Read Ebook: Schools of Hellas An Essay on the Practice and Theory of Ancient Greek Education from 600 to 300 B. C. by Freeman Kenneth J Kenneth John Verrall A W Arthur Woollgar Author Of Introduction Etc Rendall M J Montague John Editor

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The grown men were also encouraged to fight by the following device. The Ephors selected three of them, who were called Hippagretai. Each of these three selected one hundred companions, giving a public explanation in each case why he chose one man and rejected the others. So those who had been rejected became foes to those who were selected, and kept a close watch over them for the slightest breach of the accepted code of honour. Each party was always trying to increase its strength or perform some signal service to the State, in order to strengthen its own claims. The rivals also fought with their fists whenever they met.

This systematised pugnaciousness at Sparta presents an interesting parallel to the German University duels and to the fights which used to be almost daily occurrences in the life of an English schoolboy. Most of the older English public schools can still show the special ground which was the recognised scene of these battles.

Floggings were exceedingly common at Sparta. Any elder man might flog any boy. It was not etiquette for boys to complain to their parents in these cases; if they did so, they received a second thrashing. But the triumph of this system was the flogging of the "epheboi" yearly at the altar of Artemis Orthia, in substitute for human sacrifice. Entrance for the competition was quite voluntary, but competitors seem always to have been forthcoming even down to Plutarch's days. They began by practice of some sort in the country. The altar was covered with blood; if the floggers were too lenient to some "ephebos" owing to his beauty or reputation, the statue, according to the legend, performed a miracle in order to show its displeasure. The competitors were often killed on the spot; but they never uttered a groan. The winner was called the "altar-victor" and an inscription still records such a victory.

The Spartans were intensely fond of dancing, but it must be remembered that they often called dancing what moderns would call drill. For war was almost a form of dance; they marched or charged into battle to the notes of the flute, crowned and wearing red cloaks. The march tunes were in frequent use in Sparta, no doubt at military exercises. Every day the epheboi were drawn up in ranks, one behind the other, and went through military evolutions and dancing figures alternately, while a flutist played to them and beat time with his foot. This is simply musical drill. The great national festival of the Gumnopaidia was very similar. Three great battalions, consisting respectively of old men, young men, and boys, drawn up in rank and file, exhibited various movements, chiefly of a gymnastic sort, singing the songs of Thaletas and Alkman and Dionusodotos the while and indulging in impromptu jesting at one another's expense, after the fashion of a rustic revel-chorus in Attica. Sometimes the battalions appeared one by one, and were "led out" like an army, by the Ephors. On other occasions all three were drawn up in crescent formation side by side, with the boys in the middle. The festival must have closely resembled the public parades of the gymnastic clubs in Switzerland. There were posts of honour and dishonour, as in battle, cowards usually receiving the latter. But Agesilaos, the king, once received an inferior station after his victory at Corinth, and turned the insult by a jest, "Well thought of, chorus-leader: that's the way to give honour to the post." Then there was the war-dance, imitating all the actions of battle, a sort of manual and bayonet exercise, but accompanied by much acting and by music. Every Spartan boy began to learn this as soon as he was five. It was done in quick time, if we may judge by the "Pyrrhic" or war-dance foot . There was also a wrestling-dance, and most gymnastics were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In fact, chorus-dancing was a regular part of the education of Spartans and Cretans: the only experience of singing which most of them possessed was acquired in this way. It is true that elegiacs were sung as solos before the king's tent on campaigns, and at meals, when the victor got a particularly good slice of meat; but probably this accomplishment was confined to a few. Aristotle asserts that the Laconians did not learn songs, but claimed nevertheless to be able to distinguish good from bad.

Such was the Spartan system of education. To an Englishman their schools have a greater interest than those of any other ancient State. Sparta produced the only true boarding-schools of antiquity. The "packs" of the Spartan boys, like the English public schools, formed miniature States, to whose corporate interests and honour each boy learned to make his own wishes subservient. Spartan boys, too, like our own, had the smaller traits of individuality rubbed off them by the publicity and perpetual intercourse with others involved in the boarding-school system, in order that the racial characteristics might the more emerge in them. They, too, learnt endurance by hardship, and were early trained both to rule and to obey by means of the institution of prefects and fagging. But here the resemblance stops short. The Spartans, like most other nations, were not prepared to pay the price at which alone an education in responsibility can be obtained, the price which lies in the possible ruin of all the boys who are not strong enough to be a law to themselves. They very rarely left the boys to themselves without grown men to look after them. They were always interfering and supervising, instead of leaving the prefects to exercise their authority. And so, when Spartans were sent abroad to govern cities or command armies, having had no practice in responsibility, they failed shamefully and ignominiously. But this is equally true of the Athenians and of other Hellenes. The Spartans deserve all credit for their experiments with the boarding-school system.

If courage was their sole object, as perhaps it was, they succeeded in obtaining it. The coward was a rare, and a most unhappy bird at Sparta. Mothers on several occasions killed sons who returned home from a campaign disgraced. "No one would mess with a coward, or consort with him. When rival teams were chosen for the game of ball, he was omitted. In dances he received the post of dishonour. He was avoided in the streets. No one would sit next to him. He could not find a husband for his daughters or a wife for himself," and was punished for these offences. "He was beaten if he imitated his betters in any way." If the Hellenes were a nation of children, as the old Egyptian called them, the Spartans were at least a manly sort of schoolboy. They deified the schoolboy virtues, pluck and endurance. If we wish to see how far their education, in its best days, enabled them to prove true to their ideals, let us consider those 300 at Thermopylae waiting, with jests on their lips, for the onset of Oriental myriads, and remember that finest of all epitaphs, of which English can give no rendering, written upon their memorial in the pass in honour of their obedience unto death--

Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

The Cretan system of education was very similar in many ways to the Spartan. In both localities the teaching was given by any elder member of the community who chose, not by a professional and paid class of masters. But in Crete education cost the parent even less than at Sparta; for the boys were fed largely at public cost. But so was every other Cretan, male and female alike. Each community possessed large public estates, cultivated by public serfs. The revenues thus accruing to the State were applied to the expenses of government, which were small, and to the food-supply of all citizens. Thus men, women, and children were all fed mainly at public cost. It may be noted, however, that there is no question of providing the children of improvident parents with meals at the expense of more provident citizens. Moreover, the heads of families, who each possessed an allotment, as at Sparta, had to contribute a tenth of the produce of their estates.

The women-folk took their meals at home, although the cost of their food was mainly defrayed by the public revenues. The men took their meals in dining-clubs . The whole population of each community was divided into clubs of this sort, apparently on the family basis, so that two or three families made up a club between them, to which their children and descendants would in turn belong. All the males of the family attended these meals; small children, boys, and young men as well as elders are all mentioned as being present at the same dinners. The club is only an enlarged family party. The small children sat on the ground behind their fathers; they waited on themselves and on their elders, but the general superintendence of cooking and attendance was in the hands of a woman with three or four public slaves and some underlings in her control. As they grew older, the sons sat beside their fathers. Boys ordinarily received half what their parents had; but orphans were allowed the full quantity at their dead father's club.

Thus the Cretan club was an amalgamation of several families into a sort of clan, whose male members all dined together. All the boys of the clan formed one boarding-school. They all slept in one room, perhaps attached to the dining-hall; there was always a dormitory attached to each of these buildings for visitors from other cities, so it would be natural to expect a dormitory for the children also. The boys took their meals in the club dining-hall, in the presence of their elders, by whose improving conversations upon politics and morals they were supposed to be educated. These elder members elected one of their number to serve as ?????????? or "Superintendent of the boys" of their club. Under his directions the boys learned letters "in moderation": they were constantly practised in gymnastics, in the use of arms, especially the bow, which was a great Cretan weapon, and in the war-dances, the Kuretic and Pyrrhic, both indigenous in Crete. They learned the laws of their country set to a sort of tune, in order that their souls might be drawn by the music, and also, that they might more easily remember them. In this way, if they did anything which was forbidden, they had not the excuse of ignorance. Besides this, they were taught hymns to the gods, and praises of good men. The favourite metre for these purposes was the Cretic , which was regarded as "severe" and so suitable for teaching courage and restraint. The Paean was their chief national form of song. Cretan boys were also practised in that terse and somewhat humorous style of speaking which we have already seen at Sparta.

Cretan boys were always fighting either single combats or combined battles against the boys of another club-school. They were taught endurance by many hardships. They wore only a short coat in summer and winter alike. They learnt to despise heat and cold and mountain paths and the blows which they received in gymnasia and in fighting.

They remained in the club-schools till their seventeenth year, when they became epheboi and celebrated their escape from the garb of childhood by a special festival. Like their contemporaries at Athens, the epheboi took a special oath of allegiance to the State and hatred towards its enemies. A fragment still survives of the oath taken by the epheboi of Dreros, near Knossos. At seventeen the epheboi were collected into "packs" by private enterprise. A rich and distinguished young ephebos would gather round him as large a pack of his contemporaries as he could; their numbers no doubt depended partly on his wealth, and still more on his personal popularity. The aristocratic element in this arrangement is very noticeable, as in all the institutions of Crete as contrasted with Sparta. The father of this young chief usually acted as leader of the pack ; he possessed full authority over them and could punish them as he pleased. He led them out on hunting expeditions and to the "Runs" , that is, the gymnasia of the epheboi. Cretans who had not yet entered a pack of epheboi were excluded from these runs ; when they entered, they were called "members of packs" . The pack-leader could collect his followers where he pleased; very possibly the epheboi did not attend the club dinners ordinarily, but fed or slept either at their patron's house or in some special room. They thus corresponded closely to the Spartan boys of a younger age under their Eiren. Their food was supplied, like that of all Cretans, largely out of the public revenues. On certain fixed days "pack" joined battle with "pack" to the sound of the lyre and flutes and in regular time, as was the custom in war; fists, clubs, and even weapons of iron might be used. It was a regular institution, half dance, half field-day, with fixed rules and imposed by law. These battles must have closely resembled the contests of the Spartan epheboi in the shady playing-fields. The life of the boys was surrounded with a military atmosphere throughout. They wore military dress and counted their weapons their most valuable possessions. Young Cretans remained in the packs till after marriage. Then they returned to their homes and the clubs.

Of the practical results of Cretan education nothing can be said. From the day when Idomeneus sets sail from Troy, Crete almost disappears from Hellenic history. Too strong to be attacked by their neighbours, too much weakened by intestine feuds to assume the aggressive, the Cretans remained aloof from their compatriots on the mainland and in the archipelago till the close of the period of Hellenic independence.

SPARTAN SYSSITIA

These dining-clubs were organised like "diminutive states." It was enacted who was to recline in the most important place, who in the second, and so on, and who was to sit on the footstool, which was the place of dishonour, usually assigned only to children. "Each man is given a portion to himself, which he does not share with any one. They have as much barley bread as they like, and there is an earthenware cup of wine standing by each man, for him to put his lips to when he feels disposed. The chief dish is always the same for all, boiled pork. There is plenty of Spartan broth, and some olives, cheese, and figs.

"Each contributes to his mess about 18 gallons of barley meal, 60 or 70 pints of wine, and a small quantity of figs and cheese, and 10 Aeginetan obols for extras." This contribution no doubt covered expenses, for the quantity sent by an absentee king, probably representing the average consumption of an individual, falls well within this estimate . After the regular meal an ???????? or extra meal might be served. It would be provided by a member of the mess, consisting either of the results of hunting or the produce of his farm, for nothing might be bought. The ordinary components of such a meal were pigeons, geese, fieldfares, blackbirds, hares, lambs, and kids, and wheaten bread, a welcome change from the usual barley loaves. The cooks proclaimed the name of the giver, so that he might get the credit. ??????? were often exacted as fines for offences from rich members; the poor had to pay laurel leaves or reeds. There was also a special sort of ???????? designed for the children, barley meal soaked in olive oil--a sort of porridge, in fact. According to Nicocles the Laconian, this was swallowed in laurel leaves--which does not sound very inviting.

There were also banquets independent of the messes. These were called ??????? . Tents were set up in the sacred enclosure round the temple of the deity in whose honour the feast was given. Heaps of brushwood covered with carpets served for couches. The food consisted of slices of meat, round buns, cheese, slices of sausage, and for dessert dried figs and various beans.

At the Tithenidia, or Nurses' Feast, a ????? was given at the temple of Artemis Koruthalia by the stream Tiassos. The nurses brought the boy-babies to it. The sacrifice was a sucking pig, and baked loaves were served. The ??????? were evidently a feature of Spartan life: Epilukos makes his "laddie" remark, "I will go to the ????? in Amuklai at Appellas' house, where will be buns and loaves and jolly good broth": which shows that the children's parties at Sparta were regarded as attractive.

The Karneia, the great Spartan festival, was an imitation of camp-life. The sacrificial meal was served in tents, each containing nine men, and everything was done to the word of command.

CRETAN SYSSITIA

The chief authorities for the attendance at these meals are the two historians, Dosiades and Purgion, quoted in Athenaeus . Dosiades states that an equal portion is set before each man present, but to the younger members is given a half portion of meat, and they do not touch any of the other things. Purgion says: "To the sons, who sit on lower seats by their fathers' chairs, they give a half portion of what is supplied to the men; orphans receive a full share." The comparison of the two passages shows that the "younger members" mentioned by Dosiades are what Purgion calls the orphans, and that they are not yet full-grown men. Thus they must be either the boys or the epheboi. It is not, however, at all likely that the epheboi, who were of military age and engaged in violent exercises, would be given only half rations, so these younger members are the boys not yet included in the ?????? . Dosiades continues: "On each table is set a drinking vessel, of weak wine. This all who sit at the common table share equally. The children have a bowl to themselves," that is, the boys who sat beside their fathers but not at the table. "After supper first they discuss the political situation, and then recall feats in battle, and praise those who have distinguished themselves, encouraging the youngers to heroism." The quotation shows that not merely the small children are in question, but boys of an age to understand politics and war.

Herodotos, 4. 77.

Say, 1 1/2 bushels of meal, 5 gallons of wine, 5 lbs. of cheese, and 2 1/2 lbs. of figs.

Phularchos .

Phularchos .

"Agelai" of young men are mentioned by inscriptions at Miletos and Smurna ; there may have been boarding-schools somewhat resembling those of Sparta at these towns for young men.

In which case the Eiren corresponds closely to the Cretan Agelates.

????????, ?????? .

Thuc. iv. 80.

Polukrates .

Athen. xii. 550 d. Their dress and bedding was inspected at the same time.

Pausan. iii. 11. 2. ?????? , B?ckh, 1241, 1242; ?????? , 1254.

Herod. ix. 72.

Paus. iii. 14. 2.

Hesychius, ??????? .

Paus. iii. 16. 11.

B?ckh, 1364.

Whence they were called ???????????? . This chiton may be seen in the conventional statues of Artemis.

Athen. 630 a.

Athen. 678 b.

Additional revenues for the same objects were derived from the taxes paid by Perioikoi and serfs .

Historians quoted by Athen. 143 e.

Strabo, x. 4. 483 , and Herakleides Pont. iii. .

Strabo, x. 4. 480.

Sosikrates , speaking of Phaistos.

Hesychius, ???????? .

??????? , Antoninus Liberalis, 18.

Mahaffy, p. 81; Grasberger, iii. 61.

Herakl. Pont. iii. 3.

Demetrius of Scepsis .

ATHENS AND THE REST OF HELLAS: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

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