With the removal of the swaddling-clothes which were denied the new born Spartan babe after its first bath there was for ever banished all that warmth of soul which makes existence endurable to its possessor and a blessing to his fellows. Experiments have been frequently attempted in the case of entire nations, but they have always failed. Athens glowed with a life which it continued to enjoy and diffuse long after it had ceased to be a state, while Sparta was never able to do more than impose formulas. In the other parts of Greece the infant was subjected to milder customs. Upon the judgment and means of its parents especially depended the education of the child, which up to the seventh year of its life devolved exclusively upon the mother: whatever the latter did not take upon herself she left to the benignant divinities, to whom the child was dedicated with a few simple ceremonies, while at the same time she hoped to avert evil influences by means of amulets. Cradles were unknown. The babe was placed in a receptacle which allowed it an easy, half-reeumbent posture, or it was carried about in a sort of basket, though of course it was generally in the arms of its mother or nurse. At some time between the fifth and the tenth year the girls were consecrated to Artemis, and on that occasion they assumed a saffron-colored dress. Thenceforward their education was conducted in the house. It was of a domestic, but not cloistral, character.
Education.—Ancient education was somewhat like that of the more civilized nations of the present day—strict and at the same time invigor ating. Ancient representations show us how disobedient children were punished with the rod or the sole. Gaines and toys were numerous; these are referred to by contemporary writers as well as portrayed in artistic delineations. Even Sparta permitted such games, and it is said that the rattle was invented there. Girls had dolls even with movable limbs, and boys had horses, dogs, geese, etc. made of clay: many such have been found in the ancient tombs of children. They had already nursery rhymes, songs imitative of those of birds and insects, balls, tops, hoops, etc. Our illustration (p. 24, fig-. I), copied from an Athenian vase, shows a boy drawing a little wagon and offering a cake to a dog.
The favorite games were played with dice, which served the purpose of our marbles. The young people played social games like blindman's buff, play of words, riddles, etc., and they also associated at "love-trysts." Plate 26 5), copied from a vase in the museum of Munich, exhibits the game of morra, which is still very popular in Southern Europe. It is played by two persons, who sometimes, as in our illustration, hold a short staff; each rapidly holds up a number of fingers, which the other must at once guess. Figure 7, from a similar original in Berlin, shows a swing, a form of recreation especially adapted to the secluded life of the girls.
In the better families the boys on completing their sixth year were entrusted to a tutor (t./. 24, fig. 6), generally a worthy slave somewhat advanced in years, who instructed them also in the ordinary rules of etiquette. According to the Greek idea of education, body and mind must advance together; and although we have to seek in this combination the cause of that completeness of culture which stamps them for all time as models of human excellence, it must not be forgotten that the Greeks never departed from that happy mean which made their system of educa tion what it was. Their plan of physical training was entirely unlike the
exaggerated methods of the modern gymnasium, and their school-training aimed above all things to preserve in man his individuality—to make him an end in himself, instead of degrading him to the lower purpose of a means, as is the case so largely with us, who indeed, living upon a more unfruitful soil and under a less friendly sky, are compelled to struggle for existence by highly artificial methods which leave us nothing more than the abstract satisfaction of self-consciousness. The Greeks endeavored to acquire, besides the necessary strength, a fine carriage of body, and found in the natural exercises of running, jumping, wrestling, and throwing, systematically practised, the appropriate means to that end.
The young Greeks sought their pleasures in the gymnastic exercises of the in the baths or public porticos, and especially in banquets, the expenses of which were either divided among the participants or paid by the host. These banquets generally had all the solemnity of festivals: the guests were anointed and crowned with wreaths; their joyous humor was allowed freer play because its very nature was a pledge that it would not descend to vulgarity: and a moderate indulgence in intellectual sub jects gave additional zest to such meetings. The older citizens occupied themselves with public offices and cares of state.
Knowledge was imparted in private schools, for the state concerned itself only about the morals, and not about the acquirements, of the teacher. Grammar, a term that included reading, writing, arithmetic, music, and, later on, drawing, was the foundation of education. The first school-aids were a tablet covered with a thin layer of wax and a pencil of metal or ivory sharpened at one end for engraving and flattened at the other for erasing. Such writing-tablets were used largely for the ordinary purposes of life, together with paper made of the papyrus plant. The pupil sat on a low stool and rested the tablet on his knee when writ ing or reading, as shown in Figure 5, from a painted vase in the Berlin Museum. When he became sufficiently advanced lie was made acquainted with the great poems of his people, and Homer especially was imprinted on his mind, indeed became a part of his being. The youth completed his school-days between his sixteenth and eighteenth years. He was then invested with the chlamys, and his hair was cut short in honor of his guardian deity. At twenty he assumed the duties and received the rights of a citizen, and he was at liberty, until he established his own house, either to pursue his pleasures or to improve himself further by travelling. In the latter event, he availed himself of the hospitality of his father's friends (pl. 24, fig. 7) or of that of the new ones formed by himself.