ters combined the "three R's." Athenæus, Book X, gives us a metrical alphabet like the rhymes by which children are sometimes taught their letters to-day. In learning to read, the method of dividing into syllables was employed. Athenæus, in the passage just mentioned, quotes from Callias: "Beta alpha, ba; beta ei, be; beta eta, be; beta iota, bi; beta ou, bo; beta upsilon, bu; beta omega, bo." This is much like a modern jingle: b, a, ba; b, e, be; b, i, ba be bi; b, o, bo; ba be bi bo; b, u, bu; ba be bi bo bu, familiar to some of us as an old-fashioned schoolroom vowel exercise.

For a long time writing was thought to be of little importance among the Greeks, and fit only for slave amanuenses; but when it came into vogue it was taught very much as it is now. Copies were set by the master, and the hand of the pupil was often guided by him. Tablets covered with wax and a stylus of ivory or metal at first took the place of copy book and pen, and afterward papyrus and parchment, pens of split reeds, and a red and black ink were invented. Verses from the great poets were read, copied and learned by heart, so that many of the Greeks were able to repeat from memory the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey. Not only was much reading aloud required of pupils, but also great stress was put upon clear intonation and rhythmical utterance. So great was the emphasis put on musical, distinct vocalization, that an actor who tripped in this or mouthed his words was hissed from the stage. Imagine the actor, Hegelochus, at a critical point in one of Euripides' lofty lines saying, "for o'er the waves, lo! I behold once more a cat (calm)," speaking the word galee for galene. He might have stumbled in his clumsy dress without exciting a smile, yet so rude was his verbal blunder to the exacting ear of his audience that it not only provoked real "cat calls," but also gave a source of ridicule against poet and player unto all ages, for the mercilessly witty Aristophanes set the blunder to his iambics in the Frogs.

When we reflect that the Greek drama was built on wellknown legends, with conventional and cumbrous pattern of tunic, mask and cothurnus, and with scant aid of scenery, we can understand that a play presented little in the way of new

situations, interpretative gestures and "asides." Most of the interest centered in the lines, and since the audience was remote from the stage, we see that a distinct and graceful elocution was imperative. So, too, a person was trained from boyhood to speak with "pith and moment" in his words, and not like a struck bronze pot, to go ringing on until stopped by the touch of a hand.* A musical and measured tongue was, of course, the best instrument of expression for the harmonious brain. Socrates' highest tribute to the sophist, Protagoras, was,

"So charming left his voice, that I the while

Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear."

Arithmetic, the last of the "three R's," was taught, if at all, in the Greek school, only to the extent of a little adding and subtracting, and less multiplying and dividing. The human hand naturally furnished the simplest tools of arithmetic. A straight line (one finger) meant one, etc., to five, which was represented by the angular outline of the open hand (V); the two hands together, represented by angular signs joined at the vertices, stood for ten (X). Hundreds and thousands were indicated by the initial letter of the word, and the letters of the alphabet were also assigned values and used in notation. The science of abstract numbers must have been understood to a high degree, for the monuments of Grecian architecture show in their dimensions its controlling principles, so stress was put on the study of geometry, as having more ethical value than has arithmetic. Plato required a knowledge of geometry of his pupils, but he said that arithmetic should only be learned for an amusement. He recommended apples as a good means of counting. Did the old philosopher intimate that the best way to get addition into a boy was to have him eat the apples of its illustration?

By the second study in the Greek curriculum, music, was meant a much broader culture than is meant by the modern term. Little technical knowledge or mastery of the lyre was required, only enough to strike a few chords of accompaniment to lyrical masterpieces. The music masters were to teach children the lyric poets, and "make their harmonies and rhythms

* Plato.

quite familiar to them, in order that they might learn to be more gentle and harmonious and rhythmical, and so more fitted for speech and action; for the life of man in every part has need of harmony and rhythm." Music, as it is to-day, is a development of the last few centuries. Ancient music grew out of the dance, and like the dance was used specially to give a rhythmical interpretation to recitals of poetry. Instruments of the lyre class, the cithara, phorminx and barbiton, were chiefly used in the schools of the best period of Athens, while the flute, which afterward came into fashion, was considered sentimental and less adapted to mental development. Alcibiades' more prosaic objection to the flute was that it distorted the mouth. The Greeks held that music should not be regarded only as a pastime, but as a powerful educational factor.

The popular songs of the day, and "rag-time" melodies, can do as much harm to the young as cheap literature, and should be as carefully kept from them. One who acquires a taste for the music of the vaudeville and cheap theatre is not likely ever to retire to the dusky chapel, so to speak, where a toccata of Galuppi inspired Browning,—

"Brave Galuppi! that was music, good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play."

"Gymnastics," says Plato, "should be taught the young, that the weakness of the bodies may not force them to play the coward in war or on any other occasion." The Greeks' innate love of freedom and daring of adventure had taught them long before to cultivate the body as the instrument of attaining both of these. From the legendary founding of the Olympic games by Heracles, from the first determined date of them, 776 B. C., when Lycurgus is said to have had a hand in reviving them, on down to the highest period of Hellenic culture, in which we are chiefly interested, the long and short foot races, the races in armor, the pentathlon, wrestling and discus throwing, had taken a great part in education. The gymnastic was gradually unfolding into Plato's ideal of it-one half music. Its healthful culture of the body and its moral training of self-restraint and

* Plato.

artistic impulse, had made it "a matter of the fair proportion between soul and body, of the soul with itself."* The chariot race, too, served the same end, as long as the prize was a spray of olive or parsley, as long as it was a part of the ritual of Zeus, Poseidon and Apollo. The gymnastic furnished to a Myron and a Pindar the motive of sculpture and ode. The unhealthier part of Greek gymnastic, boxing and the pancration, perverted by the Romans into gladiatorial contests, survives a little too much in the athletics of to-day. Modern training should revive more of Plato's μουσική.

With gymnastics an account of the training of the child among the ancient Greeks is finished. He who desired a more liberal education entered the class of some great rhetorician, philosopher or sophist. It is not within the purpose of this paper to discuss the higher instruction given by a Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Gorgias or Hippias. The statement, however, that with letters, music and gymnastic the education of the Greek child was completed, must be modified. The great Greek colleges have not been mentioned. National festivals, the four Dionysiac feasts, the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean and the Isthmian games, continually increased the culture of the people. At the Dionysiac festivals the rival productions of Greece's unrivalled dramatists, at the games, the exhibition and recital of splendid poets, actors, historians, sculptors and painters furnished all Hellas with an unequalled university course of culture. That which was purest and best in the drama, in art and in literature-what university of the twentieth century can boast of more?

The Greeks aimed at a common culture of refined taste, clear judgment, vigorous thought, easy and distinct vocal expression, and the polite power to please others, all of which are indispensable to fine success in life to-day, and are practical. The tendency in our secondary schools, even those of ethical culture, to allow pupils to elect only those branches for which each has a special taste, may serve to thwart this chief factor of general culture in early training, and may also tend to weaken the will power of the pupil to cope with difficulties.

* Walter Pater, Greek Studies, Athletic Prizemen.

Among others, there are two very practical lessons to be learned from Greek education; a distinct, and, so far as possible, musical enunciation in speaking; and the ability to express, extempore, thoughts before an audience in a direct and clear style. The Greeks showed us that for all real purposes these arts could be cultivated. From the primary school up, they should be impressed upon the young.

There have been wise men before Solomon and great thinkers before scholars. Let us, then, reflect that, perhaps, some of our new educational methods may be transient fads, and, while we advance, let us not fail to select from the educational systems of the past those elements which are found in all of them, and which have shown themselves to be right.

The Greeks have also taught us, indirectly, how important the theatre may be in education. Drama not moving on the highest plane of morals and literary excellence found no place in Greece; scenery with its distracting influence had not begun to call attention from the artistic structure of the play. The union of the drama with religion, its place in the ritual of the Pantheon, prevented moral looseness. That which one sees leaves the greatest impression, especially in youth; and that which the child sees, he imitates. Learning lines from the great English dramatists, at least, and acting scenes from their dramatic writings, with minor attention to scenic effect, might be prudently introduced into the curriculum of a modern school. Such vivid training would leave many good seeds in fruitful soil, and a taste for only true drama would be cultivated. The tendency might be gradually to elevate the modern stage.

Finally, in our latter day haste to be wise, on our short cuts to Parnassus, Greek culture asks us, is there no danger from the dust of vulgarity-the education without culture? Let the Grecian urn teach us a little of its lesson to Keats,—

Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

With modern shoemakers there is danger of sticking too close to the lasts, but I cannot close this paper without saying a word for the study of Greek. The word will come, however, with more force and taste from the pen of another, and so I