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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text (Dedication) enclosed by plus signs is in ornate
bold face (+bold+).
OLD GREEK EDUCATION
by
J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A.
Fell. and Tutor, Trin. Coll., Dub.
Knight of the Order of the Saviour
Author of “Social Life in Greece” “A History of Greek Literature”
“A Primer of Greek Antiquities” etc.
New York
Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square
1882
TO
THE GREEK NATION
STILL, AS OF OLD, THE PIONEER OF EDUCATION
IN EASTERN EUROPE
+I Dedicate+
THIS LITTLE BOOK
IN MEMORY OF THE YEAR 1881
PREFATORY NOTE.
Readers unfamiliar with Greek will find the equivalent of the Greek
words cited in the nearest word printed in italics.
The scope of this book precludes me from acknowledging individually
my many obligations to other authors, both for curious facts and for
learned references.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
I. Infancy 7
II. Earlier Childhood 14
III. School Days--The Physical Side 21
IV. School Days--The Musical Side--The Schoolmaster 32
V. The Musical Side--Schools and their Appointments 42
VI. The Subjects and Method of Education--Drawing and
Music 57
VII. The Last Stage of Education--Military Training of the
Ephebi 69
VIII. Higher Education--The Sophists and Socrates 78
IX. The Rhetors--Isocrates 91
X. The Greek Theorists on Education--Plato and Aristotle 99
XI. The Growth of Systematic Higher Education--University
Life at Athens 116
INDEX 141
GREEK EDUCATION.
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. We hear it often repeated that human nature is the same at all
times and in all places; and this is urged at times and places where
it is so manifestly false that we feel disposed peremptorily to deny
it when paraded to us as a general truth. The fact is that only in its
lower activities does human nature show any remarkable uniformity; so
far as men are mere animals, they have strong resemblances, and in
savages even their minds seem to originate the same fancies in various
ages and climes. But when we come to higher developments, to the
spiritual element in individuals, to the social and political relations
of civilized men, the pretended truism gives way more and more to the
opposite truth, that mankind varies at all times and in all places. As
no two individuals, when carefully examined, are exactly alike, so no
two societies of men are even nearly alike; and at the present time
there is probably no more fertile cause of political and legislative
blundering than the assumption that the constitution successfully
worked out by one people can be transferred by the force of a mere
decree to its neighbors. All the recent experiments in state-reform
have been based on this assumption, as if the transferrence of a
House of Commons in any real sense were not as impossible as the
transferrence of Eton and of Oxford to some foreign society.
Although, therefore, we cannot deny that past history contains many
fruitful lessons for the bettering of our own time, it is not unlikely
that the tendency of the present widely informed but hasty age is to
exaggerate the likenesses of various epochs, and to overrate the force
of analogy in social and political reasoning. Historical parallels
are generally striking only up to a certain point; a deeper knowledge
discloses elements of contrast, wide differences of motive, great
variations in human feeling.
§ 2. But as we go back to simpler states of life, or earlier stages
of development, the argument from analogy becomes stronger, and the
lessons we may derive from history, though less striking, are more
trustworthy. This is peculiarly the case with the problem of education
as handled by civilized nations in various ages. The material to
be worked upon is that simpler and fresher human nature, in which
varieties are due only to heredity, and not yet to the numerous
artificial stimulants and restraints which every society of mature
men invents for itself. The games and sports of children, all over
the world, are as uniform as the weapons and designs of savages. The
delights and disappointments of education have also remained the same,
at least in many respects. The conflict of theoretical and practical
educators, and the failure of splendid schemes for the reform of
society by a systematic training of youth, mark every over-ripe
civilization. Here, then, if anywhere, we may gain a distinct advantage
by contemplating the problems, which we ourselves are solving, under
discussion in a remote society. The more important and permanent
elements will stand out clearer when freed from the interests and
prejudices of our own day, and from the necessities of our own
situation; and thus we may be taught to regain freedom of judgment
and escape from the iron despotism of a traditional system. For if it
be the case that in no department of our life are we more thoroughly
enslaved than on the question of education, if it be true that we are
obliged here to submit our children to the ignorance and prejudice
of nurses, governesses, priests, pedants--all following more or less
stupid traditions, and all coerced by shackles which they want either
the knowledge or the power to break--then any inquiry which may lead us
to consider freely and calmly what is right and what is not right, what
is possible and what is not possible, in education cannot but have real
value, apart from purely historical or learned considerations.
§ 3. In fact, the main object of this book is to interest men who are
not classical scholars, and who are not professional educators, in the
theory of education as treated by that people which is known to have
done more than any other in fitting its members for the higher ends and
enjoyments of life. The Greeks were far behind us in the mechanical
aids to human progress; they understood not the use of electricity, or
of steam, or of gunpowder, or of printing. But, in spite of this, the
Greek public was far better educated than we are--nay, to some extent,
because of this it was better educated. For Greek life afforded proper
leisure for thorough intellectual training, and this includes first
of all such political training as is strange to almost the whole of
Europe; secondly, moral training of so high a kind as to rival at times
the light of revelation; thirdly, social training to something higher
than music and feasting by way of recreation; and, fourthly, artistic
training, which, while it did not condescend to bad imitations of
great artists, taught the public to understand and to love true and
noble ideals.
Why must these great ends of education be obscured or lost by the
modern wonders of discovery, which should make them more easy of
attainment and wider in circulation? Were the Greeks better off in
education than we are, and, if so, why were they better off? or is all
this alleged Greek superiority an idle dream of the pedants, with no
solid basis in facts? If it is real, can we not discover the secret of
their superiority, and use it with far wider and deeper effect in our
Christian society? or is human nature of narrow and fixed capacity, and
does the addition of wide ranges of positive science and of various
tongues mar irrevocably the cultivation of the pure reason and of
the æsthetic faculty? These are the problems which will occupy the
following pages, not in their abstract form; they will be considered
in close relation to the success or failure of the old Greeks in
discussing and solving them.
§ 4. There have been only two earlier nations and one later which could
compete with the Greeks in their treatment of this perpetual problem
in human progress. We have first the Egyptian nation, which by its
thorough and widely diffused culture attained a duration of national
prosperity and happiness perhaps never since equalled. Isolated from
other civilized races by geographical position, by language, and in
consequence by social institutions, the Egyptians prosecuted internal
development more assiduously than is the wont of mere conquering
races. The few foreign possessions acquired by the Egyptians were
never assimilated, and the civilization of the Nile remained isolated
and unique. We have reason to know that this refined social life,
which is perpetuated in pictures on the monuments of the land--this
large and various literature, of which so many fragments have been
recovered in our century--was not created without a diffused and
systematic education. In Plato’s “Laws,”[1] the training of their
young children in elementary science is described as far superior to
anything in Greece. But, unfortunately, the materials for any estimate
of Egyptian education, in its process, are wanting. We can see plainly
its great national effects; we have even some details as to the special
training in separate institutions of a learned and literary class;
but nothing more has yet been recovered. If we knew the various steps
by which Moses became “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,”
an interesting field of comparison would be opened to us; and here,
no doubt, we should find some of our own difficulties discussed and
perhaps solved by early sages, still more by an enlightened public
opinion, showing itself in the establishment of sound traditions.
And, no doubt, from the dense population, the subdivision of property
and of labor, and the absence of a great territorial aristocracy, the
education of the Egyptians must have corresponded to our middle-class
and primary systems, together with special institutions for the higher
training of the professions and of the literary caste.
§ 5. If we could command our material, we might seek elsewhere for
analogies to the education of our nobility and higher gentry. We know
through Greek and Roman sources, as well as through the heroic poetry
of the “Shahnameh,” that the Aryan nobles who became, under Cyrus,
the rulers of Western Asia, were in character, as they were in blood,
allied to the Germanic chiefs and Norse Vikings, with their love of
daring adventure, their chivalry, and their intense loyalty to their
appointed sovereign. In these qualities they were strangely opposed to
the democratic Greeks, on whom they looked with contempt, while they
were appreciated in return only by a few such men as Herodotus and
Xenophon. Indeed, such devotion to their sovereign as made them leap
overboard to lighten his ship in a storm was confounded by the Greeks
with slavish submission, Oriental prostrations, and other signs of
humiliation. Nevertheless, the men whom the Greeks long dared not look
in the face--the conquerors of half the known world, the successful
rivals of the Romans for the dominion of the East--faced death under
Xerxes and the last Darius with other feelings than those of slavish
submission. Herodotus, in his interesting and sympathetic account of
them, says their children’s education consisted of three things--to
ride, to shoot, and to tell the truth. If he had added a chivalrous
loyalty to their kings like that of the French nobles in the last
century, he would have completed the picture, and sketched a training
which many an English gentleman considers little short of perfection.
§ 6. The Romans are the only other ancient people who stand near enough
to us to suggest an inquiry into their education. And it may be said
that they combined the dignity of noble traditions with the practical
instincts of a successful trading people. Hence Roman education, if
carried on with system, ought of all others to correspond with that of
Englishmen, who should combine the same qualities in carrying out an
analogous policy, and in filling, to some extent, a similar position
in the world. But so closely was all Roman culture based on Greek
books and models that, although every people must develop individual
features of its own--and the Romans had plenty of them, as we may see
from Quintilian--any philosophical knowledge of Roman education must
depend upon a previous knowledge of the Greeks. In many respects the
Romans were a race more congenial to the English, and hence by us
more easily understood. In the coarser and stronger elements of human
character, in directness and love of truth, in a certain contempt of
æsthetics and of speculation, in a blunt assertion of the supremacy
of practical questions, in a want of sympathy, and often a stupid
ignorance and neglect of the character and requirements of subject
races, the Romans are the true forerunners of the English in history.
Burdened as we are with these defects of national character, the
products of the subtler and more genial, if less solid and truthful,
Hellenic race are particularly well worth our consideration. This has
been so thoroughly recognized by thoughtful men in our generation as to
require no further support by argument. It only remains that each of
our Hellenists should do his best, in some distinct line, to make the
life of the Greeks known to us with fairness and accuracy.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] P. 819.
CHAPTER I.
INFANCY.
§ 7. We find in Homer, especially in the “Iliad,” indications of the
plainest kind that Greek babies were like the babies of modern Europe,
equally troublesome, equally delightful to their parents, equally
uninteresting to the rest of society. The famous scene in the sixth
book of the “Iliad,” when Hector’s infant, Astyanax, screams at the
sight of his father’s waving crest, and the hero lays his helmet on
the ground that he may laugh and weep over the child; the love and
tenderness of Andromache, and her pathetic laments in the twenty-second
book--are familiar to all. She foresees the hardships and unkindnesses
to her orphan boy, “who was wont upon his father’s knees to eat the
purest marrow and the rich fat of sheep; and when sleep came upon him,
and he ceased his childish play, he would lie in the arms of his nurse,
on a soft cushion, satisfied with every comfort.” So, again,[2] a
protecting goddess is compared to a mother keeping the flies from her
sleeping infant, and a pertinacious friend[3] to a little girl who,
running beside her mother, begs to be taken up, holding her dress and
delaying her, and with tearful eyes the child keeps looking up till
the mother denies her no longer. These are only stray references, and
yet they speak no less clearly than if we had asked for an express
answer to a direct inquiry. So we have the hesitation of the murderers
sent to make away with the infant Cypselus, who had been foretold to
portend danger to the Corinthian Herods of that day. The smile of the
baby unmans--or should we rather say unbrutes?--the first ruffian, and
so the task is passed on from man to man. This story in Herodotus[4]
is a sort of natural Greek parallel to the great Shakespearian scene,
where another child sways his intended torturer with an eloquence more
conscious and explicit, but not, perhaps, more powerful, than the
radiant smile of the Greek baby. Thus Euripides, the great master of
pathos, represents Iphigenia bringing her infant brother Orestes to
plead for her with that unconsciousness of sorrow which pierces us to
the heart more than the most affecting rhetoric. In modern art a little
child, playing about its dead mother, and waiting with contentment for
her awaking, is perhaps the most powerful appeal to human compassion
which we are able to conceive.
On the other hand, the troubles of infancy were then as now very
great. We do not, indeed, hear of croup or teething or measles or
whooping-cough. But these are occasional matters, and count as nothing
beside the inexorable tyranny of a sleepless baby. For then as now
mothers and nurses had a strong prejudice in favor of carrying about
restless children, and so soothing them to sleep. The unpractical
Plato requires that in his fabulous Republic two or three stout nurses
shall be in readiness to carry about each child, because children,
like game-cocks, gain spirit and endurance by this treatment! What
they really gain is a gigantic power of torturing their mothers.
Most children can readily be taught to sleep in a bed, or even in
an arm-chair; but an infant once accustomed to being carried about
will insist upon it; and so it came that Greek husbands were obliged
to relegate their wives to another sleeping-room, where the nightly
squalling of the furious infant might not disturb the master as well
as the mistress of the house. But the Greek gentleman was able to make
good his damaged rest by a mid-day siesta, and so required but little
sleep at night. The modern father in Northern Europe, with his whole
day’s work and waking, is therefore in a more disadvantageous position.
Of course, very fashionable people kept nurses, and it was the highest
tone at Athens to have a Spartan nurse for the infant, just as an
English nurse is sought out among foreign noblesse. We are told that
these women made the child hardier, that they used less swathing and
bandaging, and allowed free play for the limbs; and this, like all the
Spartan physical training, was approved of and admired by the rest of
the Greek public, though its imitation was never suggested save in the
unpractical speculations of Plato.
Whether they also approved of a diet of marrow and mutton suet, which
Homer, in the passage just cited, considers the luxury of princes, does
not appear. As Homer was the Greek Bible--an inspired book containing
perfect wisdom on all things, human and divine--there must have been
many orthodox parents who followed his prescription. But we hear no
approval or censure of such diet. Possibly marrow may have represented
our cod-liver oil in strengthening delicate infants. But as the
Homeric men fed far more exclusively on meat than their historical
successors, some vegetable substitute, such as olive oil, must have
been in use later on. Even within our memory mutton suet boiled in milk
was commonly recommended by physicians for the delicacy now treated
by cod-liver oil. The supposed strengthening of children by air and
exposure, or by early neglect of their comforts, was as fashionable
at Sparta as it is with many modern theorists, and it probably led in
both cases to the same result--the extinction of the weak and delicate.
These theorists parade the cases of survival of stout children--that
is, their exceptional soundness--as the effect of this harsh treatment,
and so satisfy themselves that experience confirms their views. Now
with the Spartans this was logical enough, for as they professed and
desired nothing but physical results, as they despised intellectual
qualities, and esteemed obedience to be the highest of moral ones, they
were perhaps justified in their proceeding. So thoroughly did they
advocate the production of healthy citizens for military purposes that
they were quite content that the sickly should die. In fact, in the
case of obviously weak and deformed infants, they did not hesitate to
expose them in the most brutal sense, not to cold and draughts, but to
the wild beasts in the mountains.
§ 8. This brings us to the first shocking contrast between the Greek
treatment of children and ours. We cannot really doubt, from the free
use of the idea in Greek tragedies, in the comedies of ordinary life,
and in theories of political economy, that the exposing of new-born
children was not only sanctioned by public feeling, but actually
practised throughout Greece. Various motives combined to justify or to
extenuate this practice. In the first place, the infant was regarded
as the property of its parents, indeed of its father, to an extent
inconceivable to most modern Christians. The State only, whose claim
overrode all other considerations, had a right, for public reasons,
to interfere with the dispositions of a father. Individual human life
had not attained what may be called the exaggerated value derived from
sundry superstitions, which remains even after those superstitions
have decayed. And, moreover, in many Greek states, the contempt for
commercial pursuits, and the want of outlet for practical energy,
made the supporting of large families cumbersome, or the subdivision
of patrimonies excessive. Hence the prudence or the selfishness of
parents did not hesitate to use an escape which modern civilization
condemns as not only criminal, but as horribly cruel. How little even
the noblest Greek theorists felt this objection appears from the fact
that Plato, the Attic Moses, sanctions infanticide[5] under certain
circumstances or in another form, in his ideal state. In the genteel
comedy it is often mentioned as a somewhat painful necessity, but
enjoined by prudence. Nowhere does the agony of the mother’s heart
reach us through their literature, save in one illustration used by
the Platonic Socrates, where he compares the anger of his pupils, when
first confuted out of their prejudices, to the fury of a young mother
deprived of her first infant. There is something horrible in the very
allusion, as if in after-life Attic mothers became hardened to this
treatment. We must suppose the exposing of female infants to have been
not uncommon until the just retribution of barrenness fell upon the
nation, and the population dwindled away by a strange atrophy.
§ 9. In the many family suits argued by the Attic orators, we do
not (I believe) find a case in which a large family of children is
concerned. Four appears a larger number than the average. Marriages
between relations as close as uncle and niece, and even half-brothers
and sisters, were not uncommon; but the researches of modern science
have removed the grounds for believing that this practice would tend
to diminish the race. It would certainly increase any _pre-existing_
tendency to hereditary disease; yet we do not hear of infantile
diseases any more than we hear of delicate infants. Plagues and
epidemics were common enough, but, as already observed, we do not hear
of measles, or whooping-cough, or scarlatina, or any of the other
constant persecutors of our nurseries.
As the learning of foreign languages was quite beneath the notions
of the Greek gentleman, who rather expected all barbarians to learn
_his_ language, the habit of employing foreign nurses, so useful and
even necessary to good modern education, was well-nigh unknown. It
would have been thought a great misfortune to any Hellenic child to
be brought up speaking Thracian or Egyptian. Accordingly, foreign
slave attendants, with their strange accent and rude manners, were not
allowed to take charge of children till they were able to go to school,
and had learned their mother tongue perfectly.
But the women’s apartments, in which children were kept for the first
few years, are closed so completely to us that we can but conjecture a
few things about the life and care of Greek babies. A few late epigrams
tell the grief of parents bereaved of their infants. Beyond this,
classical literature affords us no light. The backwardness in culture
of Greek women leads us to suspect that then, as now, Greek babies were
more often spoiled than is the case among the serious Northern nations.
The term “Spartan mother” is, however, still proverbial; and, no doubt,
in that exceptional State discipline was so universal and so highly
esteemed that it penetrated even to the nursery. But in the rest of
Greece we may conceive the young child arriving at his schoolboy age
more wilful and headstrong than most of our more watched and worried
infants. Archytas, the philosopher, earned special credit for inventing
the rattle, and saving much damage to household furniture by occupying
children with this toy.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Δ 130.
[3] Π 7.
[4] Herod. v. 93.
[5] Exposing children, instead of killing them, left open the chance
that some benevolent person would save them, from pity, or avaricious
person sell them as slaves--a result which, no doubt, often occurred.
Thus the parents could console their consciences with a hope that the
benevolence of the gods had prevented the natural consequences of their
inhuman act.