GRECIAN EDUCATION'. 97 



fleliberative assembly. In the Odyssey this matter is represented as 

 follows : — 



With partial hands the Gods their gifts dispense ; 

 Some greatly think, some sjjeak with manly sense ; 

 Here heaven an elegance of form denies, 

 But wisdom the defect of form supplies ; 

 This man with energy of thought controls. 

 And steals with mode, and violence our souls ; 

 He speaks reservedly, but speaks with force ; 

 Nor can one word be chang'd but for a worse ; 

 In public more than mortal he appears. 

 And, as he moves, the gazing ciowd reveres. 

 While others, beauteous as the ethereal kind. 

 The noble portion want, a knowing mind. 



The liability of young men to go astray, is thus set forth : 



The pendant chief with calm attention heard, 

 Then mildly thus : Excuse, if youth have err'd : 

 Superior as thou art, forgive th' offence. 

 Nor I thy equal, or in years, or sense. 

 Thou know'st the errors of unripen'd age. 

 Weak are its counsels, headlong is its rage. 



That females were not uneducated may be inferred from the charac- 

 ters of Penelope, Arete and Nausika. 



Supposing that the poet has transferred Grecian usage to foreign 

 countries, and believing that he has represented things substantially as 

 they were, notwithstanding the poetic drapery thrown around them, we 

 must be convinced that education was not neglected, that children were 

 trained with care, were caressed and fondled with tender affection, and 

 fitted for that mode of life, which their institutions and relations render- 

 ed necessary. 



Schools for boys were established after the Trojan war. The change 

 in the manners of the people after the heroic age and the Argonautic ex- 

 pedition, leads to this view. Medical schools there were — one in the 

 island of Cos, the birth place of Hippocrates, tlie father of Medi- 

 cine, and one at Crotona in Italy — both of Egyptian origin. Knidus 

 and Rhodus were likewise .seats of such institutions, which were prob- 

 ably, in addition, designed for instruction in other branches of know- 

 ledge. Other references to education in the Homeric poems might be 

 made, but we abstain. Before leaving him, it may not, however, be out 

 of place to state that amongst the stories about Homer, many of which 

 are sufficiently apochryphal, is this — that he himself exercised the peda- 

 go!^'ical office at Smyrna (perhaps his birth place, though other cities 

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