NATIONAL EDUCATION
IN GREECE
In the fourth Century before Christ

LIBRARY
BY AUGUSTUS S. WILKINS, M.A.,
FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON ;
LATE SCHOLAR
PROFESSOR

OF ST. J O H N ' S

OF LATIN

IN THE

COLLEGE,

CAMBRIDGE;

OWENS COLLEGE,

MANCHESTER

STRAHAN & CO.
56, L U D G A T E

HILL,
1873

LONDON

LONDON !
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO.,
CITY ROAD.

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND

CONNOP T H I R L W A L L , D.D.,
LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S,

WITH PROFOUND VENERATION,

AN ESSAY,
WHOSE ONLY CLAIM ON T H E NOTICE OF T H E FIRST
OF LIVING ENGLISH HISTORIANS I S ,
THAT I T COMES ASSOCIATED, HOWEVER U N W O R T H I L Y ,
W I T H T H E NAME OF

JULIUS CHARLES HARE.

PREFACE.

| H E following essay obtained the
H a r e Prize in the University of
Cambridge, a prize founded in
1861 by the friends of the Ven. Archdeacon
Hare, " to testify their admiration for his
character, and the high sense they entertained of his services to learning and
religion." I t is awarded once in every
four years to the graduate of not more
than ten years' standing from his first
degree, who shall produce the best English
Dissertation on some subject taken from
Ancient Greek or Roman History, political
or literary, or from the History of Greek
or Roman Philosophy. The subject proposed by the Vice-Chancellor for the year
1873 was " T h e Theories and Practice of

viii

PREFACE.

National Education in Greece during the
Fourth Century B.C."
The subject of Greek education has been
so thoroughly investigated, the passages
in classical authors that bear upon it have
been so industriously collected, and its
principal merits and defects have been so
fully expounded, that it is difficult now to
write upon it with any originality. I n this
essay my aim has been mainly twofold, to
group the facts familiar to every scholar
round the idea of the relation of the State
to the citizen, and to furnish a trustworthy
sketch of this side of the life and thought
of Greece for the use of the general reader.
Now that the supreme importance of
national education is happily so widely
recognised, there are probably many who,
though not having the power of studying
for themselves the classical authors, still
desire to know how the problems which
are straining so severely the statesmen of
to-day, were solved in the ancient world.
I do not know any work in English which
exactly suits this want, and therefore I
have endeavoured to adapt this essay to

PREFACE.

IX

the needs of a wider circle than that to
which, under other circumstances, it 'might
have seemed fitter to appeal. The authorities used are in all cases referred to in
the margin. In dealing with Plato, I have
been deeply indebted to his two great
English exponents and critics. In other
cases I have drawn chiefly on the scholars
of Germany; but all references to classical
authors have been independently examined
and verified. Unfortunately, the admirable
sketch of the history of education among
the Greeks and Romans by the well-known
Danish scholar, J. L. Ussing (translated
into German by Friedrichsen. Altona, 1870),
and the copious collection of materials by
K. F . Hermann in his Privatalterthiimer
(2nd edition by Stark. Heidelberg, 1870),
did not reach me until I had written these
pages. References to them have here and
there been added in the course of revision.
OWENS COLLEGE, MANCHESTER,

October, 1873.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE

INTRODUCTORY—EDUCATION IN SPARTA

.

.

1

CHAPTER II.
EDUCATION AT A T H E N S

60

C H A P T E R III.
PLATO ON EDUCATION

101

C H A P T E R IV.
ARISTOTLE ON EDUCATION

135

CHAPTER L
INTRODUCTORY.—NATIONAL EDUCATION
IN SPARTA.

H E object of the present essay object of the
will be to set forth, so far as our
extant authorities allow — i st,
the popular Greek conceptions
of the aims and methods of national education ; 2nd, the manner in which these
conceptions were carried into practical
effect, with their general results upon national life; and 3rd, the criticisms of the
popular ideas and methods of education
passed by the great Greek thinkers of the
fourth century before our era, with the
substitutes suggested by them.
I n attempting to deal with these ques- Limits of the
inquiry.

tions successively our attention will of
necessity be limited almost wholly tc
B

2

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

Athens and Sparta. I t is true that for
a portion of the century under our more
immediate consideration the hegemony of
Greece falls to the lot of Thebes.
But
her supremacy was too brief and baseless
for the thought of the Athenian writers
(on whom we have mainly to depend) to
be attracted to her institutions, social or
political,, in the same way in which it was
challenged by those of Lacedaemon. T h e
T h e b a n views and methods of education
will therefore claim our notice rather by
way of occasional contrast and comparison
than as an independent portion of our
inquiries. A n d in regard to the other
Hellenic communities, we find in almost
every case, either t h a t we have but hints
and fragments of information which whet
our interest rather than satisfy it, or that
our authorities treat of periods excluded
from this essay by the limits of time imposed. M a g n a Graecia, the Aeolic colonies
of Lesbos and the adjacent coast, Crete
and Ionia, would all furnish matter of value
for a general history of Greek education,
which must here be regarded as excluded.

DORIANS

AND IONIANS.

3

But happily the states on which we haste Athens and
the fullest information are not only those states. y u
of the greatest intrinsic interest, but they
may also be regarded as typical. F r o m
the earliest appearance of the Hellenic
race on the stage of history, it presents
itself to us as broadly divided into two
great sections.* The division was never
deep enough to sever the bond which
united all together as members of a common H e l l a s ; nor did it exclude numerous
and occasionally important sub-divisions.
Still, speaking with a certain latitude, we
may say that a careful study of the leading
characteristics of the Dorian and Ionian
races, and their mutual influence, will give
us almost all we want for a knowledge of
the mental and spiritual life of Hellas, f
Now of these two races, Athens and Sparta
were undoubtedly the recognised leaders
and representatives; and therefore, if we
* E. Curtius has well shown that minor divisions sink into>
insignificance compared with this great dualism.
f The statement in Theophrast. Char. Proem, (worthlessas is the authority on which it rests) is probably not far from
the truth—iravrmv T&V 'EXXr/vwv opo'iug 7raidtvofisvit)v.
Cp. Wittmann—Erziehung und Unterricht bei Platon, p.. 7,

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

succeed in mastering the A t h e n i a n and
Spartan systems of education, we shall be
in possession of the main ideas current
in the other Hellenic states, although their
developement may well have been modified
greatly by varying conditions in each individual case.
The Dorians. F r o m the numerous and inconsistent
legends of t h e origin of the Dorians, discussed very fully by Ottfried Miiller, we
can learn but little as to the influences
which stamped upon them their well-marked
character. I t is possible t h a t comparative
philology, which has done so much for us
already, may yet be able to give us some
light on this subject; but at present it can
carry us no further than the days when
the Italo-Hellenic people were still united.*
W e may perhaps conjecture that a life in
the rough mountainous country of Northern
* The picture of their common civilisation has been graphically sketched by Mommsen (i. 19-31); the materials
for adding a few more details are given by Fick— "Vergleichendes Worterbuch" (2nd edition), pp. 421-504. I
intentionally pass over the difficult question whether the
Keltic tribes remained united with the Italians up to and
after their separation from the Hellenes. But cp. Peile's
'•Etymology," 24-27; and Schleicher in Rhein.Mus.for 1859.

THE DORIAN

CHARACTER.

Hellas, exposed to the constant assaults
of the barbarians who were ever pressing
southwards, was the main cause of their
distinctive character. Dr. Donaldson, following Kenrick, finds a trace of their
earliest home in Greece in the very name
Dorian (Awptcts, ' Highlanders,' from 8a a n d
opos); and the more probable explanation
of the name sanctioned by Prof. G. Curtius
(vielleicht bedeutete auch Awpt-s eigentlich
Holzland, Waldland, so dass die Awptcts
unsern u Holsaten " entsprachen) points
in the same direction. Dr. E . Curtius
says, I think with justice, t h a t " i n the
full and broad sounds of their dialect we
seem to recognise the chest strengthened
by mountain air and mountain life." B u t
our knowledge of their history before the
dawn of trustworthy tradition is too slight
to enable us to determine whether it w a s
only external conditions which moulded
their national life, or whether there were
not far earlier race distinctions which contributed largely to fashion it. I t is certain Dorian cka~
that wherever we come upon them in
historic times we find the same charae-

6

ED UCA TION IN

SPARTA.

teristic tendencies, obscured, it may be,
in wealthy mercantile cities like Corinth
(itself, however, to a large extent Achaean),
and appearing in their unmixed clearness
only in isolated states like Crete, yet
nowhere wholly wanting. We have on
one side a freshness and simplicity of life,
a manly energy, a bright and joyous but
self-restrained and calm religion—points
on which Miiller delights to dwell; but on
the other hand, a want of the free play of
individual activity, the quick intellectual
subtlety, the restless, inquisitive temper of
the Ionian mind. Above all we have the
great idea of the state dominating every
member, and owning their absolute and
unqualified obedience. In the vigorous
and suggestive passage in which Mommsen
compares the Italian and Hellenic characters, he appears to have had in view
throughout Athens as the type and crown
of Hellas, we cannot say wrongly; but in
many points the Dorians approach more
nearly to the Italian than to the Athenian
character; and their conception of the claims
of th$ state seems to have been one of

THE INFLUENCE
these.

OF DELPHI,

?

It cannot be said of Dorians that

" ; they sacrificed the whole to its individual
elements, the nation to the single state,
and the single state to the c i t i z e n ; " it is Mommsen,
rather true that they " s u r r e n d e r e d their

i. 24.

personal will for the sake of freedom, and
learnt to obey their fathers, that they might
know how to obey the State," although, ibid., u 3r.
" i n such subjection as this, individual
developement might be arrested, and the
germs of the fairest promise in man might
be arrested in the bud." It is very noteworthy from this point of view, that the
centralising influence of Delphi, if not
originating in Dorian ideas, was at least
extended by Dorian energy. Profc Curtius
holds that the Dorian idea of a state was
formed by the action of the Delphic priesthood. Whether this was the case, or
whether it was external pressure that
welded the Dorians into greater unity than
was ever attained by the looser Ionian
city-federations, may be left uncertain. I t
is clear that throughout the period of the
prime of Hellas, there was a very close
connection and sympathy between the Del-

8

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA,

Cp. Muller's phic authorities and the leading Dorian
Dorians, ii.

241.

Curtius, ii.

states.
And, in spite of the Spartan
xenelasy, it is probable that the link of
union lay in common Panhellenic tendencies.
A t any rate we find the great
Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian
games all celebrated in Dorian territory,
and in honour of deities distinctively or

The spartan

especially Dorian.
The key to the right understanding of

27-29.

institutions.

the Spartan institutions lies in regarding
See K. F.
them as the old Dorian laws and customs
arguments
modified under the pressure of exceptional
Grote, Plato, conditions. The current traditions reprem 309
* '
sented the conquest of Laconia as rapid
and complete. B u t this is sufficiently disproved, not only by isolated fragments of
Miiller, book information which are wholly inconsistent
i. cc. 4, 5.

with any such view, but also b y considering the nature of the case. The Spartans to
the end of their history were confessedly very
unskilful in the attack of fortified places;
and, indeed, how was it possible that their
phalanx of spearmen, irresistible in the
open field, should be equally adapted to
scale the Acro-Corinthus or the Argive

THE POSITION

OF

SPARTA.

Larisa ? It cannot be doubted that the
Dorians of S p a r t a carried on for years,
and it may be for generations, a kind of
eViTeixwr/Aos against the surrounding Achaean
towns. Hence their distinguishing belief
in the absolute right of the state to the
unconditional obedience of its citizens,
must have been intensified by the knowledge that this unhesitating devotion was
simply needful for self-preservation. Sparta Cp. Ar. Pol.
ii. 9, 2.

oc

was a garrison planted in the midst of EtXwrcc . .
enemies, and its laws and. habits were ptvovreg TOXQ
those of a garrison. That every citizen dianXovrnv.
should be trained to the highest perfection
of physical condition and discipline was
an essential requisite of their position.
And when the supremacy of Sparta over
Amyclae, A e g y s , Pharis, and Helos had
once been established, not less vigilance
and energy were needed to retain it. The
Achaean population was crushed, but not
exterminated. Mutatis mutandis, the position of the S p a r t a n s was not unlike that
which the English have for a century held
in India. I n our own case the maintenance
of empire is aided by a more advanced

10

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

material civilisation, and by a still more
marked superiority of national character.
But the Dorian invaders were probably
decidedly inferior to the Achaeans in the
arts of peace, and distinctions of race,
though of course existing, were of much
less importance than is the case as between
the Englishman and the Bengali.
But
the needful conditions for the rule of a
nation by a small body of foreigners are
a proud consciousness on the part of the
rulers that^ man for man, they are immeasurably superior to the subject race,
and an unhesitating daring, ready in times
of trial to fling itself upon unnumbered
e n e m i e s firj <j>povY)fJLaTi fiovov aAAot KOLL KaTa<f)povrjfJLaTti

Like the slave-priest of Aricia, Sparta
held her national life only so long as she
proved herself stronger in battle than all
Compare the who might come against her.

A n d as the

words of

Brasidas:
Thuc. iv. 126;

chance of a struggle was always imminent,
r

-

. .

-

Ar. Pol. ii. 9, every one of her citizens was kept m perfect training for it.
Lycurgus.

That Lycurgus had a real

historical

Thiriwall,

existence hardly admits of doubt.

But it

1 2 28 • fin*-

tius, i/191." is difficult to determine what amount of

LYCURGUS.

a

originality may be ascribed to his legislation. On the whole it seems most probable
that he did little more than revive and
place under a strong religious sanction
the ancient laws and institutions of the
Dorians, adapting them in a few particulars to the peculiar position of the
Spartans. This is the view of Bishop
Thirlwall, accepted on the whole b y Curtius.* The basis of all his reforms, as
Plutarch tells us, was his system of
national education. But here we must piut. Lye. 14.
digress for a moment to limit the application of the term. I n Sparta as i m
Athens, and indeed throughout Hellas, the
phrase bore a very different meaning from
that which is happily attached to it in
modern times. I n Sparta there were at
most nine thousand families of citizens,
* I am speaking of course with reference mainly to the
social institutions of Lycurgus. There is force in the arguments by which Curtius endeavours to show that part of the
political constitution was distinctly Achaean. But it is surprising to find him ignoring the irrefragable evidence by
which Grote has disproved the tradition of an equal division
of land. To the whole system of Sparta Grote is disposed
to attribute more originality and a more exceptional position than most other authorities will allow. Compare his
History, and especially his " Plato," vol. iii. 309, note x.

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

surrounded by more than three times as
many Perioeci, and a Helot population,
amounting on t h e whole at least to two
Miiiler, ii. 45. hundred and fifty thousand.
I n Attica,
with its population of half a million, at
least four-fifths of the whole were slaves.
Bockh, Pubi. But of anything like a public education
Econ. book i.

c. 7.

of slaves, or even of Perioeci, there could
never have been a question in Hellas.
T h e " n a t i o n " then, in the eyes of a Greek,
would only consist of the free population,
possessing the full civic rights—Aristotle
even excludes the " b a s e mechanicals"
(Pavavoroi) from his ideal state—and therefore the term " n a t i o n a l education" must
be taken in the limited sense of the education of that small minority of the whole
community which was recognised as forming the nation. But to r e s u m e : the aim of
Lycurgus was to train the citizens of Sparta
to the greatest possible efficiency in war.
To this every other object was unsparingly
sacrificed. P l a t o says in his Laws (1. 630 D)
7ravra rd r

Iv AaKtSaifiovi

KCU TO. rfjSe Trpos rbv

7ro\€fiov fxaXLa-Ta /3A.€7rovras AvKovpyov re /cat MtVa>

T106C0CU ra vofiifm. On the means which he

OUR

AUTHORITIES.

employed to obtain this result we have, Ourauthorifortunately, ample and trustworthy information. I t is true that the writings of
Plutarch require to be used with caution.
Living, as he did, long after the time
when Sparta h a d ceased to have any
independent national life, his facts are of
course given us only on second-hand
authority. A n d Mr. Grote has pointed
out another less patent source of possible
error.
The abortive attempts at reform made b y Agis and Cleomenes not
only had failed to restore the primitive
Spartan constitution, but also had caused
the new ideas which their enthusiasm or
their policy h a d announced as constituent
parts of the Lycurgan institutions to be
accepted by later historians as really such.
Plutarch has undoubtedly misled us on
the question of the equal distribution of
the l a n d ; and it would be rash to use
without suspicion any assertion of his that
is unsupported by better authorities. Isocrates, though a contemporary authority
for the period which we have especially
to consider, is of little value, because of

14

Cp. Paneg.

§.§ 110-132.

ED UCA TION IN

SPARTA.

the strong hostility to the Lacedaemonians
which appears in his writings. But X e n o -

phon and Aristotle can be trusted with
less reserve. The AaKcSat/xovtW UoXiTcCa of
cp. Weiske's the former has been suspected both in
dissertation

prefixed to

ancient

and in modern times, but

the

Schneider's

edition.

arguments against it do not appear to be
strong; and the tone of the treatise is
just what would be expected from the
friend of Agesilaus and the exile of
Scillus. There is an evident tendency to
apologise for Spartan customs and to
prefer them to those of A t h e n s ; and
though this of itself would not be sufficient
to prove the authorship, for it became the
fashion to write in this style in the Attic
schools of philosophy, yet it tends to confirm the opinion which we should form
from external evidence. In the case of
Aristotle, we have unfortunately lost his
noA.iT€tcn, in which he gathered the material
which was employed in his extant treatise
Cp. Zeller, ii. fa IIoXmKa; but in the latter work we have
not only most instructive criticisms, but
also, incidentally, very valuable information on the Spartan laws and customs.

MARRIAGE.

*5

The authority of both Xenophon and
Aristotle has been impugned by Manso, Sparta I. ii.
69.
on the ground that neither was himself a
S p a r t a n ; , but the former can have been
little less familiar with Spartan institutions
than a native citizen, while the careful
accuracy of Aristotle is surely beyond the
possibility of censure. It is to these two
writers, therefore, supplemented by the
somewhat numerous allusions in the Laws
of Plato, that we shall have mainly to
look for guidance.
The absolute right of the State to dispose Authority of
of its members as seemed to it best was
not allowed to remain a theory at Sparta.
From their birth through all the successive
stages of infancy, childhood, youth, and
manhood, its authority never ceased to be
seen and felt. I n fact it may be said to
have commenced even before their appearance in the world; for it was the state
which determined what marriages should
be sanctioned or forbidden. The numerous Xen. de Rep.
regulations as to the time, the manner, Aristotle quite
and the place of marriage, ascribed by th^1 control.
Xenophon to Lycurgus, all had for their f£ L lv ' (V11,)

16

Miiiier, ii.
211 and 301 2.

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

object the production of the healthiest and
most vigorous offspring ; and so far was
this desire for evyovCa carried, that, if our
authorities do not mislead us, practices the
most revolting, fatal to the nobler aspects
of marriage, were deliberately permitted in
order to secure it. Miiller endeavours to
,

,

__

.

. ,

r

.

_

exalt the Dorian idea 01 marriage by comp a r i n g it with the views current in Ionian
countries, and he is probably right in his
comparative estimate; but h e is obliged to
confess that at Sparta marriage was considered mainly " a s a public institution,
in order to rear up a strong and healthy
Vol. i. 105 progeny to the nation."
Plutarch tells
us
a t
n
Exposure of
^
" ew-born children were carried at
children.
once to certain tryers, who were elders of
the tribe to which the child belonged.
Their business was to view the infant carefully, and if they found it stout and wellmade, they gave order for its rearing, and
allotted to it one of the nine thousand
shares of land for its maintenance: but
if they found it puny and ill-shaped, they
ordered it to be taken to what was called
the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under

EXPOSURE

OF CHILDREN.

17

Taygetus, as thinking it neither for the
good of the child itself, nor for the public
interest, that it should be brought up if it
did not, from the very outset, appear made
to be healthy and vigorous." This fact
rests, I believe, only on the authority of
Plutarch, and some of the details are
probably inaccurate. For instance, the
allotment of one share of land stands or
falls with the theory of an equal distribution of property by Lycurgus, which Mr.
Grote has so brilliantly disproved: but the
general fact of the destruction of deformed
or weakly children may very well be true.*
Plato (Rep. vi. 460 B), and Aristotle
(Pol. iv. (vii.) 16, 15), both give their
sanction to i t ; and it seems to have been
commonly allowed, if not approved, in
Hellas.f
Some, however, have interpreted the ' putting away ( Gbro0eo~ts) to mean
* Thirlwall does not doubt it, i. 372.
f On the question how far the arbitrary exposure of children was generally practised and approved there are some
valuable remarks by K . F . Hermann in " Charikles," ii.
5 (2nd edition). It is noteworthy that at Thebes (but
apparently there alone) it was expressly forbidden by law,
and provision was made by the State for the support of
those children whose parents were unable to keep them. Cp.
Aelian. Var. Hist. ii. 7, and Ussing, op. cit. p. 23.
C

18

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

simply that such infants were exposed in
the villages of the Perioeci, and grew up
among them, excluded from the " m i l i t a r y
Curtius, i. 202. brotherhood " of the Spartans. U p to the
Training of age of seven years, children were left to t h e
voting chil-

\tren..

care of their mQthers or of nurses; but the
rigorous discipline under which they were
to spend their lives began at once. Swaddling bands were discarded, and they grew
up unfettered in l i m b ; their food was
plain, and not too plentiful; and Plutarch
adds the hardly credible information that
they were " n o t afraid in the dark, or of
being left alone, without any peevishness
or ill-humour or crying/'
W e cannot
wonder that Spartan nurses, if they really
secured this, " w e r e often bought up or
hired by people of other countries/' as, for
Piut. Lycurg. instance, by the parents of Alcibiades.* A
glimpse at the brighter side of the chilKaXaiiov dren's life is given us by the well-known
Piut Ag^es^s. story of Agesilaus riding on a stick to
* Schomann, Griech. Altertli. i. 265 (note 2), quotes
another instance of a Laconian nurse at Athens, in Malicha
of Cythera, nurse to the children of Diogiton. Her tomb
has been recently discovered in Athens. Cp. Bulletino di
corrisp. Archeol. 1841, p. 56.

TRAINING

OF BOYS.

amuse his little o n e s ; and to a Dorian, if
not to a Spartan* the philosopher Archytas,
is ascribed the credit of the invention of
the rattle (TrXaTayrj,) «which they give to
children, in order that having the use of
this they may not break any of the things
in the h o u s e : for little creatures cannot
keep still/' A t seven years of age boys Arist. Pol. v
>
were taken from their parents, and the
regular education (aywyy) by the State commenced. Xenophon contrasts the custom state
of the other Greeks in this respect with
that of the Spartans ; for while the
former, as soon as the children could
understand what was said to them, placed
them in charge of a slave called the
TratSaywyos, and sent them off with him to
schoolmasters, Lycurgus chose as their
master one of the most eminent of the
citizens, to whom he assigned the office
of TratSovd/xos. The boys were divided into
bands called ayeXat, or in the Laconian
dialect fiovai, and over each of these was a
povdyop, chosen from the youths who were
just entering manhood, who acted as the
captain of the band. All, rich and poor

20

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

alike, were subjected to the same rigid
discipline, and did their exercises and
took their play together. A specific quantity of food was allotted to each; but this
was intentionally barely sufficient for them,
in order that they might learn to do with
Xen. Rep.

as little as possible.* A t the same time
they were encouraged to steal whatever
they could, as being so best prepared
for military service, " for evidently one
who is to play the thief, must watch
b y night and deceive b y day, lie in a m bush, ay, and supply himself with spies,
Cp. Gellius, if he is to get anything." But any one who
xi. 18, 17.

Flogging.

,

,

.

..

-

was detected in stealing was beaten severely for his clumsiness in not learning
aptly, as Xenophon says, the lesson which
it was intended to teach him. There wa$
a strange practice of Sia/xao-Tiywo-is, according to which boys were flogged severely
at the altar of Artemis Orthia, and vied
with each other in bearing the blows
without a murmur, even though they
* Athenaeus, an uncritical and somewhat doubtful authority, tells us (xii. 12) that leanness was so much admired
at Sparta, that the boys were inspected every ten days, and
any one who seemed too fat was^whipped.

TRAINING

OF BOYS.

21

Sometimes died under the suffering. This
was probably first adopted as a substitute
for human sacrifices; * a view which is
supported by the fact that it lasted down
to the days of Cicero (Tusc. Disp. ii. 34),
Plutarch (Lycurg. p . 108), and even P a u sanias (iii. 16, 6, 7). Plutarch, indeed,
assures us that he had himself seen several
of the youths endure whipping to death.
Whatever its origin, it was taken advantage
of by the Spartan legislator to strengthen
the contempt of pain, which it was one
of his principal objects to implant. For Dress.
the same reason boys till their twelfth
year were only allowed to wear a single
sleeveless chiton, exchanged as they advanced in years for a plain rough cloak,
which served them all the year round.
They commonly went barefooted, and
often stripped entirely for their games.
In all their amusements, as well as their
exercises, they were constantly under the
eyes of the older m e n ; and we are told
that the latter delighted to stir up quarrels
* Cp. Preller, " Griecliisclie Mythologie," i. 240 (2nd
edition).

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

and disputes among them, " t o have a
good opportunity of finding out their different characters, and of seeing which
would be valiant, which a coward, when
they should come to more dangerous enTraini?igof counters." From their twelfth year their
youths.

Hunting.

.

.

.

-

.

.

.,

A

training increased in seventy; and the
several stages between this date and that of
manhood, which was fixed at thirty years,
were marked by different names, corresponding, probably, though we cannot
determine the point exactly, to changes
in their forms of education.* The little
bands (T\<u, subdivisions of the fiovai mentioned above) slept together on beds of
rushes, which they gathered by the banks
of the E u r o t a s ; and to train the boys to
greater hardihood, no knives were allowed
to be used for cutting them. The favourite
amusement was hunting, for which the
mountain-forests of Laconia gave abundant
facilities, and the Spartan hounds were proverbially famous.
But the game seems
always to have been pursued on foot; for
* oidtvvai, fxeWsipeveg, uptvtg, fffaipug. Cp. Miiller, ii.
315, 316.

THE

CRYPTEIA.

23

Xenophon, in his enthusiastic treatise called
KwrjytTLKos, makes no mention of horses, nor
does he speak of their use in hunting in his
book 7r€pl'nrinKrjs.T h e evidence on which
Miiller says t h a t " r i d i n g w a s one of the
principal occupations of the youths of
Sparta," is very slight and untrustworthy,
especially in the face of the admitted inferiority of the Lacedaemonian cavalry.* I n
fact, Miiller himself points out elsewhere
that a preference for cavalry, according to
the principles of antiquity, was a proof of an
unstable a n d effeminate character, exactly
the reverse of that exhibited by the heavyarmed soldiery of the Lacedaemonians*
On t h e other hand, I think that we may The Crypteia.
fairly accept t h e explanation which he
gives of the much-abused Kpwrcia, an institution which, in t h e way in which Plutarch (Lye. 28) describes it, is simply
incredible. Megillus, the Spartan inter- Cp. Grote, ii.
locutor in Plato's Laws, speaks a s follows: *44'
* The expression of Xenophon (Hell. vi. 4, 10) is qualified:

rolg de AaKedaifxovioiQ KCLT IKUVOV rhv XQOVOV 7TOVTJ-

porarov yv TO ITTTTIKOV, and therefore should not have been
referred to by Mr. Mason in his careful article on Exercitus
(Greek) in Diet. Ant. to prove the point; but the general
fact is unquestioned. Cp, Miiller, ii» 257.

24

ED UCA TION IN

SPARTA.

" T h e r e is, too, the so-called Crypteia,
or secret service, in which wonderful endurance is shown; those who are employed
in this wander over the whole country by
day and by night, and even in winter
have not any shoes on their feet, and are
without beds to lie on, and have no one
to attend them " (p. 633 B). W e may fairly
view this in the light of another p a s sage where the philosopher, speaking in
the character of the Athenian, describes
the services which h e will require of
the " wardens of the country " (aypovofioi):
" F u r t h e r at all seasons of the year,
summer and winter alike, let them survey
minutely the whole country, bearing
arms and keeping guard, at the same
time acquiring a perfect knowledge of
every locality. F o r there can be no more
important kind of information than the
exact knowledge of a man's own country;
and for this, as well as for more general
reasons of pleasure and advantage, hunting with dogs and other kinds of sports
should be pursued b y the young. T h e
service to whom this is committed m a y

THE CRYPTEIA.

2$

be called the secret police [icpwrroCL or
wardens of the country; the n a m e does
not much signify, but every one who h a s
the safety of the State at heart will use
his utmost diligence in this s e r v i c e "
(p. 763 A.B). Mr. Jowett justly notices Vol. iv
that the crypteia, as well as the public
education, is borrowed by P l a t o from
Sparta. It is not unfair, then, to suppose
that at least t h e main objects of this
"secret
service" were those on which
Plato lays most stress, that the youngSpartans might obtain an intimate knowledge of their own country for military
purposes; and that their frames might
be hardened by exposure and vigorous
exercise. Of course it is easy to believe
that if, while ranging through the land,
they found any traces of conspiracy, or
even disaffection, among the Helots, they
might resort to severe and treacherous
means of repression; but this is a verydifferent thing from Plutarch's view, which
makes it out to have been a legalised
system of gratuitous assassination."* So
* Cramer, in his " Geschichte der Erziehung,"

a

book

26

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

Tusc. ii. 14, Cicero writes : " Leges Lycurgi. labonbus
34.
erudiunt iuventutem venando, currendo,
esuriendo, sitiendo, algendo, aestuando."
A n d no more than a constant vigilance need
be understood by the words of Thucydides
(iv. 8 0 - 2 ) del yap TOL 7roXXa AaKeSaifjioviocs Trpbs TOVS
EtAcoras rrjs cf>vXaK7Js iripi /xaAtora KaOecm/JKei,

Fights.

x h e words of Megillus immediately preceding those already quoted—TO ircpl ras

Legg. p. 633 KapT€prj(T€LS T&V aXy€$6v<ov 7roXv Trap* rjfuv yiyvofxevov
iv rats 7rpos dAX^Xovs rats X€P°^ / ^ a x a i s — c o n t a i n a

reference to a custom which is described
by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. v. 27, 77) as existing in his own d a y s : " Adolescentium greges
Lacedaemone vidimus ipsi incredibili contentione certantis pugnis, calcibus, unguibus, morsu denique, cum exanimarentur
prius quam victos se faterentur." Pausanias
111. 14, o ;
cp. ii. 2.
gives a still more highly-coloured descrip^d\ovrai Sk
Kai tv %£p<Ti
Kal IfjiTrrjcCov- tion, from which it appears that no act
TEQ Xa£, da.Kof violence was spared to gain the victory
vovffi re Kal
TOVQ 6(p0aX- in these ferocious contests,* which were
fxovg CLVTOpixjGovai.

that requires to be used with much caution, identifies the
Kpwirrtia with the legalisation of KKOTTT], but he is probably
only following Miiller somewhat carelessly.
* Mr. Jowett's translation of Plato's expression by
" certain hand-to-hand fights," if not positively incorrect, is

EDUCATION

OF BOYS.

carried on in an island called Platanistas,
devoted to the purpose. It is curious, after
reading Pausanias's description of the
biting and kicking that were sanctioned,
the bleeding faces and the eyes torn from
their sockets, to turn to Miiller's comment
that " every unprejudiced r e a d e r " must
consider it iC proved satisfactorily that the
chief object of Spartan discipline was to
invigorate the bodies of the youth, without
rendering their minds at the same time
either brutal or ferocious ! " W e are much Vol. ii. p. 327.
more inclined to say, with Aristotle, that Pol. v. (viii.)
the Spartans were rendered brute-like by

4, 1.

t h e i r h a r d s h i p s (ot AaK(x>ves OrjpiwSeLS airepya£,ovTai
TOts TTOVOLS.)

But we must pass from

the general Education of
the boys.

training and discipline of the Spartan boys
to their education, in the narrower sense
of the term. In the eyes of eve y Greek,
education had to deal with three main
Subjects—ypdfJLfxaTa,

p.ovcriKrj a n d TCL iv 7raAaib~T/oa,

though often the first and second were
grouped together under the common name
likely to mislead a reader. The essential point is that no
weapons were allowed but fists, nails, and teeth.

28

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

Gymnastics^ of /lovo-ucq.* To gymnastic exercises the
Spartans were passionately devoted, and
regarded them, with war and the chase,
Cp. Plutarch, as the only occupations fit for a freeman.
i. 116

(Clough).

But here a distinction must be sharply
drawn between gymnastic exercises and
the elaborate training of gymnasts. The
ancients never failed to mark the difference, and the Romans, much as they
practised the exercises of the Campus
Martius, looked with entire disapproval,
mingled with contempt, upon professional
athletes.f Gymnasia, such as abounded in
the other Hellenic states, were unknown
in Sparta, and it was rare indeed to find
a Spartan distinguishing himself, except in
* Cp. X e n . de R e p . L a c . c. 2. evQvg Se 7rkfjLirov<Tiv eig
didaatcdXwv, fxadrjaofikvovg Kai ypdfifiara, Kai \iov(nKY\v Kai
ra kv iraXaivTpq,: Plat. Alcib. i. 106 E . tfiaQeg yap ypdfifiara Kai Ki9api£eiv Kai -iraXaleiv. Theages 122 E . OVK
tdidaZaTo ere 6 'irarrjp Kai eTraiSevcrev ciwep hvQa.de ol aWoi
7re7raiSevvTai oi ruJv KaXwv KayaQ&v irarkpuiv vlelg, olov
ypafifxara re Kai Ki9api%eiv Kai iraXauiv Kai TTJV aWrjv
dyujviav;
f Cp. the passages from Plutarch, Seneca, and Silius
quoted b y Becker and K . F . H e r m a n n in Charikles, h\
162-164. T h e difference between gymnastics and the training of athletes is well brought out by Jacobs in his eloquent
lecture (Vermischte Schriften, iii. 2, 18) : " Erziehung der
Hellenen zur Sittlichkeit." C p . also Prof. Mayor's notes
on Quintilian X .

GYMNASTICS.

29

certain forms of competition, in the great
athletic festivals. Plutarch gives a curious
reason for the prohibition of some kinds
of gymnastic contests at Sparta. " Lycurgus," he tells us, " being asked what sort of
martial exercises or combats he approved
of," answered, " A l l sorts, except that in
which you stretch out your h a n d s / ' that is
acknowledge yourself defeated ; because
it was held to be unworthy of a Spartan
to ask for quarter, even in a peaceful encounter. But a more probable reason is
to be found in the fact that the special
excellence required for distinction in any
particular kind of gymnastics interfered
with that perfect developement of all the
physical powers which proved of most
service in war.
Euripides, though no Cp. Paiey,
r*

•

.

Euripides, i.

friend to Spartans or their ways, certainly p . xx.
expresses Spartan views in the curious fragment cited from his AVTOXVKOS by Athenaeus:
(Frag. 284 Dind.)
rig yap TraXaiGag ev, rig WKVTTOVQ dvijp
r\ diGKov dpag rj yv&Oov 7raicrag iea\u>g
TroAa TraTpipa orktiavov iipKeaev \a(3(ov;
r n
,
> V
' ~
irorepa paxovvrai TroAsfiioicriv hv %tpoiv
SivKOvg exovrsg rf 6ix' acnri^v iroal
BtivovTtg h/SaXovai 7ro\tfiiovg irdrpag ;

T h e whole
fragment (28
lines) is we
worth comparing, from
this po'int of
view.

30
> Gymnasts.

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

The fulness of flesh (iroXvo-apKLa) with which
we find gymnasts often taunted, was quite
opposed to the spare and slender " g o o d
condition" cvefia, which, as we have seen
above, was especially aimed at by the
Lacedaemonians.
The disproportionate
strengthening of the legs of runners and
the shoulders of boxers which Sokrates
blames in Xenophon's Symposium (n. 17),
would be equally disapproved by them; and
the careful attention to food and drink
(though not always according to the rules
of modern " t r a i n i n g " ) which was required
of athletes, would have run counter to
the first principles of Spartan education.
Hence, just as we are told of Philopoemen
by Plutarch,* that he put a stop, as far
as he could, to athletics in Achaea, so the
Lacedaemonians refused to sanction any
special gymnastic training.
"They appointed no masters to instruct their boys
in wrestling, that they might contend, not
in sleights of art and little tricks, but in
* ov fiovov avrbg £(pvys TO Trpdy/ia Kai tcaTfytXaasv, aXka
Kai (Trparrjywv vcrrepov arifiiai^ Kai TrpoTrrjXaKiaiJLoig, oaov
r\v 67r' avT^J, Traaav a9\r]<nv i&fiaktv
6)Q rd %p7j(rtjLtojra«:a
TOJV awfiarwv dg Toi)g uvayKaiovg dywvag a%pi\GTCL Troiovcray.

BOXING.
strength and courage."

31
It is a little per- Plutarch,
Apophth.

plexing to find, in the face of Plutarch's Lac. (vol. i. p.
•

434 Goodwin).

repeated statements that Lycurgus forbade boxing as an exercise,* that in
Plato (Protag. 342 B) the Laconizers in
the various Greek towns " g e t their ears
battered in b o x i n g / ' in imitation of the
Spartans, " and bind the cestus round their
arms, and are devoted to gymnastics
and wear short cloaks,, just as though it
were by means of these things that the
Lacedaemonians were masters of Greece/'
But, as in other passages where the
" Laconomania" is mentioned,! there is
no reference to gymnastics, it is possible
that Plato had in his eye certain individual
Laconizers whose zeal outstripped their
knowledge, and who were no more to be
taken as fair representatives of Spartan
customs, than some Anglomaniac devotees
of le sport are to be considered as repro- R ep . Lac. iv.
ducing the field of the Pytchley or the
Quorn. The boxing of which Xenophon
* Plutarch, Lye. 19. Reg. Apophth. 125. Lac. Apophth.
225 (MtLller, ii. 320).
f Cp. Aristoph. Av. 1282 (with Kock's note). Demosth.
in Con. 1267. Plut. Phoc. 10.

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA

speaks does not appear to have been an
exercise, but an angry fight. Gladiators,
too (OTTAO/ACIXOI), were forbidden at Sparta,*
partly because the legislator does not
seem to have wished to encourage their
special training, but also, we may well
believe, because the use of arms was
thought too serious a thing to be allowed
for mere amusement. But all gymnastic
exercises which had for their object the
harmonious developement of all the bodily
powers were pursued with eagerness. In
Wrestling. wrestling especially they excelled, and
Xenophon tells us that they were noted
for all forms of it alike, though it is not
Cp. Rep. Lac easy to identify the various descriptions
Schneider's which he mentions. All their exercises
note
*
were carried on under the eyes, not only
of their appointed superintendent, but also
of as many of the older citizens as chose
to be present, and the emulation thus
inspired was regarded as one of the most
powerful motives that could be brought
* P l a t o L a c h e s , 183 B . TOVQ Iv oifKoiq fiaxo/xsvovg syw
TOVTOVQ 6pu> TYJV /ifv AaKtdaifxova r'jyovfisvovq dvai
dparov
Upbv KCti ovdk aKpip nodi 87ri(3aivovraQ, K.T.X.

CHORIC

DANCES.

33

to bear upon the youthful warrior.
By
this means also boys, in what might be
considered their hours of amusement, were
made to feel the continual presence of a
restraining power;—for every adult citizen
was regarded as possessing a father's full
authority over the children of the State, an
authority which, in the absence of the usual
Psedonomus, he might enforce by blows, xen. Rep.
And as most of these exercises seem to vi. 2.
have been performed by the troops (TXat)
together and under a common command,
they must have greatly tended to produce
the effect at which the Spartan education
was always aiming, to lead the individual
citizen to feel himself always closely encompassed by a system of rigid rules, and
as nothing in himself, except so far as he
formed a unit in a perfect whole.
The same sense of " s o l i d a r i t y " must choricdances.
have been powerfully strengthened by the
choral dances, which were constantly practised. The broad distinction between the c P . Curtius,
passionate outpourings of the fiery Lesbian
school and the grave high choric songs
of Alcman and Terpsichorus bears witness
D

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

to a deep distinction between the tribes
for whom they wrote. And the contrast
is not less great between the iambics and
elegiacs of the Ionian bards and the spiritstirring paeans and hyporchemes that were
welcome in Lacedaemon. A s " t h e vital
principle of the Lacedaemonian constitution
was harmony, a complete unity of interests
and feeling among the members of the
privileged class, an absorption in fact,
to this extent, of the individual in the
Mure, iii. 47. mass," so the powerful aid given to this
b y the song and dance of the chorus could
not be overlooked.
The graceful and
ordered motion of the body in the dance
was of itself no slight assistance to military
training;* but the habit of acting rapidly
in numbers in obedience to a leader must
have been of still more value. Hence we
are prepared to find the origin of the
Cp, Plato,
Legg. 796 B,

and other

Pyrrhich dance attributed to S p a r t a ; and
\

.m

although other authorities gave different

authorities in

Miiller,ii.349. accounts on this point, it is certain that
* Cp. the poet Socrates (apud Athen. xiv. p. 628), supposed by Miiller (ii. 342 n.) to be the philosopher.
01 tie %opo1g KciWiara Btovq riftuHTiv, apioroi iv TroXsjuy.

MENTAL

AND MORAL

TRAINING.

35

it was nowhere so long* and ardently
practised. Lucian describes a dance of
the Spartan ephebi, in which they were
ranged in rows one behind another, and
danced to the music of the flute, first
military and then choral dances, chanting
invocations to Aphrodite, or exhortations Lucian de
, ,

,

.

,

T

.

-

Salt., 10, 11.

addressed to each other. In the Gymnopae- Cp. Mure, iii.
dia the combination of gymnastic exercises
and mimetic dances seems to have reached
its fullest developement; and for this time
only the customary exclusiveness of Sparta
was relaxed, for we hear of great numbers
of strangers flocking from all parts to see Xen. Mem.
_

2, 6 1 , &c.

the festivities. The op/^os was a favourite
dance, in which youths and girls joined
together, linking hand in hand.
But the subject of the choral dances Musk.
naturally leads us to the second great
branch of a Spartan education, that which
was concerned with the mental and moral
training of the children; for the music
and song with which the dance was accompanied formed one of the most important
* Athenaeus says that it was danced at Sparta in his own
time (circ. A.D. 230).

36

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

elements in this. It is not needful for the
present purpose that we should plunge into
the technical and complicated mysteries
of ancient Greek music. I t is sufficient
for us to note that music was ever regarded
among the ancients—and especially among
the Greeks—as possessing a very powerful
moral influence for good or evil. The
music that should be allowed at Sparta
was subject to the severest official control:
while all the citizens were trained to take
their part in the choric songs, the measures
to which these should be set were strictly
limited to grave and simple strains. The
Dorian style was always the favourite one,*
though other styles do not appear to
have been forbidden. But when a player
named Phrynis attempted to perform on
a lyre with more than the lawful number
of strings, one of the ephors at once de* A s able CLKOVOVTCLQ diariQsoQai KaQearriKOTtoQ fidXiara

TrpbQ krkpav (Ar. Pol. v. 6, 22). " The Dorian mode created
a settled and deliberate resolution, exempt alike from the
desponding and from the impetuous sentiments
The
marked ethical effects produced by these modes in ancient
times are facts perfectly well attested, however difficult they
may be to explain on any general theory of music."—Grote,
„ History," ii. 190.

MUSIC.

37

stoyed the superfluous chords* A similar
story is told of Timotheus, but it rests on
very doubtful evidence. Aristotle remarks Cp. Porson in
i

i

r>

,* i

i

i

tne

i

Museum

that the Spartans, " though they do not Criticum, vol.
learn, are yet able to judge correctly, as l'v' *
they assert, what strains are good and what
are

not

g o o d :"

ov fiavOdvovres

ofiios

hvvavrai

Kpivuv 6p0ws, o)S <£ao-t, TOL xprjcTTa KOLL TOL fxtj XprjorTa

T(3V /xcXwv (Pol. v. (viii.) 5, 7); but this assertion
of their neglect of the study of music must
evidently be taken with some limitation:
either he is thinking of skill in playing
musical instruments, in which case his
remark may well be true of the great Cp. Grote, til.
73; Dorians,

majority of the citizens; or it may be, as ii. 342.
Miiller supposes, that in Aristotle's time,
" the number of the citizens in Sparta
was so greatly diminished, and war occupied so much of the public attention,
that the favourable side of Spartan discipline was cast into the shade." But
the former supposition is the more probable ; for the choric songs of the Spartans would naturally require much less
individual skill in playing instruments
than the elegies and scolia, which, as we

38

ED UCA TION IN

SPARTA.

shall hereafter see, were common in the
Ionian States.*
intellectual
W h e t h e r the Spartan boys received any
training.

other mental training than that implied m
the study of their choric songs is a point
on which our authorities and critics are
at variance. Mr. Grote speaks of them as
" destitute even of the elements of letters,"
and bases his opinion mainly upon two
passages in the Panathenaicus of Isocrates.
In one of these the fact is directly asserted
(p. 277) :

OVTOI 3e TOOOVTOV aVoXeXajUjucvoi rrjg KoivrJQ

7rat$£iag Kal (piXoaro(j)lag elalv

(bare ovlk

ypafifxara

jiavdavovaiv: in another the belief which
Isocrates (rightly or wrongly) held is
shown, Mr. Grote thinks, more unmistakeably, because unconsciously, by the
words (p. 285): " t h e most rational Spartans will approve this discourse, if thpy
find any one to read it to them."
But
surely if Isocrates was capable of a rhetorical exaggeration, which, as Mr. Grote
* Schomann however (Griechische Alterth. I. 2 268) holds
that they were taught both the lyre and the flute, quoting
Chamaeleon (apud Athen. iv. 84, p. 184) as an evidence for
the latter at any rate; and rejecting the relevance of the
anecdote in Plutarch ; Apophth. Lac. 39.

LITERARY

CULTURE.

himself allows, deprives his testimony of
much of its weight, he was capable also
of the rhetorical artifice of dropping a
sneer, such as is contained in the second
passage, in the hope that it would sting
the more for being apparently so unpremeditated. Nor can we suppose that in
this a wonderful effusion of senile selfcomplacency " Isocrates was more careful to Dr. Thomp,

. . .

«

.

-

.

-

,

son,Phaedrus,

observe historic accuracy than m his elabo- p . 177.
rate Panegyricus, which teems with blunders
or exaggerations. Certainly a couple of
careless phrases, dropped by a garrulous
rhetorician in his ninety-fifth year, ought
not to be allowed to outweigh the evidence
drawn from the constant references in
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon to
written letters and treatises, without the
slightest hint that there was any difficulty
in reading them, and from the unbroken
silence of Plato and Aristotle. Plutarch's
evidence that Lycurgus taught the Spartans
letters, " in so far as they were required for
useful and necessary purposes," may n o t in
itself carry great weight ; but the wellestablished practice of using the scytale

4o

Moral

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

as a means of communication between
the Spartan authorities at home and their
generals and ambassadors, cannot be explained away. In short, it appears to me
that Colonel Mure (Vol. iii. A p p . K and N)
has gained a victory over Mr. Grote all
along the line; and that we are bound to
admit at least as much literary culture on the
part of the Spartans as is implied in the
words of Plutarch.* But this is confessedly
very little; and in all but the taste for choric
poetry the Spartans must have held as low
a position in this respect as was ever occupied by any semi-civilised nation.
Their moral training was cared for far

training*

more sedulously, and though its range was
narrow and defective, within its limits it
appears, at all events in the better days
of Sparta, to have been crowned with
signal success. The virtues which made
a man an accomplished warrior and a
* Mr. Grote in his " Plato" somewhat qualifies the assertions made in his History, and asserts only that " the
public training of youth at Sparta, equal for all the citizens,
included nothing of letters and music, which in other cities
were considered to be the characteristics of an educated
Greek, though probably individual Spartans, more or fewer,
acquired, these accomplishments for themselves," vol.- iii.
307; cp. vol. iii. p. 174.

. MORAL

TRAINING.

devoted citizen were impressed upon the
Spartan boys by all the resources of an
elaborate system of national education;
habits formed from his earliest years, the
keenest emulation, the most consistent and
ever-present public opinion, the entire exclusion of any disturbing element, were all
brought to bear upon the future citizen to
make him obedient, frugal, brave, and
self-denying.
A n d the success of this
educational policy, so long as the system
of Lycurgus was preserved in secure isolation, was complete. All the qualities
requisite to gain dominion were attained
as they never have been since. But of the its defects.
qualities that are needed to make it a
blessing instead of a curse to the subjects,
of an enlightened and far-seeing liberality,
an even-handed justice, a wise and kindly
tolerance, we nowhere find the existence,
or the desire for their existence. The admirers of Sparta found abundant material
for their panegyrics. Xenophon delights De Rep. Lac.
c. iii.

to describe the Spartan youths as " walking along the streets with their hands
folded in their cloaks, proceeding in silence*

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

looking neither to the right hand nor to
the left, but with their eyes modestly fixed
upon the ground. There the male sex
showed their inherent superiority to the
female sex, even in modesty. They were
as silent as statues ; their eyes as immovable as bronzes, their looks more
shamefast than a maiden in the bridal
chamber/' Plutarch contrasts their brief
sententiousness and reverence for their
elders with the loquacity and petulance
of the Athenian striplings. But we can
never forget that when the time of trial
came, and Sparta had wrested the reins
of empire from Athens, her failure to hold
them and to guide them wisely was far
more speedy and ignominious than that
of her rival. The obedience to law which
had been inculcated in the vale of the
Eurotas, was forgotten as soon as the
Spartan generals passed into a wider field :
the simplicity and scorn of luxury, which
the whole of their training had been intended to produce, was changed into a
venality and greed for gold almost unparalleled. Brasidas was cut off too soon

MORAL INFLUENCES.

43

to show what he might have become,
but even his brilliant career was tainted
with scandalous duplicity; of Agesilaus Thuc. iv.
122 6.

we know but little, except from absurdly
inflated panegyrics; but Pausanias, Gylippus, Lysander, and many others show
the same fatal weakness in the presence
of temptation. Rarely has a more magnificent opportunity been offered to any
state than that which was given to Sparta
after the battle of Aegospotami and the
submission of Athens ; and rarely has
such an opportunity been more brutally
and wantonly abused. A n d the secret of
it lay in this : that the Spartan national
education trained citizens for Sparta and
not for Hellas. The duties of a man to his
State were diligently t a u g h t ; the duties
of man to man were passed over in silence. Cp. Cramer,
Greschichte

H o w clearly the great philosophical critics der Erzieof Athens perceived these faults we shall note^
'
see hereafter.
W e must now turn our
attention to two substdta of the Spartan
system of education, which contributed
powerfully to mould it. The legislator
fully recognised and attempted to regulate

44

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

the influence exerted on the character of
the young by strong personal attachments,
influence of and by the power of woman. The relations
lovers.

which commonly existed in Greece between
a full-grown man and some favourite boy
present us with a curious and often perplexing subject of inquiry. The question
is one which must be looked at wholly
from a Hellenic stand-point.
For the
union of Mediaeval Catholicism with the
old Teutonic reverence for woman gave
birth to a spirit of chivalry, which has,
happily, never died out of the world in
later days. But the influence of this makes
it far more difficult for us to throw ourselves
back in thought into the times when it was
not yet born. Yet it is certain that to a
Greek ardent feelings of devoted attachment to beauty of form and soul were more
readily excited by a boy than by a woman.
Cp. the pas- Marriage was regarded as a civic d u t y :
sages quoted

. .

by Hermann, and the wife as the mother ot legitimate
p. 232, 2.
children: the connection with a H e t a e r a
was mainly a matter of sensual pleasure;
but it was the passion for a beautiful boy
that was looked upon as the source of the

INFLUENCE

OF LOVERS.

45

noblest inspiration, and as the keenest
spur to glorious deeds. The Phaedrus and
the Symposium of Plato become intelligible
to us only as we read them in the light of
this Hellenic sentiment; and the accounts Cp. Grote's
Plato, ii. 206

which we have of the relation of Socrates Sqq. The
to youths like Alcibiades show us how Z discussed
pure and elevating the attachment might t i ve fuineSs bybe. It is needless to touch upon the foul charikles, ii.
and degrading vices which often attended by9jfcobs^n
it: it is important for our present purpose Jchriften %i
only to notice t h a t it was neither originally
nor invariably evil. . And so far as we can
determine from our authorities, the custom,
as it was observed in Sparta, was wholly
free from the corruptions which sometimes
accompanied it in Athens, and Which made
|t in Rome the source of the most shameless abominations.
The elder Spartan
citizens were encouraged to link themselves by the closest ties of affection to
particular boys or youths; it was regarded
as disgraceful if a boy found no one to
take him under his special protection; and Cp. Cic. apud
1

,r ,

1

1

Serv.adVerg.

it was a reproach to a man 11 he neglected Aen. x. 325.
this portion of his civic duties. But the

46

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

names that were given to the lover and the
loved one bear sufficient witness to the lofty
conception of their mutual relation.

The

former was called elawvfiXas, he whose task
it was to breathe into the soul of his chosen
one the spirit of valour and virtue: the
latter was the diVac or hearer, who had to
listen to the words of counsel and en. couragement* If a man had entered into
such a connection, he became responsible
to the State for the conduct of his protege,
Lycurg. c. 18. and we are told by Plutarch that a lover
was fined by a magistrate, because the
lad whom he loved cried out in a cowardly
fashion while he was fighting. But to
allow any sensual taint to enter into this
Xen. Rep. attachment was considered as extremely
Cp. Charikies, disgraceful; and we are assured by several
Schomann/ respectable authorities, that no jealousy
i. 270;Cl *
ic ep. iv.

was
or

felt if
one ^ y

o n e m a n na

-ci several favourites,
y i o v e r s # "We have no right
man

then to regard this feature of the Spartan
system as anything but the legal recognition of what was an inspiriting aid to
the attainment of the standard of virtue
aimed at.

RELATION

OF THE SEXES.

47

The same remark is probably true of Influence of
women.

the relation of the sexes as established
by Lycurgus. The main object of the
training to which he subjected girls as
well as boys—an object which is stated
frequently by Xenophon and Plutarch with
a directness little suited to modern feelings—was that they might produce vigorous offspring. To this end he established
a discipline for girls, of which we have
but fragmentary notices, but which seems
to have differed but little from that prescribed for boys. There was, probably,
the same division into bands and troops,
the same constant supervision by a magistrate of high rank, the same simple
fare and scanty dress, the same rigid
training in gymnastics, dancing, and singing. But what excited most astonishment on the part of the Ionian Greeks,
accustomed as they were to the seclusion
of women in the inner chambers, and to
the long and graceful Ionian x1™*, was
the free mixture of youths and girls in
the amusements of the games, and the
exposure of the latter, which was not only

48

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

sanctioned but encouraged.
Plutarch
speaks as if the girls exercised entirely
naked, but they seem from other authoriCharikles, ii. ties to have worn a crxicrroQ xi™vi reaching
Cp. Miiiier's to the knee, and open on either side. I n
Denkm. ii.

.

118.

any case, the object of the lawgiver was
to train his citizens to such healthy freedom of intercourse with the other sex
that prurient thoughts might be excluded
by the absence of any attractive attempts
at concealment; and that youths and
maidens might mix together in pure simplicity. The experiment was hazardous,
but the unanimous voice of all our authorities bears witness to its success in
Cp. Scho2
this instance. The tone of morality at
mann, II.
271.
Sparta would bear comparison with that
of any other city of H e l l a s : we find no
reference to a class of prostitutes: adultery was all but unknown, and jealousy
extremely rare. Love-matches were common, and we have several instances of
Grote, ii. 151; the most devoted conjugal affection.
It
Miiller, ii.

303-305;

.

is true that Aristotle gives a picture far
from attractive of the luxury, pride, and
wealth of the Spartan women of his own

INFLUENCE

OF WOMEN.

time; but we cannot but believe that the
philosopher is generalising hastily from a
few notorious instances; and, in one point
of his criticism, his censures of the
cowardice which he thinks they showed
during the invasion of Laconia by E p a - Plutarch (i.
minondas, he is clearly unfair to them, indignant
On the whole, it appears that the splendid repretenta"
vigour and beauty, which was universally ^ s s t o t i e .
ascribed to the Spartan women,* was not
purchased at the cost of maidenly purity
and decorum. But the interest in manly
accomplishments which their whole training gave to them, must have added
great weight to their influence with the
youths; and the hope of distinguishing
himself under their eyes in gymnastic
contests, must have been one of the most
powerful incentives to a youthful Spartan. It was the crowning point of the
Lacedaemonian training that, at solemn
feasts, the maidens stood around, " n o w
and then making by jests a befitting
reflection upon those who had misbehaved
themselves in the wars, and again sing* To this we have frequent reference in the Lysistrata.
E

EDUCATION

Plutarch, i.

IN

SPARTA.

ing encomiums upon those who had done
any gallant action; and by these means
inspiring the younger sort with an emulation of their glory. Those who were
thus commended went away proud, elated,
and gratified with their honour among the
maidens; and those who were rallied were
as sensibly touched with it as if they had
been formally reprimanded; a n d so much
the more, because the kings and the
elders, as well as the rest of the city,

102 (Clough).

saw and heard all that passed."
Such is a general sketch of the theory
Athenian
and practice of national education at
this system. Sparta. Its errors and defects have been
occasionally noted in passing; but these
brief notices may now be supplemented by
a somewhat more complete consideration
of the question, W h a t was the judgment
of contemporaneous Hellas on the system r
Cp. Mem. iii. Some there were, like Xenophon, who
Butthis strong viewed it with an unmodified admiration.
disappears in Nowhere in his treatise do we find a
work,De
trace of criticism. H e strikes the keyCp?tGro!e's1, n o t e * n t ^ i e ^ r s t ^ e w l m e s : " Lycurgus,
Plato, m. 601. w h o g a v e t h e m t h e l a w s w h e r e b y they

THE SPARTAN

SYSTEM

CRITICIZED.

51

grew to prosperity, I greatly admire, and
hold to have been extremely w i s e " (elg rh
irr^ara fxaka (7o0oi> ??yoD/zcu), a n d

from

this

he

never deviates. Nor does he ever give
a hint that the success of this belauded
legislation had been less than might have
been expected; for the chapter " de depravata Lycurgi disciplina" bears the
plainest marks of spuriousness. But the
ordinary judgment was not so favourable.
The way in which the Spartan system
was looked upon by a cultivated Athenian
may be gathered from the magnificent
speech of Pericles, in Thucydides (II.
35-47). Whether the words employed are
those of the orator or those of the his*
torian matters but little for our present c r . Thuc. i.
22 1
purpose. Thucydides is at least as good '
an authority as Pericles for the general
tone of feeling at Athens. W e find in the
Funeral Speech, throughout the earlier
chapters, an under-current of allusion to
Spartan practices, writh which the A t h e nian customs are contrasted. The original
and autochthonous nature of the Athenian
constitution, the absence of any disabili-

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

ties arising from birth or fortune, the
spirit of liberty which regulated every
act of public or private life, the ready
toleration of varying habits and pursuits,
the freedom from sour and censorious
looks, the willing obedience from a sense
of honour to the national code, written
or understood, all are points in which
Athens is praised, and Sparta implicitly
disparaged. The orator dwells on their
full enjoyment of the festivities, which the
Dorians ridiculed, and of the luxuries of
every clime, attracted to their capital by
its splendour and its fortunate position.
Strangers are gladly welcomed, and alien
acts unknown. Their fondness for art is
free from extravagance, their love of letters
does not disable them for war or business.
Above all, they do not, as their rivals do,
set out in pursuit of manly prowess by
a long and toilsome process of t r a i n i n g ;
yet, though living at their ease, they are
as ready to meet dangers as any one,
happily combining chivalrous daring with
a careful calculation of the expedient
course. And thus a double advantage is

PLA TO'S JUDGMENT

OF IT

53

gained; they do not suffer from the dread of
impending dangers, nor do they yield in
courage to the slaves of a life-long drill.
"Whatever the pedant might say, the
practical statesman had little doubt that
the boasted system of Lycurgus sacrificed
the noblest parts of the nature of man
to secure in lower regions a superiority
that was at best but doubtful. Though
here the orator does less than justice to
Lacedaemon. Whether the cost was not
too great at which her pre-eminence in
arms was purchased, is another question;
but it cannot be doubted that it was recognised and admitted as a rule in Greece;
and few were ashamed to confess themselves inferior in military skill and discipline to the consummate craftsmen and
professors of military science (aicpot rexrfrai Cp. Grotc, ii,
214, 215.

Plato seems to have been strongly piato'x admi*
attracted by the ordinances of Lycurgus.
They furnished him a concrete instance
on which to base his ideal structure. A t
Sparta that absolute supremacy of the
State in every detail of the life of the

54

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

citizen, which he laid down as his fundamental postulate, was actually carried into
Plato, iii. 210. effect. A s Mr. Grote says, to an objector
who had asked him how he could possibly expect that individuals would submit
to such an unlimited interference as that
which he enjoined in his Republic, he
would have replied : " Look at Sparta. You
see there interference as constant and
rigorous as that which I propose, endured
by the citizens, not only without resistance, but with a tenacity and long continuance such as is not found among
other communities with more lax regulations. The habits and sentiments of the
Spartan citizen are fashioned to these
institutions. F a r from being anxious to
shake them off, he accounts them a necessity as well as an honour." But though
he had much sympathy with the Spartan
institutions, and based his own schemes,
as stated in the Republic and the
Laws, more upon them than upon any
other existing system, still he was not
wholly blind to its defects.* H i s criti* Mr, Jowett defines the Republic as " the Spartan con*

PLATO'S

CRITICISMS.

cisms are to be found mainly in the' first Plato's
book of the Laws, where the Athenian
examines the constitutions of Crete and P. 633.
Sparta. The principal points of his censure are the preference of war to peace,
and the direction thus given to the
whole course of education, the neglect of
music in favour of gymnastic exercises,
the license which existed among the
Spartan women, and the yet greater p. 637 B.
evils which arose from the close intimacy of the gymnasia and the common
feasts. H e pronounces that Lacedaemon p. 636.
had no institutions to strengthen her
citizens against the temptations of pleasure, and that the value of festive intercourse, as a revealer of the character
of men, was wholly lost sight of.
In
the second book he finds fault with the
exclusive attention paid to choral music:
" Y o u r young men," he says to Megillus,
the Spartan, " are like wild colts, feeding
in a herd together; no one takes the
individual colt and rubs him down, and
stitution appended to a government of philosophers " (Plato,
iv. 20), and there is as much truth in this as there usually is
in an epigram.

56

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

tries to give him the qualities which would
make him a statesman as well as a
soldier." They ought to have been taught
that courage was not the first of the
virtues, as Tyrtaeus had ranked it, but
only the fourth, and lowest among the
cardinal virtues. On the other hand,
Plato heartily commends in the Spartan
system of national education the importance attached to obedience, and the slight
regard for wealth, the care taken of marriages, and the reverence paid to elders.

Aristotle's

W h a t his own views were on the training of the youth of a nation, we shall have
to consider more fully hereafter.
Aristotle in his criticism of the Spar-

criticisms.

tan constitution (Polit. I I . 9) touches but
slightly on the method of education; but
he fully accepts the judgment of Plato,
. as expressed in his Laws, that fault may
be justly found with the fundamental
principle (viroOtvig) of the legislator, inasmuch as the whole system of his laws is
directed towards the cultivation of a part
Pol. if. 9, 34. only of virtue, that which secures supremacy in war. Hence, as he says, " t h e y

ARISTOTLE'S

CRITICISMS.

57

were preserved in a healthy condition
while they were at war, but they fell into
ruin when they had won the supremacy
(iawZovTO fJLEV TzoKe^xovvTiQ, a7r(i>\\vvTO %s apZavreg).

In another passage he censures their extreme
devotion to gymnastics, which left their
children untaught in all the points essential to man, the most necessary rudiments
of intellectual training; thus, AiW cfe rearm
av£vT€S TOVS 7rat8as, /cat rcov droy/caiW aTraiSaywyYjTovs 7rot^o"avT€5

/Savavarovs Karepya^ovTai

Kara Pol. v, (viii.)
4, 5.

ye TO a\y}6k. But it is noteworthy that the
other main point in which the Spartan
national education seems so defective to
the judgment of modern Christian Europe,
namely, that so large a portion of the nation
was excluded from its benefits, is specially
chosen out by Aristotle for approval. For,
he says, freedom from the necessity of
attention to the first requisites of life on
the part of the citizens, is one of the
most important notes of a well organized
community. A subject population, living in Pol. a. 9, 2.
ignorant slavery or serfage, is regarded by
him with a complacency which is strangely
foreign to our own ideas of justice.

58

EDUCATION

IN

SPARTA.

Only, he adds, it is difficult to know how
to deal with such; for if you treat them
kindly they wax wanton, but if they are
treated with severity you must always
be on your guard against conspiracy and
revolt. The account which Aristotle gives
us of the cowardly, domineering, and avaricious spirit engendered in the Spartan
women, by what he considers their lax
and disorderly training, has been already
touched upon.

Further
defects.

On the general question of Spartan
education there is little to be added from
our modern stand-point to the criticisms
of the philosophers of Athens. The evils
arising from a discipline so narrow in its
aims and so unnatural in its processes,
cannot be felt or described more forcibly
than was the case with Plato and Aristotle.
But we may be permitted to
.

.

.

notice one point on which they do not
dwell.

It was death to a Spartan

to

leave his country without permission; and
this is a significant fact.

The Spartan

discipline was possible only so long as
all the citizens subjected to it were kept

ITS

DEFECTS.

59

in narrow isolation from the rest of Hellas.
The ^evrjXao-ta of Lacedaemon, which seemed
so* repulsive to the rest of the Greeks, was
simply a needful measure of self-preservation. In the presence of those who lived
by other and laxer rules, a Spartan felt
bewildered; the only law he knew was
the law of his country, and if strangers
had been permitted to settle in Laconia
the same result must have followed there
which we find in almost every case in
which a Spartan was absent for any long
time from his fatherland. The ties of the
law in which he had been educated were
broken, and no others were found to take
their place; so that he fell into a lawlessness which was rarely if ever rivalled
by the citizens of less rigidly organized Cp. Curtius, i.
204, and again

communities. Not only were the aims of i. 211.
the Spartan education low and unworthy,
but also they required for their attainment
external conditions which were wholly inconsistent with the free and full developement of the life of the nation and of the
individual citizens.

C H A P T E R II.
NATIONAL EDUCATION AT ATHENS.

Athens com- I L i j '

'^JlE pass into a wholly different air

pared with

i N y ASQUI

Sparta.

I B ^mm

when we turn from the banks
of the Eurotas to the slopes
of Hymettus. The sun is as
bright and the breeze as healthy; but
there is a dainty clearness in the sky*
that was wanting in t h e shadow of Taygetus, and the many-dimpling sparkle of
the ocean seems to lend a brightness to
the heaven under which it is smiling. A s
the lofty mountain-wall which hems in
Laconia on every side but that which is
guarded by a cliff-bound coast seemed
destined to preserve the Spartans in a
* The infinite charm of the Athenian air has been nowhere
more gracefully set forth than by Dr. Newman, " Historical
Sketches," pp. 20-22.

ATHENS

AND SPARTA.

61

rigid isolation, so the " highway of the Cp. Pictet,
L.es Aryas

nations," to which the peninsular form Primitifs, i.
and excellent harbours of Attica gave such Curtius,
easy access, appeared to attract its autoch- 354 . m '
thonous people to a richly-cultured and
manifold life. As in the garrison-city of
Sparta the State held absolute lordship
over every citizen, from the cradle to the
grave, so—
Where on the iEgean shore the city stood,
Built nobly,

the true Hellenic principle of the fullest
and freest developement of the individual,
ruled every civic ordinance. It is evident No State
,

-

r

,

education at

that a national system of education, in Athens.
the strictest sense of the term, would have
been wholly foreign to the genius of the
State. To force every citizen from childhood into the same rigid mould, to crush
the play of the natural emotions and
impulses, and to sacrifice the beauty and
joy of the life of the agora, or the country
home, to the claims of military drill, were
aims which were happily rendered needless by the position of Attica, as well as
distasteful to the Athenian temperament.

62

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

And yet, on the other hand, we are not
to suppose that — a t least in the better
days of the State—the liberty which was
readily conceded was allowed to pass into
unrestricted license. If the methods by
which a father should train his children
were not rigidly prescribed by the State,
at least the object to be attained was set
before him, and not only the force of
public opinion, but also the positive control of law and judicial authority, was
brought to bear on him to secure its accomplishment. If there was no common
discipline, at least there were definite
laws requiring that every child should be
Plato, Crito, trained in the two great branches of Greek
5° E.
education, povo-iKrj and yv^vao-TLKrj. And so
long as it retained its original powers,
the court of Areopagus was charged with
the enforcement of the laws in this respect.
isocratescom- Quintilian (v. 9, 13) tells us that they even
plains bitterlv
of the disuse' condemned to death a boy who had torn
vision on the ' out the eyes of his quails; and according
Areopagus. t o Athenaeus (iv. 6) two youths were
brought up before them, charged with
attending the lectures of philosophers

AMUSEMENTS

OF CHILDREN.

63

without having any visible livelihood. Instances like this, which might be multiplied, show that the supervision exercised
was not merely nominal.
A t first children were left wholly to the Amusements
care of their mothers and nurses, and the
diligence of scholars like Becker and
H e r m a n n has gathered many interesting
particulars of their modes of training. Toys Cp. Hermann,
r

1 .

1

1

1

/

Privatalterth.

of many kinds are mentioned—rattles (see pp . 261-268.
p. 18), toy carts,* and beds, dolls of wax
and clay, hoops, and t o p s ; several games
are noticed, such as flying cockchafers
and blind-man's buff; f and stories of Cp. An Nub.
! . ,
. .£
.
763 (Kock),
various kinds, terrific or amusing, were and Schoi. on
employed to frighten the children out of esp ' 34 '
mischief,J or to keep them in good humour.
As soon as the children grew too old to
* Ar. Nub. 863 ; cp. 877-881.
f Cp. Pollux, ix. 122. 7) dk xa^KV l^via^TaivicjLTioo^QaKixu)
TrtpiG<piyZ,avT££ kvbq iraidog, b fxtv TrepiffTptytrat KTJPVTTIOV*
XaXicrjv fxvlav Oijpaau)' 01 SI anoKpivaiitvoi, Orjpdatig a\X' ov
AT^J/EJ, ffKvrtai j$vj3\LvoiQ Ttaiovaiv avrov, eu>; rivbg avrwv
Xij^irai.
(For borpaicivda cp. Phaedr. 241 B with D r .
T h o m p s o n ' s note).
% Chrysippus blames those who would deter m e n from sin
by the fear of punishment from the gods—a>c ovdev hia^'spovtaq TY]Q 'AKKOVQ Kai Trjg 'AXQITOVQ, Ci &v ra iratdapia rov
KaKo<JX°^v ai yvvaiKtg
airtipyovoiv.

64
The slaveattendants.

ED UCA TION A T A THENS.

be managed any longer by their mothers
.,

-

and nurses, they were placed under the
care of iraihayuyoL* The primary duty of
these slave-attendants was to conduct the
children to the public, schools, but they
had also entrusted to them a general
supervision of their conduct, and especially of their manners and deportment
(evKoo-fALa); and they appear even to have
inflicted . personal chastisement.! They
would be naturally chosen from the most
honest and trusted members of the household, but as a rule they possessed little or
no literary accomplishments themselves.
Plutarch is very indignant at the careless* Cp. an amusing passage in Lucian Hermotim. 82 : k-xti
Kai at TirOai roiadt Xiyovvi Trept T&V wailmv,
wc airirkov
avroig eg didaaicaXov' Kai yap av firjdsTru) jiaOslv dyaOov n
dvviovTai, dW ovv QavXov ovdkv iroirjaovaiv SKBI fi'svovrsg.
Cp. Ussing, Darstellung, &c. p p . 68-73, a n d Lightfoot on
Gal. iii. 24.
t T h e Traicayoiytiov mentioned by Demosthenes (de Corv.
p . 313) was probably a waiting-room, devoted to the use of
the slave-attendants [so H e r m a n n in Charikles, ii. p . 21 and
Simcox, ad loc.~\; M r . Holmes (with Pollux, iv. 19) takes
it to m e a n simply the schoolroom, but this meaning weakens
the force of the passage ; and is there any authority for his
assertion that iraidaywybc sometimes is used in the wider
sense of " tutor ? " All the instances of this usage th#t I
have been able to discover, belong to a later time than that
of Demosthenes. (Cp. H e r m a n n , Privatalterth. p . 276, 19).

THE PEDAGOGUES.

65

ness which some parents in his day showed
in the choice of their " p e d a g o g u e s / ' entrusting the care of their children only to
such slaves as were unfit for any other
occupation.* The age at which the children were committed to the pedagogues
cannot have been fixed very rigidly ;
much would depend upon their own character and developement, and much upon
the position of their parents ; for, as Plato
says (Protagor. p . 326), the sons of rich
men would go to school earlier than
those of others, and remain there longeis
But from several passages of Plato and
Aristotle it seems probable that the usual
age for commencing to attend school was
about seven years, and that for two or
three years after that the children learnt
little or nothing but gymnastics. There
is no reason to believe that the schools
received any subvention from the State ;f
* Morals,i. p. 9 (Goodwin). Cp. Plato, Alc.i. p. 122 B.
aoi de, w *A\K. nepiickrJQ eirkffrrjcr iraiSayioybv r&v ouctrwv
TOV axptiorarov virb yrjpwg; and Lysis, ad fin., where the
pedagogues appear as very boorish. Ussing notices that
where they are represented on monuments they have barbaric
features and dress (p. 67). Cp. Stark's Niobe u. Niobiden,
PI. ii. iv. vii. xvi. xix.
f Cp. [Plato] Alcib. i. p, 122 B. rfjg dk aijs yivkoung, w
F

66

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

Cp. Laws, p. they appear to have been without exception
794 and Ar.

Pol. iv. (vii.), " private venture '
17.

schools, and, as might

I follow

.

here Hermann have been expected, of very various degrees
in Charikles,

r

.

_.

,

,

'

.

ii. 23, rather .oi merit. Demosthenes, when taunting
than SchoAeschines with the lowness of his origin,
rnann, Gr.
A l t . i. 519.
speaks of the school kept by the father
of the latter in terms of great contempt:
Bt8d(TK(x)v ypafifiara,

ws cyw 7 W 7rp€o-/3vT€po)v OLKOVO),

7T/0OS TO) TOV ^HpO) TOV IdTpOV, 07T0)S iSvVOLTO, dAA' OVV €V

ravrrj yc l^q. But in the speech de Corona he
claims for himself that when he was a boy he
went to suitable schools. W h a t the customary fees were we have no means of knowing;
for the charges of rhetoricians and sophists
—which are frequently mentioned—give us
no clue to the practice in ordinary dayschools.* But though they were not supported by the State, they were subject to
a rigorous official supervision, at least, so
far as the character of the teachers and the
regulations of the school were concerned.
'AXKifiiadrj, Kal Tpoiprjg, Kai ixaidtiag, 1 aWov orovovv
7
Va'lUV, fe>C 87TO£ tlTTtlv,

Ovfitvl

'A6rj-

flkXtl.

* Bern. F . L . p . 419 (p. 158 ed. Shilleto). C p . de Cor.
p . 313, where we have some curious details on the " interior "
of a school at A t h e n s , F r o m A r , N u b . 965, it is evident
that they were spread over the various districts (<cw^ai) of
the city.

ATHENIAN

SCHOOLS.

67

Aeschines (in Timarch. §§ 9, 10) says : " T h e
lawgiver shows a certain distrust of the
teachers, to whom of necessity we commit
our children, though their livelihood depends upon their character for morality,
and the loss of this would reduce them to
b e g g a r y ; for he explicitly ordains in the
first place the hour at which a free-born
boy is to come to the school, and secondly
the number of boys with whom he is to be
taught, and when he is to leave; and he
forbids teachers to open their schools, or
trainers their wrestling-grounds, before
sunrise, and orders them to close them
before sunset, feeling the greatest distrust
of solitude and darkness; and he ordains
who are to be the boys who frequent these
schools, and what is to be their age, and
what magistrate is to superintend them." *
But we have no means of knowing to what
magistrate this duty was allotted. W e find
at Athens no 7ra«Wo/x,oi, such as existed in
* Some additional details are added by the laws quoted
in § 12, but their genuineness, as is the case with most of
those quoted by the orators, is open to the gravest suspicion*
Gp. Franke's edition and K. F . Hermann in Charikles, ii.
p. 21.

68

Aims of

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

Sparta and elsewhere; and though in later
times we have mention of o-ax^onoW,
and viroKoo-fXTfTaL, who exercised a control
over the gymnasia, these seem to belong
entirely to the period when Athens had
become the University of the R o m a n
Empire, and its schools were thronged
by students from every province.* To such
schools, then, did the Athenian boys resort

education,

from an early age to be taught the limited
curriculum which was then regarded as
furnishing the needful training for a citizen.
I t is noteworthy that we find in Athens
* Cp. Schomann Griech. Alterth. i. p, 525. Of the sirifit\rjral TU>V tyrjfiiov mentioned by Dinarchus (Hermann Pol.
Ant. § 150, 4), we know next to nothing; the allusion in
Dem. Fals. Leg. p. 433, is very vague, and need not refer to
any special magistracy (cp. however Bockh, Public Economy,
book ii. c. xvi.); and the genuineness of Plato's Axiochus is
much too doubtful to allow us to argue anything from the
expressions in p. 367 A. On the University character of
Athens at a later time cp. Dr. Newman's Historical Sketches,
cc. iii. iv. vi. vii., and especially Neubauer's Commentationes
Epigraphicae, with the review by Mr. E. L. Hicks in Academy, I. 141. But that it was already beginning to assume
this character is shown, not merely by phrases like KOIVOV
iraidtvriipLov iraaiv dvOpcJTroig (Diod. xiii. 27) and " Salvete Athenae, quae nutrices (jraeciae " (Plaut. Stich. 649—
probably preserved from the original by Menander), but also
from [iEschin.] Epist. xii. 699. nal 'ingot fiev, o>c SOIKS, roijt;
kavT&v iraXdag, rovg fi iv Botwri^t ytvvrjOsvTag ri iv AirwXi^,
irpbg vfiag 7T€/A7rovai rrjg avroQi iraidtiag ptQiZovTag.

THE AIMS OF EDUCATION,

69

a clear comprehension of the essential
character of liberal education. The deluded
endeavour after "practical utility/' which
proves so misleading to much of the popular
education of our own day, was then unknown, or known only to be branded as
unworthy and contemptible. No special
training was given for special needs in
after life; the Athenians judged aright that
the acquirements needed for particular
trades or professions might safely be left
to be gained at a later stage by those who
intended to make use of them.* But the
teaching which the nation encouraged, if
it did not prescribe it, aimed at something better than the production of " commercial men;" it endeavoured to give the
free and general culture becoming to a
citizen of the " school of Hellas." As
Aristotle says, " t o be always in quest of
what is useful is by no means becoming to
high-minded gentlemen " (rots /AcyaAoi/^xois *cal
* Cp. Curtius, ii. 417, and Hermann in Charikles, ii. 32,
" der Unterricht. . . gerade eine Erhebung iiber die Banausie
des alltaglichen Bedarfes bezweckte," Cp. also Wittmann,
Erziehung und Unterricht bei Platon, p. 9. Hippocrates
in the Protagoras says that he learnt music and gymnastics
—OVK iirl rs\vy a\X iiri waiSti*.

7o

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

Pol. v. (viii.) rots cAcuflcpois). Its subjects were limited in
range, but they gained in depth and
thoroughness more than they lost in extent. " The mental culture was but plain
and simple, yet it took hold of the entire
m a n : and this all the more deeply and
energetically, inasmuch as the youthful
mind was not distracted by a multiplicitous
variety, and could, therefore, devote a proportionately closer devotion to the mental
food, and to the materials of culture offered
to it." (Curtius ii. 416.)*
Reading and

In " m u s i c " the first stage, of course,

writing,

was the study of -ypd/^ara, which included
* In the following sketch of the subjects of education, it
must be remembered that they were strictly confined to boys.
The education given to Athenian girls is adequately summed
up in the words of Ischomachus in Xenophon's Oeconomicus,
c« vii. 5. Socrates asks him whether he had himself trained
(iTtaifovoas) his wife to be as she ought to be, or whether
when he received her from her father and mother she knew
how to discharge all her duties. And Ischomachus replies :
Kai TL av kTrnjTan'ivriv avrijv 7rap€Xa/3ov, »} Irjj fikv ovwu>
irtvreKaideica yeyovvla fjXQe vrpoQ 8/AS, TOV d' tfjurpoaBev
Xpovov t%rj virb 7ro\\iJc k7rifitXsiag OTTIOQ iXd^iora fikv oxpoiTOy
kXax^TOL S' CLKOV^OITO, sXdxiora 8* 'ipoiro; " W h y what

could she have known, when I married her ? She was not
fifteen years of age when she came to me, and during the
whole of the time before her marriage great pains had been
taken with her that she might see as little as possible, bear as
little as possible, and ask as little as possible." Then follows
a very pretty sketch of the way in which he taught her various

duties.

READING.

V

reading and writing. Whether arithmetic
was added in the Athenian schools, as
Plato (Laws, vii. 819) wished it to be in
his ideal State, seems to H e r m a n n more
than doubtful, on the ground that a matter Cp. Charikles,
of merely practical value was never reckoned
as 7ratSeta; but it is hardly likely that such an
essential branch of knowledge should have
been wholly passed over.* W e find that the
knowledge of the use of the abacus or calcu- Cp. Jebb's
1

.

,

.

. - . , - . , ,

TTT.

- Theophrastus,

lating-board was common in daily lite. W i t h p p . 189,217.
regard to reading, Becker appears to think
that when the names and powers of the
letters had been mastered, the pupils next
began to read by the syllabic method ;f but
* Mathematics certainly were not wholly neglected, as we
may see from the beginning of the Erastae (the genuineness
of which Mr. Grote satisfactorily defends, i. 452), where, in
the house of Dionysius the schoolmaster, two youths are
represented as debating some geometrical problem. Plato
gives us an idea of how he would have it taught in the wellknown passage of the Meno (84 D, 85 B) ; and the importance which he attached to the study comes out in many of
his works (cp. esp. Rep. vii. 522 E, 525 D, 528 B, Legg. v.
747 B. He uses mathematical examples inter alios locos in
Euthyph. 12 D, Theaet. 147 D). But how far the study of
mathematics was pursued at schools, and how far it was left
to later life, we have no means of determining.
f If I understand aright Becker's " Syllabirmethode,"
as opposed to the "reine Buchstabirmethode," he denotes
by the former the admirable method of learning to read

EDUCATION

Cp. Ussing,

AT

ATHENS.

the passage quoted by him from Dionysius
of Halicarnassus hardly bears out the
interpretation which he puts upon i t ; and

op. cit. p. 107, .

note.
it is expressly contradicted by another
Athen. x. 79, passage quoted from Athenaeus, which
P- 453.
tells us how there was a kind of metrical
chant used in schools, running fifjra aAc/>a fia,
firjra €* fa, firjra f) fir}, firjra iwra fit, firjra ov fio,
firjra to fito* /cat rraXiv iv avri(rrp6<f>to TOV /meXovs /cat
rov fiirpov, ydfJLfJLa a\<j)a, ydfi/na eT/c.r.A.. /cat C7rt rwv
XoLTtov crvWafitov bpottos €KaoTa>v.*

Writing.

WViting

was

taught by copies, the masters drawing
lines on which the pupil was to write the
letters set before him, as Plato tells us
(Protag. 326 D) 01 ypa/A/AaTiorat rots fxrpro} Setvots
ypa</>€iv TOJV 7rat6W VTroypaxf/avrts ypa/xjuias rrj ypacfriSi
(recently brought into more general notice by Messrs.
Meiklejohn and Sonnenschein), in which the pupil is not
taught the names of the letters at first, but simply their
powers, so that he is able to combine them into syllables at
once, without the confusion of ideas that often arises from
the common system. But this is one of the somewhat
numerous passages in which the English abridgement
of " Charicles " purchases brevity at the cost of the sacrifice of the most important phrases and clauses of the
original*
* In Dionys. Halic. (de admir. vi die. in Demosth. c. 52)
we have the following account of the various stages in
learning to read : " First, we learn the names of the letters
(oroixeia rfJQ Qwvrjo) that is the ypd/i/mra, then their several
forms and values (TVITOVQ KQI dvvafitlg), then syllables and

STUDY

OF THE

POETS.

ovTLj TO ypajLt/xarctov SiSoacri /cat dvay/cd£oixrt ypd<f>€W ,
Kara rrjv vcfrrjyrjcrw ra>v ypapLpLuv I h e r e ypajuLfial

must mean the lines drawn for the guidance
of the pupil, and not, as some would understand it, letters which the pupil was to
trace over; though the latter practice was Cp. Sauppe
also adopted, as we see from a passage in
Quintilian (I. i. 27,Halm): " Cum vero iam
ductus sequi coeperit (puer), non inutile erit
literas tabellae quam optime insculpi, ut
per illos velut sulcos ducatur s t i l u s " (cp.
also v. 14, 31). But in the judgment of Plato
(Laws, vii. 810) too much attention ought
not to be given to h a n d w r i t i n g : if boys
cannot readily acquire quickness and beauty
of writing in the time allowed to their
studies, they must be content to let it
alone.
A s soon as the needful rudiments of study of the
reading and writing were mastered, the
their modifications (rd wtpi ravra 7rd9rj), and finally nouns
and verbs and connecting particles, and the changes which
they undergo (6v6fj,ara xai prjpara icai awhkafxovQ KCIL rd
(jvufitfirjKora TOVTOIC, GV(TTO\CLQ, £»cra<Tftc, oKurrjTaQ, (3apv~
Tt}ragt 7rr<*)(T(iQ9 dpi9povgt eyjcXtcmc, rd dWa 7rapair\fiffia
TOVTOIQ). Then we begin to read and to write, at first
syllable by syllable, very slowly, and then more rapidly, as
we acquire some familiarity."

74

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

teachers commenced the more important
part of literary education. " Placing the
Protag. 325 E. pupils," as Plato says, " on the benches,
they make them read and learn by heart the
poems of good poets, in which are many
moral lessons, many tales and eulogies
and lays of the brave men of old, that
the boys may imitate them with emulation, and strive to become such themselves." It appears that in very early
times there were selections from the works
of Homer, Hesiod, I h e o g n i s , Phokylides,
and many of the lyric poets, expressly
intended for use in schools. Some, like
SchomannGr. Nikeratos in Xenophon's Symposium,
From Ar. Av. went so far as to learn by heart the
thatJEsop
whole of the Iliad and the Odyssey; and
an elementary l*e boasts that he could still repeat them
a7 Q
m
A t first, we may believe
yTpY<pvg . [ fro memory.
V
that these
oems were
7L^7a°
P
simply explained
to the boys, the meaning of words and
phrases discussed, and obscure allusions
interpreted.*
But before long ypa^fxara
* W e have an example of the kind of catechising that
was practised in the fragments of the AairaXelg of Aristophanes, quoted by Galen in the preface to the Lexicon
Hippocraticum; e.g.—

MUSIC.

75

was supplemented by the other great sec- Musk.
tion of jjiov(TiKr]; and the boys were taught
to chant the poems they had learnt to a
suitable accompaniment on the lyre. A c cording tO PlatO KiOdpicris was not to Com- Laws, vii. p.
mence till the boys were thirteen years
of age, when they h a d already spent
three years on the study of letters; but
we have no means, I believe, of determining whether in laying down this regulation for his ideal State, he was following
or correcting the practice common at
Athens. It is evident, of course, that a
certain time would have to be spent in
acquiring a command over the instrument *

8IOA.

irpbg ravra av Xs%ov 'O/nrjptiovg yXwrrag, ri KCLXOVOI Kopvjifia.

and again—
b fxev ovv (Tog, sfibg d' ovrog adsX^bg ^paadroj ri KaXovcriv
idviovg.

Cp. Aristophanis Fragmenta, ed. Dindorf. (1869) p. 182.
The AairaXug would have probably furnished us with many
more hints on Athenian education, had it been preserved to
us ; for the subject appears to have been furnished by two
brothers, one addicted to the old-fashioned methods of
learning, another to new-fangled ways, regarded of course
with no little disfavour by Aristophanes.
* Hermann notices that the Xvpa is more frequently Charikles, ii.
mentioned by the earlier writers (with the exception of 38.
Homer, where the word does not occur) than the iciQapa;
but the latter was a much lighter instrument (Diet. Ant. s.v.
Lyra), and was therefore probably used in schools. The use
of the flute, so common in Boeotia, was at one time prac-

76

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

before it could be employed to accompany
the voice in recitations or chantings. "We
influence of have already noticed (p. 35) the importance
music.

attached to the study of music. Plutarch
Vol. i. pp.
in his treatise on the subject is only
(Goodwin), expressing the common Greek sentiment
when he writes: " W h o e v e r he be that
shall give his mind to the study of
music in his youth, if he meet with a
musical education proper for the forming
and regulating his inclinations, he will be
sure to applaud and embrace that which
is noble and generous, and to rebuke and
blame the contrary, as well in other things
as in what belongs to music. And by
that means he will become clear from all
reproachful actions, for now having reaped
the noblest fruit of music, he may be of
great use, not only to himself, but to the
commonwealth; while music teaches himto abstain from everything that is indecent,
both in word and deed, and to observe
tised at Athens, but it was afterwards discouraged, partly
because its music was supposed to be too passionate and
orgiastic in its character, and partly because it could not be
.accompanied by the voice of the performer. Cp. Arist. Pol.
v. (viii.) 6, 6, and Cic. pro Mur. 13, 29.

INFLUENCE

OF MUSIC.

decorum, temperance, and
regularity"
(§ 41). And again yet more emphatically,
(§ 31): " T h e right moulding or ruin of ingenuous manners and civil conduct lies
in a well-grounded musical education/'
Plato constantly expresses similar opinions,
as, for instance, in the Timaeus (p. 47 p),
where he says that " harmony is not r e garded by him who intelligently uses the
Muses as given by them with a view to
irrational pleasure, but with a view to
the inharmonical course of the soul and
as an ally for the purpose of reducing
this into harmony and agreement with
itself; and rhythm 'was given by them
for the same purpose, on account of the
irregular and graceless ways which prevail among mankind generally, and to
help us against them." A n d again in
the Protagoras (p. 326 B.): " T h e y make
rhythm and harmony familiar to the souls
of boys, that they may grow more gentle,
and graceful, and harmonious, and so be Cp. too Rep.
r

1

1

•

1

-.

1

1

r

* " ' 4 0 1 '* La\VS

of service both in words and deeds; for vii. 812 , and
•
the whole life of man stands in need of (viii.)' 5,
grace and harmony/'
Hence we find I5 ~ 25 '

78

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

that the greatest care was taken to adapt
the tunes to the poems to which they
were to be sung, and to provide that both
the one and the other should be pure,
noble, and elevating. It is quite as much
on ethical as on aesthetic grounds that
Aristophanes attacks so fiercely the corrupters of the music of his own day.
Philoxenus, Kinesias, and Phrynis all
come in for his censures, as contributing,
by their effeminate and enervating music,
Cp, Nub. 971. to the degeneracy of the Athenian youth.
A n d in the controversy between Aeschylus
and Euripides in the R a n a e , as to their
respective merits, hardly less importance
is attached to the formal (i.e. the rhythmical and musical) side of their works
than to the material or moral and rePlato, iii. 336. ligious side. Mr. Grote has pointed out
how even a practical politician like Poly' bius considers a training in music indispensable for the softening of violent and
Poiyb. iv. pp. sanguinary tempers. The Athenian critics
rude Area- found the main object of their attacks
Kynaetha. in the later developements of the Dithyramb, which had always been allowed

HIGHER

EDUCATION.

great laxity of construction, but which,
towards the close of the fifth century
before Christ, in the hands of Melanippides, Philoxenus, Kinesias, Phrynis, Timotheus, and Polyeidus went through a
gradual process of degradation. The principal ground of censure with the philosophers and moralists was that which Plato
(Gorg. 501 D) expressly adduces in the
case of Kinesias, that the musicians had
come to attach no importance to m a k i n g
their hearers better, and only sought to
please the greater number. Hence, as we
shall shortly see, Plato and Aristotle, in
their ideal schemes of national education,
insist repeatedly on the necessity of a
rigid official control of the music taught
to the young, that it may not fail to
secure the elevating results which it is
capable of producing.*
* The moral part of the education given in an Athenian
school, so far as it concerned propriety of behaviour rather
than justness of views, or temperance and courage of spirit,
was summed up under the name evicoofiia. To this Plato in
the Protagoras attaches much importance, and even says
(speaking under the person of Protagoras), dg dida<ricd\ojv
irkfjnrovrsQ [ol iraTtpi(f\ rroXi) /ACLWOV ivriWovrai iTrifiEXeXaQai
evKocr/LLiag TUV iraiduv f; ypafjinariov re icai KiQapiatwQ (p.

325 D). A graphic sketch of the points which were con-

8o

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

I n the earlier days of the Athenian
State, the education of a boy was considered complete when he had acquired
sidered essential to tvKoafiia is given in the locus classicus
on Athenian education in Aristoph. Nub. 961-983. From
this it appears that a modest silence, a reserved behaviour in
the streets, a decent position in sitting, and an absence of
greediness at meals, were regarded as distinguishing features
of a well-trained boy.
-^
It is probable that both branches of fxovaiKrj, letters and
music, were often taught by the same master (Cp. Ar. Eq.
181, with Kock's note); but for gymnastics, as we see from
the passage in the Clouds, boys went to a different master,
the TraidoTpifirjG- Cramer (Geschichte der Erziehung, i. 287)
regards this profession as one peculiar to Athens; but he
assigns no authority, nor is such a limitation probable from
the nature of the case. As compared with Sparta, where
the physical training of the youth of the nation was conducted wholly by State officials, it is certain that private
teachers of gymnastics were far more numerous at Athens ;
but all our evidence goes to show that they were common in
every town of Greece. Whether there was any difference
between the iraidorpifirjQ and the yvfivatrrrjg is not clear:
from the words of Aristotle (irapaSorkov rovg iraidag -yi/juvaoriKy icai 7rat<Wpi/3iicy * TOVTWV yap r) fikv iroiav riva
Tcoiti rr\v'i%ivrov owfiarog 1 6k TO. tpya—Pol. v. [viii.] 3, 2)
7
it seems that the one was especially concerned with the
general health and vigour of his pupils, the other with their
skill and agility in the performance of gymnastic feats. But
the terms are often interchanged. Still after the very careful
discussion by Becker and Hermann (Charikles, ii. 185-194)
it seems probable that the gymnasium was especially devoted
to the amusement of men, the palaestra to the training of
boys. [Mr. Jebb, in his charming edition of Theophrastus
(p. 237), makes the distinction to consist rather in the fact
that the palaestra was strictly only a school for boxing and
wrestling, while the gymnasium properly meant a place of
more general resort and more various resources, including

THE SOPHISTS,

81

the elements of gymnastics and of music*
Naturally, the process of training was
continued longer i n some cases than in
others. In a passage already quoted Plato
tells us, what we might have argued
from analogy, that the sons of wealthier
citizens remained at school longer than
those of the poorer ones; and probably
some of them continued their studies
until the time for their solemn admission
into the ranks of the 7rept7roAot, when they
were enrolled, each in his own deme,
presented with a shield and spear in the
theatre before the assembled people, and

grounds for running and archery, javelin-ranges, baths, &c]
It would lead us too far from the present subject to enter
upon a consideration of the particular exercises practised in
the palaestra. There is a very graphic description of these
in the Anacharsis of Lucian; and the whole question is
exhaustively discussed by Hermann, Privatalt. pp. 296-304.
And it is happily needless to dwell upon the serious moral
evils that attended upon them so often—
Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa.
* Aristotle tells us (Pol. v. (viii.) 2) that to the three main
branches of education, letters, gymnastics, and music, some
added a fourth—drawing. According to Plin. H.N. xxxv.
17, this was owing to the influence of Pamphilus of Sicyon
(Flor. B.C. 390-350) : Pamphili auctoritate effectum est
Sicyone primum, deinde in tota Graecia ut pueri ingenui
omnes artem graphicen hoc est picturam in buxo docerentur,
recipereturcjue ars ea in primum gradum artium liberalium.
G

82
Cp. Scho-

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

required to take an oath of obedience to

mann,Alterth.

'

i. 372, where the laws and devotion to the State.
the words of

,

1

1

. .

Per.

the oath are haps the more elaborate training in the
klven
'
use of arms, in the art of war, and in
the elements o f drawing, which we find
mentioned by Plato and Aristotle, was
The Sophists, already known*
But it is with the
appearance of the Sophists that we have
the first intimations of anything like a
regular system of higher education. This
is not the place for any attempt at a full
discussion of the character and work of that
remarkable class of men. Since the appearance of Mr. Grote's justly famous chapter
on the subject, the question has been so
thoroughly discussed, from every point of
view, by Mr. Cope, Mr. Lewes, Dr. Schomann, Dr. Zeller, Sir A. Grant, Professor
Campbell, Professor Jowett, and Mr. H e n r y
Sidgwick, that nothing less than an essay
devoted to the purpose would be sufficient
to state and examine the various arguments that have been adduced. I must
be content here to express my full conjournalof
currence in the words of Mr. Sidgwick,
vol. iv. p. 288. that Grote's account " has the merit of a

THE SOPHISTS,

83

historical discovery of the highest order/'
and that " t h e main substance of his conclusions is as clear and certain as anything
of the kind can possibly be." The general Their character and
purport of his views I take to be some- influence,
what as follows: that towards the middle
of the fifth century before Christ, various
teachers appeared in different parts of
Greece, most of whom were, at some time
of their life, attracted to Athens as the
centre of the highest Hellenic life; that
they judged the traditional system of
education to be imperfect in many ways,
and capable of being supplemented by instruction of considerable value for practical
life; that this instruction they professed
themselves able to give, and willing to
give for money; that in doing so some
of their number took up with superficial
and dangerous views of truth which drew
upon them the unsparing hostility of men
like Sokrates and Plato, while the way in
which they ran counter to popular prejudices, and above all the fact that they
received pay for their teaching, exposed
them to the ill-will of the uneducated ; but

84

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

that it is equally erroneous to regard them
as a sect with any common agreement as
to doctrines, and as consciously and without exception teaching immorality. It cannot be denied, I think, that their method
of investigation was as a rule deficient
in depth and thoroughness; that it was
often dangerous; that it contributed something to the decay of morality at Athens,
and would have contributed more if it had
not been for the resolute opposition of the
Socratic schools; and that Plato was fully
justified in much, if not all, his polemics
against their prevailing tendencies. Nor,
on the other hand, can we doubt their
Their inservices to the developement of the higher
wholly*for education of the time. It would not have
eml
'
been a little if the bold speculations of
some of their number on ethics and politics
had done nothing more than call up the
more thorough and far-reaching discussions of Plato and Aristotle. There is a
very real sense in which men like P r o tagoras, Prodikus, and even Gorgias and
Hippias, are to be called the fathers of
moral philosophy rather than Sokrates.

THE SOPHISTS.

85

It was not he who called down philosophy
from the heights to dwell among m e n ;
but finding her already directed by the
Sophists to the business of the agora
and the home, he guided her by his
shrewd common-sense and unfailing devotion to righteousness to the method
whereby she might deal with it aright.
The step from the era of " unconscious Cp. Stirling.
Notes to

morality " [Sittlichkeit, as the Germans call Schwegier,
it) to that of philosophical morality [Moralitat), when moral precepts rest no
longer upon tradition, but upon " a system Grote's Plato,
i. vi.

of reasoned truth," must, of necessity, be
accompanied by much shaking of accepted
beliefs, by much scepticism, unreasonable
as well as reasonable; but for all that
the step is imperatively needful for the
progress of the race. Traditional morality
is secure only so long as it is unimpugned;
at the first assault with the weapons of
reason, it must furnish itself with arms
of the same temper and forging, if it is
to hold its own. I t is probable, nay
almost certain, that Plato exaggerates
the shameless audacity of men like Thra-

86

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

symachus and P o l u s ; yet it cannot be
doubted that the Gorgias and the R e public, and we may even add the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, are the
immediate outcome of the speculations
The study of first set on foot by the Sophists.
But
grammar.

.,

.,

.

-

r

-

their contributions to the advance of knowledge were not wholly indirect. The importance which was commonly assigned
to dialectic and rhetoric naturally led to
a closer study of the nature of words and
sentences; and hence we find the beginnings of the science of grammar attributed
to some of the leading Sophists. Protagoras was the first to discuss the gender
of substantives, the tenses (fiiprj xpavw) and
the modality of propositions,* and generally the correctness of diction (SpOo^m—
Plat. Phaedr. 267 c). Prodikus—as we
learn from Plato's delicious parodies—>
* Cp, teller, Philosophic der Griechen, i. 787 : " Protagoras und Prodikus—die ersten Begriinder einer wissenschaftlichen Sprachforschung bei den Griechen gewerden
sind." It is commonly said that he discussed the moods, and
Zeller (u.s. note 5) defends this view; but Spengel (2vvaywy$
Ts%vwvt p. 44) and Benfey—Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft (p. HI)—have, I think, clearly disproved it.

THE SOPHISTS.

87

taught the distinctions between synonymous terms, not without a certain over-refinement and conscious affectation. Hippias
laid down rules for correctness in language
generally, but especially with reference to
rhythm, and to the powers of the several
l e t t e r s (ypa/x/jLchw OW/ACIS).

And

t h e r e w a s Cp. Benfey,
Geschichte,

hardly one of the more prominent Sophists p. 112.
who did not leave behind him a treatise on
rhetoric (rexvrj). T h e fragments of these
have been collected in an early work of
Leonard Spengel's, %vvaywyr} TC^IW.
SO
deeply did the new studies strike root
into the higher Athenian education, that
Antisthenes, who was at once a pupil of
Sokrates and of Gorgias, says apxrj TraiScuo-ctos
rj ruv dvopdruv imo-Keij/is ; * and the earnestness
with which the Platonic Sokrates repeatedly utters his warnings against the
* At the same time we have abundant proof of the
general ignorance of grammar in the fact that Plato again
and again introduces its elementary conceptions as novelties
to his hearers. Cp. Phileb. 18 B ; Cratyl. 424 C ; Theaet.
203 B ; and see especially the curious difficulty with which
the very intelligent Theaetetus follows the grammatical illustrations of the Elean in Sophistes, pp. 261-262. Cp. Wittmann, Erziehung und Unterricht bei Platon. p, 22, and
Grote's Plato, iL 434.

88

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

danger of deriving a knowledge of things
solely from their names, is a sufficient
proof of the great influence of the Sophistic methods. If further evidence were
wanted, it would be supplied by the jests
of Aristophanes (Nub. 662, 599) and by
the fact that the comic poet Kallias wrote
a TpafjLfiaTiKrj Tpaya>Sta on purpose to turn
them into ridicule.* Of the interest which
the presence of one of the famous
Sophists caused at Athens we have a
well-known and extremely graphic description at the beginning of Plato's P r o The higher tagoras. It is plain that as early as the
learning;.

time # of the Peloponnesian war a new
element had been introduced into Athenian
education, which for nearly a thousand
* Cramer, on the other hand (Geschichte der Erziehung,
ii. p. 212), considers that the object of Kallias was rather to
encourage the introduction of the new Ionian alphabet, which,
in 403, was officially substituted for the old Cadmean alphabet
of sixteen letters ; and that he endeavoured to give to grammatical rules a certain attractiveness by throwing them into
the form of verse. I have not had an opportunity of consulting Welcker's paper "Das ABC-buch des Kallias in
Form einer Tragodie," in the Rhein. Museum, I. i. 137, &c.
But Kallias is certainly best known as a comic poet. Dr.
Schmitz, however (in Diet. Biog. 1. v.), considers it doubtful
whether the comic poet is to be identified with the writer of
the TpafifiariKrj Tpayydia.

THE SOPHISTS.

S9

years was never to be wanting to it. Not
recognised by the Government—at least
till a later date—and owing their attraction solely to their reputation for superior learning or ability, the long series
of Sophists, rhetoricians, and philosophers continued to give that instruction
in the higher learning which, found nowhere else in equal fulness, was destined
to keep alive, far into the Christian centuries, the fame of Athens as the university of the civilised world. The general
nature, tendency, and results of their teaching would furnish a theme of the highest
interest. For, indeed, it would be little
less than the history of the completest
culture given to the human intellect during
a period of surpassing importance.
It
would comprise all the most hopeful,
sober, resolute, and finally despairing attempts of human philosophy to solve for
itself the mysteries of life and death, of
man and of the world around him, before
the " d a y s p r i n g from on h i g h " visited us,
and the " Sun of R i g h t e o u s n e s s " arose
with healing in His wings on a weary,

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

sin-sick earth. But the theme would lead
us far away from our present subject,
and, indeed, it would need no little courage to attempt it. W e must simply take
notice of the fact that above and beyond
the training of the palaestra and the
school, there was an education open to
every free-born Athenian youth, which,
for the untrammelled play which it gave
to the highest powers of reason and
fancy on the most important themes, for
the keen rivalry of opposing schools, for
the acuteness, and in many cases the
moral earnestness, of the teachers, for
the free intercourse which it promoted
among students from every part of the
Hellenic world, has been rarely if ever
equalled. The early training of the Athenian boys in grammar and music (as the
words were at that time understood),
developed a refinement of taste which
became instinctive; the close and constant study of the poets of their country
filled their minds with noble thoughts and
beautiful fancies; and the assiduous practice of gymnastics shaped and moulded

THE CIVIC LIFE.

9i

frames of manly grace and vigour. But
that which made the Athenian intellect
what it was, which lent it its unrivalled
suppleness, and created its unfailing versatility, was not so much the formal
training of boyhood, as the daily intercourse of the youthful citizen with acute
and disciplined philosophers.
Again, we should fail to take account of influence of
the national

a most important element in Athenian edu- life.
cation if we passed over wholly in silence
the results upon the younger men of
the richness of the common national life.
W h e n critics like Johnson sneered at the
Athenians as ignorant barbarians, he was
not answered by enumerating the schools
that abounded in Athens, and cullingfrom ancient writers references to the extent and completeness of the training in
grammar and rhetoric. But he was reminded that " to be a citizen was to be a
legislator-^-a soldier—a judge,—one upon
whosQ voice might depend the fate of the
wealthiest tributary state, of the most
important public man."* A n Athenian's
* Cp. Macaulay's "Essay on the Athenian Orators," and

92

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

books were few, but those which he had
were the writings of the poets whom the
consentient voices of all later civilisation
have pronounced to be unrivalled models.
And they were known with a thoroughness
which outweighed a thousandfold in its
value for mental discipline the hasty
skimming of innumerable newspapers and
pamphlets. But above all things the
Athenian of the age of Perikles was
living in an atmosphere of unequalled
genius and culture. H e took his way
past the temples where the friezes of
Phidias seemed to breathe and struggle,
under the shadow of the colonnades
reared by the craft of Iktinus or K a l •likrates and glowing with the hues of
Polygnotus, to the agora where, like his
Aryan forefathers by the shores of the
Caspian, or his Teutonic cousins in the
forests of Germany, he was to take his
part as a free man in fixing the fortunes
of his country. There he would listen,
Curtius Hist. ii. 415 : " A constitution founded in a spirit of
sublime wisdom, and having in view the participation of the
whole civic community in public life, necessarily and of itself
became, in the fullest sense of the word, a public discipline."

THE CIVIC

LIFE.

93

with the eagerness of one who knew that
all he held most dear was trembling in
the balance, to the pregnant eloquence
of Perikles. Or, in later times, he would
measure the sober prudence of Nikias
against the boisterous turbulence of Kleon,
or the daring brilliance of Alkibiades.
Then, as the Great Dionysia came round
once more with the spring-time, and the sea
was open again for traffic, and from every
quarter of Hellas the strangers flocked for
pleasure or business, he would take his Cp. Becker's
,

,

-

r

-r^.

•

Charikles,

place betimes in the theatre of Dionysms, i. scene x.
and gaze from sunrise to sunset on the
successive tragedies in which Sophokles,
and Euripides, and Ion of Chios, were
contending for the prize of poetry. Or,
at the lesser festivals, he would listen to
the wonderful comedies of Eupolis, Aristophanes, or the old Kratinus, with their
rollicking fun and snatches of sweetest
melody, their savage attacks on personal
enemies and merry jeers at well-known
cowards or wantons, and, underlying all,
their weighty allusions and earnest political purpose. As he passed through the

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

market-place, or looked in at one of the
wrestling schools, he may have chanced to
come upon a group of men in eager conversation, or hanging with breathless interest
On the words of one of their number; and
he may have found himself listening to an
harangue of Gorgias> or to a fragment of
the unsparing dialectic of Sokrates. W h a t
could books do more for a man who was
receiving an education such as this ? " It
was what the student gazed on, what he
heard, what he caught by the magic of
sympathy, not what he read, which wras
J. H* New- the education furnished by A t h e n s / ' Not
torical
by her discipline, like Sparta and Rome,
p. 40. '

but by the unfailing charm of her gracious
influence> did Athens train her children.
The writer whose words have just been
quoted, has summarized, with all his wonted
perfection of diction, the famous passage
in the funeral speech of Perikles, and his
language may fitly express the better side
of that ideal of life to which Athenian
Character of education was directed: " W h i l e in pri-

j4.thetii(ziz life

* vate and personal matters, each Athenian
was suffered

to please himself, without

ATHENIAN

CHARACTER.

any tyrannous public opinion to make
him feel uncomfortable, the same freedom
of will did but unite the people, one and
all, in concerns of national interest, because obedience to the magistrates and
the laws was with them a sort of passion,
to shrink from dishonour an instinct,
and to repress injustice an indulgence.
They could be splendid in their feasts
and festivals without extravagance, b e cause the crowds whom they attracted
from abroad repaid them for the outlay;
and such large hospitality did but cherish
in them a frank, unsuspicious and courageous spirit, which better protected them
than a pile of state secrets and exclusive
laws. Nor did this joyous mode of life
relax them as it might relax a less noble
r a c e ; for they were warlike without effort
and expert without training, and rich in
resource by the gift of nature, and after
their fill of pleasure they were only more
gallant in the field, and more patient
and enduring on the march. They cultivated the fine arts with too much taste
to be expensive, and they studied the

96

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

Newman,

sciences with too much point to be effeminate : debate did not blunt their energy,
nor foresight of danger chill their d a r i n g :
but as their tragic poet expresses it, ' t h e
loves were the attendants upon wisdom,
and had a share in the acts of every
virtue/ " It is needless to say that there

Historical

.

-

.-

,

A

.,

Sketches, pp. is another side to the picture. A purely
3 4
~ '
laissez-faire policy in education is not
likely to be wholly successful, even under
the most favouring circumstances; and
there are darker shades to be added to
the painting, befibre we can accept it as
influence and a just delineation'. The attraction of incmnpared. fluence tells, as nothing else will, with
those who are nobly-minded; and the
unfettered " L e r n - und Lehr-Freiheit,"
which has long been the boast of Germany, and to which our own English
universities are happily making some approaches, is capable of producing results
more valuable than any which discipline
can attain to. But for the mass of men
something more is needed than the simple
charms of knowledge and virtue to constrain them to the steady and strenuous

DECLINE

OF ATHENS.

97

pursuit which is needful to achieve success.
W e may well believe that, as Spartan
apologists were compelled to admit, a
good Athenian was a better man than
the best of Spartans. And yet we may
see that many a young Athenian citizen
would have been far better for something
of the stern control which marked the
discipline of Lacedaemon. The evils that
arose as freedom degenerated into license
were felt all the more deeply in a city
where the only guard of the laws was
the tone of public opinion. All that a
genuine lover of the free Attic life, like
Curtius, can venture to say is that a the
old Attic culture which had* proved its
worth during the troubles of the Persian
wars, the ancient morality and piety, had
retained their dominion as late as the days
of Pericles, even without the binding force
of laws such as held sway at Sparta."*
I n the time of Plato and Aristotle the
danger of the Athenian tendency to indivi* The repeated attacks of Aristophanes on the corruption
of the youth of hiis own time are of course exaggerations ;
but they cannot have been without a very considerable basis
of reality.
H

98

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

dual freedom of thought and action, had
clearly presented itself to the view of every
t h i n k e r : and hence we shall find them
tending rather towards the institutions of
The Stoics
her rival. W e may see perhaps in the
cureansfore- educational systems of Athens and Sparta
shadowed.

*

r

«

j

c

,-

respectively some foreshadowing of the
two great schools of philosophy that were
afterwards to divide between them so large
a portion of the Hellenic and R o m a n world.
Athens appears to have learnt beforehand
the philosophy of Epicurus—the identity
of goodness with beauty and joy—and
the strength and the weakness of Epicureanism were hers. W e find on the one
hand the winning grace of life, the genial
ease, the kindly brightness which lend so
much attraction to the figures of Epicurus
himself and the best of his followers—
we need refer only to Vergil and H o r a c e ;
but on the other hand we have a license
that readily degenerates into licentiousness, an indulgence of the purer impulses
of the heart that too soon passes into an
indulgence of each and all. The identification of virtue with happiness leads very

DANGERS

OF THE SYSTEM

99

quickly to the identification of pleasure
with virtue; the love of the Beautiful
becomes the love of the S e n s u a l ; and
the pursuit of that which is most alluring
lasts, even when goodness has lost her
power to be held as such.
Sparta, on
the other hand, tended towards that rigid
suppression of natural desires, and that
absolute submission to external law, which
formed the strength of Stoicism, just as
their exaggeration proved in the long run
its fatal weakness. There were many, undoubtedly, to whom the rigid discipline
of Sparta, or the severe ascetism of the
Porch, was safer than a freer and a more
genial system; but as on the one hand
the virtue that was the product of Law
fell short of the goodness that sprang
from a love of the ideal Good,* so, on the
other, the attempt to impose on all mankind a burden greater than they could
bear of necessity led to a fierce reaction,
which broke the bonds of every law.
* It is needless to say that men like Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius. cannot be considered as Stoics proper. Though
nominally followers of Zeno and Cleanthes, they are really
Eclectics in the most attractive part of their philosophy.

ioo

EDUCATION

AT

ATHENS.

The evils of license are great, but it may
be fairly doubted whether they are not
less in magnitude and permanence than
those which result from unnatural and
tyrannous restrictions. The rule of Sparta
was shorter and far more brutal than that
of A t h e n s ; her fall was greater, her ruin
more utter and irretrievable.

CHAPTER III.
PLATO ON NATIONAL EDUCATION.

E have now completed our survey
of the popular theories of education in the two great typical
Greek communities, and of the
manner in which they were carried into
practice; it remains that we should consider more in detail the views of the leading
Athenian thinkers of the century with
which we are especially dealing.
Xenophon need not long delay us. It is Xenophon's
.

.

true that his Kyropaedia, if not actually
written, as some authorities inform us, in
opposition to the Republic of Plato, has
this much in common with that great work,
that the writer endeavours to set forth (in
this case under the transparent disguise of
a historical fiction) his views on the ideal
constitution and government of a State.

limited views,

PL A TO ON EDUCA TION.
But the paternal despotism of a wise and
virtuous prince, and not the rule of a
highly cultivated body of philosophers, was
the government which commended itself to
the judgment of the gallant but somewhat
narrow-minded mercenary; and the Persian laws, which he regards with so much
approval, aim only at rearing skilful, brave,
temperate, and above all obedient, soldiers.
Of any higher education than that which is
needful for the production of useful tools in
war, there is hardly a trace to be found.
The training of the intellect was limited to
the cultivation of a certain power of explaining the grounds of action (Kyrop. i.
4," 3). The Persians are not supposed to
know their letters, to hear or recite any
poetry, or even to learn the use of any
., ii. musical instrument. A n d Heeren has
shown that even this meagre training was
intended only for the members of an exclusive caste. None were to be admitted to it
but those who were placed by circumstances beyond the necessity of working
for their daily bread. It is needless to
point out the want of analytical and specu-

ARISTOTLE'S

METHOD,

lative power, and the inferior knowledge of
human nature, which make this treatise
hardly deserving of mention by the side of
the master-works of the Lyceum and the
Academy.
Plato and Aristotle both attached the importance of
education

greatest importance to education, and dwelt with Plato
upon it at considerable length. W i t h both,
the establishment of a perfect commonwealth was regarded as the ultimate object
of all the speculations of philosophy; inasmuch as it was only in the midst of the
favourable conditions afforded by a perfect
State that the complete happiness and
virtue of the individual could be realised.
But the first requisite for the perfection
of the State is a well-ordered system of
education. And so Aristotle, after dis- Aristotle's
method.

cussing in the Nicomachean Ethics the
supreme good of the individual, and the
laws of his highest excellence^ proceeds in
his Politics to sketch out his conception of
an ideal State.* A s usual with him, a certain
amount of attention is given first to a purely
* That it is an ideal State has been shown, against
objectors, by Zeller, ii. 2, 570.

104

PL A TO ON ED UCA TION.

negative criticism of previous attempts in
the same direction; but he proceeds only
a very little way in the constructive portion
of his work before he takes up the question
of education, and assigns nearly a book
and a half to its consideration, although his
treatment of the subject is evidently fragmentary.* And Plato's matured and systematic expression of his views on education
is thrown into the same form in his Republic
These two great works differ
The Republic and Laws,
and the Laws*
so considerably in style, in power, and in
many points of detail, that some have been
tempted to deny the genuineness of the
latter. But after the defence of the Laws
by Stallbaum, Grote, and Jowett, and the
recantation by Zeller of his former exCp. his
Platonische]
tremely able attack, we may fairly consider
Studien,
i -131, with
all doubts removed. The important dishis Geschichte, ii.
crepancies seem to be fully accounted for
h 348, 615,
641.
by the different conditions under which the
dialogues were written, and the different
objects which they had in view. In the
* It will be seen that I follow the rearrangement of the
books of the Politics adopted by St. Hilaire and Congreve.
Cp. Zeller, ii. 2, 523.

REPUBLIC

AND LA WS.

105

Republic, undoubtedly a work of Plato's
prime, the philosopher endeavours, with
little or no regard to the possibilities of
actual life, to draw out a scheme of that
polity, which should be ideally favourable
to the developement of virtue, and therefore
of happiness. The Laws we may with
equal certainty pronounce to be the product
of his extreme old age. He no longer
aims at that which is the best conceivable ;*
but he draws out a system of legislation
for a colony which he supposes it is intended
to found in a certain place in Crete. There
is not only a striking failure of artistic
power in the later treatise, a senile garrulity
and discursiveness, a marked deficiency in
the infinite grace, humour, and dramatic
skill that illuminate his earlier writings,
but there is also a hard and bitter tone,
and above all a narrow dogmatism strangely
unlike his former joyous confidence in the
healthful results of the free play of reason
in dialectics. It will, therefore, be needful
* Strictly speaking, even the Republic does not give what
Plato considered absolutely best; e.g. communism is limited
to the Guardians, instead of being extended to the whole
community. Cp. Grote's Plato, iii. 207 and note.

! o6

PL A TO ON ED UCA TION.

for us in many cases to distinguish the
theories of the Laws from those of the
Republic; and not to speak hastily of any
views as held by Plato, unless at the same
time we determine to what portion of his
life and to what stage in his thought we are
to assign them.
The Republic. It has been often said that the Republic
is essentially a treatise on education, and
Mr. Maurice the statement has much truth in it. But
characteristically objects it needs one very important qualification.
to any such

limited defini- All that has been said above of the limited
Anc. Phil. sense in which we can speak of a national
P• 4)- e ( j u c a t i o n in Greece is true, in a still higher
degree, of the conception of it held by Plato*
Dividing the citizens of his ideal state into

Cp. Grote's
Plato, iii. 212.

Rulers, or Guardians, Auxiliaries, and
Commons, he provides a very careful and
thorough education for the first class, and
a rigorous training, up to a certain point,
for the second, but the third, which will
naturally be by far the largest, he leaves
wholly without provision. It is true that
he does not exclude them from membership
.

of the State, as Aristotle does; on the
contrary, the laborious and self-denying

HIS VIEWS OF SPARTA.
training of the Guardians is mainly intended
to secure the happiness of the Commons*
and the chief enjoyment which the former
have to expect is the consciousness of doing
their duty* Still the education sketched
out in the Republic is the education of a
small class, and the Demos is in this
respect wholly neglected. It is one of the
most curious points about the Republic
that Plato passes over almost wholly in
silence the condition of what after all he
must have considered would have formed
the great majority of the citizens.
W e have noticed before (p. 53) the great The extent of
his admiration

attraction which the Spartan institutions for Sparta.
seem to have had for Plato. H e is entirely Cp. jowett's
Plato, ii. 137.

at one with them on the absolute control
which the State is to exercise over the
training and the manner of life of every
citizen. And yet, as Mr. Grote has acutely
noticed, it is rather the Athenian type of
character which he aims at producing, and
the common Athenian instruments of edu- Cp. Grote,
Plato, iii.

cation which he approves* The excessive 175, 178.
devotion of the Spartans to gymnastics,
and their neglect of music in its wider

io8

PLATO ON

EDUCATION.

sense, he censures as likely to make men
good warriors, but not good citizens. A
man who gives himself up unduly to
gymnastics, " e n d s by becoming a hater
of philosophy, uncultivated, never using
the weapon of persuasion; he is like a
wild beast, all violence and fierceness, and
knows no other way of dealing; and he
lives in all ignorance and evil conditions,
Repub. iii\

and has no sense of propriety or g r a c e / '
On the other hand, if he devotes himself
too much to music, he is a p t to become
" melted and softened beyond what is good
for h i m ; " " the passion of his soul is melted
out of him, and what may be called the
nerves of his soul are cut away, and he
becomes but a feeble warrior;" he may even
grow irritable, violent, and very discontented.
Therefore it is necessary that
throughout life these two means of education should be kept in due proportion to
each other, so that each side of the nature
of man may be fitly trained and developed.

The Urth and

W i t h Plato, as with Lycurgus, the care

re&riti& of
children,

of the children of the State begins before
their birth.

Rigid rules are laid down for

REGULA TION OF MARRIA GE.

109

the regulation of marriage. The limits of
age within which marriage for the purpose
of procreation is allowed are strictly fixed ;
and the care which was taken at Sparta
that the most suitable partners should be
brought together is carried to an extreme,
which has always been regarded as one
of the most impracticable and repulsive
features of the Republic. A s Mr. Jowett
justly says : " H u m a n nature is reduced as
nearly as possible to the level of the
animals. . . . All that world of poetry and
fancy which the passion of love has called
forth in modern literature and romance
would have been banished by Plato. . . .
W e start back horrified from this Platonic
ideal, in the belief, first, that the instincts
of human nature are far too strong to be
crushed out in this w a y ; secondly, that if
the plan could be carried out, we should
be poorly recompensed by improvements
in the breed for the loss of the best things
in life. The greatest regard for the least
and meanest things of humanity—the deformed infant, the culprit, the insane, the
idiot—truly seems to us one of the noblest

no

Plato, ii.

PL A TO ON EDUCA TLON.

results of Christianity/' And yet we are
bound to recognise in Plato's conception
of a State regulation of marriage, involving
as it does the degrading notion of a general
community of wives, an honest and earnest
attempt to struggle against some of the
greatest and most widespread hindrances
to the establishment of national well-being.
It cannot be denied that there are few
sources of vice and crime so fatally prolific
as the manifold evils that result from improvident and ill-adjusted marriages. W h a t
the most thoughtful and far-seeing of the
modern reformers of society are endeavouring to secure by the creation of habits of
self-control aided by an enlightened public
opinion, Plato attempted to grasp at once
by a violent subversion of the foundations
of human society as at present constituted.
W e , who are learning in medicine to trust
to the restorative power of nature, and are
taught by our ablest surgeons to give up

See the pub- the cautery and the knife for the healing
lished lectures

-,.11

of Mr. Hilton, magic of rest, are not likely to sympathise
Hospkal
with " heroic remedies." And yet we may
appreciate the magnitude of the evils

TEE TRAINING

OF CHILDREN,

in

against which Plato's theories were directed,
and the value of the advantages which
would be among the results of their realisation.
W e must not fail to notice, however, that Limits to the
Plato himself was fully alive to the im- marriage.
portance of giving some freedom to the
emotions in marriage. For while he assigns
to the Rulers the absolute determination
of the unions which shall be permitted, he
recognises it as one of their most difficult,
and at the same time important duties, so
to arrange their assignment of men and
women to each other, that the decision may R ep . v. 40.
appear the result of fortune, not of policy.
The offspring of the marriages of the The nurture
Guardians are to be removed from their °* °u
mothers as soon as born, that no special
attachments may be formed towards those
who are all brought forth for the State, and
the property of the State in common; and
the children of inferior parents, or those
which happen to be deformed, are to be
made away with,* that the breed may be
* KaraKpvirreiv need not necessarily bear a stronger
meaning than that which Curtius assigns to similar expies-

PLATO ON

EDUCATION:

maintained in vigour and purity. Those
approved by the authorities are to be
transferred to State nurseries, and given
over to the nurses who dwell t h e r e ; the
mothers are to be allowed to come and
feed them, but the greatest care is to be
taken that no mother recognises her own
child. In the Laws, where Plato goes
much more into detail than he does in the
Republic, we find abundant precepts given
as to the manner in which the nurses are
to rear the children. Just as the Athenian
bird-fanciers were accustomed to take long
walks in the country, with their cocks and
quails tucked under their arms, for the sake
of health, " t h a t is to say, not their own
health, but the health of the b i r d s ; " so
the children are to be kept constantly in
motion. " T h e y should live, if that were
possible, as if they were always rocking
at sea." The nurses are to be constantly
sions used of the Spartan custom (cp. p. 10). In Timaeus,
p. 19 A, where there is an evident reference to this passage,
Plato says, " You remember how we said that the children
of the good parents were to be brought up {Bpeirrkov), and
the children of bad parents secretly dispersed—elg rrjv dXkjjv
irokiv." Cp. Grote's Plato, iii. 205 (note).

THE TRAINING

OF CHILDREN.

113

carrying them about, and not to allow
them to walk until they are three years
old, that their legs may not be distorted Laws, vii. pp.
from the too early use of them. H e entirely
disapproves of the common custom of
scaring children into good behavour by
fearful stories, and insists that only authorised tales should be used by the mothers
and nurses. They should be kept as free Rep. ii. 377.
as possible from every pain and fear, but
their pleasures should also be limited, in
order that they may be preserved from
undue excitement in either direction. Laws, vii. 792
C-D.

Amusements they will be able to provide Their amusefor themselves abundantly, as they get
a little older; all that will be needful is
that they should be brought together at
the temples of the various villages, in the
charge of the nurses, and under the superintendence of one of the twelve women
annually appointed for that purpose. W i t h Their educaregard to the education which is to be
given to them, when they are of the proper
age—an age which Plato considers to begin
at seven years—he expressly says that it
would be difficult to find a better than the
I

PLATO ON

EDUCATION.

Rep. ii. 376. old-fashioned sort, that is, gymnastics for
the body and music for the soul. The first
three years are to be given up mainly to
gymnastics: though the laudatory manner
in which he refers to the Egyptian custom
of teaching children the principles of
arithmetic by means of games (Laws, vii.
819), shows us that he would not have
objected to some intermixture of mental
training with the physical: but the regular
study of letters was not to begin before ten
years of age, and only three years were to be
assigned to i t ; at thirteen years a boy was
to take in hand the lyre, and at this he
might continue for another three years,
"neither more nor l e s s : and whether his
father or himself liked or disliked the study,
he was not to be allowed to spend more or
less time in learning music than the law
strictness of allowed" (Laws, vii. 810). Throughout
the whole of his period of pupilage the
strictest supervision and discipline were to
be exercised.
" F o r neither sheep nor
any other animals ought to live without
a shepherd, nor ought boys to live without
tutors (TrcuSaywyot) any more than slaves

STRICTNESS

OF SUPER VISION. 115

without masters. A n d of all creatures the
boy is the most unmanageable. For, inas-r
much as he has in him a spring of reason
not yet regulated, he is the most insidious,
sharp, and insubordinate of creatures. So
that he must be bound with many bridles :
in the first place, when h e gets away from
mothers and nurses, he must be under the
control of tutors, because of his childishness
and foolishness ; and then again as being
free-born, he must be kept in check by
those who have anything to teach him,
and by his studies; but as being, on the
other hand, in the position of a slave> any c p . s. £aui,
of the free-born citizens may punish him* x ? * u,u:
ay, and his tutor and teacher, if any of ^ ^ ^
them do anything w r o n g ; and he who vi}Zl6%iaI>v
J

°

°

0VC6V ClCHptptl

comes across him and does not inflict upon &>v\ov, rcvpiog
T&VTVJV

him the punishment which he deserves,
shall incur the greatest disgrace ; and that
one of the guardians of the laws who has
been selected to govern the children, must
look after any one who has fallen in with
the cases we have mentioned, and has
failed to inflict punishment, or has inflicted it improperly: and we must have

lov.

116

PL A TO ON EDUCA TION.

him always looking out sharply and with
especial care to the training of the children,
directing their natures, and always turning
them towards the good, in accordance with
the laws." (Laws, vii., 808-9).
Detailed reIt is characteristic of the dogmatic and
gulations in

the Laws.

Boys and

despotic tone which marks the Laws
throughout that very little freedom of
action is given to the national Minister
of Education.
" A s far as possible the
law ought to leave nothing to him, but
to explain everything, that he may be the
interpreter and tutor of others." Hence
the multiplicity of details as to the time
to be spent in the various studies, the
rhythms to be allowed in the poems learnt,
and the dances to be practised. In the

girls trained-

alike.

Republic Plato insists that the same education should be given to boys and girls,
that both alike should be trained to be
guardians of the State, and that both
should practise the exercises of the palaestra. H e is aware of the ridicule that
such a proposal will bring upon h i m ;
but inasmuch as nature has not made man
and woman to differ in kind of excellence

BOYS AND GIRLS.

117

but only in degree, he will be no partner
to any arbitrary distinctions. It is idle Cp. Rep. v.
to say that gymnastic exercises are not
becoming to women : they are needful for
the object he has in view; the object is
a worthy one, and the best of all maxims
that are current or ever will be is that
" t h a t which is useful is honourable, and
that which is harmful is disgraceful." But
in the Laws he is willing to make some
concession to what he still regards as
the unreasonable prejudices of society,

457.

and though he would prefer that boys
and girls should be trained together in
precisely the same exercises, and with a
view to the same functions in after life,
he allows them to be educated separately
after the age of six years, boys under
the care of men, and girls under that of
women. But he protests that this is but
a second-best kind of polity, better than
the Spartan system, and very much better
than the Athenian, but after all providing Laws, vii.
but inadequately for the well-being and
happiness of half of the human race. In
the Laws we have, as we have noticed

806-7.

n8

PLATO ON

EDUCATION,

already, many more details as to the
method of education than are given in
the Republic, where the object is rather
to lay down the leading principles which
Gymnasia a r e to govern it. For instance, the followmd sc zoo s. j n g p a s s a g e c o m e s from the former work,
and has nothing corresponding to it in
the latter: " T h e buildings for gymnasia
and schools open to all are to be in three
places in the midst of the city; and outside the city and in the surrounding
country there shall be schools for horse
exercise, and open spaces also in three
places, arranged with a view to archery
and the throwing of missiles, at which
young men may learn and practise. I n
these several schools let there be dwellings
for teachers, who shall be brought from
foreign parts by pay, and let them teach
the frequenters of the school the art of
Compulsory war and the art of music; and they shall
come not only if their parents please,
but if they do not please; and if their
education is neglected, there shall be compulsory education of all and sundry, as
the saying is, as far as this is possible;

PRINCIPLES

OF TRAINING.

119

and the pupils shall be regarded as belonging to the State rather than to their
parents." (Laws, vii. 804.)
But it is to the Republic especially that Principles of
we have to look for the principles on which e uca wn'
such detailed rules are ultimately based.
Plato's theories on education are intimately
connected with his psychology and metaphysics. For the moral training of the
citizen of his ideal State—a training which
is not limited to the period of youth, but
extends throughout the whole of life, and
which is distinctly viewed as preparatory
to another life in which it is to be carried
out in fuller perfection—has for its aim See Jowett's
the proportionate and harmonious develope- p . l$2*
ment of the various elements of the soul;
and his intellectual training is intended
to fit him for the contemplation of the
ideal Good, by the cultivation of the
power and habit of abstraction. The soul, Psychology of
according to Plato, is composed of three
parts, corresponding generally to the
senses, the heart, and the intellect: the
first and lowest is the concupiscent principle, or appetite (TO imOvfxrp-tKov); the second

120

PLATO ON

EDUCATION.

the impulsive principle or passion (Ov^s or
TO OvfjioeiSei); the third and highest is reason
Rep. iv.
(TO XoytorTLKov). T h e virtue of the first is
temperance; the virtue of the second,
courage; the virtue of the third is wisdom;
while the supreme and crowning virtue,
in which the others find their synthesis and
harmony, justice, or rather perhaps rightnesSyis only attained to when " t h e appetites
whose object is sensual pleasure, and the
Dr. Thomp- impulses that prompt to energetic action/'
Append, i. ' willingly submit to the control of a wiselyp
* *
ruling reason. The aim of education, then,
must be to produce in the appetites temperance, in the spirit courage, in the reason
wisdom, and in all that harmonious cooperation which alone is worthy of the
Use of myths, name of justice. The earliest instrument
employed for the training of children conRep, ii. 377. sists of myths or fictitious stories. H e r e
Plato accepts the common practice of his
t i m e ; but of the majority of the fables
used he strongly disapproves. For some
of them, he says, tend to corrupt the
mind, by placing before it false conceptions
of what is to be desired and what is to

INFL UENCE OF ART AND MUSIC. 12 r
be shunned; while others, and especially
those which describe the terrors of Hades,
fill it with baseless and degrading fears.
T h e narrative form of composition is
especially approved; but if poets adopt
the mimetic or dramatic style, they are
not to be allowed to assume the characters
of vicious or foolish m e n ; no imitation
can be suffered but that of the reasonable and virtuous man. In the same way, Rep. iii.
396-398.
artists must not venture to present before Plato's dislike
.

of the drama

the eyes of the young copies of any ugly comes out
or unbecoming t y p e ; their object must L^ws/iv.
be to discover and reproduce the idea of Go9rg.*502PB.
the beautiful; so t h a t children, having
before them constantly various forms of
beauty, may be fitted to receive and appreciate the influence of beautiful discourse. Rep. iii. 401.
I t is needless to repeat, after what has
been said above, that foremost among the
creations of art stood music, in its several.
branches of harmony, rhythm, and lyric
verse. The power which these possess to Power of
attune the mind unconsciously to the love
of the beautiful is dwelt upon at length.
The reason why musical training is so

122

PL A TO ON ED UCA TION.

powerful is " because rhythm and harmony
find their way into the secret places of
the soul, on which they mightily fasten,
bearing grace in their movements, and
making the soul graceful of him who is
rightly educated, or ungraceful if illeducated ; and also because he who has
received this true education of the inner
being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art or nature, and with
a true taste, while he praises and rejoices
over, and receives into his soul the good,
and becomes noble and good, he will justly
blame and hate the bad, now in the days
of his youth, even before he is able
to know the reason of the t h i n g : and
when reason comes he will recognise and
salute her as a friend with whom his
Rep. iii.
education has made him long familiar."
Qowett).
This love for the beautiful, engendered by
Platonic Eros. a rightly-ordered music, leads Plato on to
the general question of the nature and
results of that passionate and ecstatic
yearning for a closer union with the beautiful, known as the Platonic Eros.
To
this, as might have been expected from

GYMNASTICS.

*23

the writer of the Phaedrus and the Symposium, Plato attaches great importance.
But just as we have seen already that
there is no reason for imputing any taint
of evil to the intimacy between the lover
and the loved one at Sparta—whatever
was the case at Athens—so Plato is careful to preserve his conception of Eros free
from sensuality and impurity. Then he R ept iii
passes on to the consideration of the
gymnastics to be practised. These are
intended only in a subordinate degree
for the developement of the bodily powers
(in. 410 c ) ; just as the main object of
music was to infuse temperance, so g y m nastics is especially intended to stimulate
the spirited (TO OvpoeiSh) part of the nature
of man, and thus to increase his courage.
The two must be duly tempered, each
with the other; lest on the one hand a
boy should grow hard and fierce, or on
the other his spirit should be melted and
softened beyond what is good for him.
But Plato does not think it needful to
give prescriptions in detail as to gymnastics : «if the mind be properly edu-

PLATO ON

Rep. iii.

EDUCATION.

cated, the minuter care of the
be committed to i t ; " for " the
improves the body, and not
body the soul." A n d here he

body may
good soul
the good
leaves the

403 D.

subject of the education of the greater
number of the Guardians (in the wider
sense in which he employs the term),
only providing that at certain stages in
their growth there shall be tests imposed
Tests of the upon them. Tasks are to be set before
Guardians.\

them such that there is a danger of their
forgetting their duty or being deceived;
toils and pains and conflicts are to be
prescribed ; and finally, they must be tried
Rep. iii. 413. by the witcheries of pleasure " more
thoroughly than gold is tried in the fire,"
in order to discover whether they are
armed against all enchantments, and of
a noble bearing always, good Guardians
of themselves and of the music which
they have learned, and whether they retain,
under all circumstances, a rhythmical and
harmonious nature, such as will be most
serviceable to the man himself and to
the State. A n d he who at every age,
as boy and youth and in mature life, has

HIGHER

EDUCATION,

125

come out of the trial victorious and pure,
shall be appointed a Ruler and Guardian
of the State. Those who fail are to be
degraded into the class of husbandmen
and artisans; but, on the other hand,
proved and tested excellence may raise
a man from the lower rank to that of
Guardian or Auxiliary. Mr. Jowett admirably notices this " c a r e e r open to
talents " as " one of the most remarkable
conceptions of the Republic, because unGreek in character and also unlike anything that existed at all in that age of
the world." It is true that Plato says Plato, ii. 38.
nothing of the means by which the lower
class are to attain to the excellence which
is so carefully cultivated in the Guardians :
throughout the whole of the dialogue
they fall into the background: but at
least he does not deliberately doom them
to entire exclusion from the higher life of
the nation.
T h e subject of the higher training to be Higher trainm

1 1

*

1

/-«

•••

1

afforded to the select Guardians who are to
become the Rulers of his ideal State Plato
recurs to in the sixth and seventh books

ing of Rulers.

126

PL A TO ON EDUCA TION.

of the Republic. But this does not appear
to fall strictly within the scope of the
present essay, and may therefore be passed
over lightly. The main object which he
has in view is to train the chosen few, by
the study of philosophy, to the contemplation of the ideal Good. If they have learnt
to know what this is, they will be able to
recognise it under all the various forms in
which it may present itself, and so they
Rep, vi. 505. will be able to rule aright. " T h e power
which supplies the objects of real knowledge with the truth that is in them, and
which gives to him who knows them the
power of knowing them, we must consider
to be the essential Form and Idea of Good,
and we must regard this as the origin of
science and of truth, so far as the latter
lb. 508 £>, comes within the range of knowledge."
The highest of all cognitions of the Form
of Good is that of the Dialectician, who
comprehends directly the pure essence of
Good by means of vovs or Intellect (the
" R e a s o n " of K a n t and Coleridge); an
inferior power is that of the Geometer, who
knowrs the Good only through particular

HIGHER EDUCATION,
assumptions by means of the Stavota or the lb. 510-511.
Understanding. The ordinary life of man
is illustrated by the famous simile of captives chained in a gloomy cave, with their
backs turned to the opening, so that they
can see nothing by the light of the sun,
but only the shadows of things cast by a
subterranean fire. The purpose of education is to turn men round from their
cramped and confusing position, to enable
them to see the glimpses of light which
come from the world of brightness and
realities, to induce them to struggle up
into the light, and to learn to look upon
things as they really are, and then to
descend again into the cave, that they may
benefit those who are still imprisoned, by
their fuller and clearer knowledge.

W h a t Rep. vii.

are the studies then which are needful for

514-521.

e d u c a t i o n ? (TL av ovv elrj fJLaOrjfJLa t/or^s OXKOV d,7ro
TOV yuyvofxtvov CTU TO OV j) M u s i c a n d g y m n a s t i c s

are but preparatory studies, both concerned
with the changeable and perishing; the
useful arts are simply degrading to the
reason. But arithmetic, if taught, not as
it is too often with a view to practical

Subsidiary

12 8

Rep. vii.

Cp. Grote's

PL A TO ON EDUCA

TION.

utility, but as a means of stimulating
thought, and as leading us to distrust the
impressions of the senses, will be found
of value. " The philosopher must study
it, because he is bound to rise above the
changing and cling to the real, on pain
of never becoming a skilful reasoner." The
second study is to be geometry, pursued
in the same manner and for a like purpose.
Geometry of three dimensions, Plato held,
was in his time studied absurdly; but if
properly taught and honoured, it would
suitably take the next place.
Treatises
on the subject he regards, most justly from
his own point of view, as of little value
compared with the intellectual discipline

Plato, i. 228

and 467.

furnished by a competent teacher. Astronomy takes the fourth place;- but this is
to be studied, not by the empiric method
of observation, but as a branch of solid
geometry, treating of bodies in motion.*
W h e n the philosopher has added to these
* Mr. Jowett notices (Plato, ii. 85) that this view, which
at first sight seems so strange, is really supported by the fact
that the greater part of astronomy at the present day consists
of abstract dynamics, and that the most brilliant discoveries
have been made by its means.

DUTIES OF CIVIC

LIFE.

the theoretical study of acoustics and harmonics, he will have been trained to see
the common method and principle which
pervades them all; and so he will be prepared to enter on the crowning task of his
life-long work, the pursuit of dialectics. It Dialectics.
is this which gives his intellect power to
grasp the pure and absolute Idea of Good,
to rise out of the darkness of the cave, and
to gaze upon the eternal realities in the
" white-dry" light of truth. The special
time allotted to the commencement of
these higher studies is the period between
thirty and thirty-five years of a g e ; they R ep . vii. 539 .
should not begin them before this t i m e ;
for boys, when first introduced to dialectics,
are like puppies, who delight in pulling and
tearing to pieces with their newly-grown
teeth all that comes in their way, merely
for amusement's sake. At thirty-five they Practical
.,

n

are to be constrained to return to the cave,
as it were, and to take upon them the
duties of practical life, subjected all the
time to the supervision and the continual
testing of their seniors, to see if they will
remain steadfast in spite of every seduction.
K

duties.

PLATO ON

EDUCATION.

It is only when they are fifty years of age,
that those who have passed safely through
every temptation are to be allowed to
resume their philosophical pursuits, and
" t o lift up the eye of the soul and fix it
upon that which gives light to all t h i n g s / '
Yet each, when his turn comes, " i s to
devote himself to the hard duties of public
life, and to hold office for his country's
sake, not as a desirable, but as an unavoidable occupation; and thus having
trained up a constant supply of others like
themselves to fill up their place as Guardians
of the State, they will depart and take up
Rep. vii. 540. their abode in the islands of the blessed."
The whole of the system of training prescribed for the Guardians is, in accordance
with Plato's fundamental position on this
Cp. Rep. iv. point, to be common to men and women.
45 45 •

j

n no

res p eC f-

is

anv

cognised between

difference to be re-

them, except such as

inevitably result from

their natural dis-

tinctions.*
* The earnestness with which Plato aims at raising the
education of women from the absolute neglect which it
suffered at Athens, is selected both by Jowett and by Zeller
(Philosophic, II. 1, 570) as among his greatest excellences.

ALTERED

VIEWS.

The same opinion is maintained in the Laws, vii.
Laws explicitly.

804-806.

But in other points we Altered views
.

of the La7v,s\

find his views largely modified. There is
no distinct class of Guardians ; their place
is filled by a Nocturnal Council,* consisting
of the ten oldest "guardians of the l a w s "
and those of the citizens who had obtained
prizes for virtue, together with those who
had visited foreign countries (a privilege
rarely conceded), and an equal number
of " co-optative " juniors. This council is
asserted to require a special training, but
none such is provided for i t : the attempt
which has been made in the Epinomis
(probably by Philippus of Opus : cp. Diog.
Laert. iii. 37) to supply the deficiency is
certainly not genuine.f
But the most
important point of all, is that magistrates
are to be elected by the votes of all the
citizens capable of military service, the Laws, vi. 755.
* It is not easy to see from the text of Plato (Laws, xii.
961 A) how Mr. Jowett arrives at the number of twenty-six
for this council.
+ Mr. Grote, I believe, stands alone among modern
scholars in his attempt to defend i t ; but his interpretation
of the words of Diogenes is to me quite untenable. Mr.
Jowett has no doubt upon the subject. Plato, iv. 485 and
172*. Cp. Zeller, ii. I. 321.

PL A TO ON ED UCA TION.
council by universal suffrage tempered by
a division into classes analogous to that
prescribed by the Servian constitution at
Rome, and even the Minister of Education,
the most important functionary in the State,
in Plato's view, by the votes of the
guardians of the law, who are themselves
chosen by the people.
The absolute
ignoring of the Demus, which is so conspicuous in the Republic, is absent from
the Laws, and the education ordained is
Education in common to all the citizens. The leadthe Laws.

ing features of this have been already
pointed out (pp. 116-119).* W e have every* The most important difference between the teaching of
the Republic and that of the Laws as to the higher education
lies in the fact that in the Laws there is no mention of the
doctrine of Ideas: " the will of God, the standard of the
legislator, and the dignity of the soul as compared with the
body have taken their place in the mind of Plato." On the
other hand, even more importance is attached to the study
of Numbers; and this not from the practical utility of a
knowledge of arithmetic; this would be by far the most
foolish of all arguments (Laws, vii. 818); but because they
appertain essentially to the divine nature and to the constitution of the universe. As Zeller justly says: " In this work
also Plato could not be content with the common training in
music and gymnastics ; but the higher training in dialectics
he deliberately sets aside; it only remains for him therefore
to complete his system with what ought to have been only a
preliminary stage to philosophy, a link between mere conception and philosophic thought, that is, the mathematic

DEFECTS

OF THE LA WS.

133

where the most rigid censorship, the
most precise prescription of duties, and,
worse than all in the view of modern
thinkers, an elaborate system of perpetual
espionage. All the regulations are directed
to the maintenance of the institutions of
the legislator. Plato's noble confidence in
the power of reason to guide to the truth (as
expressed in passages like Phaedo, 89-91) Cp. Grote,
is exchanged for a timid dread of entrust- 154-157.
ing a weapon so dangerous to unskilful
hands. Originality is in every way discouraged, and the willingness to "follow
the argument, whithersoever it might lead,"
is sacrificed to an oppressive orthodoxy.
The ideal of Plato would have been realised
in the boast of M. Duruy, as he drew his
watch from his pocket: " A t this moment
sciences, and to seek in them that complement of the ordinary morality and popular religion, which the original
Platonic State had secured by philosophy " (Die Philosophie
der Griechen, ii. I, 621). For the moral side of education
much recourse is had to two forces that are but sparingly
introduced in the Republic—the religious feeling, and the
power of public opinion. It is to the latter that Plato looks
to suppress all irregular and harmful sexual relations, just as
it has already extinguished incest. The former permeates
the whole work, and the entire system of the State is based
upon religion. Cp. Zeller, ii. 1, 620.

PLATO ON

EDUCATION.

in every school of France the boys are
learning such-and-such a page of such-andsuch a text-book."
H e seems to have
forgotten what he once knew—that the
wise man is sure to be in opposition to the
rest of mankind ; for some degree of eccentricity generally accompanies originality;
as "Oemocritus said, " the philosopher, if
we could see him, would appear to be a
strange being." In the Magnesian State
all the citizens are to be reduced to rule
and measure; there would have been none
of those great men " whose acquaintance is
beyond all p r i c e ; " and Plato would have
found that in the worst-governed Hellenic
State there was more of a carriere ouverte
for extraordinary genius and virtue than
in his own. T h e first principle of Plato's
Laws, borrowed apparently from the Spartan military system, " that no one is to be
jowett, Plato, without a commander," is literally that of
iv. 165*.

i

T

.

-,

the J esuit order.

C H A P T E R IV.
ARISTOTLE ON EDUCATION.

HE

theories
-

.

of Aristotle upon piaceofedu-

.

cation in

education bear m many re-politics.
spects a striking resemblance
to those of Plato. H e is wholly
at one with his master in regarding a wellordered education as the necessary basis
of the constitution of a State, and in attaching the greatest importance to the influence
of music. Like Plato he regards education,
not as pertaining only to the period of
youth, but as a life-long task.* And he
would place it not less absolutely under
the control of the authorities. The supreme
good for man, and the ultimate object of
all his manifold endeavours, is happiness;
* This view is often incidentally given in the Politics, but
comes out most explicitly in Eth. Nic. x. 10.

136

ARISTOTLE

ON EDUCA TION.

and happiness is shown in the Nicomachean
Ethics by an exhaustive analysis to be
" the conscious activity of the highest part
of man according to the law of his own
excellence, not unaccompanied by adequate
external conditions." The greater part of >
the Ethics is taken up with the determination of the contents of this " law of excellence " for man. But an important portion
of the question is reserved for the Politics.
For the law of man's excellence must be
ascertained by a complete consideration
of his nature (<£wns); and his <j>vcris plainly
shows him to be a political creature (TTOKITIKOV
£<$ov), much more so than the bee or any
Pol. i. 2, io. other gregarious animal. So that really
Tjj <f>vo-€iy the State is anterior to the family
or to any individual; and therefore individuals are to be regarded primarily and
essentially as members of a community.
But here,-too, comes in that limitation of
the idea of a State which we have noticed
already in Sparta, in Athens, and in Plato's
ideal Republic. In a perfect State all the
citizens should be h a p p y ; the attainment
of his own supreme good by every indi-

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN.

137

vidual is the very raison d'etre of a State,
and at the same time the necessary condition of its existence. But men can only
be happy by virtue, and those who are
not capable of the highest excellence have
no right to citizenship. Not only slaves
but also artisans are excluded by the conditions of their life from attaining to this Pol. iii. 5, 3.
supreme excellence. Therefore " the best
civic community will never admit an artisan
(fidvavo-ov) to the franchise;" or, if such be
admitted, the whole conception of the ideal
excellence of a citizen must be modified:
" for it is not possible to care for the things
of virtue while living the life of an artisan
or a slave." The citizen is he who is able to
take his share in all the duties and honours
of civic life; and the purpose of education
is to enable him to do so aright.
Now that which makes men " political," Aristotle's
1

.

-i

1

1 1

•
«

and raises them above the beasts, is the
possession of reason and language.* If,
therefore, the supreme good of man is the
* The meaning of \6yog in the Politics seems to vary
between these two ideas, or rather perhaps to comprise them
both. Cp. Pol. i. 2, 10, with Pol. vii. (iv.) 15.

Psychology.

138

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

conscious activity of his highest part, it
is evident that the main aim of education
must be the perfect developement of reas o n : o 8e Aoyos Tjfuv KCLI 6 vovs TTJS <j>vcr€U)S T£\OS.
WO~T€

7TpO? TOVTOVS

TYJV y€V€CTLV

-rrapaarK€vd£eiv fxeXirrjv

Cp. the
quSedfby
392.^ " 2'

KCLL TYJV T(DV

iO£)V

( P o l . iv. (vii.) 15, 8 ) .

<$€l

But

although this is the most important object,
it does not follow that it is to be the first
attended to. In time the lower has to
come before, the higher, the means before
the end. Man consists not only of soul
(^hxv) but a ^ s o of b o d y ; and the soul itself
consists of that which is possessed of reason (TO \6yov exov), and that which is irrational (TO aXoyov), the latter being divided
again into the purely vegetative life,
common to man with plants and animals
(T6 Open-TLKov o r <I>VTLK6V)9 a n d t h a t w h i c h

to

a certain extent shares in reason (jxcrc^ov 7*7
77
\6yov), the appetitive and passionate part of
The order of the immaterial principle.* The first thing,
education.

,

,

.

therefore, to be attended to is the training
of the body; the second is the moral educa* E t h . N i c . i. 13. I n P o l . iv. (vii.) 14, of the last it is
said, TO d' oiie lxH V^v Ka®' ^vrb, ^oyi^ < VKCIKOVEIV dvvaT
Itevov.

ORDER OF

EDUCATION.

*39

tion of the desires and passions ; the third
and highest task is the developement of
the reason. But it must be borne in mind
throughout that the first two are not ends
in themselves, but only means to an end;
that the body is trained for the sake of
the soul, and the passions for the sake of
the intellect. All the citizens are to share Education
the same education, whether they are to be
rulers or subjects—and this will be determined by age rather than by anything else
—•for all the members of the State are to
be made as good as possible. But he Pol. iv. (vii.)
by no means accepts the doctrine of Plato,
insisted upon in the Republic, though
reasserted with much less emphasis in the
Laws, that the training of men and women
is to be identical. On the contrary, he lays The differences betifjeen

much stress on their essential differences, men and
and maintains that their virtues are fELrwomenfrom identical. While the slave has no Pol. i. 13,
.

.

7-11.

will at all, and the child's is immature, the
woman's is invalid (aKvpov), and waits for
the sanction of her lord (Kvptos). So in the
case of moral excellences, we must admit
that all possess them, but they vary not

Ho

ARISTOTLE

ON EDUCATION.

•

only in degree but also in kind. The man's
virtues are those of rule, the woman's those
of obedience; hence self-control, courage,
and justice will be different in her case
from what they are in his. Men have been
misled by the use of vague generalities ;
but the real state of the case is clear as
soon as we examine the matter in detail;
for instance :
Soph. Aj. 261.

A modest silence well becomes a woman,

but this
Therefore
must be
Pol. i. 13,15. separate
534 (note 2),' nowhere
and St.

Hiiaire, ad

is far otherwise with a man.
their whole system of training
different, and it will require a
consideration.
But this he
bestows upon it, and therefore
, .

r

- .

we are not in possession of his views on
this important branch of the subject. W e
have some clue to the manner in which he
would probably have handled it in the
following passage from the Hist. Anim. ix.
1. (p. 608 B, ed. Bekker: Berl.). " F e m a l e s
are tenderer and more mischievous and
less straightforward, more hasty, and more
given to thought for the nourishment of
their offspring; but males, on the other
hand, are more spirited, fiercer, more

THE NATURE

OF WOMAN,

141

straightforward and less treacherous. A
woman exceeds a man in pitifulness and
in her tendency to tears, but on the other
hand she is more given to envy and censoriousness, to abusiveness and blowTs.
Again, the female is more inclined than the
male to be dispirited and despondent; she
is more shameless and more false, and at
the same time more easily deceived, and
of a better memory; she is also more
wakeful, but more sluggish, and generally
less disposed to move than man, and she
needs less food. The male, as we have
said, is more ready to give help, and more
courageous than the female." W e may
hesitate before we call this, with Zeller
(ii. 2. 535, note 1), " a careful observation of
natural history/' especially as traits drawn
from Laconian bitches, bears, and female
cuttle-fishes are without hesitation transferred to women. But it is a sufficient
proof that Aristotle would have treated the
question of their education in a very different way from that which Plato adopted
upon a hasty generalisation as to their
absolute identity of nature with men. In

142

ARISTOTLE

ON ED UCA TION.

the imperfect discussion of the subject of
education contained in the Politics, it is
boys and youths who are in view throughout.
As has
aim of all
is the full
The life of powers.
action mid the

.

been said before, the ultimate
the State-education of the citizens
developement of the intellectual
But reason (\6yos) admits of divi.

.

life of contem-sion; there is practical reason, concerned
with the affairs of daily life, and contemplative reason (6tfcwp^TiKos).Which of these
is it that has the strongest claims upon our
attention ? Aristotle, who in the Nicomachean Ethics has determined the supreme
happiness for man to reside in the greatest
possible continuity of intellectual exercise,
can have no doubt how he is to answer. As
war is to be pursued only for the sake of
peace, and business only for the sake of
leisure, so the functions of the practical
reason are of value only as needful for
fuller and more perfect exercise of the
speculative reason. This has been too
much lost sight of by legislators, who have
regarded success in war as a thing to
be sought for its own s a k e ; and conse-

AIMS OF ED UCA TION.
quently their States have beer, in a healthycondition so long as they have been engaged
in w a r ; but they have been ruined by
peace, losing the temper (fiajyfj) of their
spirit, because they have never been
educated to a proper use of leisure. In Pol. iv. (vii.)
Aristotle's time the decay of Sparta fur-'
nished a striking proof of the inadequacy
of a merely military training for the life
of a nation ; and he does not fail to make
use of it to point his moral. Therefore, the
object of the legislator must be to inspire
those virtues which are best adapted to
secure a wise and happy enjoyment of
peace and leisure. Courage and endurance
are mainly needed for times of active duty ;
temperance and justice are also require4
then, but still more in leisure and tranquillity, while philosophy is especially
appropriate to the latter condition.
To
produce these virtues we need the cooperation of (i) the natural disposition,
(2) habits that become instinctive, and
(3) a right reason. The last is most important, but it is the last to appear in the
life of a child; its habits precede its

144

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

reasoning judgments, and the habits are
* themselves preceded by natural tendencies.
Therefore, as we saw before, the care of
the body is the first thing, then the care
Pol. iv. (vii.) of the passions, and finally the discipline
1-2,1422.
of the intellect.
Regulation of W i t h Aristotle, as with Plato, the legis?narriage.

-

.

,

-

,

,

.

l a t o r s care for the physical well-being of
the citizens commences with the regulation
of marriage. The special points to be provided against are a disparity of age between
husband and wife, and too early marriages,
which have the double disadvantage that
the offspring is likely to be puny, and that
they are too near the age of the father, and
so not likely to reverence him as they
should. The proper age for marriage is
pronounced to be eighteen for women and
thirty-seven for m e n ; the main reason for
such a wide interval between the two is
apparently that the procreative power in
husband and wife may cease at about the
Rearing of same time. Detailed regulations follow as
infants

to the physical conditions needful for
securing healthy offspring. Infants who
are born deformed are not to be reared,

REARING

OF

CHILDREN.

and if the population appears to be pressing
on the limits fixed by the constitution,
abortion is to be practised in the early
stages of the growth of the embryo.* Much
stress is laid upon the quality of the food
given to children when young, and Aristotle
appears Xo approve of the mechanical a p pliances "used, as he says, by some nations
to straighten their limbs. Until they are
five years of age they are not be set to
any studies, nor to any compulsory work,
but activity of body is to be promoted by
proper amusements, and their frames are
to be hardened by exposure to cold. Dif-,
fering here from the Spartan legislator
[see p. 20] Aristotle will not have them
forbidden to cry ; f o-v^ipu yap irpbs av£rj<riv;
* This precept of Aristotle's did not find universal acceptation even in Greece. Cp. Stobaeus, 74, 61, and 75, 15
(quoted by Schomann Alterth. i. 112, note). But in Rome
there is no trace of any law against dbortio partus before
A.D. 200. Cicero (pro Cluent. 11, 32) has to go to Miletus
for an example of its punishment. Cp. Daremberg and
Saglio : Diet. Ant. p. 16.
f Congreve, on Pol. iv. (vii.) 17, 6, apparently takes
diardaug to refer to physical exertions generally; but it
must surely be here limited to " shouts." Cp. the use of
kvTeivdfievog in Plat. Rep. 536 C ; Ar. Nub. 968, " les cris
et les pleurs," St. Hilaire.
L

i46

See St.
Politique
p. 26o.° '

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

it acts as a gymnastic exercise for little
children. Like Plato he holds that the
stories which they are told should be only
such as are sanctioned by the authorities ;
they are to be kept away, as far as possible,
from the society of slaves, and are not to
be allowed to witness any of the buffooneries which the laws allow in the worship
of some of the gods. Aristotle is indeed
somewhat doubtful whether any such exhibitions are to be suffered at all; but he
reserves this point for a more detailed
examination, which is not found in his
extant works. The point on which he
lays especial stress is that the first impressions left upon the mind of a child
should be wholly free from every kind of
e v i l :—tocnrep yap <f>aari TOL Keva T&V dyyetiov avacfrepew
Tas 7 w 7rp(x)T0)V a s avra iy)(y0ivTO)v 607x019, OVT(O KCU

Pbilo, quoted a^ T&v V^0)V */™xat' From the age of five to
Hor.Ep!^ that of seven children are to be lookers-on
2 ()9
' '
at the lessons, which afterwards they will
have to learn ; and then they are to be
taken under the more immediate supervision of the State.
But

now that

he

has come to the

EARLY
threshold
-

TRAINING.

'47

of education proper, Aristotle Nature of
.

/

\ /-\

i

i

the State ec

raises three questions: (i.) Ought there to cation.
be any public authoritative system of education ? (2.) Ought it to be the same for
all ? (3.) If so, in what should it consist ?
The first two are easily answered from his
point of view; indeed the theories upon
which he has been building up the whole
of his ideal of a State, will only allow
them to be answered in one way.
For
in the Nicomachean Ethics (ii. 1.) he has
shown that a previous training from childhood up is needful for virtuous actions (inasmuch as virtue resides not in the act,
but in the moral state (eft?) from which it
springs); and in the tenth book of the
same work (c. 10) he has shown that the
previous training can only, or at any rate
can best, be had through a system based
upon public authority. And this is not
only the case in the ideal S t a t e : it is even
more true in imperfect States like the
democratic or the oligarchic: for every
constitution requires for its stability that
he characters of the citizens should be in
harmony with it, and this can only be

148

^ ,

, ...

Pol. v. (vm.)
2

h -

ARISTOTLE

ON EDUCA TION.

secured by a State-ordered system of education. That it must be one and the same
for all is proved by a consideration of the
fact that the State as a whole can have but
one ultimate a i m ; things of public concern
must be dealt with by the public; and it
is a grave mistake to suppose that any
citizen belongs to himself: far rather does
he belong to the State of which he is a
member; and the State must determine
his education as it sees to be best, without
making any distinctions between one and
another. But with regard to the things
to be taught there is great difference of
opinion. Is education to be merely utilitarian, or is it to include moral training, or
are the higher refinements* of intellectual
culture also to be aimed at ? All these
views have found supporters; so that the
systems actually in vogue help us little.
It is certain, however, that useful knowledge ought to form a part of education;
but then only that portion of useful know* rd 7r'spLTra seems to be used here much in the same
sense as in Aristotle's well-known description of the dialogues
of PJato (Pol. ii. 6, 5) with perhaps a touch of depreciation,
but hardly as St. Hilaire, ''•des ohjets depur agrement"

ITS

CHARACTER.

ledge is to be sanctioned which is free
from all taint of servility. Every art and
every study is to be considered servile
which renders the body or the soul or the
intellect of a freeman unserviceable for
the acts and practices of virtue.
And
under this head come all occupations which
are pursued for wages, for they deprive
the intellect of leisure and make it abject.
Even liberal studies, if pursued too far, or
for improper motives, are liable to certain
dangers. Perhaps an examination of the Detailed

exa^
wiitzatiofi of

various constituents of education in detail the subjects of
n

j

,

1

.

r™

may lead us to more general views, l h e s e
are four in number, for to letters, gymnastics, and music some now add drawing.
It is evident that letters and drawing are
useful studies; and the same may be said
of gymnastics, for this developes that
courage and bodily vigour which are needful for the well-being of the State. But
what of music ? It cannot be said to be
useful in the same way as these other
pursuits. The ancients always studied it
as affording an honourable occupation for
leisure, and this is the true view. For the

education.

i5o

Gymnastics,

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

right employment of leisure is one of the
most important tasks that can be set to a
man. Work is always done for some end,,
and therefore has not an independent value
of its own ; but leisure is an end in itself,
and can be used at our discretion for the
highest purposes. It must not be used for
amusement merely, for that would be to
make amusement—which is properly only
a relief from work—the chief end of life.
The main aim of education is to teach a
man the right use of leisure; and music
has always been justly regarded as one
of the noblest and most elevating employments for such time. It may therefore
claim its place as one of the most important elements of the higher education. But
even those arts which are of direct utility,
like reading, writing, and drawing, are not
to be learnt solely on the ground of their
utility : they may have, if properly taught, a
helpful influence on the mind. To resume,
then, the detailed consideration of the
various branches of education, in order
previously decided on :—First, the body is
to be trained by the gymnast and the

GYMNASTICS.

151

" paedotribe." But care is to be taken
that gymnastics do not pass into athletics (cp. p . 28), and that they are not
carried so far as to injure the character.
The Lacedaemonians, though they have
avoided the former error, have fallen into
the latter. They have formed their system
with a view to courage alone; but, in the
first place, no one virtue is to be pursued
to the neglect of o t h e r s ; secondly, if any
one ought to be so pursued, it certainly is
not courage; and thirdly, courage is a very
different thing from ferocity, as we may
see in the case of many barbarous tribes.
Great care must be taken not to overtrain
boys in gymnastics, or more evil than good
will be the result. Indeed, they must be
allowed to spend at least three years in
their other studies before they begin any
severe gymnastic exercises; for "it. is not
proper to put the body and the mind to
hard work at the same t i m e / ' W e may Pol. v. (viii.)
4» 9*

pause for a moment in this resume of Aristotle's theories to notice how he

agrees

with Plato on a point which is very strange
to our modern ideas.

" H e seems to have

15 2

ARISTOTLE

ON ED UCA TION.

thought that two things of an opposite and
different nature could not be learnt at the
same time. W e can hardly agree with
him, judging by experience of the effect
on the mind of spending three years, bejowett, Plato, tween the ages of fourteen and seventeen,
ii. 154.

Music

in mere bodily exercise."
Music in its narrower sense was so firmly
established in the time of Aristotle as an
essential portion of education, that we
could have well understood his motives,
if he had been content to accept the traditional ideas upon the subject.
But,
according to his custom, he enters upon
a careful analysis of the purposes which
music is intended to serve. Is it simply
a sensuous gratification, as some assume ?
Or, has it an ennobling effect upon the
character ? Or, does it even contribute to
the developement of the intellect (<t>p6vr)<n$),
by supplying it with needful relaxation?
It is evident that it cannot be simply
amusement, or it would form no part of
education ; for the end of education is not
amusement. Nor can it be the case that
the boy is trained to music that he may

THE PURPOSE OF MUSIC.

•153

have amusement when he is grown up ;
for this could be better supplied by the
services of professional musicians. Nor
can it be pursued only for its effect on
the character.
In that case, too, there
would be no need to learn it personally;
and it is recognised that there is something servile (fidvava-ov) in a professional
study of music. Aristotle's own opinion
is, that music may be considered at once
a means of education (7rai8eta), an amusement (TraiSia), and a source of enjoyment
in life (Siaywy?J),*—" an ornament of life
in its highest form, when the man has
passed the restlessness of childhood, ever
in want of amusement; has passed the
struggles of youth and earlier manhood,
the period of learning, of discipline, of
formation of character; and has reached
the settled state of life and mature manhood, to be spent not in business or in
war, but as a period of rest and peaceful
* The distinction between 7raidid and diayioyfj appears to
be that the former is rather " childish games," the latter
" rational relaxation " [cp. v. 5, 10, and Congreve on v. 3, 6].
Liddell and Scott appear to be somewhat misleading. See
Zeller, ii. 2, 577,5-

i54

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

Congreve,

contemplation.

Aristotle,

hands to be one of the greatest of plea-

Politics of

It is

admitted on

all

D. 2 2 0 .

Practical
knowledge of
music,

sures; and that it influences the character
is clear from its evident power over the
emotions, for it is the emotions which form
the character. A n d as right education
consists in training men to feel pleasure
at right objects (cp. Nic. Eth. book ii.),
the power which music has in this respect
must be of the greatest value. The different " m o d e s " are found by experience
to have different effects. Mixolydian is
plaintive, the Dorian produces a steady
calm, the Phrygian excites the passions;
and these facts are to be remembered in
using them for purposes of education.
But is it necessary for boys to acquire
,

M1

,

r

.

.,

.

^r

any SKIII in pertormmg tnemseives t x es :
for, in the first place, this will intensify the
effect of music upon them ; and, secondly,
they must have something to do with
their hands, or they will be always breaking things. But this practical acquaintance
with music is not to be carried so far as
to interfere with other studies, or to teach
them to perform the wonderful new-fangled

THE STUDY OF MUSIC.
flourishes

(ra

i5 5

Oavfida-La /cat 7T€/3iTTa rwv epywv)

which were coming into fashion in A r i s totle's time. The flute was to* be rejected, Cp. Hermann
ad Soph.

as an immoral instrument, unduly exciting, Trach. 216,
and the

and contributing nothing to real education Scholiast
there (p. 157,

(Pol. v. 7, 14).

Then he proceeds to dis- ed. Elms].),
and Cic. pro

cuss the rhythms to be permitted: the Mur. § 29.
moral modes alone are to be employed for
study, though the more animated and passionate ones may be allowed in concerts,
where the audience only listen, without
taking any part themselves. A decided
preference is expressed for the Dorian
mode, and Plato is censured for having
in his Republic allowed the Phrygian
alone to remain by the side of the Dorian
at the same time that he proscribed the
music of the flute, which is particularly
appropriate to it. A greater variety should
be admitted, in view of the different purposes to which music is applied. % Only
three requisites are always to be kept in
mind—the absence of excess (TO /xeow), the
limits of what is practicable (TO Swa-rdv),
and propriety (TO Trpiirov).
Here Aristotle breaks off his formal

156

ARISTOTLE

ON EDUCA TION.

incomplete- discussion of education.

Whether the fifth

ness of the

discussion. book of the Politics is fragmentary, as
Schneider, Stahr, Congreve, and Zeller
maintain, or whether it is perfect, as St.
Hilaire contends, we cannot decide with
certainty. Rut the weight of authority and
of probability appear to incline to the
See the very former belief. A t all events, we are left
complete

.

.

discussion of to gather the views 01 Aristotle on the
the520-5272, question

in Zeller, ii.

. .

r

-

.

,.,

r

proper training 01 the intellect of a nation,
as best we may, from the principles that
are established, and the hints that are
dropped in his other treatises. The philosopher who made the supreme good of
man to reside in the vigorous and unimpeded play of the intellect, and who, perhaps more than any other of his time,
recognised the absolute necessity of a
careful and long-continued training to
produce this, either never lived to give
to the world his matured thoughts on the
methods and instruments of this training,
or he wrote them down only to share the
fate of others of his most precious works.
T h e same caprice of fortune which has
preserved to us the treatise " De Gene-

HIS VIEWS

INCOMPLETE,

ratione Animalium," and robbed us of the Zeller, ii. 2,
7 5 * * die

IIoXtTctat, has, it is t.o be feared, deprived unersetzlichen
us of what would have been an invaluable
criticism on the educational uses of literature, and the means of developing the
higher intellectual powers. And even in
the case of his Poetics, from which we
might have expected to draw some matter
for our present purpose, we find on the
one hand much that is undoubtedly spurious intermixed, and on the other hand
we have a singular incompleteness of
treatment, which leaves some of the most
important aspects qi his subject wholly
untouched. It can only be considered as
a fragmentary and largely interpolated
collection of isolated extracts from Aristotle's original work. The general ends to Zeller ii# 2
which he would have directed his training 77i n o e*
may be gathered to some extent from the
Sixth Book of the [Nicomachean] Ethics,
where he treats of the intellectual virtues.
But here again we must notice, first, that
the Aristotelian authorship of this book
is more than doubtful.
Sir A. Grant has
shown, I think almost to demonstration,

15 8
Aristotle's

ON ED UCA TION.

that, with the book which precedes it and

Ethics, vol. i.

pp. 33-43.

ARISTOTLE
.

.

.

.

that which follows it, it is the work of
Eudemus, and that, although on the whole
it gives a fair representation of the master's
views, it is in some points at variance with
them, and on many points obscure. And
secondly, the intellectual excellences are
regarded not so much in and for themselves, as in relation to their influence

Eudemus on 1H

determining the moral canon.

Virtue

the intelleC"

tual virtues, having been previously defined to be a
mean between two extremes, which mean
is to be fixed by " right reason/' it follows
to explain what this " right reason" (6 bpObs
\6yos) is. The rational part of the soul is
shown to consist of two parts—the one,
which may be called the scientific reason
(TO CTTIO-TT/JU-OVIKOV), dealing with
necessary
principles and the existences depending
On t h e m (TCL TOICLVTCL rwv ovnov ocron/ al ap^ul fxr]

ivSexovrat aXXws %xuv)» a n c * the other, the
calculative reason (TO Xoyto-TiKov), to which
appertains contingent matter. W e have
seen before that there are three principles
in man—sensation (alo-Orjo-Ls), reason (voSs),
and desire (opcft?)—corresponding to the

THE EUDEMIAN

ETHICS.

three parts of his nature. Action results
from the synthesis of desire and the practical or calculative reason, when that
which is affirmed or desired by the latter
is pursued or avoided by the former.
Then again it is shown that truth, of
whatever kind, is attained only by five
organs of the mind (oh aXrjOtvet f) i/™^).
These are art (rexyyjj science (eTrio-TT^u,??),
wisdom (<t>p6vr)<ns)y philosophy (o-o^ta), reason (vovs): the first is the acquisition of
truth, with a view to production; the second
covers the results of syllogistic reasoning;
the third is right knowledge, with a view
to action ; the fifth is the organ or mode
whereby we arrive at principles; and the
fourth is higher than all the others, and
comprehends both wisdom and reason, the
knowledge of particulars and the grasp
of principles. The three great divisions
of human science—OeoXoyiKrj, fiaOrj^ariKy, and
(pvo-LKYj—are but branches of this all-embracing o-o^ta. In this classification it is
evident that the various sections are not
co-ordinate; and it seems very possible
that Eudemus comprehended but imper-

160

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

fectly, or else has unwisely attempted to
improve upon, the psychology of his
teacher.* Be this as it may, he has left
us without the means of learning by what
methods either Aristotle or he would have
promoted the developement of these several
intellectual excellences, and which of them
he would have especially cultivated in a
indication of system of national education. W e can
Aristotle's

views.

only say that he would have laid the
greatest stress on the formation of virtuous habits, as a means of attaining practical Wisdom, ov yap 0 0 re etvat dyaOov Kvpiws
1V
avev

<j>povrj<T€Uis ovSe c/ypovipov avev TYJS r)6u<f}<s aperrjs.

But this simply brings us back to out
former position, that Aristotle attached the
greatest importance to an authoritative
public discipline of the manners and the
intellect, and makes us regret the more
deeply that we can form such imperfect
conceptions of the detailed form which he
would have given to it. That he would
have expanded the common curriculum,
* The division given in the Posterior Analytics is much
more clear and satisfactory: there we have three pairs
mutually contrasted : didvoia vovg, k-jnarrniri TEXVT1> (ppovqoig

aoipia. Cp. Sir A. Grant on Eth. vi. 4, 1.

INDICA TION OF HIS VIEWS.

161

at least for the most advanced students,
by the addition of a far more scientifie
rhetoric, and an all but wholly new logic,
by a wide acquaintance with natural science, and a universal application of the
historical method of research, may be
argued fairly from the contents of his
published works ; but what in his opinion
should be the order of their study, and
what the extent to which they should be
pursued by various classes of the community, must always remain uncertain.
It is only clear, from the well-known expression that young men ought not to
study philosophy, that Aristotle would
have had a careful and protracted intellectual discipline precede any attempt to
•grapple with the problems of ethics. To
art he would certainly have assigned a
larger place in education than Plato did;
for while the latter, in his Laws, banishes
poets from his ideal State, with but few
exceptions; and directs that the youths,
instead of committing to memory the epics
of Homer or the lays of Simonides, the
lofty lines of yEschylus or the melodious
M

162

ARISTOTLE

ON EDUCA TION.

choruses of Sophocles, should learn by
heart the laws and ordinances of the
Laws, vii. 8n legislator,* Aristotle accepts with approval
E;cp.

817 C.

.

H

not only the tragic, but even the comic
drama. Provided that wit does not degenerate into scurrility, and that the dramatist chooses for his attack faults that
are really ridiculous, and not serious moral
offences—TO

yap

yeXolov

lariv

afjidpTTjfid

TL KOLL

cfrOapTiKov—he is willing
to recognise its value. His conception of
the importance of tragedy in moral education comes out in the much-discussed
expression, " effecting a purification of
passions such as these by means of pity
at(T)(Os dvwSvvov

and
Zeller, ii. 2,

fear/'

T&V TOLOVTCDV

KCU OV

oY

iXiov

KOL cj)6fiov

TraOrjfJidTiDV KaOapcrw.

Trepacvovcra
W h a t

TTjv
the

precise meaning of the phrase is, it is far
from easy to determine: perhaps the most
satisfactory view is that of Zeller, who
regards the "purification" as consisting,
not in the improvement of the will, or
the strengthening of virtuous tendencies,
but in the removal of the evils caused
* On Plato's views of art, and the dangers to which it is
exposed, see Zeller, ii, 1, 613.

GENERAL

ASPECTS.

163

by too violent emotions, and in the calming of the passions. This tragedy effects Cp. Zeller, ii.
by referring the individual instances of
suffering and calamity to the common law
of destiny, and by pointing out under all
the eternal law of righteousness.
But it is impossible to weave into any
consistent and harmonious scheme fragmentary facts like t h e s e ; and we are
obliged to leave imperfect the attempted
sketch of the thoughts of " t h e master of
those who k n o w / ' on what he would himself have regarded as the fundamental
question of national education.
A few words may be added in conclusion General
aspects of

on some general aspects of the question Greek educaunder our consideration. They have, it
is hoped, not been wholly lost sight of
in the study of the details; but it may
be that they will be brought into a clearer
light, when gathered up together by way
of a retrospect. There is one point of
view from which the national education
of Greece appears to us singularly attractive. Like the works of the artists and
poets who were trained by it, it possesses

164

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

a unity and completeness within its limits
that are all but perfect.* Just as
" The singer of sweet Colonos, and its child,"

who always rises to our thoughts as the
crown and flower of the Hellenic genius,
" Saw life steadily, and saw it whole; "

so the Greek education laid its hands on
the entire citizen, and, within the range
that it recognised, moulded all his powers
into a finished unity.
Beauty of form,
and grace of movement, subtleness of
intellect, and nobleness of life were all
attained, at least to such an extent as to
leave no jarring sense of flagrant discord
between the ideal aimed at and the work
achieved. This it is that lends so much
of the charm of those " self-sufficing "
days, in the eyes of those who are wearied
and distracted with the manifold claims
of the varied developements of modern
thought. There is a certain sense of adequacy, of attainment, of perfection, which
wins ineffably on those who are harassed
with the " b l a n k misgivings/' the un* Cp. the remarks on the aa7riroQ aiOrjp of Greek literature in the " Guesses at Truth," pp. 39 and 64 (last ed.)

MODERN

THOUGHT.

165

satisfied yearnings, the baffled aspirations,
the unsolved problems, that vex alike the
life and the literature of our times. A n d
yet we are bound, while we feel very
keenly the charm, to recognise the cost
at which it was won, a cost that we
could not and would not pay. The deep Contrast of
modern

dull hue of much of our modern thought thought.
is due not solely to the turbid source from
which it springs: it comes at least as much
from the profundity of the abysses over
which it is brooding. If the course of
the modern student is often perplexing,
it is not because he is called to traverse
a desert way, but rather that on every
side there branch out by-paths, tempting*
him away from the road he has chosen
by the beauty of the prospects t h a t they
offer, or the richness of the fruits that
lie on every hand. If the Greeks were
not tried by a " Conflict of Studies," such
as that in which we find ourselves, it
was from the limitation, we may almost
dare to add, the poverty, of their intellectual food. It may indeed be that we
are now constrained to a specialization

166

ARISTOTLE

ON

EDUCATION.

which leads to a more one-sided and incomplete developement of the whole being
of a man than the music and gymnastics
of a young Athenian. But if it be found
to be so irremediably, we can but take
refuge in the faith that none have taught
more unwaveringly than the philosophers
of Athens, that the well-being of the
State brings with it the well-being of all
and every one. If " t h e individual withers/'
yet " the world is more and more."
Wider extent But again, if we ought to be willing
of

modern

education. to sacrifice something of the perfect and
harmonious unity of the Greek education
for the sake of a deeper culture, much
more should we be content to do this
when it is a question of its greater width
and extension. As we have already seen,
the very phrase of national education in
Greece is all but a misnomer.
Thanks
to the lessons we have learnt from the
Gospel of Christ, we cannot look with
complacence upon any "national education," however well-rounded and selfsufficing, whose benefits are not shared
by the artisan, the peasant and the factory-

MODERN EDUCA TION.

167

hand. The task which the legislators of
to-day have set before them is one far
harder than any with which Plato or
Aristotle dared to grapple. It is to see
that every child of Britain's thirty millions
has placed within his reach that training
which shall fit him most completely to
serve his fellow-men in the station in
which it has pleased his God to place him.
It may be that still we are far from the
goal. Educational theorists are debating;
class-interests bar the w a y ; and, worst of
all, sectarian jealousies wrangle, till it
seems at times that the day for which
every Christian is longing would never
come to us. But come it must at last :
and then we shall see in the national
schools of England a physical training
not inferior to that of Athens or Lacedaemon ; heart and soul shall learn to
love yet nobler truths than those which
dawned before the eyes of P l a t o ; and the
wisdom of Aristotle shall be as childish
fancies to—
" The fairy-tales of science, and the long results of time."
TRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD, LONDON.