But what the ancients called _music_ in the wider sense must be held to include a knowledge and recitation of good poetry, as well as proper training in that figured dancing which was the most usual service of the gods. Indeed, a good musical education in Greece, much in contrast to ours, included every graceful æsthetical and intellectual accomplishment. This wide use of the term, however, though co-ordinate with the ordinary sense of playing instruments and singing, causes little confusion. A distinction between “music and singing,” such as we often see it (not satirically) set forth in the advertisements of our professional teachers, was not admitted. § 26. I think we may be justified in asserting that the study of the epic poets, especially of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” was the earliest intellectual exercise of schoolboys, and, in the case of fairly educated parents, even anticipated the learning of letters. For the latter is never spoken of as part of a mother’s or of home education. Reading was not so universal or so necessary as it now is; and as it was in earlier days an accomplishment only gradually becoming an essential, its acquisition seems always to have been intrusted to a professional master, the γραμματιστής, or grammarian in the earlier use of the word. Of course, careful parents, of the model above set forth by Protagoras, must have inculcated early lessons from poetry before that age. We may assume that books of Homer were read or recited to growing boys, and that they were encouraged or required to learn them off by heart. This is quite certain to all who estimate justly the enormous influence ascribed to Homer, and the principles assumed by the Greeks to have underlain his work. He was universally considered to be a _moral teacher_, whose characters were drawn with a moral intent, and for the purpose of example or avoidance. In Plato’s “Ion” we distinctly find something supernatural, some distinct inspiration by the muse, asserted of Homer; and this inspiration was even passed on, like some magnetic force, from bard to bard. These ancient poets were even supposed to have uttered words deeper and holier than they themselves knew, being driven by some divine _œstrus_ to compose what they could not have said in their natural state. Accordingly, the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” were supposed to contain all that was useful, not only for godliness, but for life. All the arts and sciences were to be derived (by interpretation) from these sacred texts.