Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/380

350 included learning by heart and reciting passages from the poets, selected for the lessons in virtue or knowledge which they conveyed. The next step was music, in the modern acceptation of the term. All boys were taught to play the lyre or flute, and to sing to it, as far as they were capable of learning. The greatest importance was attached to this branch of education. Music was believed to soften and humanise the soul, as well as to inspire it with noble and lofty emotions, and in the representations of the interior of schools which survive on pottery, no scene is more frequent than that of boys practising on a lyre or flute with a master facing them and giving them instructions. This view of education is put by Plato into the mouth of a great teacher—Protagoras:—

"When children have learnt to read and understand the written, as well as they do the spoken word, schoolmasters set before them for reading aloud poems of good writers, and compel them to learn them by heart. These poems contain much moral instruction, many narratives, panegyrics, and encomiums upon brave men of old, that the child may be roused to emulation of their virtues and yearn to become like them. . . . Besides, when they have learnt to play on the lyre, their masters teach them the songs of another class of poets—the lyrical, setting their songs to the music. Thus compelling the principles of rhythm and harmony to sink into their souls, that the children may be more cultivated, and becoming imbued with the principles of true rhythm and harmony, may be effective in speech and action alike. For a man's life needs always to