OF FORMER TIMES. 



321 



renowned for its love of letters and science ; and amidst 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 con- 

 ducted, general learning and a knowledge of the arts acquired and dissemi- 

 nated, philosophy taught, and society cultivated and polished. This era 

 may be regarded as contemporary with the reign of Artaxerxes the First 

 of Persia, and Alexander the Second of Macedon, the rebuilding of the 

 temple at Jerusalem under Nehemiah, and the establishment of the de- 

 cemvirs at Rome : and, if we extend 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 celebrated characters, include the 

 existence of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, among the poets ; 

 Thucydides, Xenophon, and Marsyas, among the historians ; Lycias, 

 Isaeus, Isocrates, and iEschines, among the orators and rhetoricians ; Sis;= 

 crates, Timasus Ocellus, Aristippus, Diogenes, Plato, Aristotle, and Epi- 

 curus, among the philosophers ; Eudoxus, among the astronomers ; and 

 Apelles, among the painters. 



The elementary branches of education were acquired among the Athe- 

 nians, as among ourselves, sometimes by private instruction, but more ge- 

 nerally by public schools ; many of which, at the period I am now advert- 

 ing to, had attained 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, agree- 

 ably 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 afterwards continued with the greatest punctuality, under par- 

 ticular regulations, and constituted 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 consisting in learning to ride, to shoot with the 

 bow, and to fight on horseback ; the latter embraced and inculcated the 



I valuable habits of honesty and speaking the truth, patience, sobriety, reve- 

 rence to parents, and the practice of every other virtue. With them lite- 

 t^ature was subservient to morals. 



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



! Comprised the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, 

 music, geometry, and astronomy. Of these the two first, or grammar g^rjil 

 rhetoric, were commenced earhest, and occupied by far the greatest atten- 

 tion of the scholar : for poetry and declamation were now the most fashion- 

 able 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 subordinate consideration. Nor was the time of the stu- 

 dent allowed to be infringed upon by the acquisition of any other language ; 

 the vanity of the Greeks inducing them to regard almost all other nations 

 as barbarians ; and only a few of their philosophers thinking it worth while 

 to make any sort of inquiry into the literature of remote countries. 

 Next to a critical initiation into their native language under the inosf. 



41 



