Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

156 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
made him learn by heart the whole of The Iliad and The Odyssey —
some 27,000 lines in all (3.5). The poems of Homer were, in fact, the
most widely read literature throughout Greek antiquity, as we know
from the fact that more papyri have survived containing scraps of
his poetry than of any other literary figure. Learning by rote sometimes
paid off in later life. The Athenians who were taken prisoner
by the Syracusans after the disaster of the Sicilian expedition were
removed from the stone quarries and given domestic work if they
were able to recite passages of Euripides.
The most popular musical instrument was the lyre or kithara,
which was taught by a musician known as a kitharistês. This was
regarded as such an important part of education that, in Aristophanes’
Wasps, the hero Bdelykleon seeks to excuse a dog’s thievery
on the grounds that “he never learnt the lyre” (line 959). It was
commonly played at symposia, much as a guitar might be played
at a party today. Physical education, which took place under the
instruction of a teacher known as a paidotribês, is discussed later.
Only a few children learned how to draw. Little attention seems to
have been given to mathematics.
Although the Athenian state did not require children to be educated
and did not involve itself in the school curriculum, it sought to uphold
certain values. In Athens, it was essentially the father’s responsibility
to ensure that his offspring received a proper upbringing. If he failed
to do so, according to a law ascribed to Solon, the child was freed
from the obligation of supporting his father in old age. The orator
Aischines cites an Athenian law that forbade parents to send their
children out of the home before daybreak and insisted that they be
collected before sunset. With the exception of slaves called paidagôgoi
(literally “child guides,” from which the word pedagogy comes), who
accompanied their young masters to school and sat behind them in
the classroom, no adult was allowed to enter the school. If any did,
it was a capital offense (Against Timarchos 9–12). Class size was prescribed
by law. Publicly sponsored competitions sought to encourage
high standards of accomplishment. At the festival known as the Apatouria,
for instance, prizes were given to boys for recitation. Finally,
no one seems to have raised any objections to corporal punishment,
and it is very likely that it was commonly applied.
Girls
The education of Athenian girls was probably minimal. The
ma jority received merely a basic training in how to run the house-