THE FLUTE LESSON, THE WRITING LESSON (ABOVE A WRITING-ROLL, A FOLDED TABLET, A RULING SQUARE, ETC.)
From the Kulix of Douris, now at Berlin (No. 2285). _Monumenti dell’ Instituto_, ix. Plate 54.]
THE LYRE LESSON, AND THE POETRY LESSON (ABOVE IS AN ORNAMENTAL MANUSCRIPT BASKET)
From a Kulix by Douris, now in Berlin (No. 2285). _Monumenti dell’ Instituto_, ix. Plate 54.]
In earlier days this primary course had no doubt sometimes lasted till the boy was eighteen: but towards the end of the fifth century a secondary stage of education arose, occupying the years immediately preceding eighteen. This secondary stage is recognised in the pseudo-Platonic _Axiochos_ and in the fragment of Teles quoted by Stobaeus. More important evidence is supplied by Plato. In the _Republic_ he assigns an elaborate system of mathematics to the age just before ἐφηβεία [ephêbeia], which he sets at seventeen or eighteen, the natural age varying with the individual, while the legal age remained fixed.
When did this Secondary Education begin? Aristotle, counting back from ἐφηβεία [ephêbeia], assigns three years to it.[133] He has just commended the arrangement of education, not on hard and fast lines, but in accordance with the natural growth of the individual: so he must mean his ἐφηβεία [ephêbeia] to vary from seventeen to eighteen.[134] Thus he puts the beginning of secondary education at fourteen or fifteen, the average age of ἥβη [hêbê] in Hellas, as in Rome. From ἥβη [hêbê] till twenty-one the young Athenian was a μειράκιον [meirakion]. Thus in point of age the παῖς [pais] of the primary schools corresponds to the Roman “impubes,” and the μειράκιον [meirakion] to the “adolescens”; but μειράκιον [meirakion] and παῖς [pais] are used very loosely, and the former word is often replaced by νεανίσκος [neaniskos]. We shall, as a rule, call the pupils of the primary schools boys, and those of the secondary lads.
Fourteen did not, however, represent an exact point at which it was compulsory to leave the primary school. Sons of the poor left earlier; rich or unoccupied Athenians might remain later: Sokrates even attended a lyre-school among the boys when he was middle-aged. The primary schoolmasters started advanced classes in astronomy and mathematics to suit elder pupils.[135] In the palaistrai there were separate classes of boys and lads, who were only supposed to meet on feast-days;[136] in the _Charmides_, however, grown men, lads, boys, and quite tiny boys are all exercising together.