The book of the ancient Greeks: An introduction to the history and civilization of Greece from the coming of the Greeks to the conquest of Corinth by Rome in 146 B.C.
John Stuart Mill · en
The chief aim of Athenian education was the building of character.
The Athenians were more concerned that their sons should grow up to
be good citizens, loving what was beautiful and hating all that was
ugly, than that they should know any great number of facts. The
object of any education is to teach a child how to live, and a system
of education is good or bad according as it fulfils this aim. As
different states and countries, at different periods, have had
different ideals as to what is meant by _living_, so they will all
have had different kinds of education, each thought out in such a way
as best to train the child for that conception of life believed in by
his state or country. For example, the Spartan conception of life
was that every citizen should be a good soldier, able to defend his
country and to go out and fight her wars. Whether the Spartan ideal
was a good one or not, may be questioned, but it cannot be denied
that Spartan education was an excellent preparation for such a life.
The Athenians had a much wider ideal than the {222} Spartans. They,
too, believed in the training of the body, and in making patriotic
citizens who would count it a glory to die in defence of their city,
but they also believed that it was a glory to live for their city,
and to this end they trained the mind and the imagination as well as
the body. To an Athenian a good man was a good citizen, one who,
being physically perfect, would be able to defend his city in time of
war, who, being able to think, would be capable of governing, and
loving all that was beautiful would set high standards of taste in
art, in letters, and in conduct. Praxiteles gave outward form to
this ideal in his statue of Hermes, and though the Athenian ideal was
not complete, Athenian education produced a warrior like Miltiades,
statesmen like Themistocles and Pericles, a poet like Sophocles,
artists like Pheidias and Praxiteles, philosophers like Socrates and
Plato, and a historian like Thucydides.
[Illustration: THE FLUTE LESSON, THE WRITING LESSON. (ABOVE A
WRITING-ROLL, A FOLDED TABLET, A RULING SQUARE, ETC.) From the Kylix
of Douris, now at Berlin (No. 2285). Monumenti dell' Institute, ix.
Plate 54.]