The instruction at Athens is divided into two headings: music and gymnastics. Let us first consider the former. It appears to have been very rare for boys to be taught at home by private teachers. They were usually sent to some school conducted by an elementary teacher. We know very little about the arrangement and curriculum of these schools. It seems that boys from the same neighbourhood generally attended the nearest school, and were taught there in the same room by one teacher, who had to instruct in turns the beginners and the more advanced pupils. Cases of over-filled classes are mentioned, but these do not refer specially to Athens. It is not improbable that classes not only received different instruction, but were also taught in separate rooms; and that besides the master who was the director and proprietor of the schools, assistants paid by him also took part in the instruction. But in reality we know very little about these matters; it is however, certain that some teachers had no schoolroom at all, but sat out in the street with their scholars--a thing which is only possible in the sunny South. No doubt these were only schools for the poor, and the sons of rich parents did not attend them. The furniture of the schoolroom was doubtless very simple. A music teacher sometimes set up in his school statues of Apollo and the Muses, but he would be well paid, and we must not expect to find such luxuries in the furniture of ordinary elementary schools. Here probably, there was little more than the benches for the boys, a seat for the master, and some aids to teaching, such as we see hanging on the walls on the few ancient monuments which introduce us to Greek schoolrooms. (Compare Fig. 75.) Among the requisites was a white board. It is not probable that the charts, used in the Roman period to impress dates of mythology and history on the pupils’ minds by plastic representation, were already known to Greek antiquity. The master supplied the ink required for instruction in writing: we may infer this from the fact that Aeschines, who as a boy used to help his father, a schoolmaster, had to mix the ink and sweep out the schoolroom. The salary which the master received for his instruction probably depended on his knowledge and ability; doubtless popular teachers were well paid. But it was not a paying profession, for it is not likely that the school fees, usually paid monthly, were high; also negligent fathers often put off paying them for a long time; while stingy parents kept their children at home during a month in which there were many holidays, in order to save the school fees. We must not assume high culture in these elementary teachers, and we find that the pupils feared their masters more than they loved them, which is natural, seeing that they seem to have made a freer use of canes and sticks than our present pedagogic principles would permit. Still we do not find any Greek pendant to Horace’s _Plagosus Orbilius_.