In the literary and æsthetic schools there were two elements of the subjects taught, both with an ethical effect, matter and form. The literature studied in the schools was expected to be full of improving suggestions and life-histories of heroes worthy of imitation, couched in the form most attractive to young minds, in order that they might appreciate and love its teaching and examples. The music which the boys played or heard, the songs which they sang, the dances which they performed or watched, the art which they copied or observed, must be such as would influence their characters for good――mould them, that is, in accordance with the national ideal. For Hellenic morality was æsthetic; they followed the course which appealed to their imagination and sense of beauty. It was therefore the object of education to make the children see and feel beauty in virtue, and good art in good ethics, in order that they might find satisfaction for their æsthetic cravings――the dominant instinct of a Hellene――in living good and upright lives.
For the unanimous feeling of Hellas based ethics not upon duty, but upon happiness――upon the satisfaction, that is, of the instincts. But this eudæmonistic attitude was qualified by an important consideration which is often forgotten. Owing to the solidarity of Hellenic life, the happiness which was sought was primarily not that of the individual but that of the community. The readiness of the average Hellene, during the best period of the country, to sacrifice everything on behalf of his city is very remarkable. The real, if unformulated, basis of his ethics came thus to be not personal pleasure, but duty to the State. When the individualism of the Socratic age overthrew this basis, the Hellenes fell back from the happiness of the State to the happiness of the self, and both patriotism and personal morality suffered from the change.
It was the sense of duty to the State, the resolution to promote the happiness of the whole citizen-body, which made parents willing to undergo any sacrifice in order to have their sons educated in the way which would best minister to this ideal. The bills of the masters of letters and music and of the paidotribai, and the lengthy loss of the son’s services in the shop or on the farm in Attica, the break-up of family life at Sparta, must have been a sore trial to the parents and have involved many sacrifices. Yet there is no trace of grumbling. The Hellene felt that it was quite as much his duty to the State to educate her future citizens properly as it was to be ready to die in her cause, and he did both ungrudgingly. If the laws which made the teaching of letters compulsory at Athens fell into desuetude, it was only because the citizens needed no compulsion to make them do their duty. Nor had the State to pay the school bills; for every citizen, however poor, was ready to make the necessary sacrifices of personal luxuries and amusements in order to do his duty to the community by having his children properly taught. The State only interfered to make schooling as cheap and as easy to obtain as possible.