[22] Cf. the amusing notes in Cicero’s letters on a private tutor he got for his son and nephew, vi. 1, 9: “I am in love with Dionysius. The boys say he flies into furious passions. But no man could be more learned or conscientious (_sanctior_) or more devoted to you and me.” Presently Cicero’s tone alters, viii. 4: “Dionysius gave me impudence: you would say I had procured another Dicæarchus or Aristoxenus, and not a man that talks us all down, and is no good for teaching. But he has a good memory.” [23] ii. p. 189. CHAPTER V. THE MUSICAL SIDE--SCHOOLS AND THEIR APPOINTMENTS. § 30. The school was generally distinguished by the term διδασκαλεῖον[24] from the palæstra. We know that every Greek town possessed one or more, and in early times Herodotus[25] mentions one existing at Chios as early as 500 B.C., of which the roof fell in and killed one hundred and nineteen out of one hundred and twenty children at work within it at the time. Pausanias tells of another at Astypalæa, into which a madman rushed and pulled down the supporting pillar, so that sixty boys were buried under the ruins. The sad affair of Mycalessus is told by Thucydides, and extorts from him a most ungrammatical grimace of pity, when Thracian mercenaries murdered all the children assembled in school. These cases show how it was evidently regarded as an essential in every town. So the Trœzenians, when they received the fugitive Athenians during the invasion of Xerxes, took care, even in that great and sudden crisis, to provide for the teaching of the Attic children.[26] Of course, in early days and in poor towns, the place of teaching was not well appointed; nay, even in many places teaching in the open air prevailed. The oldest legends speak of Cheiron teaching in his grotto on Pelion; in the latest Greek χαμαιδιδάσκαλος (_teacher on the ground_) is a word for a low class of teacher. This was, again, like the old hedge schools of Ireland, and, no doubt, of Scotland too. They also took advantage, especially in hot weather, of colonnades, or shady corners among public buildings; as at Winchester the summer term was called _cloister-time_, from a similar practice, even in that wealthy foundation, of instructing in the cloisters. On the other hand, properly appointed schools in respectable towns were furnished with some taste, and according to traditional notions. As in gymnasia and palæstras, there was a shrine of the Muses or of Hermes, and the head of the institution was regarded as the priest of this shrine, at which offerings were made, so in the schools also there were statues of tutelary gods set up, and busts of heroes and other eminent men, by way of ornament as well as reminder to the boys.