Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/379

Rh difficulties. The sentiment was, therefore, strong and permanent. The result seems to have been that the number of those who grow up without at any rate the rudiments of letters and arithmetic was everywhere very small.

The professed object of this education, however, was not technical, but moral. It was to make good men and useful citizens. Technical instruction, the teaching of a trade or an art, was regarded also as incumbent upon all parents, except, perhaps, the wealthiest. But this was not education. The object of education was something higher and more universal—to familiarise the soul with what was great and noble, and to train the body to be the effective servant and agent of the soul. This education was simple and uniform as compared with that of our day. It did not include the study of any foreign language, nor, at any rate directly, such studies as geography, history, or theology, though these were in a manner involved in it. The first principles of morality and religion were the business of the mother, nurse, or paidagogos—the slave who, in most houses, was especially attached to the service of the children, taking them to school and guarding them from evil company.

The two subjects of primary education were music and gymnastics. But by "music" the Greeks understood all intellectual subjects. Education began with reading and writing, and for the poorer children, whose stay at the school was necessarily short, it went, perhaps, little beyond that. But for the average child, and above all for the rich, it