Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Private Life 155
EDUCATION
Boys
Greek education was inevitably much more informal than its
modern equivalent. Prior to the fifth century b.c.e. , education was
mainly in the hands of private tutors, which meant that only the
wealthy could afford it. Most schools were extremely small, accommodating
perhaps no more than about ten or fifteen pupils, although
some were considerably larger. Herodotos (6.27) describes a school
on the island of Chios that had 120 pupils. In 494 b.c.e., the roof
caved in while the boys were learning their letters; tragically, only
one boy survived. Even so, it is highly probable that most children
were home-schooled. Not until the Hellenistic Period was a system
of universal public education established in some communities for
all boys, thanks to foundations that funded teachers’ salaries. They
include the city of Teos, which lies to the north of Ephesus, just off
the Turkish coast, and the island of Rhodes. The exception to the
rule was the Spartan state, which imposed a uniform system on
both boys and girls that may well have been in effect long before
the Classical era.
Athenian boys began their schooling around the age of seven.
They continued as long as their parents could afford to pay their
fees—or as long as the parents did not require their sons to be economically
productive. We know very little about Athenian teachers,
but they seem to have had little status. There is no record of the fees
that were charged. and there is no knowing how widespread education
was. Because democratic Athens required its citizens to be at
least functionally literate, however, very few boys were completely
unlettered. Aristophanes makes it clear in Knights (188f.) that even
an ignorant lout such as a sausage seller knew how to read and
write. As the Sophist Protagoras points out in Plato’s dialogue of
that name, it was a general rule that “the sons of the most wealthy
went to school earliest and left latest” (326c).
Basic Athenian education consisted of reading and writing,
physical training, and music. Reading and writing were taught by
the grammatistês, which roughly translates as “teacher of letters.”
Pupils practiced their letters on waxed tablets using a pen called a
stylos. Broken shards of pottery called ostraka served as scrap paper.
The grammatistês also provided a grounding in literature by requiring
pupils to learn passages from epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry.
Memorization was a key element in the educational process. Nikeratos,
who figures in Xenophon’s Symposium, claims that his father