The attitude of the philosophers towards music will be discussed elsewhere. Plato’s view may be summed up in the words which he puts in the mouth of Protagoras the Sophist.[318] “The music-master makes rhythm and harmony familiar to the souls of the boys, and they become gentler and more refined, and having more rhythm and harmony in them, they become more efficient in speech and in action. The whole life of Man stands in need of good harmony and good rhythm.” Aristotle’s attitude is briefly this. “Music is neither a necessary nor a useful accomplishment in the sense in which Letters are useful, but it provides a noble and worthy means of occupying leisure-time.”[319]
Aristotle mentions that in his day some added drawing and painting to the three parts of the course.[320] It was not universal, like these, and it does not seem to have started till the fourth century. In the _Republic_ and _Laws_ Plato does not attack and criticise it among the other educational subjects; but it plays so prominent a part in the _Republic_ that it is obvious that the philosopher regarded it as a dangerous enemy to the views which he wished to spread. It is noticeable that the discussion of Art comes in as an after-thought, in Book X. May it not be inferred that when Plato wrote the earlier books, drawing and painting were not yet in vogue in the schools, but they became popular before he had finished his great work?
In Periclean Athens the possibilities of artistic training had certainly existed. In the _Protagoras_,[321] as an instance in some argument, it is suggested that the lad Hippokrates might “go to this young fellow who has been in Athens of late, Zeuxippos of Heraklea. Every day that he was with him he would improve as an artist.” Earlier in the same dialogue Sokrates remarks that his friend might go to Polukleitos or Pheidias, and pay to be taught sculpture.[322] The large numbers of boys who became apprentices to the potters at Athens must have learned line-drawing and designing and painting from the earliest times. But art probably did not become a usual part of a liberal, as distinct from a technical, education till the middle of the fourth century.
This date is fixed by a passage in Pliny.[323] According to him, its introduction was due to Pamphilos the Macedonian. At his instance, first at Sikuon, where he lived, and afterwards in the rest of Hellas, free boys were taught before everything painting on boxwood, and this art was included in the first rank of the liberal arts. Now Pamphilos’ picture of the Herakleidai is mentioned in the _Ploutos_ of Aristophanes, which appeared in 388 B.C. Apelles, his pupil, began to come into prominence about 350: Pamphilos himself seems to have lived on till the close of the century. The introduction of painting into the schools at Sikuon may therefore be dated, roughly, about 360 B.C., and from there the custom spread over Hellas. By 300 B.C. no doubt art had become a regular part of the educational curriculum; for the philosopher Teles,[324] who probably lived about that time, mentions the gymnastic trainer, the letter-master, the musician, and the painter as the four chief burdens of boys. A trace of the new art-schools, with their technical vocabulary, is found in the _Laws_, the work of Plato’s old age:[325] “paint in or shade off,” he says, “or whatever the artists’ boys call it.”