Unfortunately, the Greek schoolmaster, at least of elementary schools, was not generally in high repute, was evidently not highly paid, and his calling was not such as to give him either dignity or self-respect. He was accused of pedantry if he was really learned, and of bad temper if he was zealous and impatient at idleness.[22] Lucian, in a jocose description of the nether world, describes kings and satraps as beggars or “primary” schoolmasters, and was only carrying out into fiction the proverbial downfall of the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, who spent his old-age teaching children at Corinth. An unknown comic writer is quoted as saying, “The man is either dead or teaching the alphabet.” We hear of philosophers accusing each other--very absurdly--of having once followed this profession; and every scholar will remember the famous passage in Demosthenes’ “De Corona:” “But you, worthy man, who despise others compared with yourself, now compare with mine your own lot, which consigned you to grow up from boyhood in the greatest need, when you helped your father to attend in the school, preparing the ink, cleaning the benches, sweeping out the schoolroom, and so taking the rank of a slave, and not of a free boy.” We even hear of Horace’s master, Orbilius, writing a lamentable autobiography on account of his miseries, under the title of _the man acquainted with grief_ (περιαλγής). § 29. The general question of the payment of teachers will be better discussed when we come to the Sophists’ training of riper youth. Indeed, on the whole value of the various attacks on the teaching order in Greece, Grasberger concludes his elaborate summary of the above and many other facts with the sensible remark:[23] “As regards the unpleasant and objectionable features, which men seem to record with special preference, the true state of the case may be the same as with the many scandals which are reported from the life of the mediæval universities in Europe. Evil did not predominate; but the chronicler, instead of putting forward the modest virtues of diligence and of scientific earnestness, preferred to note both the faults of the teachers and the gross excesses of the students.”