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ON THE LITERARY EDUCATION 



cians; as Orpheus, and the priests of Cybele, and others of like power; the 

 first of whom is represented, not only as having harmonized the passions of 

 men, but broken the ferocity of the beasts of the forests, and even tranquillized 

 the tortures of the infernal regions. And of their early knowledge of colours 

 and the art of designing we have a sufficient proof in various passages of the 

 Cyclic poets that have reached us ; while in Homer we have occasional re- 

 ferences to their being applied, and by ladies, through the medium of tapes- 

 try, to the most important subjects of history. Thus Iris, in the third book 

 of the Iliad, finds Helen occupied in representing in tapestry the evils 

 which the Greeks and Trojans had suffered on her account in their battles; 

 and when Andromache first heard the melancholy tidings of the death of Hec- 

 tor, she was engaged in a similar occupation. These, indeed, were employ- 

 ments of Trojan ladies, but what was common to them must have been com- 

 mon also to their neighbours of Greece. 



Among the Greek states, however, that of Athens was by far the most re- 

 nowned for its love of letters and science ; and amid the different eras which 

 the Athenian history comprises, that of Pericles may be selected as affording 

 the fairest specimen of the manner in which education was conducted, general 

 learning and a knowledge of the arts acquired and disseminated, philosophy 

 taught, and society cultivated and polished. This era may be regarded as 

 contemporary with the reign of Artaxerxes the First of Persia, and Alexan- 

 der the Second of Macedon, the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem under 

 Nehemiah, and the establishment of the decemvirs at Rome : and if we ex- 

 tend its range through an entire century, as, for example, from the middle of 

 the fourth to the middle of the third century before the birth of our Saviour, it 

 will just reach from Herodotus to Demosthenes, and will, besides these cele- 

 brated characters, include the existence of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristo- 

 phanes, among the poets ; Thucydides, Xenophon, and Marsyas, among the 

 historians ; Lycias, Isaeus, Isocrates, and ^Eschines, among the orators and 

 rhetoricians ; Socrates, Tima^us Ocellus, Aristippus, Diogenes, Plato, Aristo- 

 tle, and Epicurus, among the philosophers ; Eudoxus, among the astrono- 

 mers ; and Apelles, among the painters. 



The elementary Ijranches of education were acquired among the Athenians, 

 as among ourselves, sometimes by private instruction, but more generally by 

 public schools ; many of which, at the period I am now adverting to, had at- 

 tained a very high degree of reputation, and were crowded with youths from 

 other Grecian states, and even from foreign countries. For the first five or 

 six years, however, not the smallest effort was made to improve the mind ; 

 the whole of this period of time being devoted, agreeably to the advice of 

 Plato, and even of many earlier sages, to sports and pastimes, for the purpose 

 of giving strength to the body ; exercises which were even afterward conti- 

 nued with the greatest punctuality, under particular regulations, and consti- 

 tuted a very important branch of Athenian education. In this respect they 

 seem to have imitated the example of the Persians, who never commenced 

 training their children till they were five or six years old, not even those of 

 royal birth. At the age of five or six, the rising generation of Persia were 

 placed under the care of their magi, or men of letters, and combined a course 

 of gymnastics with a course of moral science : the former consisted in learn- 

 ing to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to fight on horseback ; the latter em- 

 braced and inculcated the valuable habits of honesty and speaking the truth, 

 patience, sobriety, reverence to parents, and the practice of every other virtue. 

 With them literature was subservient to morals. 



The general circle of study among the Greeks is well known to have com- 

 prised the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, 

 geometry, and astronomy. Of these the first two, or grammar and rhetoric, 

 were commenced earliest, and occupied by far the greatest attention of the 

 scholar : for poetry and declamation were now the most fashionable pursuits, 

 and the Greek language was criticised with an accuracy amounting even to 

 fastidiousness, for new niceties and turns of expression, both in prose and 

 verse ; the sense itself being often sacrificed to the sound as a matter of sub- 



