The school hours were naturally arranged to suit the times of Hellenic meals, for which the boys returned home. The ordinary arrangement was a light breakfast at daybreak, a solid meal at mid-day, and supper at sunset. So the schools opened at sunrise.[208] Solon enacted that they should not open earlier. They closed in time to allow the boys to return home to lunch,[209] opened again in the afternoon, and closed before sunset.[210] How many of the intermediate hours were spent in work,[211] and what intervals there were, is unknown. There was, of course, no weekly rest on Sundays; but festivals, which were whole holidays, were numerous throughout Hellas, and, in Alexandria at any rate, on the 7th and 20th of every month the schools were closed, these days being sacred to Apollo.[212] There were also special school festivals, such as that of the Muses, and holidays in commemoration of benefactors; thus Anaxagoras left a bequest to Klazomenai, on condition that the day of his death should be celebrated annually by a holiday in the schools.[213] It must also be remembered that one of the three branches of Primary Education in Hellas would be called play in England: an afternoon spent in running races, jumping, wrestling, or riding would not be regarded as work by an English schoolboy. Music, too, is usually learned during play-hours in an English school. Even Letters, when the elementary stage was past, meant reciting, reading, or learning by heart the literature of the boy’s own language, and most of it not stiff literature by any means, but such fascinating fairy-tales as are found in Homer. There is little trace of Hellenic boys creeping unwillingly to school: their lessons were made eminently attractive.
Of the fees which were paid to schoolmasters little is known. An amusing passage in Lucian,[214] dealing with the under-world, describes those who had been kings or satraps upon earth as reduced in the future state “to beggary, and compelled by poverty either to sell kippers or to teach the elements of reading and writing.” From this it may be inferred that elementary schoolmasters did not make much money by their fees. This inference is supported by the fact that even the poorest Athenians managed to send their sons to such schools. Plato in the _Laws_ reserves the profession for foreigners, thus suggesting that it was neither well paid nor highly esteemed. To call a man a schoolmaster was almost an insult; Demosthenes, abusing Aischines, says, “You taught letters, I went to school.”[215] The weakness of the masters’ position may be seen too from the extreme contempt with which their pupils seem to have treated them. The boys bring their pets――cats and dogs and leopards――into school, and play with them under the master’s chair. Theophrastos,[216] in describing the characteristics of the mean man, says that “he does not send his children to school all the month of Anthesterion” (that is, from the middle of February to the middle of March) “on account of the number of feasts.” The school-bills were paid by the month, and, since boys did not go to school on the great festivals, and Anthesterion contained many such days, the mean parent thought he would not get his money’s worth for this particular month, and so withdrew his boys while it lasted.