Greece and Rome develop the idea of individuality in a very different manner from Persia and Egypt, and do not know anything of the Hebrew idea until their national career has been run. Greece does not reach the idea of one God as Jehovah, but it conceives the divine as beautiful individuality—the gods of Olympus, serene and graceful, but having the special character of human beings. It was a great step to recognize this human character in the divine,—and the Greek mind rejoiced in the consciousness that his gods were so nearly of his own nature that they could and did dwell in human bodies. This idea furnishes us the first phase of Greek education—the education of the body by gymnastic games, so as to make it perfectly beautiful and graceful. Cultivation of the body was a religious exercise, for it was a celebration of the divine by realizing it in the form of the beautiful. The East Indian ascetic sought by all means to mortify and deform the body. The Greek sought to perfect it. There were games for all the Greek States—the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemæan, and Isthmian—international expositions of strength and beauty. When the ideal of beauty had been fixed, there came the sculptor who conceived the forms and expressions of the gods of Olympus, taking his hints from human models that he saw all around him. The national culture in gymnastics first, the plastic arts second, these conspired to produce the ideals of beauty which educated the Greek people, and furnish an essential element in the education of all subsequent time. Preceding all plastic art was the poetry of Homer, out of which the Greek civilization seems to have been breathed. The second book of the _Iliad_ furnished the staple of school education, giving the history and geography of ancient Greece with the most wonderful of literary forms. The _Odyssey_ extended the education in the same direction, and gave under a thin veil of allegory, the Greek moral code. The general character of Greek education may be said to be æsthetic—a cultivation of the sense of the beautiful, and a training of the body into symmetry and grace. Gymnastics, music, and grammatical art were the staples of their pedagogy. By music they meant not only a sense of rhythm and measure, but spiritual culture in general—including the several branches over which the Nine Muses presided—whence its name “music.” Poetry and music and mathematics were all included under this designation. Grammatical training included reading, writing, and language studies.