the morals of their boys, and guarded them as we should guard the morals of girls, it will be seen that the principles of education are permanent, and applicable in all ages under similar circumstances.

But what the ancients called _music_ in the wider sense must be held to include a knowledge and recitation of good poetry, as well as proper training in that figured dancing which was the most usual service of the gods. Indeed, a good musical education in Greece, much in contrast to ours, included every graceful æsthetical and intellectual accomplishment. This wide use of the term, however, though co-ordinate with the ordinary sense of playing instruments and singing, causes little confusion. A distinction between “music and singing,” such as we often see it (not satirically) set forth in the advertisements of our professional teachers, was not admitted.

§ 26. I think we may be justified in asserting that the study of the epic poets, especially of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” was the earliest intellectual exercise of schoolboys, and, in the case of fairly educated parents, even anticipated the learning of letters. For the latter is never spoken of as part of a mother’s or of home education. Reading was not so universal or so necessary as it now is; and as it was in earlier days an accomplishment only gradually becoming an essential, its acquisition seems always to have been intrusted to a professional master, the γραμματιστής, or grammarian in the earlier use of the word. Of course, careful parents, of the model above set forth by Protagoras, must have inculcated early lessons from poetry before that age. We may assume that books of Homer were read or recited to growing boys, and that they were encouraged or required to learn them off by heart.

This is quite certain to all who estimate justly the enormous influence ascribed to Homer, and the principles assumed by the Greeks to have underlain his work. He was universally considered to be a _moral teacher_, whose characters were drawn with a moral intent, and for the purpose of example or avoidance. In Plato’s “Ion” we distinctly find something supernatural, some distinct inspiration by the muse, asserted of Homer; and this inspiration was even passed on, like some magnetic force, from bard to bard. These ancient poets were even supposed to have uttered words deeper and holier than they themselves knew, being driven by some divine _œstrus_ to compose what they could not have said in their natural state. Accordingly, the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” were supposed to contain all that was useful, not only for godliness, but for life. All the arts and sciences were to be derived (by interpretation) from these sacred texts.

Hence, when it occurs to a modern reader that the main superiority of our education over the Greek is the early training in the Scriptures--a training, alas! decaying in earnestness every day--an old Athenian or Milesian or Cean would deny the fact, and say that they, too, had an inspired volume, written for their learning, in which all the moral virtues and all the necessaries of faith were contained. The charge of objectionable passages in the old epic would doubtless be retorted by a similar charge against the old Semitic books.

§ 27. It is well-nigh impossible that in the higher families throughout Greece this moral training should not have begun at home; and there must have been many Greek mothers able and anxious to help, though history is silent about them, and does not even single out individual cases, like the Roman Cornelia, where mothers influenced the moral and intellectual training of their children.[20] Certain it is that here and there we find evidences of a strong feeling of respect to the house-mother which contrast curiously with the usual silence about women. In the “Clouds,” the acme of villany in the young scapegrace who has turned sophist under Socrates’ hands is to threaten violence to his mother.[21] Here it is that Strepsiades exclaims in real horror at the result of such teaching. We also find both Plato and (perhaps in imitation of him) Cicero laying stress upon the purity of speech preserved in the conversation of cultivated women, whose conservative life and tastes rejected slang and novelty, and thus preserved the language pure and undefiled. The very opposite complaint is made concerning the pædagogues, whose often barbarous origin and rude manners were of damage to the youth.

§ 28. On the question of punishments, both at home and at school, we do not find the Greeks very different from ourselves. There are not in Greek literature any such eloquent protests against corporal punishment as we find in Seneca and Quintilian. They all acknowledge the use and justice of it, and only caution against applying servile punishments to free boys. Indeed, in many later writers, such as Lucian, the severities of schoolmasters are noted; and we have among the Pompeian pictures a scene of a master flogging a boy, who is hoisted on the shoulders of another, with a third holding him up by the heels. These evidences, together with those of the later Romans, on the sounds of woe common in schools, must not be overestimated. They are probably exceptional cases made prominent for satirical purposes, and not implying any peculiar savagery in Greek above modern masters.

Most certainly the Greek schoolmaster was not harsher than the lower-class masters in many primary schools, as, for example, the Irish hedge schoolmasters described in Carleton’s “Tales of the Irish Peasantry.”

Unfortunately, the Greek schoolmaster, at least of elementary schools, was not generally in high repute, was evidently not highly paid, and his calling was not such as to give him either dignity or self-respect. He was accused of pedantry if he was really learned, and of bad temper if he was zealous and impatient at idleness.[22]

Lucian, in a jocose description of the nether world, describes kings and satraps as beggars or “primary” schoolmasters, and was only carrying out into fiction the proverbial downfall of the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, who spent his old-age teaching children at Corinth. An unknown comic writer is quoted as saying, “The man is either dead or teaching the alphabet.” We hear of philosophers accusing each other--very absurdly--of having once followed this profession; and every scholar will remember the famous passage in Demosthenes’ “De Corona:” “But you, worthy man, who despise others compared with yourself, now compare with mine your own lot, which consigned you to grow up from boyhood in the greatest need, when you helped your father to attend in the school, preparing the ink, cleaning the benches, sweeping out the schoolroom, and so taking the rank of a slave, and not of a free boy.” We even hear of Horace’s master, Orbilius, writing a lamentable autobiography on account of his miseries, under the title of _the man acquainted with grief_ (περιαλγής).

§ 29. The general question of the payment of teachers will be better discussed when we come to the Sophists’ training of riper youth. Indeed, on the whole value of the various attacks on the teaching order in Greece, Grasberger concludes his elaborate summary of the above and many other facts with the sensible remark:[23] “As regards the unpleasant and objectionable features, which men seem to record with special preference, the true state of the case may be the same as with the many scandals which are reported from the life of the mediæval universities in Europe. Evil did not predominate; but the chronicler, instead of putting forward the modest virtues of diligence and of scientific earnestness, preferred to note both the faults of the teachers and the gross excesses of the students.”

We may be sure that in the Greek primary schools, though we hear of one assistant sometimes, the master was required to teach all the subjects. This was so not long ago in England, and still more in Ireland, where the hedge schoolmasters, but lately supplanted by the national school system (not without considerable loss), were required, and were able, to teach classics, mathematics, and the old-fashioned English. It is, indeed, clearly presupposed in all the many bequests of pious benefactors, who leave forty or sixty pounds per annum for the payment of a single master to keep a school in some remote part of the country. And at Athens, as in the days of these bequests, there was no official or state test of a master’s qualifications. Each man set up on his private account; it depended on the reputation he made whether his school was well attended. The worthy pedant in Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village” gives us a fair specimen of the better class of such men.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] P. 325 C. Cf. also “Axiochus,” p. 366 E: ὁπόταν δὲ εἰς τὴν ἑπταετίαν ἀφίκῃται [τὸ νήπιον] πολλοὺς πόνους διαντλῆσαν, παιδαγωγοὶ καὶ γραμματισταὶ καὶ παιδοτρίβαι τυραννοῦντες, κ.τ.λ.

[19] 961 sq.:

λέξω τοίνυν τὴν ἀρχαίαν παιδείαν, ὡς διέκειτο, ὅτ’ ἐγὼ τὰ δίκαια λέγων ἤνθουν καὶ σωφροσύνη νενόμιστο. πρῶτον μὲν ἔδει παιδὸς φωνὴν γρύξαντος μηδέν’ ἀκοῦσαι· εἶτα βαδίζειν ἐν ταῖσιν ὁδοῖς εὐτάκτως εἰς κιθαριστοῦ τοὺς κωμήτας γυμνοὺς ἀθρόους, κεἰ κριμνώδη κατανίφοι. εἶτ’ αὖ προμαθεῖν ᾆσμ’ ἐδίδασκεν, τὼ μηρὼ μὴ ξυνέχοντας, ἢ Παλλάδα περσέπολιν δεινὰν, ἢ Τηλέπορόν τι βόαμα, ἐντειναμένους τὴν ἁρμονίαν, ἣν οἱ πατέρες παρέδωκαν. εἰ δέ τις αὐτῶν βωμολοχεύσαιτ’ ἢ κάμψειέν τινα καμπὴν, οἵας οἱ νῦν τὰς κατὰ Φρῦνιν ταύτας τὰς δυσκολοκάμπτους, ἀπετρίβετο τυπτόμενος πολλὰς ὡς τὰς Μούσας ἀφανίζων. ἐν παιδοτρίβου δὲ καθίζοντας τὸν μηρὸν ἔδει προβαλέσθαι τοὺς παῖδας, ὅπως τοῖς ἔξωθεν μηδὲν δείξειαν ἀπηνές· εἶτ’ αὖ πάλιν αὖθις ἀνιστάμενον συμψῆσαι, καὶ προνοεῖσθαι εἴδωλον τοῖσιν ἐρασταῖσιν τῆς ἥβης μὴ καταλείπειν. ἠλείψατο δ’ ἂν τοὐμφαλοῦ οὐδεὶς παῖς ὑπένερθεν τότ’ ἂν, ὥστε τοῖς αἰδοίοισι δρόσος καὶ χνοῦς ὥσπερ μήλοισιν ἐπήνθει· οὐδ’ ἂν μαλακὴν φυρασάμενος τὴν φωνὴν πρὸς τὸν ἐραστὴν αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν προαγωγεύων τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἐβάδιζεν, οὐδ’ ἂν ἑλέσθαι δειπνοῦντ’ ἐξῆν κεφάλαιον τῆς ῥαφανῖδος, οὐδ’ ἄννηθον τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἁρπάζειν οὐδὲ σέλινον, οὐδ’ ὀψοφαγεῖν, οὐδὲ κιχλίζειν, οὐδ’ ἴσχειν τὼ πόδ’ ἐναλλάξ. κ.τ.λ.

[20] Two or three stories of Spartan mothers in Plutarch form tardy and unimportant exceptions.

[21] v. 1444 sq.

[22] Cf. the amusing notes in Cicero’s letters on a private tutor he got for his son and nephew, vi. 1, 9: “I am in love with Dionysius. The boys say he flies into furious passions. But no man could be more learned or conscientious (_sanctior_) or more devoted to you and me.” Presently Cicero’s tone alters, viii. 4: “Dionysius gave me impudence: you would say I had procured another Dicæarchus or Aristoxenus, and not a man that talks us all down, and is no good for teaching. But he has a good memory.”

[23] ii. p. 189.