Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/842

818 there was a special division where each pebble meant five of its respective order. Thus 5,839 on the abacus would be—

Numbers were often represented by the letters of the alphabet; the first ten characters stood for the numbers from one to ten; the eleventh character signified twenty; the twelfth, thirty, and so on; eleven was represented by the letters for ten and one. Thus—

1, 2, 5 in the Greek notation is a', β', ε'; but 125 is ρκέ, in which

Geometry, though advocated by the philosophers as good discipline for boys too young for philosophical and political studies, was not taught in the common schools, but became a favorite study of the university scholars. Over the door of Plato's lecture room was written, "Let none ignorant of geometry enter here." The absence of the great number of compulsory studies which the modern boy is forced to taste, but seldom till his university course is enabled to digest, is a marked and praiseworthy feature of ordinary Greek schooling.

The importance assigned to music and gymnastics forms the most noticeable contrast between old Hellenic training and ours. Music in its strict sense was practically synonymous with culture, and not only gave color but formed the basis of the educational theory. Real music does not cease with the song or the performance on the instrument, but wields its subtle though powerful influence in making our lives in harmony or at discord with pure thought and noble action. When we speak of the influence of music we think of it as a recreation, but a pastime, indeed, which affords harmless amusements, and brings boys within the refining influence of their sisters and young lady friends, seldom anything more. The Greek thinker held that music not only had a refining influence, but that continuous playing of warlike tunes really made men warlike, and that passionate and voluptuous music made men passionate and voluptuous. The Grecian father was as particular about the kind of music his boy heard as we are about what our sons read. There are as many Captain