No More Learning

By making the works of the great poets of the Greek people the material
of their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects
difficult of attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the ancient
poetry of Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and
characters, its accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its
manliness and pathos, its directness and simplicity, its piety and
wisdom, its respect for law and order, combined with its admiration for
personal initiative and worth, furnished, in the hands of a careful and
genial teacher, a material for a complete education such as could not
well be matched even in our own day. What instruction in ethics,
politics, social life, and manly bearing could not find a fitting
vehicle in the Homeric poems, not to speak of the geography, the
grammar, the literary criticism, and the history which the comprehension
of them involved? Into what a wholesome, unsentimental, free world did
these poems introduce the imaginative Greek boy! What splendid ideals of
manhood and womanhood did they hold up for his admiration and imitation!
From Hesiod he would learn all that he needed to know about his gods and
their relation to him and his people. From the elegiac poets he would
derive a fund of political and social wisdom, and an impetus to
patriotism, which would go far to make him a good man and a good
citizen. From the iambic poets he would learn to express with energy his
indignation at meanness, feebleness, wrong, and tyranny, while from the
lyric poets he would learn the language suitable to every genial feeling
and impulse of the human heart. And in reciting or singing all these,
how would his power of terse, idiomatic expression, his sense of poetic
beauty and his ear for rhythm and music be developed! With what a
treasure of examples of every virtue and vice, and with what a fund of
epigrammatic expression would his memory be furnished! How familiar he
would be with the character and ideals of his nation, how deeply in
sympathy with them! And all this was possible even before the
introduction of letters. With this event a new era in education begins.
The boy now not only learns and declaims his Homer, and sings his
Simonides or Sappho, he learns also to write down their verses from
dictation, and so at once to read and to write. This, indeed, was the
way in which these two (to us) fundamental arts were acquired. As soon
as the boy could trace with his finger in sand, or scratch with a stylus
on wax, the forms of the letters, and combine them into syllables and
words, he began to write poetry from his master's dictation. The
writing-lesson of to-day was the reading, recitation, or singing-lesson
of to-morrow. Every boy made his own reading-book, and, if he found it
illegible, and stumbled in reading, he had only himself to blame. The
Greeks, and especially the Athenians, laid the greatest stress upon
reading well, reciting well, and singing well, and the youth who could
not do all the three was looked upon as uncultured. Nor could he hide
his want of culture, since young men were continually called upon, both
at home and at more or less public gatherings, to perform their part in
the social entertainment.

The strictly musical instruction of this period was almost entirely
confined to simple, strong Doric airs, sung to an accompaniment which
was played on an instrument closely resembling the modern guitar (? ? ? ? ,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ). Complicated and wind instruments were unpopular, and the
softer or more thrilling kinds of music, Lydian, Phrygian, etc. , had not
yet been introduced, at least into schools. Anything like the skill and
execution demanded of professional players, who were usually slaves or
foreigners, was considered altogether unworthy of a free man and a
citizen, and was therefore not aimed at. Fond as the Athenians were of
the fine arts, they always held professional skill in any of them,
except poetry and musical composition, to be incompatible with that
dignity and virtue which they demanded of the free citizen. A
respectable Athenian would no more have allowed his son to be a
professional musician than he would have allowed him to be a
professional acrobat.

It is difficult for us to understand the way in which the Greeks
regarded music. Inferior as their music was to ours in all technical
ways, it exerted an influence upon their lives of which we can form but
a faint conception. To them it was a daemonic power, capable of rousing
or assuaging the passions, and hence of being used for infinite good or
evil. No wonder, then, that in their education they sought to employ
those kinds which tended to "purgation" (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), and to avoid those
that were exciting, sentimental, or effeminate! No wonder that they
disapproved of divorcing music from the intellectual element contained
in the words, and allowing it to degenerate into a mere emotional or
sensual luxury! Music the Greeks regarded, not indeed as a moral force
(a phrase that to them, who regarded morality as a matter of the will,
would have conveyed no meaning), but as a force whose office it was, by
purging and harmonizing the human being, to make him a fit subject for
moral instruction. Music, they held, brought harmony, first into the
human being himself, by putting an end to the conflict between his
passions and his intelligent will, and then, as a consequence, into his
relations with his fellows. Harmony within was held to be the condition
of harmony without.

In the period of which I am speaking, no distinction was yet made
between music and literature (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), both being taught by the
_citharist_ (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ). Indeed, the term for teacher of literature
(? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) was not then invented. But the citharist not only taught
literature: he also taught the elements of arithmetic, a matter of no
small difficulty, considering the clumsy notation then in use. This was
done by means of pebbles, a box of sand, or an abacus similar in
principle to that now used by billiard players to keep count of their
strokes.

As to the schoolrooms in ancient Athens, they were apparently simple in
the extreme; indeed, rather porches open to sun and wind than rooms in
the modern sense. They contained little or no furniture. The boys sat
upon the ground or upon low benches, like steps (? ? ? ? ? ), while the
teacher occupied a high chair (? ? ? ? ? ? ). The benches were washed,
apparently every day, with sponges. The only decorations permitted in
the schoolrooms, it seems, were statues or statuettes of the Muses and
Apollo, and the school festivals or exhibitions were regarded as
festivals in honor of these. Indeed, in Greece every sort of festival
was regarded as an act of worship to some divinity. The chief school
festival seems to have been the _Mus? a_ (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), at which the boys
recited and sang.


(? ) _Gymnastics or Bodily Training_.

Under the term _Gymnastics_ (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), the Greeks generally included
everything relating to the culture of the body. The ends which the
Athenians sought to reach through this branch of education were health,
strength, adroitness, ease, self-possession, and firm, dignified
bearing. A certain number of boys, intending to take part in the Olympic
and other great games, were allowed to train as athletes under a gymnast
(? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) in the public gymnasia, and under the direction of
the State; but these were exceptions. The athlete was not an ideal
person at Athens, as he was at Thebes and Sparta.

Gymnastic exercises were conducted partly in the palaestras, or wrestling
schools, partly on the race-courses, both of which were under the
direction of professional trainers (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ). In early times, the
palaestra and race-course were simply an open space covered with sand and
probably connected with the school (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), thus corresponding to
our playground. Later, this space was partly covered over and furnished
with dressing-rooms, a bath, seats for spectators, an altar for
sacrifices, statues, etc. Of the five gymnastic exercises in which boys
were trained, all except wrestling seem to have been conducted on the
race-course, so that the palaestra was reserved for what its name
implied. It is by no means certain that every palaestra had a race-course
connected with it, at least in the time of which we are speaking, and
possibly in many cases the boys took part of their exercises in the
public race-course running from the agora to beyond the walls. Just as
the schoolroom was decorated with images of Apollo and the Muses, so the
palaestra was decorated with images of Hermes, Heracles, and Eros,
symbolizing, respectively, adroitness, human strength, and youthful
friendship. The special patron of the palaestra was Hermes, and the
gymnastic exhibition took the form of a festival to him, the Hermaea, at
which a sacrifice was offered and the boys were allowed the use of the
building to play games in, the victors wearing crowns.

It would be impossible, in a work of this compass, to enter into a
minute description of all the exercises of the Athenian palaestra. We
must be content with a general statement, which may be prefaced with the
remark that these exercises were at first light, increasing gradually in
rigor and difficulty as the strength and skill of the growing child
permitted.

The chief gymnastic exercises were five, named in this order in a famous
line of Simonides: (1) leaping, (2) running, (3) discus-throwing, (4)
javelin-casting, (5) wrestling (? ? ? ? ), which last gave the name to the
palaestra. We shall not strictly follow this order, but begin with

(1) _Running. _--This was the simplest, lightest, most natural, and,
therefore, the most easily taught of exercises. It was probably also the
oldest. We find even Homer making his ideal Phaeacians begin their games
with it, and this practice seems to have been general throughout
antiquity. In taking this exercise, the boys divested themselves of all
clothing and had their bodies rubbed with oil. The running appears to
have been of the simplest kind. Hurdle-races, sack-races, etc. , were
apparently excluded from education. At the same time, the running was
rendered difficult by the soft sand with which the course was covered to
the depth of several inches. The races were distinguished according to
their length in furlongs or stadia: (1) the furlong-race, (2) the
double-furlong race, (3) the horse (four-furlong) race, (4) the long
race, whose length seems to have been twenty-four furlongs, or about
three miles. The stadion was = 2021/4 yards English. The shorter races
called for brief concentration of energy, the longer for persistence and
endurance; all were exercises in agility; all tended to develop
lung-power.

(2) _Leaping or Jumping. _--This exercise seems, in the main, to have
confined itself to the long leap. Though the high leap and the pole-jump
can hardly have been unknown, we have no evidence that they were ever
employed in the gymnastic training of boys. There may have been hygienic
reasons which forbade their use. On the other hand, boys were taught to
lengthen their leap by means of weights, somewhat similar to our
dumb-bells, carried in their hands, and swung forward in the act of
leaping.
Such leaping would be an exercise for the arms, as well as for
the legs and the rest of the body. But, just as there were two exercises
intended chiefly for the legs, so there were two intended chiefly for
the arms--discus-throwing and javelin-casting.

(3) _Discus-throwing. _--The modern world has been rendered very familiar
with the method of this exercise by the copies of the _discobolus_ of
Myron, preserved in Rome and extensively engraved and photographed, and
that of the _discobolus_ of Alcamenes which now stands in the Vatican
(see Overbeck, _Griech. Plastik_ vol. i, p. 276). The discus was
generally a flat, round piece of stone or metal, a sort of large quoit
with no hole in the middle, which the user sought to throw as far as he
could. The discobolus of Alcamenes shows us a youth balancing the discus
in his left hand, and taking the measure of his throw with his eye; that
of Myron shows us another in the act of throwing. He swings the discus
backward in his right hand, and bends his body forward to balance it.
His right foot, the toes contracted with effort, rests firmly on the
ground; the left is slightly lifted; the whole body is like a bent bow.
In the next instant the left foot will advance, the left hand, now
resting on the right knee, will swing backwards, the body will resume
its erect position, and the discus will be shot forward from the right
hand like an arrow. Nothing could show more clearly than does this
statue the perfect organization, symmetry, and balance which were the
aim of Greek gymnastics. Not one limb could be moved without affecting
all the rest,--which shows that the exercise extended to the whole body.

(4) _Javelin-casting. _--The aim of this exercise was to develop skill
and precision of eye and hand, rather than strength of muscle. The
instrument employed was a short dagger or lance, which was aimed at a
mark. He who could hit the mark from the greatest distance was the most
proficient scholar. The spear, before being thrown, was balanced in the
right hand at the height of the ear.

(5) _Wrestling. _--This very complicated exercise was evidently the
principal one in the gymnastic course, the one to which the others were
merely preparatory. It was the only one which a boy could not practice
by himself. It exercised not only the whole body, but the patience and
temper as well. The aim of the wrestler was to throw (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) his
antagonist. Those who took part in this exercise had their bodies rubbed
with oil and strewn with fine sand. It seems that the wrestler was
allowed to do anything he chose to his antagonist except to bite,
strike, or kick him. Before he could claim the victory he had to throw
him three times. After the contest the wrestlers scraped from their
bodies, with a strigil, the oil and dust,[2] bathed, were again rubbed
with oil, exposed their bodies to the sun, in order to dry and tan them,
and dressed. The bathing was done in cold water, and both the bathing
and the sunning were in part intended to inure the body to sudden cold
and heat, which inurement was considered a very essential part of
physical training.

Such were the chief exercises employed in the gymnastic training of the
Athenians. Thus far, we have considered the two branches of education as
conducted separately, and as not coming at any point in contact with
each other. But it would have been very unlike the Greek, and especially
the Athenian, to leave the two divisions of education unrelated and
unharmonized. And, indeed, he did not so leave them, but brought them
together in the most admirable way in what he called _orchesis_, a word
for which we have no better equivalent than

(? ) _Dancing_ (? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ).

"Dancers," says Aristotle, "by means of plastic rhythms (rhythms
reproduced in plastic forms) imitate characters, feelings, and
actions. " Xenophon, in his _Anabasis_, describing a banquet that took
place in the wilds of Paphlagonia, says: "After the treaty was ratified
and the paean sung, there first rose up two Thracians and danced in armor
to the flute, leaping high and lightly, and using their swords. Finally
one of them struck the other, so that everybody thought he had wounded
him; but he fell in an artificial way. Then the Paphlagonians raised a
shout; but the assailant, having despoiled the fallen man of his armor,
went out singing the Sitalcas. Then others of the Thracians carried out
the other as if he had been dead; but he was none the worse. Next, some
AEnianes and Magnesians stood up and danced the so-called Carpaea in
armor. The manner of the dance was this: one man, putting his arms
within reach, sows and drives a team, frequently turning round as if
afraid. Then a robber makes his appearance. As soon as the other espies
him, he seizes his arms, advances to him, and fights in front of the
team. And the two did this keeping time to the flute. Finally the
robber, having bound the other, carries off both him and the team;
sometimes, on the contrary, the ploughman binds the robber, in which
case he yokes him, with his hands bound behind his back, to his oxen and
drives off. " Several other dances, performed by persons of different
nationalities, follow; but enough has been quoted to show that the Greek
? ? ? ? ? ? ? was something very different from our dancing. It was, indeed, a
pantomimic ballet, interspersed with _tableaux vivans_.

In the dances here mentioned, the flute is the instrument employed, and
this the player could not accompany with his voice. But in the Athenian
schools, in the old time, the flute, and all music without words, were
tabooed. There can be no doubt, therefore, that in these the orchestic
performances were accompanied by the lyre, the player on which sang in
words what the dancers danced. It is obvious that in such performances
the musical (literary) and gymnastic branches of education came in for
about equal shares. Dancing exercised the whole human being, body and
soul, and exercised them in a completely harmonious way. It is this
harmony, this rhythmic movement of the body in consonance with the
emotions of the soul and the purposes of the intelligence, that is
_grace_ (? ? ? ? ? ). Hence, while the Greeks relied upon gymnastics to
impart strength and firmness to the body, they looked to dancing for
courtliness and grace. Plato places the two on the same footing, as
parts of a single discipline.

The fact that the two divisions of education met in dancing seems to
prove what I surmised above, viz. that they were conducted within the
same precincts; in which case we may suppose that, while the dancing
exercises took place in the palaestra, the music was supplied by the
music master. We know that the chorus-leader was a public officer,
appointed by the demos, and had to be over forty years old. In any case,
it is curious enough to think that Athenian, and, generally, Greek,
education culminated in dancing. But this was a perfectly logical
result; for the chorus is the type of Greek social life, as we see most
clearly in the _Republic_ of Plato. It hardly needs to be pointed out
that the supreme form of Greek art, the drama, was but a development of
the Bacchic or Dionysiac chorus. This development consisted in the
separation of the music from the pantomime, and the assignment of the
former to the chorus, which no longer danced, but walked, and of the
latter to the actors, who added the dialogue to it. Greek life was
divided into three parts--civil, military, religious. Music and letters
were a preparation for the first, gymnastics for the second, and dancing
for the third. Dancing formed a prominent part in Greek worship, and it
may be doubted whether free Athenians ever danced except "before the
gods "--? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , as Xenophon says.

Two things still remain to be considered with regard to Athenian
schools, (1) grading, (2) holidays. With respect to the former, the
practice probably differed at different times; but we seem to be
justified in assuming that, at the time of which I am speaking, there
were but two grades, boys (? ? ? ? ? ? ) and youths (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ). These are
mentioned by Plato, in the _Lysis_, as celebrating the Hermaea together
in a palaestra. The first grade would include the boys from seven to
eleven years of age; the second, those from eleven to fifteen. As to
holidays, they seem to have been simply the feast-days of the greater
gods, when business of every sort was suspended. Such days amounted to
about ninety annually.


(3) COLLEGE EDUCATION.

About the time when he was blossoming into manhood, that is, some time
between his fourteenth and his sixteenth year, the Athenian boy of the
olden time was transferred from the private school and palaestra, which
belonged to the family side of life, to the gymnasium, which belonged to
the State, and in which he received the education calculated to fit him
for the duties of a citizen. Having, in the family and the school, been
trained to be a gentleman (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ), he must now be trained to be a
citizen, capable of exercising legislative, judicial, and military
functions. The State saw to it that he received this training, if his
parents chose and could afford it.

In the time of Solon, about B. C. 590, two great gymnasia, the Academy
and Cynosarges, were erected in the midst of extensive groves outside
the city walls. These groves were afterwards surrounded with high walls,
furnished with seats and other conveniences, and turned into city parks.
The Academy, which lay to the northwest of the city, in the valley of
the Cephisus, and was under the patronage of Athena, was the resort of
the full-blooded citizens, while Cynosarges, situated to the east of the
city, near the foot of Lycabettus, was assigned to those who had foreign
blood in their veins, that is, who had only one parent of pure Athenian
stock. This gymnasium was under the patronage of Heracles, whose worship
always implies the presence of a foreign and vanquished element. These
were the only two gymnasia belonging to Athens before the time of
Pericles. They were, probably, destroyed by the Persians in 480, and had
afterwards to be rebuilt, and the groves replanted.

While the children of nearly all the free citizens of Athens attended
the school and the palaestra, it is clear that only the youth of the
wealthier classes attended the gymnasium. One result of this was that
the government and offices of the State fell exclusively into the hands
of those classes; and it was perhaps just in order to make this
division, without introducing any class-law, that the shrewd Solon
established the gymnasia, which thus became a bulwark against democracy.

As soon as the Athenian youth was transferred to the gymnasium, he
passed from under the charge of the pedagogue, who represented the
family, and came under the direct surveillance of the State. He was now
free to go where he would, to frequent the agora and the street, to
attend the theatre, in which he had his appointed place, and to make
himself directly acquainted with all the details of public life. In the
gymnasium he passed into the hands of a gymnast or scientific trainer,
and for the next two or three years was subjected to the severer
exercises, wrestling, boxing, etc. No special provision, beyond the fact
that he had to learn the laws, was made for his intellectual and moral
instruction. He was expected to acquire this from contact with the older
citizens whom he met in the agora, the street, or the public park. Thus,
at what is justly regarded as the most critical age, he was almost
compelled to live a free, breezy, outdoor life, full of activity and
stirring incident, his thoughts and feelings directed outwards into acts
of will, and not turned back upon himself or his own states. At the same
time he was acquiring just that practical knowledge of ethical laws and
of real life which could best fit him for active citizenship. He now
learnt to ride, to drive, to row, to swim, to attend banquets, to
sustain a conversation, to discuss the weightiest questions of
statesmanship, to sing and dance in public choruses, and to ride or walk
in public processions. If he abused his liberty and behaved in a lawless
or unseemly way, he was called to account by the severe Court of the
Areopagus, which attended to public morals. He saw little of girls of
his own age, except his sisters, unless it was at public festivals, when
there was little opportunity of becoming acquainted with them. His
affectionate nature therefore expressed itself mostly in the form of
devoted friendships to other youths of his own, or nearly his own, age,
a fact which enables us to understand why friendship fills so large a
space, not only in the life, but also in the ethical treatises of the
Greeks,--Plato, Aristotle, etc. ,--and why love, in the modern sense,
plays so insignificant a part. The truth is that, even in Athens, the
State encroached upon the family. Plato's _Republic_ was only the
logical carrying out of principles that were latent long before in the
social life of the Athenian people.

It would be impossible to treat in detail the exercises to which the
Athenian youth was subjected during the years in which he attended the
public gymnasium as a pupil. The old exercises of the palaestra were
continued, running and wrestling especially; but the former was now done
in armor, and the latter became more violent, and was supplemented by
boxing. In fact, the physical exercises were now systematized into the
_pentathlon_--running, leaping, discus-throwing, wrestling,
boxing--which formed the programme of nearly all gymnastic exhibitions.
During these years, the youth was still regarded as a minor, and his
father or guardian was responsible for his good behavior. But when he
reached the age of eighteen, a change took place, and he passed under
the direct control of the State. His father now brought him before the
reeve of his _demos_ (ward or village), as a candidate for independent
citizenship. If he proved to be the lawful child of free citizens, and
came up to the moral and physical requirements of the law, his name was
entered upon the register of the demos, and he became a member of it. He
was now prepared to be presented to the whole people, and to pass the
State examination. He shore his long hair for the first time, and donned
the black garment of the citizen. In this guise he presented himself to
the king-archon of the State, who, at a public assembly, introduced him,
along with others, to the whole people. He was then and there armed with
spear and shield (supplied by the State if his father had fallen in
war), and thence proceeded to the shrine of Aglauros, where, looking
down on the agora, the city, and the Attic plain, he took the Solonian
oath of citizenship (see p. 61). He was now technically an _eph? bos_,
cadet, or citizen-novice, ready to undergo those two years of severe
discipline which at once formed his introduction to practical affairs,
and constituted the State examination.