the robber, the rustic, the wezeer, and the schah; by the Armenians the thief, the ploughman, the steward, and the lord. The number of casts among the Greeks, according to Eustathius, amounted to thirtyfive. Pliny speaks of a work of Polycletos representing naked boys playing at this game, and the reader will probably remember the mutilated group in the British Museum, in which a boy having evidently been beaten at astragals, is biting in revenge the leg of his conqueror.

3

The

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. 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 skilfully thrown. The common acorn, and fruit of the holm oak, were often substituted for astragals

1 Meurs. Græc. Lud. p. 7. 2 xxxiv. 19. Vid. Calcagnin, Dissert. de Talis. J. Cammer. Comment. de Utriusque Ling. c. 846. 3 Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p.

261.

4 Plut. 817. sqq. Cf. Sch. in loc.

5 Suid. et Hesych. in v. Poll. ix. 102. Cf. Meurs. Græc. Ludib. p. 69.

6 Cf. Meurs. de Lud. Græc. p. 61. Hesych. v. Tpóra.

in this game. The Ephentinda seems to have consisted in pitching an ostrakon into a circle, so as to cause it to remain there. The Skeptinda çonsisted in placing an ostrakon, or a piece of money, on the ground, and pitching another at it so as to make it

turn.1

1 Poll. ix. 117.

164

CHAPTER IV.

ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION.

IN Greece, as everywhere else, education1 commenced in the nursery; and though time has very much obscured all remaining traces of the instruction which the children there received, we are not left on this point wholly without information. From the very

day of his birth man begins to be acted on by those causes that furnish his mind with ideas. As his intelligence acquires strength, the five sluices which let in all that flood of knowledge which afterwards overflows his mind, appear to be enlarged, and education at first, and for some time, consists in watching over the nature and quality of the ideas conveyed inward by those channels. It is difficult to say when actual instruction commenced: but among the earliest formal attempts at impressing traditionary knowledge on the infant mind was the repetition by mothers and nurses of fables and stories, not always, if Plato may be credited, constructed with a religious or ethical purpose. They, in fact, introduced into the minds of their children the legends of the mythology, under the forms of which truths of the greatest importance, such as Bacon has developed in his "Wisdom of the Ancients," lay sometimes concealed, though more frequently, perhaps, they inculcated no useful lesson, but were the mere sportive creations of fancy, or if they contained any moral kernel the shell in which it was

2

1 Among the ancient writers on education, of which the greater number have perished, was Clearchos of Soli, on whom see Voss.

de Hist. Græc. i. Athen. xv. 54. Men. in Diog. Laert. p. 4. b.

2 Rep. ii. t. vi. p. 94. - - Cf. Adolph. Cramer, 8, 9.

cased was too hard for the teeth of the vulgar. Such, for example, as the legend of Zeus in Hesiod mutilating his father Kronos, which, in Plato's opinion, was not to be delivered to the empty-headed multitude or to untaught children; but, having sacrificed, not a hog, but the most precious victim, in mysterious secrecy to a few.

Wholly different from these, however, were the fables' properly so called, which, invented apparently by Hesiod, (at least his Hawk and Nightingale is the oldest example extant in Hellenic literature,) were afterwards sprinkled by the greatest poets, through their writings, or spontaneously uttered in pressing emergencies to warn their countrymen against the approaches of tyranny. Archilochos' Eagle and Fox' was famous throughout antiquity, as was likewise the Horse and the Stag, related by Stesichoros to the people of Himera, to put them on their guard against the Machiavellian policy of Gelon. But the most complete, perhaps, of these ancient compositions is the fable of the lion, delivered by Eumenes to the Macedonian generals under his order, when they had been tampered with by Antigonos, who would have persuaded them to disband."

66

"It is said," observed the Prince, "that once upon "a time a lion falling in love with a young maiden "came to make proposals of marriage to her father. "The old man replied that he was quite ready to "bestow on him his daughter upon one condition, namely, that he should pluck out his teeth and his "claws, for that he feared his majesty might upon the wedding night forget himself and unwittingly destroy "the bride. To these terms the lion consented, and

66

66

1 Cf. Suid. v. Kaì rò Toũ λÚKOV. i. 1427.

2 Opp. et. Dies, 202 212. Quintil. v. 2.

3 Plat. Rep. 1. ii. cap. 8. c. p. 117. Schol. Aristoph. Av. 652. Philostrat. Imag. i. 3.

4 Phot. Bib. 139. b. 8. Hor. Epist. i. 10. Gyraldi, de Poet. Histor. p. 462. a. sqq. Aristot. Rhet. ii. 20.

5 Diod. Sic. 1. xix. c. 25.

2

"allowed his teeth and claws to be pulled out, upon "which the father seeing he had lost the only things "which rendered him terrible fell upon him with a club "and beat him to death." The Esopic fables' which Socrates a few days before his death amused himself by turning into verse, are known to us solely by comparatively modern imitations, and of those which were denominated Sybaritic we know nothing3 beyond the name; for though one scholiast informs us that the Sybaritic fables brought men upon the scene, as the Esopic did animals, another states the direct contrary. In the earlier and ruder ages of Greece, however, these compositions were in great repute, as they are still among the people of the East. To the infancy of nations as of individuals the wisdom they contain is, in fact, always palatable; for which reason they were highly esteemed by Martin Luther as particularly adapted to the spirit of his times.

Doubtless we know too little of how the foundation of the republican character was laid in the ancient commonwealths; but it was laid by woman, and for centuries cannot have been laid amiss, as the glorious superstructure of virtue and patriotism erected upon it fully demonstrates. On this point we must reject the testimony of Plato's academic dream. The historic fields of Marathon, Platæa, Thermopylæ, and a thousand others confute his fanciful theorising, proving incontestably that the love of glory and independance could, in the very polities which he least esteemed, achieve triumphs unknown to the subjects of other governments.

4

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

1 Aristoph. Pac. 128. Vesp. 1392, sqq. et Scholia.

2 Diog. Laert. ii. 5. 22.

3 Sch. Aristoph. Av. 471. Sch. Vesp. 1251.

4 Aristot. Polit. vii. 15.