Schools held a prominent role in ancient Greece for transmitting both military and cultural standards.
Date: c. 500-31 b. c.e.
Category: Education
The Spartan Ideal Sparta was a totalitarian garrison state in which the citizens were constantly endangered by rebellions among the more numerous population of slaves (helots). Supported by the labor of slaves they despised and feared, citizens were expected to serve the military needs of the community and were trained accordingly. Newborn male children were judged by a council; ill-formed and weak ones were abandoned to die of exposure. Those accepted spent from ages seven to eighteen organized in packs learning to live off the land by foraging and stealing, learning endurance by physical hardship, and learning to kill by ambushing stray helots. At age eighteen, they became ephebes, took an oath of allegiance to the state, and were recruited into private armed bands that competed with one another constantly in gymnastics, hunting, and pitched battles using real weapons. At age twenty, those who had proven themselves worthy were allowed to join Sparta’s army and spend ten years on active service. At age thirty, they left active service as full citizens who were part of a military reserve for life.
The Athenian Ideal The Athenians led the other Greek states in elaborating a notion of citizenship that found its models in the mythic figures of Achilles and Odysseus. Achilles epitomized the strong, skilled, and singleminded warrior, and Odysseus added to the strength of the warrior a clever and supple strategic mind and a taste for experience and new knowledge. Thus, Athenian education would produce military prowess but add to it development of a broad culture rooted in the study of literature and philosophy.
Aristotle and his student Alexander. (R. S. Peale and J. A. H
Until about 500 b. c.e., Athens was a kingdom whose aristocrats were educated almost exclusively in physical skills and heroic ideals. As Athens developed into a democracy and nonaristocrats began asserting themselves in public life, a school system emerged for those who could not afford to employ private teachers. After home training until age seven, during which the child had a master or pedagogue to guide his basic moral development, the child went to primary school to learn the basics of reading, writing, counting, and drawing. During primary schooling or just after it, the Athenian boys undertook physical education under the direction of a private teacher known as a paidotribe. The boy then went to a music school until age fifteen to learn not only singing and playing the lyre but also poetry and mythology. The capstone of the Athenian education was study at the gymnasium, an institution for advanced physical training. The five gymnasiums in Athens each included a stadium, practice fields, baths, wrestling pits, meeting rooms, and gardens.
By the fifth century b. c.e., ephebic training had become the culmination of Athenian education. At age eighteen, boys could petition to become ephebes. If accepted, they received military training, and those successful could take an oath of allegiance and complete two years of military service as a gateway to citizenship. In time, ephebic training was extended to embrace advanced intellectual training. As society continued to democratize, the practical study of oratory became more and more important. Citizens were expected to carry out the public business in assemblies, and the ability to express oneself with clarity and power came to be highly prized. Teachers able to produce effective orators did very well for themselves.
The Hellenistic World When Alexander the Great followed the conquest of Greece by leading Macedonian and Greek armies in the conquest of Egypt and the Persian Empire, Greek educational ideas and forms were exported to the new kingdoms that emerged. The cities of the new kingdoms were not free and autonomous as the Greek city-states had been and lacked the driving civic spirit that fostered organization and community in those cities. Education was vital to promote the interests of the conquerors by inculcating the ideals of the heroic past of the Greeks. Yet the core ideas of freedom, responsibility, and civic virtue that were central in Athenian education rang hollow in the Hellenistic cities. The practice of oratory was now directed to display and exhibition rather than to decision making.
Cultural transmission of a vanished past became the task of the schools. Elementary schools were mandated for all free children in the Hellenistic world. They concentrated on reading, writing, and counting, gradually moving away from drawing and music. Unfortunately, children were treated very harshly and learned almost nothing. Students who persevered could go on to secondary school when they were about twelve. There they studied the literary techniques of the classic authors (especially Homer), grammar, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. In addition, most cities had higher education in the form of advanced schools of rhetoric and philosophy. In some places there were ephebic schools, no longer concerned with military arts but with broad literary culture. A few medical schools existed, and advanced scientific training was obtainable at museums. The beginnings of the specialization of education institutions into elementary, secondary, and higher education took place in the Hellenistic world.
Further Reading
Kennell, Nigel M. The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Marrou, H. I. Education in Antiquity. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956. Morgan, Theresa. Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Neils, Jenifer, John Howard Oakley, Katherine Hart, et al. Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003.
Too, Yun Lee. The Pedagogical Contract: The Economics of Teaching and Learning in the Ancient World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.
_______, ed. Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Boston: Brill,
2001.
Watts, Edward. City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Joseph M. McCarthy
See also: Athens; Daily Life and Customs; Historiography; Homer; Literature; Medicine and Health; Oratory; Science.
World History
