YOUNG GREEK BOYS AND OLD GREEK SCHOOLS. 809 



you:n^g gkeek boys axd old greek schools. 



By FKEDEPvIC E. WHITAKER, M. A., 



INSTRUCTOR OF GREEK AT BROWN UNIVBRSIXr. 



FROM tlie little tot who cries for the moon to the Edisons and 

 the Huxleys, from the tattooed savage to the inventor of the 

 wonder-working telegraph, all mankind lives to learn and to transmit 

 its knowledge. New conditions permit improved and more ingenious 

 methods, it is true. The Egyptian conjurer with his character- 

 written bark in pure water solution has given place to the learned 

 physician with his thousands invested in brain and apparatus. Yet 

 some provision has always been made for the rearing of the young. 

 First, the mere satisfying of his wants; then a training in the arts 

 of war; then the arts of peace, husbandry and agriculture; and 

 at last the fine arts, oratory, painting, architecture, sculpture, and 

 music. 



Under the stimulus and guise of religion most of the humanities 

 reached a high stage of perfection in the East; thence the torch of 

 civilization and knowledge was borne to its empire in the West. 

 The Indian, Persian, Phoenician, and Egyptian legacies in the course 

 of time became the inheritance of Greece. How little Hellas im- 

 proved the dowries of her elders the world can attest — ^her Demos- 

 thenes, the world orator; her Zeuxis and Apelles, the possessors of 

 those lost arts of coloring; her Pheidias, the inimitable modeler; her 

 Socrates, the logician of history; and her Homer, holding by con- 

 quest the imperial right to the kingdom of literature. 



History is the story of the hits and misses of the world. The 

 simple and early developments of education are much the same 

 among all peoples. The problems that perplex us to-day were 

 troublesome to the earlier civilizations, and, though the principles by 

 which they solved them may seem to differ from ours, we are such 

 slaves to educational aristocracies that anything that will help free 

 us from the bonds of present jealousy and prejudice, though hoary 

 with age, should be eagerly welcomed. 



Egypt and Persia contributed most largely to Grecian learning. 

 Egypt's portion, enriched by all the royal patronage of the Ptolemies 

 and learned Pharaohs, came a polished gem ready for its rich setting. 

 To the Nile-land more than to any other did this classic people owe 

 the great debt. And yet hardly less was contributed from the Persian 

 store — ^that old Asiatic education so uniquely described by Herodo- 

 tus, " to shoot, to ride, and to tell the truth." 



It may be interesting to know from what sources we derive our 

 scanty knowledge of Greek schools and education. The inscriptions, 



