a term used not only in your country, but in many others.” This is the argument put by Plato into the mouth of Protagoras the sophist, to show that virtue is a thing which can be taught, and not a mere natural predisposition or a divine grace. The other _locus classicus_, which may be referred to in close connection with it, is the description of the traditional education given in Aristophanes’ “Clouds.”[19] The strict discipline of boys who were not allowed to utter a whisper before their elders; who were sent in troops early in the morning to school, in their single tunic, even in the deepest winter snow; who were kept at work with the music-master studying old traditional hymns, and in attitudes strictly controlled as regards modesty and decency--all this is contrasted by the poet with what he considers the corruption of the youth with florid and immoral music, their meretricious desire to exhibit their bodily and mental perfections, their luxury and sloth, their abandonment of sobriety and diligence. There are peculiarities of Greek taste so openly alluded to in this passage that it will not bear literal translation into English, at least into a book for ordinary readers; and therefore it need only be remarked, in criticism of it, that too much stress has been laid by theorists on Greek life, both on the picture of over-anxious morality in the older time, and on the alleged immorality of the poet’s age. It is from such passages that German historians draw their very extravagant assertions of the rapid degeneracy of the Athenians under what they call the _ochlocracy_, which followed upon the death of Pericles. It is very easy to find in many other ages and times similar assertions of the glory of the good old times, and the degeneracy of the satirist’s own contemporaries. But there is generally no more truth in it than in the assertion of Homer that his heroes took up and threw easily great rocks which two, or five, or ten men, such as they now are, could not lift. The same sort of thing was said in poetry of the mediæval knights in comparison with modern Europe. One would imagine them of greater size and might than we are, and yet their suits of armor are seldom large enough for a man six feet high. The picture of Aristophanes is doubtless a deliberate exaggeration, and would have been readily acknowledged as such by the poet himself. But it, of course, gives us the extremes possible in real life, as he knew it, and is therefore of use in forming our ideas on the question, if we use common sense and caution. § 25. With the exception of this feature, that Greek parents showed a greater apprehension for the morals of their boys, and guarded them as we should guard the morals of girls, it will be seen that the principles of education are permanent, and applicable in all ages under similar circumstances.