Literate education in classical athens

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 49, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 46-61

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EID: 62449208994     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/49.1.46     Document Type: Review

References (38)

1. H. I. Marrou, Histoire de l'Education dans l'Antiquiré (7th edn, Paris, 1975), pp. 142ff.
2. P. von Schmitter, 'Compulsory education at Athens and Rome?', AJP 96 (1975), 276-89
3. F. A. Beck, Greek Education (London, 1964), pp. 80ff
4. W. Jaeger, Paideia, trans. G. Highet (3 vols, Oxford, 1939-45) deals brilliantly with intellectual culture as a whole but only incidentally with education. R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship, vol. I (Oxford, 1968) likewise only touches on education as an institution. Marrou (n. 2) deals with every form of education, including physical and professional, in necessarily summary form, but his is still the best monograph on the subject
5. J. Bowen, A History of Western Education, vol. I (London, 1972)
6. K. Freeman, Schools of Hellas (London, 1907)
7. T. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 9ff
8. Contrary to, e.g., R. C. Lodge, Plato's Theory of Education (London, 1947), pp. 11-12, there is no indication, at least in the vocabulary of the sources, that education per se was always defined as an institution separate from the rest of society
9. L. Woodbury, 'Aristophanes' Frogs and Athenian literacy', TAPhA 106 (1976), 349-57
10. more plausible than F. D. Harvey, 'Literacy in the Athenian Democracy', REG 79 (1966), 585-635, whose argument - though not his evidence - tends to the conclusion that Athenian literacy was widespread. The fifth century sees a sudden spate of vases with reading scenes, but this, too, should be interpreted with caution. Overall such scenes are not many in number compared with, for instance, athletic, military, mythical, or domestic scenes. Many of them are among the most sophisticated paintings we possess, suggesting a wealthy audience. And the fact that reading scenes became a familiar icon in the early fifth century attests the literate revolution in society which accompanied the democracy (or even slightly pre-dated it); it does not attest widespread literacy in practice
11. This might be any time from about the 430s. But we should not take this as evidence of widespread reading of Anaxagoras or texts in general at this period. That anyone can read them - they only cost a drachma in the agora - sounds like the arrogant elitism of Plato talking. A drachma at the time represented at least a labourer's daily wage: Socrates might have spent a day's wages on a book, but not many would. N. Lewis, Papyrus in Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1974), p. 132
12. cf. A. H. M. Jones, Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1957), ch. 4
13. A. D. Booth ('Douris' cup and the stages of schooling in Classical Athens', EMC 19 [1985], 275-80) argues on the too-slender evidence of the Laws and a doubtful passage in the Protagoras that pupils went first to the grammatistês, then the kitharistês. Across the range of references no such clear pattern emerges, though he is right to refute a simply synchronic interpretation of the Cup itself. The early Hellenistic inscription from Teos (SIG 3.578.8-20) which he cites in support of his argument is itself ambiguous; even if it clearly supported sequential teaching of letters and music it would be no help for the Classical period, since it is precisely the institutions of education which develop over time. The meaning of the inscription may be that letters are fundamental, so come first, while music is an optional extra; this would fit with the evidence of literary sources and papyri from the Hellenistic period onwards
14. Cf. a fragment of Sophocles (P. Oxy. 1083.1) in which a satyr chorus advertizes its suitability to marry a king's daughter: the members are accomplished not only in games, poetry, music, and dancing (the conventional components of mousikê and gymnastikê) but also in science and scholarship, which are evidently felt to be distinct - though whether because they are not a normal part of education or because they are a separate part of education is unclear. On verbal skill characterized as 'verbal wrestling' and an alternative in competition with physical prowess, especially in the Sophists and fourth-century writers, see D. O'Regan, Rhetoric, Comedy and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes' Clouds (Oxford, 1992), pp. 11-17, 39
15. Cf. G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 34-41 and 42ff., though he presses Pl. Protag. 318d7ff. too far (p. 38) in deducing a 'curriculum' of sophistic studies. The passage makes as much sense and fits the other evidence better if taken as rhetorical hyperbole
16. There is no comprehensive catalogue of mathematical schooltexts but many are included in G. Zalateo, 'Papiri scolastici', Aegyptus 41 (1961), 160-235 and MPER n.s. XV
17. R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989)
18. On the (atypical) education of Ischomachus' wife and on the education of women in general, see S. B. Pomeroy, Social and Historical Commentary on Xenophon Oeconomicus (Oxford, 1994), pp. 38-9, 267-9
19. S. G. Cole, 'Could Greek women read and write?', in H. P. Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York, 1981), pp. 219-46
20. D. Hagedorn and M. Weber, 'Die Griechisch-Koptische Rezension der Menandersentenzen', ZPE 3 (1968), 15-50 (several quotations). Knowing your letters can be a help in life, a means of livelihood, and a source of wealth as well as wisdom. Many of these quotations are certainly or putatively taken from lost New Comedies
21. There is no reason, however, to assume with von Schmitter (n. 2), pp. 276-89 that such texts depend on a degree of literacy in their entire audience, much less with A. Burns ('Athenian literacy in the fifth century B.C., JHI 42 [1981], 371-8) that the scattered references to letters in fifth-century sources indicate that the vast majority of Athenians were literate from the end of the sixth century
22. K. Robb, Literacy and Paideia (Oxford, 1994)
23. W. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA, 1989)
24. cf. M. Beard et al., Literacy in the Roman World, JRA suppl. 3 (Ann Arbor, 1991)
25. A. E. Samuel, The Shifting Sands of History (London, 1989), p. 35
26. Though for the view that Socrates only warns against reading, not condemns it, see G. R. F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas (Cambridge, 1987), ch. 7
27. Perhaps because he has no interest in educational skills, only in the virtue they produce, and reading and writing are morally neutral; on which see J. Annas, An Introduction to Plato's Republic (Oxford, 1981), pp. 83ff
28. Scepticism towards the written word and the pedagogical text was still lively in the Roman period (L. Alexander, 'The living voice', in D. Clines et al. [edd.], The Bible in Three Dimensions, JSOT suppl 87 [1990], 221-47)
29. Nor, for that matter, was the idea that poetry and other things could be read as well as heard and recited new to the Classical period. Most obviously, we possess in written form a great deal of poetry from before the fifth century, beginning with Homer. Peisistratus' campaign to educate the Athenians, according to Plato, included not only compelling rhapsodes to recite Homer at the Panathenaea but also setting up herms inscribed with moral maxims in the countryside. Vases of the early fifth century show people reading; where the writing is decipherable it is almost always poetry (H. Immerwahr, 'Book rolls on Attic vases', Classical, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 1 [1964], 17-48
30. 'More book rolls on Attic vases', Antike Kunst 16 [1973], 143-7)
31. At the same time merely being able to read and write was downgraded as a skill and we have comments such as 'he can barely read', meaning 'he's a boor', and 'he's either dead or a teacher of letters' (A. D. Booth, 'Some suspect schoolmasters', Florilegium 3 [1981], 1-20.)
32. on the fifth and fourth centuries, see the summaries of F. G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (2nd edn, Oxford, 1950)
33. and E. G. Turner, Athenian Books (2nd edn, London, 1977)
34. E.g. J. K. Davies, Wealth and the Power of Wealth in Classical Athens (New York, 1981)
35. M. H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1991), pp. 266ff.
36. A. Boeckh, The Public Economy of Athens (London, 1842), pp. 116-23
37. On Isocrates as 'the ancient author who more than any other establishes writing as a medium of political expression and activity', see the discussion of Y. L. Too, The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates (Cambridge, 1995), ch. 4
38. In particular we have no indication whether sophists used the texts they wrote for teaching. The few descriptions of sophists teaching are always oral: cf. W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 41-4