YOUNG GREEK BOYS AND OLD GREEK SCHOOLS. 813 



The extraordinary care that the Grecian boy received in his 

 formative years made his moral training more effective than that 

 inculcated by the most careful of modern parents. His general 

 education, coupled with skillful and continuous physical instruction, 

 produced a moral cultivation very similar and fully as strict as that 

 the Christian father deems necessary for his daughters. A peda- 

 gogue, generally an old and trusted slave, led the boys to school and 

 called for them after it closed, carried the books, looked out for the 

 little boys, kept the older ones from fighting and falling into bad 

 company, and had a general oversight of their conduct and street 

 form. He was by no means a schoolmaster or even a private tutor, 

 not even being allowed to enter the schoolroom. Oftentimes igno- 

 rant in the extreme, he was chosen simply because of his loyalty to 

 the family, and sometimes, I fear, because he was unfit for any other 

 occupation. Though the butt of the boys' ridicule, and bitterly 

 assailed by the comic poets and low wits of the day, he did an incal- 

 culable service in preventing vicious companionships and keeping 

 pure the minds of those intrusted to his charge. 



The child was never sent off to boarding school, but boys attended 

 the day school; town life prevailed; besides, that sentiment that 

 zealously guarded the boy's purity with a pedagogue from his sixth to 

 his sixteenth year could brook no intermission of personal oversight. 

 Education was essentially private, the state having jurisdiction simply 

 over the moral and not the professional standing of the teacher. 

 Though the Greek as well as the Roman school opened very early in 

 the morning, there appears to have been an afternoon session. By a 

 law of Solon, the schools were not allowed to open before sunrise 

 or to hold their sessions after sunset. A state fine refused admission 

 to all except teacher and pupils; the false display of the unpractical 

 public examination day was thus avoided. Outside of music and 

 athletics there were no competitive examinations. The classical 

 schoolman refused promotion for lifeless knowledge, and with keen 

 insight into the real essentials of education demanded a living grasp 

 of the subject. Every respectable town had its school. The large 

 cities furnished their schools with all the necessities and many of 

 the ornaments. The poorer towns often held their recitations in 

 the open air, and when the hot weather came on took advantage of 

 the colonnades and shade of public buildings. A similar custom 

 at the celebrated Winchester school in England gave rise to the 

 " cloister term." 



There was always an altar to the Muses, the goddesses of learn- 

 ing, or busts of Mercury and various heroes, philosophers, and 

 patriots as reminders to the boys. The master sat on a high seat; 

 the boys sometimes on steplike benches, but usually on the ground 



