it constantly as it rebounded; he who did this most frequently winning. In the game called Ourania, the player, bending back his body, flung up the ball with all his might into the air; on which there arose a contention among his companions who should first catch it in its descent, as Homer appears to intimate in his description of the Phæacian sport. They likewise played at ball in the modern fashion against a wall, in which the person who kept it up longest, won, and was called king; the one who lost, obtained the name of ass, and was constrained by the laws of the game to perform any task set him by the king. A game generally played in the gymnasia was the Skaperda. In this a post was set up with a hole near the top and a rope passed through it. Two young men then seized each one end of the rope, and turning their back to the post, exerted their utmost strength to draw their antagonist up the beam. He who raised his opponent highest, won. Sometimes they tried their strength by binding themselves together, back to back, and pulling different ways.

Another game, not entirely confined to children, was the Chalkismos, which consisted in twisting round rapidly on a board or table a piece of money, and placing the point of the finger so dexterously on its upper edge as to put a stop to its motion without permitting it to fall.

In the game of astragals, the Persians, as is implied in the name given above, often use six bones, while the Greeks employed only four, which were thrown either on a table or on the floor. According to Lucian, the huckle bones were sometimes those of the African gazelle.

The several sides of the astragal or huckle bone had their character expressed by numbers, and obtained separate names, which determined the value of the throw. Thus, the side showing the Monas was called the Dog, the opposite side Chias, and the throw Chios. In cockall as in dice there are neither twos nor fives. The highest number, six, was called the Coan; the Dog or one was called the Chian or dog-chance; to which the old proverb alluded Kŵos rgòs xiov, six to one. To have the Dog turn up was to lose, hence, perhaps, the phrase, 'going to the dogs,' that is, playing a losing game. The throw of eight was denominated Stesichoros, because the poet's tomb at Himera consisted of a perfect octagon. Among the forty who succeeded to the thirty at Athens, Euripides was one, and hence, if the throw of the astragals amounted to forty points, they bestowed upon it the name of Euripides.

To play at Odd or Even was common; so that we find Plato describing a knot of boys engaged in this game in a corner of the undressing room of the gymnasium. There was a kind of divination by astragals, the bones being hidden under the hand, and the one party guessing whether they were odd or even. The same game was occasionally played with beans, walnuts, or almonds, or even with money, if we may credit Aristophanes, who describes certain serving. men playing at Odd or Even with golden staters. There was a game called Eis Omillan, in which they drew a circle on the ground, and, standing at a little distance, pitched the astragals at it; to win consisting in making them remain within the ring. Another form of the Eis Omillan was to place a trained quail within a circle, on a table for example, out of which the point was to drive it by tapping it with the middle finger. If it reared at the blow, and retreated beyond the line, its master lost his wager. The play called Tropa was also generally performed with astragals, which were pitched into a small hole, formed to receive such things when skillfully thrown.

IL-ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION.*

Age of School Attendance.

At seven years old, boys were removed from the harem and sent under the care of a governor to a public school, which, from the story of Bedreddin Hassan, we find to have been formerly the practice among the Arabs, even for the sons of distinguished men and Wezeers. When seven years had passed over him, his grandfather (Shemseddeen, Wezeer of the Sultan of Egypt,) committed him to a schoolmaster, whom he charged to educate him with great care.'

Mischievous no doubt the boys of Hellas were, as boys will every where be, and many pranks would they play in spite of the crabbed old slaves set over them by their parents; on which account, probably, it is that Plato considers boys, of all wild beasts, the most audacious, plotting, fierce, and intractable. But the urchins now found that it was one thing to nestle under mamma's wing at home, and another to delve under the direction of a didaskalos, and at schoolhours, after the bitter roots of knowledge. For the school-boys of Greece tasted very little of the sweets of bed after dawn. They rose with the light,' says Lucian, and with pure water washed away the remains of sleep, which still lingered on their eyelids.' Having breakfasted on bread and fruit, to which, through the allurements of their pedagogues, they sometimes added wine, they sallied forth to the didaskaleion, or schoolmaster's lair, as the comic poets jocu larly termed it, summer and winter, whether the morning smelt of balm, or was deformed by sleet or snow, drifting like meal from a sieve down the rocks of the Acropolis.

Aristophanes has left us a picture, dashed off with his usual grotesque vigor, of a troop of Attic lads marching on a winter's morning to school:

Now will I sketch the ancient plan of training,
When justice was in vogue and wisdom flourished.
First, modesty restrained the youthful voice
So that no brawl was heard. In order ranged,
The boys from all the neighborhood appeared,
Marching to school, naked, though down the sky
Tumbled the flaky snow like flour from sieve.
Arrived, and sented wide apart, the master
First taught them how to chant Athena's praise,
Pallas unconquered, stormer of cities!' or
Shout far resounding' in the self-same notes

Their fathers learned. And if through mere conceit
Some innovation hunter strained his throat
With Scurril lays mincing and quavering,
Like any Siphnian or Chian fop-

As is too much the fashion since that Phrynis
Brought o'er Ionian airs-quickly the scourge
Rained on his shoulders blows like hail as one
Plotting the Muses' downfall. In the Palæstra
Custom required them decently to sit,
Decent to rise, smoothing the sandy floor
Lest any traces of their form should linger
Unsightly on the dust. When in the bath

Grave was their manner, their behavior chaste.

At table, too, no stimulating dishes,

Snatched from their elders, such as fish or anis,
Parsley or radishes or thrushes, roused
The slumbering passions.

Aristotle, enumerating Archytas' rattle among the principal toys of children, denominates education the rattle of boys. In order, too, that its effect might be the more sure and permanent, no holidays or vacations appear to have been allowed, while irregularity or lateness of attendance was severely punished.

Abridged from St. John's Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece. I. 164–205.

Lucian, speaking of the attendants of youths in the better times of the republic, describes them as an honorable company who followed their young masters to the schools, not with combs and looking-glasses like the attendants of ladies, but with the venerable instruments of wisdom in their hands, manyleaved tablets or books recording the glorious deeds of their ancestors, or if proceeding to the music-master bearing, instead of these, the melodious lyre.

Diogenes as a Teacher.

In fact, the fortunes of war often in those days reduced men of virtue and ability to the condition of slaves, when they would naturally be chosen as the governors of youth. Thus we find Diogenes the Cynic purchased by a rich Corinthian, who intrusted to him the education of his sons. The account which antiquity has left us of his sale, reception by his master, and manner of teaching, being extremely brief, we shall here give it entire. Hermippos, who wrote a small treatise called the Sale of Diogenes, observes that when the philosopher was exposed in the slave-market and interrogated respecting his qualifications, he replied that he could command men;' and then addressing himself to the herald, bade him inquire whether there was any one present who wanted a master. Being forbidden to sit down, he said: 'This matters nothing, for fish are bought in whatever way they may lie.' He remarked also, that he wondered that when people were buying a pot or a dish they examined it on all sides, whereas when they purchased a man they were contented with simply looking at him. Afterward, when he had become the slave of Xeniades, he informed his owner that he expected the same obedience paid to him as men yield to a pilot or a physician.

It is further related by Eubulos, who likewise wrote a treatise on this incident, that Diogenes conducted with the utmost care the education of the children under his charge. In addition to the ordinary studies, he taught them to ride, to draw the bow, to use the sling, and to throw the javelin. In the palæstra, moreover, where, contrary to the Athenian practice he remained to watch over the boys, Diogenes would not permit the master of the gymnasium to exercise them after the manner of the athletæ; but in those parts only of gymnastics, which had a tendency to animate them and strengthen their constitutions. They learned also by heart, under his direction, numerous sentences from the poets and historians, as well as from his own writings. It was his practice likewise very greatly to abridge his explanations in order that they might the more easily be committed to memory. At home he habituated them to wait on themselves, to be content with frugal fare, and drink water, from which it may be inferred that others drank wine. He accustomed them to cut their hair close, not to be fastidious in dress, and to walk abroad with him bare foot and without a chiton, silent and with downcast eyes. He also went out with them to hunt. On their part they took great care of him, and pleaded his cause with their parents. He therefore grew old in the family, and they performed for him the rites of sepulture. Now what Diogenes was in the house of Xeniades, numerous pædagogues were doubtless found to be in other parts of Greece.

Coördinate Authority of Parents and Teachers.

Socrates, interrogating the youth respecting the course of his studies, inquires archly whether, when in the harem, he was not, as a matter of course, permitted to play with his mother's wool basket, and loom, and spathe, and shuttle?

'If I touched them,' replied Lysis, laughing, 'I should soon feel the weight of the shuttle upon my fingers.'

'But,' proceeds the philosopher, 'if your mother or father require any thing to be read or written for them, they, probably, prefer your services to those of any other person?'

'No doubt.'

'And in this case, as you have been instructed in reading and spelling, they allow you to proceed according to your own knowledge. So likewise, when you play to them on the lyre, they suffer you, as you please, to relax or tighten. the chords, to touch them with the fingers, or strike them with the plectron,— do they not?'

'Certainly.'

From this it would appear that the authority of the parents was equal; though generally at Athens, as Plato elsewhere complains, greater reverence was paid to the commands of the mother even than to those of the father.

Public Supervision—Sophronista.

Public schools were by law forbidden to be opened before sunrise, and were closed at sunset; nor during the day could any other men be introduced besides the teachers, though it appears from some of Plato's dialogues that this enactment was not very strictly observed. To prevent habits of brawling, boys were forbidden to assemble in crowds in the streets on their way to school. Nor were these laws deemed sufficient; but still further to protect their morals, ten annual magistrates called Sophronistæ, one from each tribe, were elected by show of hands, whose sole business it was to watch over the manners of youth. This magistracy dated as far back as the age of Solon, and continued in force to the latest times. The Gymnasiarch, another magistrate, was intrusted with the superintendence of the gymnasia, which, like the public games and festivals, appeared to require peculiar care.

School-houses.

It has sometimes been imagined that in Greece separate edifices were not erected as with us expressly for school-houses, but that both the didaskalos and the philosopher taught their pupils in fields, gardens, or shady groves. But this was not the common practice, though many schoolmasters appear to have had no other place wherein to assemble their pupils than the portico of a temple or some sheltered corner in the street, where in spite of the din of business and the throng of passengers, the worship of learning was publicly performed. Here, too, the music-masters frequently gave their lessons, whether in singing or on the lyre, which practice explains the anecdote of the musician, who, hearing the crowd applaud one of his scholars, gave him a box on the ear, observing, 'Had you played well, these blockheads would not have praised you.'

For the children of the noble and the opulent spacious structures were raised, and furnished with tables, desks,-for that peculiar species of grammateion which resembled the plate cupboard, can have been nothing but a desk,-forms,

*In the Antichita di Ercolano (t. iii. p. 213.) we find a representation of one of these schools during the infliction of corporal chastisement. Numerous boys are seated on forms reading, while a delinquent is horsed on the back of another in the true Etonian style. One of the carnifices holds his legs, while another applies the birch to his naked back. Occasionally in Greece, we find that free boys were flogged with a leek in lieu of a birch.

and whatsoever else their studies required. Mention is made of a school at Chios which contained one hundred and twenty boys, all of whom save one were killed by the falling in of the roof.

School Apparatus and Equipment.

In the interior of the school there was commonly an oratory adorned with statues of the Muses, where, probably in a kind of font, was kept a supply of pure water for the boys. Pretending often, when they were not, to be thirsty, they would steal in knots to this oratory, and there amuse themselves by splashing the water over each other; on which account the legislator ordained that strict watch should be kept over it. Every morning the forms were spunged, the school-room was cleanly swept, the ink ground ready for use, and all things were put in order for the business of the day.

The apparatus of an ancient school was somewhat complicated: There were mathematical instruments, globes, maps, and charts of the heavens, together with boards whereon to trace geometrical figures, tablets, large and small, of box-wood, fir, or ivory, triangular in form, some folding with two, and others with many leaves; books too and paper, skins of parchment, wax for covering the tablets, which, if we may believe Aristophanes, people sometimes ate when they were hungry.

To the above were added rulers, reed-pens, pen-cases, penknives, pencils, and last, though not least, the rod which kept them to the steady use of all these things.

School Fees-Homer's Teacher.

Schools were private speculations, and each master was regulated in his charges by the reputation he had acquired and the fortunes of his pupils. Some appear to have been extremely moderate in their demands. There was, for example, a schoolmaster named Hippomachos, upon entering whose establishment boys were required to pay down a mina, after which they might remain as long and benefit by his instructions as much as they pleased. Didaskaloi were not, however, held in sufficient respect, though as their scholars were sometimes very numerous, as many for example as a hundred and twenty, it must often have happened that they became wealthy. From the life of Homer, attributed to Herodotus, we glean some few particulars respecting the condition of a schoolmaster in remoter ages. Phemios, it is there related, kept a school at Smyrna, where he taught boys their letters and all those other parts of education then comprehended under the term of music. His slave Chritheis, the mother of the poet, spun and wove the wool which Phemios received in payment from his scholars. She likewise introduced into his house great elegance and frugality, which so pleased the schoolmaster that it induced him to marry her. Under this man, according to the tradition received in Greece, Homer studied, and made so great a proficiency in knowledge that he was soon enabled to commence instructor himself. He therefore proceeded to Chios, and opened a school where he initiated the youth in the beauties of epic poetry, and, performing his duties with great wisdom, obtained many admirers among the Chians, became wealthy, and took a wife, by whom he had two sons.

Subjects of Instruction.

The earliest task to be performed at school was to gain a knowledge of the Greek characters, large and small, to spell next, next to read. Herodes the