Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/25

Rh of roving beggars, sung at spring and autumn gatherings. It was songs of this character that gave rise to the idea of responsive recitation, which when accompanied by intricate dance movements led to the highly artistic framework of subsequent choral poetry with its elaborate correspondences and symmetries. Especially interesting are the songs that were sung at convivial gatherings; traces of such songs are found in all branches of the Hellenic stock, as the elegiac verses of the Ionians, and the scolia which were popular with the Athenians in the classical age. Examples of the latter are given in the following pages.

The use of poetry in Greek education, indeed its almost exclusive use here, is another evidence of the intimate relation and interrelation of poetry and life. Plato tells us that "Homer is the teacher of Greece." At school, so soon as the boy could read he was introduced to the poets, and the purpose of this study was a moral one, having regard to the precepts of the poets, and to the praises of the great men of old, "in order," says Plato, "that the boy may emulate their examples and strive to become such as they." Precisely the reasons that we of to-day urge for the study of the Bible were by the Greeks urged for the study of Homer, and many more. A striking passage in Plato's Laws sets forth the practice of the Greeks of his day in reference to the use of poetry in education: "We have a great many poets writing in hexameter [Homer, Hesiod, Theognis], trimeter [the dramatists and others], and all sorts of measures—some who are serious, others who aim only at raising a laugh; and all mankind declare that the youths who are rightly educated should be brought up in them and saturated with them; some insist that they should be constantly