EARLIER CHILDHOOD.
§ 10. The external circumstances determining a Greek boy’s education
were somewhat different from ours. We must remember that all old Greek
life, except in rare cases, such as that of Elis, of which we know
nothing, was distinctly _town life_; and so, naturally, Greek schooling
was day schooling, from which the children returned to the care of
their parents. To hand over boys, far less girls, to the charge of a
boarding-school was perfectly unknown, and would, no doubt, have been
gravely censured. Orphans were placed under the care of their nearest
male relative, even when their education was provided (as it was in
some cases) by the State. Again, as regards the age of going to school,
it would naturally be early, seeing that day schools may well include
infants of tender age, and that in Greek households neither father nor
mother was often able or disposed to undertake the education of the
children. Indeed, we find it universal that even the knowledge of the
letters, and reading, were obtained from a schoolmaster. All these
circumstances would point to an early beginning of Greek school life;
whereas, on the other hand, the small number of subjects required in
those days, the absence from the programme of various languages, of
most exact sciences, and of general history and geography, made it
unnecessary to begin so early, or work so hard, as our unfortunate
children have to do. Above all, there were no competitive examinations,
except in athletics and music. The Greeks never thought of promoting
a man for “dead knowledge,” but for his living grasp of science or of
life.
Owing to these causes, we find the theorists discussing, as they now
do, the expediency of waiting till the age of seven before beginning
serious education--some advising it, others recommending easy and
half-playing lessons from an earlier period. And then, as now, we find
the same curious silence on the really important fact that the exact
number of years a child has lived is nothing to the point in question;
and that while one child may be too young at seven to commence work,
many more may be distinctly too old.
§ 11. At all events, we may assume in parents the same varieties of
over-anxiety, of over-indulgence, of nervousness, and of carelessness
about their children; and so it doubtless came to pass that there was
in many cases a gap between infancy and school-life, which was spent
in playing and doing mischief. This may be fairly inferred, not only
from such anecdotes as that of Alcibiades playing with his fellows in
the street,[6] evidently without the protection of any pædagogue, but
also from the large nomenclature of boys’ games preserved to us in the
glossaries of later grammarians.
These games are quite distinct from the regular exercises in the
palæstra (of which we will speak presently, as forming a regular part
of education). We have only general descriptions of them, and these
either by Greek scholiasts or by modern philologists. But, in spite
of the sad want of practical knowledge of games shown by both, the
instincts of boyhood are so uniform that we can often frame a very
distinct idea of the sort of amusement popular among Greek children.
For young boys, games can hardly consist of anything else than either
the practising of some bodily dexterity, such as hopping on one foot,
higher or longer than is easy, or throwing farther with a stone; or
else some imitation of war, such as snowballing, or pulling a rope
across a line, or pursuing under fixed conditions; or, lastly, the
practice of some mechanical ingenuity, such as whipping a top or
shooting with marbles. So far as climate or mechanical inventions
have not altered our little boys’ games, we find all these principles
represented in Greek games. There was the hobby- or cock-horse (κάλαμον
παραβῆναι), standing or hopping on one leg (ἀσκωλιάζειν), which, as the
word ἀσκός implies, was attempted on a _skin-bottle_ filled with liquid
and greased; blindman’s-buff (χαλκῆ μυῖα), in which the boy cried, “I
am hunting a _bracken fly_,” and the rest answered, “You will not catch
it;” games of hide-and-seek, of taking and releasing prisoners, of fool
in the middle, of playing at king--in fact, there is probably no simple
child’s game now known which was not then in use.
A few more details may, however, be interesting. There was a game
called κυνδαλισμός, in which the κύνδαλον was a peg of wood with a
heavy end sharpened, which boys sought to strike into a softened place
in the earth so that it stood upright, and knocked out the peg of a
rival. This reminds us of the pegtop-splitting which still goes on
in our streets. Another, called ὀστρακίνδα, consisted of tossing an
oyster-shell in the air, of which one side was blackened or moistened,
and called _night_, the other _day_, or sun and rain. The boys were
divided into two sides with these names, and, according as their
side of the shell turned up, they pursued and took prisoners their
adversaries. On the other hand, ἐποστρακισμός was making a _shell_
skip along the surface of water by a horizontal throw, and winning by
the greatest number of skips. Εἰς ὤμιλλαν, though a general expression
for any contest, was specially applied to tossing a knuckle-bone or
smooth stone so as to lie in the centre of a fixed circle, and to
disturb those which were already in good positions. This was also done
into a small hole (τρόπα). They seem to have shot dried beans from
their fingers as we do marbles (φρυγίνδα). They spun coins on their
edge (χαλκισμός).
Here are two games not perhaps so universal nowadays. Πενταλιθίζειν
was a technical word for tossing up _five pebbles_ or astragali,
and receiving them so as to make them lie on the back of the hand.
Μηλολόνθη, or the _beetle_ game, consisted in flying a beetle by a
long thread, and guiding him like a kite. But by way of improvement
they attached a waxed splinter, lighted, to his tail; and this cruelty
is now practised, according to a good authority (Papasliotis), in
Greece, and has even been known to cause serious fires.[7] Tops were
known under various names (βέμβιξ, στρόμβος, στρόβιλος), one of them
certainly a humming-top. So were hoops (τροχοί).
Ball-playing was ancient and diffused, even among the Homeric
heroes. But as it was found very fashionable and carefully practised
by both Mexicans and Peruvians at the time of the conquest, it is
probably common to all civilized races. We have no details left us
of complicated games with balls; and the mere throwing them up and
catching them one from the other, with some rhythmic motion, is hardly
worth all the poetic fervor shown about this game by the Greeks. But
possibly the musical and dancing accompaniments were very important, in
the case of grown people, and in historical times. Pollux, however--our
main authority for most of these games--in one place[8] distinctly
describes both football and handball. “The names,” he says, “of games
with balls are--ἐπίσκυρος, φαινίνδα, ἀπόῤῥαξις, οὐρανία. The first
is played by two even sides, who draw a line in the centre, which
they called σκῦρος, on which they place the ball. They draw two other
lines behind each side, and those who first reach the ball throw it
(ῥίπτουσιν) over the opponents, whose duty it is to catch it and
return it, until one side drives the other back over their goal line.”
Though Pollux makes no mention of _kicking_, this game is evidently
our football in substance. He proceeds: “φαινίνδα was called either
from Phænindes, the first discoverer, or from deceiving (φενακίζειν),”
etc.--we need not follow his etymologies--“and ἀπόῤῥαξις consists of
making a ball bound off the ground, and sending it against a wall,
counting the number of the hops according as it was returned.” And as
if to make the anticipations of our games more curiously complete,
there is cited from the history of Manuel, by the Byzantine Cinnamus
(A.D. 1200), a clear description of the Canadian lacrosse, a sort of
hockey played with rackets: “Certain youths, divided equally, leave in
a level place, which they have before prepared and measured, a ball
made of leather, about the size of an apple, and rush at it, as if it
were a prize lying in the middle, from their fixed starting-point (a
goal). Each of them has in his right hand a racket (ῥάβδον) of suitable
length ending in a sort of flat bend, the middle of which is occupied
by gut strings dried by seasoning, and plaited together in net
fashion. Each side strives to be the first to bring it to the opposite
end of the ground from that allotted to them. Whenever the ball is
driven by the ῥάβδοι (rackets) to the end of the ground, it counts as a
victory.”[9]
Two games, which were not confined to children, and which are
not widely diffused, though they exist, among us, are the use of
_astragali_, or knuckle-bones of animals, so cut nearly square as
to serve for dice; and with these children threw for luck, the
highest throw (sixes) being accounted the best. In later Greek art
representations of Eros and other youthful figures engaged with
astragali are frequent. It is to be feared that this game was an
introduction to dice-playing, which was so common, and so often abused,
that among the few specimens of ancient dice remaining there are some
false, and which were evidently loaded. The other game to which I
allude is the Italian _morra_, the guessing instantaneously how many
fingers are thrown up by the player and his adversary. It is surprising
how fond Southern men and boys still are of this simple game, chiefly,
however, for gambling purposes.
There was tossing in a blanket, walking on stilts, swinging, leap-frog,
and many other similar plays, which are ill-understood, and worse
explained, by the learned, and of no importance to us, save as proving
the general similarity of the life of little boys then as now.
We know nothing about the condition of little girls of the same age,
except that they specially indulged in ball-playing. Like our own
children, the girls probably joined, to a lesser degree, in the boys’
games, and only so far as they could be carried on within-doors, in
the court of the house. There are graceful representations of their
swinging and practising our _seesaw_. Dolls they had in plenty, and
doll-making (of clay) was quite a special trade at Athens. In more than
one instance we have found in children’s graves their favorite dolls,
which sorrowing parents laid with them as a sort of keepsake in the
tomb.
§ 12. Most unfortunately, there is hardly a word left of the nursery
rhymes and of the folk-lore, which are very much more interesting than
the physical amusements of children. Yet we know that such popular
songs existed in plenty; we know, too, from the early fame of Æsop’s
fables, from the myths so readily invented and exquisitely told by
Plato, that here we have lost a real fund of beautiful and stimulating
children’s stories.[10] And of course here, too, the general character
of such stories throughout the human race was preserved.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Plut. “Alkib.,” c. 2.
[7] This seems to be the interpretation of “Achar.” 920 sq., according
to Grasberger.
[8] ix. 103.
[9] I do not know whether so late an authority is valid proof for
the early Greek origin of a game. Most certainly the polo played at
Constantinople at the same time came from an equestrian people, and not
from the Greeks.
[10] There is a possibility of recovering some of them by a careful
collection of the ναναρίσματα of the modern Greeks, which in many cases
doubtless correspond to their forerunners the βαυκαλήματα of the old
Greeks. Stories of _Mormo_ and _Gorgo_ and the _Empousa_ are still
current to frighten children, as are also (about Arachova) songs about
Charos (the old Charon), the ruthless genius of death. The belief in
Lamia is still so common that ἔπνιξεν ἡ Λάμια--_Lamia choked it_--is a
common expression when a child dies suddenly. Cf. Βενίζελος, “On the
Private Life of the Old Greeks,” Athens, 1873.