Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/839

Rh sound for themselves and all the other letters, and are said to do much more talking, take the female parts. Remnants, discovered only a decade ago, prove the use of pictorial illustrations to teach young children. The subject chosen is, as usual, taken from Homer. One fragment represents the priest Chryses praying the king Agamemnon to ransom his daughter. Under the king, priest, and wagon-load of ransom we read the words "Agamemnon," "Chryses," "the Ransom." Not only correct pronunciation, but well-balanced intonation and rhythm, were demanded by the Greek ear. Reading aloud and learning the poets were great aids to this end. The children, and those who were older, were taught to recite verses from that—to them—inspired Greek Bible, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The Greek required his son to memorize the great masters' poems, not only as an intellectual acquirement, but as an incentive to holy living; and so thorough was the training that Niceratus can say in Xenophon's Banquet, "Even now I could recite the whole Iliad and Odyssey." Both of these books, some eight hundred and fifty pages of close modern type, are claimed to have been handed down by sheer memory from father to son. Though such cultivation seems miraculous to us, whose memory powers have been weakened by writing and the printing press, a striking example of its probability is seen in the story circulated about the romantic marriage of the rich German merchant, the renowned Dr. Schliemann. The doctor once said, report has it, before a party of Athenians, that he would marry the first woman who could recite the Odyssey. One day a fair Greek girl appeared before him, unintroduced, asked if the promise was true, recited her Homer, secured her home, and a wife's share of one million dollars.

Writing in ancient Greece was not for a long time considered a very important essential to the average man; probably being deemed servile, as the business writing was almost entirely confined to foreigners and slaves. In time, however, it came to be considered an ornament for the rich and people of leisure, though even the great orators and scholars employed private secretaries on almost every possible occasion. We must not think of the Greek boy as using pencil and slate or even pen and paper. The first companion of the schoolboy in his writing was the wax tablet—a thin, oblong board covered with wax; sometimes a single piece like our slate, and sometimes double, like the book slate of to-day. When two tablets were joined in this way they were provided with raised edges, to prevent the waxed surfaces from sticking together. The stylus was used to write upon the wax; it was a sharp-pointed instrument of metal or ivory, in shape much like our pencil, but with rounded end; the point cut through the wax, and the blunt end was used to erase and rub the wax