Chapter IX: Book X: May it not be inferred that when Plato wrote the earlier

books, drawing and painting were not yet in vogue in the schools, but they became popular before he had finished his great work?

In Periclean Athens the possibilities of artistic training had certainly existed. In the _Protagoras_,[321] as an instance in some argument, it is suggested that the lad Hippokrates might “go to this young fellow who has been in Athens of late, Zeuxippos of Heraklea. Every day that he was with him he would improve as an artist.” Earlier in the same dialogue Sokrates remarks that his friend might go to Polukleitos or Pheidias, and pay to be taught sculpture.[322] The large numbers of boys who became apprentices to the potters at Athens must have learned line-drawing and designing and painting from the earliest times. But art probably did not become a usual part of a liberal, as distinct from a technical, education till the middle of the fourth century.

This date is fixed by a passage in Pliny.[323] According to him, its introduction was due to Pamphilos the Macedonian. At his instance, first at Sikuon, where he lived, and afterwards in the rest of Hellas, free boys were taught before everything painting on boxwood, and this art was included in the first rank of the liberal arts. Now Pamphilos’ picture of the Herakleidai is mentioned in the _Ploutos_ of Aristophanes, which appeared in 388 B.C. Apelles, his pupil, began to come into prominence about 350: Pamphilos himself seems to have lived on till the close of the century. The introduction of painting into the schools at Sikuon may therefore be dated, roughly, about 360 B.C., and from there the custom spread over Hellas. By 300 B.C. no doubt art had become a regular part of the educational curriculum; for the philosopher Teles,[324] who probably lived about that time, mentions the gymnastic trainer, the letter-master, the musician, and the painter as the four chief burdens of boys. A trace of the new art-schools, with their technical vocabulary, is found in the _Laws_, the work of Plato’s old age:[325] “paint in or shade off,” he says, “or whatever the artists’ boys call it.”

Of the methods used in drawing and painting in Hellas little trace is left. Polugnotos and his contemporaries had produced idealised pictures, taking points from many beautiful men and women and uniting them to make one perfect man or woman. When Idealism gave way to Realism in Hellas, the change affected painting also. The artists tried to create a real illusion in their works, taking subjects like chairs or tables and making the spectator believe them to be real. They were helped by the developments of perspective and foreshortening, which were discovered at this time. It is against this exaggerated realism and the choice of homely subjects that Plato’s attack is directed: he hates such illusions as shams.[326] In the diatribes of the _Republic_ the possibility of idealised painting seems to be forgotten. Whether the boys in the art-schools also suffered by this change and were condemned to draw chairs and tables only cannot be decided.

The pupils, of course, did not have paper to draw and paint upon, nor was canvas employed. Ordinarily they used white wood, boxwood for preference, owing to its smoothness. Lead or charcoal would serve for drawing; for erasures, instead of india-rubber a sponge was used.[327] They may, perhaps, have practised on their wax tablets. One process was σκιαγραφία [skiagraphia] “shadow-drawing,” which produced rough sketches in light and shade: these seem to have been only intelligible when considered from a distance. Plato regarded them with distrust, as a sort of conjuring.[328]

In ordinary painting, which might be either watercolour or encaustic,[329] the first thing was to sketch in the outline (ὑπογράφειν, περιγραφή [hypographein, perigraphê]); the artist then filled in (ἀπεργάζεσθαι [apergazesthai]) the picture with his colours, with perpetual glances, now to the original, now to the copy, mixing his paints the while. Beginners would, no doubt, rub out (ἐξαλείφειν [exaleiphein]) frequently, and paint in again.

Aristotle,[330] in discussing artistic education, notices that it gave boys a good eye for appreciating art, and enabled them to exercise good taste in buying furniture, pottery, and other household requisites, which, to judge from the scanty relics, must have been masterpieces of beauty in the house of a cultivated Athenian. But still more important, it gave them “an eye for bodily beauty”:[331] which suggests that the human form, especially its proportions, formed the chief study of the art-schools. Proportion was the essence of Hellenic art; the great sculptors, as is well known, spent much time in drawing up a canon of perfect proportions for the human body. The boys may well have used their companions in the palaistrai for models, and the canons of physical proportion which they were taught by the art-master would serve to stimulate them with a desire to attain to such a perfection of body by their own athletic exercises.

[207] Lucian, _Loves_, 44-45.

[208] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 12; Thuc. vii. 29; Plato,
_Laws_.

[209] Lucian, _Parasite_, 61.

[210] Aischin. _ag. Timarch._ 12.

[211] _Anthol. Palat._ x. 43 has been quoted as evidence
that six hours’ work a day was a maximum. The epigram runs:
“Six hours suffice for work; rest of the day, expressed in
numerals, says ζῆθι [zêthi], ‘enjoy life.’” But the point is
the joke that the numerals for 7, 8, 9, 10, the later hours
of the day, are ζʹ [z´], ηʹ [ê´], θʹ [th´], ιʹ [i´], which
spells ζῆθι [zêthi]. The epigram does not mean to state a
fact; the joke is its only _raison d’être_. In any case
schools are not mentioned.

[212] Herondas, _Schoolmaster_ (iii.) 53.

[213] Mahaffy, _Greek Education_, p. 54.

[214] Lucian, _Nekuom._ 17.

[215] Dem. _de Cor._ 315.

[216] Theoph. _Char._ 30.

[217] _Ibid._ 30.

[218] Herondas, iii. 3.

[219] Demos. _ag. Aphobos_, i. 828.

[220] Demos. _Crown_, 312.

[221] Demos. _Crown_, 270. This is the most probable
restoration of the facts from the statements of the opposing
orators.

[222] _Ibid._ 313.

[223] Aelian, _Var. Hist._ xii. 9 (at Klazomenai).

[224] Benches do not appear on vases, because a row of boys
involves elaborate perspective; the artist preferred to take
single boys on stools, as a sort of section of a class, just
as he gave the stools only two legs. Xen. _Banquet_, 4. 27,
shows two boys sitting side by side. It is not necessary to
reject benches, with Girard.

[225] Alexis, _Linos_ (in Athen. 164 B.C.). See Illustr.
Plates I. A and I. B.

[226] Plut. _Alkib._ 7.

[227] Herondas, iii. 83. 96.

[228] See Illustr. Plate No. I. A.

[229] Plato, _Protag._ 326 D.

[230] In Clement of Alexandria, who gives two others.
_Strom._ v. 8 (p. 675, Potter). A writing copy set by a
master, though not of the alphabetical kind described by
Clement, is actually extant on a wax tablet in the British
Museum (Add. MS. 34,186). It consists of two lines of verse
written out by the master and copied twice by a pupil.

[231] Aeschylus, _Choeph._ 209.

[232] Illustr. Plate I. A.

[233] Xen. _Econ._ xv. 5.

[234] Demosth. _de Cor._ 313.

[235] Plato, _Laws_, 810 A (cp. the prizes for calligraphy
in Teos).

[236] Athen. 453 d.

[237] Giles’ _Manual of Comparative Philology_, § 604.

[238] Athen. 453 c, d.

[239] A fragment of terra-cotta has been found at Athens,
containing on it:
αρ βαρ γαρ δαρ [ar bar gar dar]
ερ βερ γερ δερ [er ber ger der]
which must have belonged to some spelling-book――perhaps the
brick formed part of the wall of a schoolroom.――Quoted by
Girard, p. 131.

[240] Athen. 454 f.

[241] This is by no means inconceivable, when it is
remembered that the Hellenes often set even the laws to
music, in order to make them easier to learn and remember.

[242] Plato, _Polit._ 278 A, B.

[243] _Ibid._

[244] _Ibid._ 285 C.

[245] Xen. _Econ._ viii. 14.

[246] See Illustr. Plate I. A.

[247] Case E 190.

[248] Plato, _Protag._ 325 E.

[249] Plato, _Laws_, 811.

[250] τὰ κεφάλαια [ta kephalaia]――a phrase used in later
times for “commonplaces,” “topics,” which suggests that
these selections were of that sort.

[251] As the great speeches are picked out from Shakespeare
for “repetition” nowadays.

[252] Plato, _Laws_, 802, 811.

[253] Isokrates (_Paneg._ 74 A). He says the object was to
make the boys hate the barbarians; as, _e.g._, English boys
might learn _Henry V._ in order to dislike the French!

[254] Xen. _Banquet_, iii. 5.

[255] _Ibid_.

[256] _Ibid_. iv. 6.

[257] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 1035.

[258] From the _Banqueters_.

[259] Straton (in Athen. 382, 383).

[260] Aristoph. _Frogs_, 1032.

[261] Athen. 164.

[262] Aristoph. _Birds_, 471; _Wasps_, 1446. 1401.

[263] Plato, _Hipp. Maj._ 286 B.

[264] Xen. _Banquet_, iv. 27. School friendships are also
mentioned in Aristot. _Eth._ viii. 12; Aristoph. _Clouds_,
1006.

[265] Athen. 242 d.

[266] The translation is free, and I omit a good deal that
is less relevant.

[267] For a picture of such a flogging see p. 599 of Bury’s
_Roman Empire_.

[268] Plato, _Laws_, 809 C.

[269] The distinction between λογιστική [logistikê],
reckoning up and comparing numbers, chiefly in bills and the
like, practical arithmetic, and ἀριθμητική [arithmêtikê],
theory of numbers, is noted in Plato, _Gorg._ 451 B.

[270] Plato, _Laws_, 643 B.C.

[271] Plato, _Protag._ 318 D.

[272] So Theodoros in the _Theaitetos_.

[273] Xen. _Econ._ viii. 14.

[274] Xen. _Mem._ iv. 4. 7.

[275] Aristoph. _Wasps_, 656.

[276] In Diogenes Laertius, i. 2. 10.

[277] Alexis (in Athen. 117 e).

[278] An abacus of a very similar sort is still in use in
China and Japan, even in banks. The “pebbles” are pushed to
and fro, not in grooves, but on wires passing through the
middle of them. Calculations can be made by this means with
marvellous rapidity.]

[279] e.g. _Polit._ 299 D. πεττείαν ἢ ξύμπασαν ἀριθμητικήν
[petteian ê xympasan arithmêtikên].

[280] Plato, _Phaid._ 274.

[281] Plato, _Laws_, 819 B.

[282] The restoration of this process rests on Athen. 671;
the other two are purely conjectural.

[283] Suggests at once Hellenic, not Egyptian customs.

[284] Plato, _Rep._ 526 B.

[285] Plato, _Laws_, 747.

[286] Technically speaking, this was λύρα [lyra], the κιθάρα
[kithara] being a professional instrument which was not
taught at school.

[287] Illustr. Plate I. B.

[288] Plato, _Lusis_, 209 B. On Inscriptions there are
separate prizes for the two methods.

[289] Xen. _Econ._ ii. 13.

[290] _Ibid._ xvii. 7.

[291] Cp. British Museum Vase E 57, on which a man is
leading a leopard by a string.

[292] Plato, _Protag._ 326 B.

[293] Aristoph. _Clouds_, 1356.

[294] Aristoph. fragment of _Banqueters_.

[295] Aristoph. _Knights_, 526.

[296] Plut. _Solon_, iii.

[297] Hermippos (in Athen. 619 b).

[298] Aristoph. _Wasps_, 959.

[299] _Ibid._ 989.

[300] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 6. 11.

[301] For this reason it was opposed to _Dorian_ influences
by Pratinas. It was excluded from the Pythian games (Pausan.
10. vii. 5). Pratinas bids it be content to “lead drunk
young men in their carousals and brawls.”

[302] Telestes, in his defence of the flute, could only
retort that Athena, being condemned to eternal spinsterhood,
ought not to be particular about her looks (Athen. 617).

[303] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 6. 11.

[304] Athen. 184 d. Plutarch, however, says that when
Alkibiades’ masters tried to make him learn the flute, he
refused, declaring that it was unfit for gentlemen (_Alk._
ii. 5).

[305] Not a respected profession at Athens.

[306] Brit. Mus. E 495, 64, 71.

[307] Athen. 337 f.

[308] Smith’s _Dictionary of Antiquities_.

[309] φορβεία [phorbeia]. It belonged to professionals.

[310] γλωσσοκομεῖον [glôssokomeion].

[311] See the “Inscription” of the _Andria_ and other plays
of Terence.

[312] See Illustr. Plate II.

[313] Athen. 20 f.

[314] Plato, _Laches_, 180 D.

[315] Plato, _Euthud._ 272 C.

[316] _Ibid._ 295 D.

[317] Aristoph. _Knights_, 987-996.

[318] Plato, _Protag._ 326 B.

[319] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 3. 7.

[320] _Ibid._ viii. 3. 1.

[321] Plato, _Protag._ 318 B.

[322] _Ibid._ 311 C.

[323] Plin. _Hist. Nat._ 35.

[324] Stob. _Floril._ 98, p. 535.

[325] Plato, _Laws_, 769 B.

[326] See _Rep._ X. 596 E, 605 A, etc. In the _Sophist_, 235
D, 266 D, etc., Plato reserves his denunciation for
φανταστική [phantastikê] which creates illusions; he almost
approves of εἰκαστική [eikastikê]. Idealised painting is
hinted at in _Rep._ 472 D, 484 C.

[327] Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_, 1329.

[328] Plato, _Theait._ 208 E.

[329] The modern oil process was not employed till late on
in the Renaissance. Fresco was common.

[330] Aristot. _Pol._ viii. 3. 12.

[331] θεωρητικὸν τοῦ περὶ τὰ σώματα κάλλους [theôrêtikon tou
peri ta sômata kallous].