A Companion to Ancient Education E-Book
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
- Sprache: Englisch
A Companion to Ancient Education presents a series of essays from leading specialists in the field that represent the most up-to-date scholarship relating to the rise and spread of educational practices and theories in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.
- Reflects the latest research findings and presents new historical syntheses of the rise, spread, and purposes of ancient education in ancient Greece and Rome
- Offers comprehensive coverage of the main periods, crises, and developments of ancient education along with historical sketches of various educational methods and the diffusion of education throughout the ancient world
- Covers both liberal and illiberal (non-elite) education during antiquity
- Addresses the material practice and material realities of education, and the primary thinkers during antiquity through to late antiquity
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title page
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
PART I: Literary and Moral Education in Archaic and Classical Greece
CHAPTER 1: Origins and Relations to the Near East
1. General Issues: Neighbors, Greeks, and Cultural Contacts
2. Mesopotamia (the Sumero-Babylonian-Assyrian Educational System)
3. Anatolia (Hittites, Hurrians, Luwians, and Others)
4. Egypt
5. The Levant (Ugarit and Other Canaanites; Israel)
6. India
7. Iranians (Elamites, Avestans, Medes, Persians) and Scythians
8. Cyprus
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 2: The Earliest Greek Systems of Education
1. General Issues: Minoans, Mycenaeans, and the Earliest “Greeks”
2. Minoans and Mycenaeans
3. Archaic Greece
4. Literacy and Early Greek “Schools”–
grammatistês
,
kitharistês
,
paidotribês
5. Conclusion: The Origins of “Classical” Education
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
PART II: Accounts of Systems
CHAPTER 3: Sophistic Method and Practice
1. Problems with the Sophists
2. Plato’s Sophists
3. The Sophists’ Activities
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 4: Socrates as Educator
1. Imitation and Socratic Education
2. How Literate Was Socratic Education?
3. The Socratic Sound
4. Socratic Natural Science
5. Politics and the Education of Desire
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 5: Spartan Education
1. Overview: From Classical Sparta to Roman Times. Ancient Sources—and Modern Approaches
2. Classical Sparta: Imposing a Character on the Young
3. The Education of Girls
4. Spartan Education: A Struggle between “Male” and “Female” Influences?
5. Military Training for Boys?
Appendix: Spartan Education under the Roman Empire
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 6: Athens
1. Traditional Education
2. Participation
3. Athletics and Music
4. Letters
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 7: Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy
1. Cicero on the Relation between Philosophy and Rhetoric
2. Cicero on Philosophical Education
3. The Roman Imperial Era
4. Pre-philosophical Education: Cornutus and Seneca
5. Philosophy: Logic, Physics, Ethics
6. The Role of Philosophy, the Goal of Life
REFERENCES
PART III: The Spread and Development of Greek Schooling in the Hellenistic Era
CHAPTER 8: Learning to Read and Write
1. Ordo Docendi
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 9: School Structures, Apparatus, and Materials
1. Primary Education in the Archaic and Classical Periods
2. Roman Schools
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 10: The
Progymnasmata
and Progymnasmatic Theory in Imperial Greek Education
1. The Imperial Greek Literary–Rhetorical Curriculum
2. The
Progymnasmata
in the Imperial Greek Literary–Rhetorical Curriculum
3. The Libanian–Aphthonian List of
Progymnasmata
4. Divergences from the Libanian–Aphthonian List of Progymnasmata
5. Advancing Through the
Progymnasmata
6. Theoretical Differentiation of the
Progymnasmata
7.
Progymnasmata
, the Three Species of Rhetoric, and the Five Parts of the Oration
8. The Influence of the
Progymnasmata
on Ancient Thought and Literature
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 11: The Ephebeia in the Hellenistic Period
1. Introduction
2. The Gymnasium and its user Groups
3. The Spread and Nature of the Hellenistic Ephebate
4. Ephebes and the Officials of the Gymnasium
5. Specialized Instruction, Intellectual and Physical
6. Military Skills
7. Ephebes and Civic Events
8. Some Conclusions
REFERENCES
FURTHER READINGS
CHAPTER 12: Corporal Punishment in the Ancient School
1. From Coercion to Self-Punishment
2. Resentment, Misbehavior, and Misuse as Agents of Internalization
3. Direct Theorization
4. Conclusion
REFERENCES
PART IV: The Roman Transformation
CHAPTER 13: Etruscan and Italic Literacy and the Case of Rome
1. The Origins
2. Writing in the Orientalizing Period
3. Aristocratic Courts and “Secretariats”
4. Social, Gender, and Religious Issues
5. Writing Schools in Sanctuaries
6. Punctuation and Teaching Methods
7. Scribes, Trade, and Literature
8. Writing Policies and Politics
9. Changes in Republican Rome
10. National Alphabets and Identity
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 14: Schools, Teachers, and Patrons in Mid-Republican Rome
1. Reviewing the Sources
2. Greek Learning in the Sociocultural Context of Mid-Republican Rome
3. Fathers and Sons
4. Conclusion
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 15: The Education of the Ciceros
1. Cicero and Q. Cicero
2. Tullia
3. Young Quintus and Young Marcus
4. Conclusion
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 16: Late Antiquity and the Transmission of Educational Ideals and Methods
1. Christianity and Classical Education
2. Educational Geography
3. A New Field Emerges: Legal Studies
4. Philosophical Studies in Late Antiquity
5. Medical Studies in Alexandria and the Ideal of Polymathy
6. Conclusions
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 17: Late Antiquity and the Transmission of Educational Ideals and Methods
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
PART V: Theories and Themes of Education
CHAPTER 18: The Persistence of Ancient Education
1. Introduction
2. Elementary Education
3. Higher Education
4. Conclusion
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 19: The Education of Women in Ancient Rome
1. Introduction
2. Educational Opportunities and Levels of Education
3. Praise and Blame: The Controversial Education of Roman Women
4. Patronage of Literature and Learning: The Example of Argentaria Polla
5. Conclusion
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 20: The Education of Women in Ancient Greece
1. Household and Professional Work
2. Weaving
3. Professional Training
4. Religious Education
5. Physical Education
6. Musical Education
7. Literacy
8. Women Intellectuals: Poetry and Philosophy
9. Hetaerae: An Intellectual Elite?
10. Sparta: An Alternative Education?
11. Conclusion
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 21: Isocrates
1. Biography and Historical Context
2. Historical Influence of Isocrates: The “Father of Liberal Education”
3. Works
4. Classifying Isocrates
5. Philosophy and the Philosopher
6. Politics: Justice and Virtue in the Best Regime
7. Education in the Political Philosophy of Isocrates
8. Isocrates’ View of Human Nature
9. The Goals of Isocratic Education
10. The Educational Program of Isocrates
11. Moral
mimesis
12. The Limits of Education
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 22: Plutarch
1. Introduction
2. Plutarch’s Conception of Education
3. Education in the Classroom
4. Women’s Education
5. Education and Politics
6. Conclusions
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
NOTES
CHAPTER 23: Quintilian on Education
1. Contents and Form of the
Institutio Oratoria
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 24: Challenges to Classical Education in Late Antiquity
1. Introduction
2. Prelude:
De Musica
3. Augustine’s Schooling:
Confessiones
4. A New Concept of Education: The
Cassiciacum Dialogues
5. Utilization:
De doctrina christiana
6. Conclusion
FURTHER READING
PART VI: Non-Literary and Non-Elite Education
CHAPTER 25: Education in the Visual Arts
1. The Education of the Artist
2. General Education in the Visual Arts
3. Learning about the Arts in the Roman World
Abbreviations
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 26: Mathematics Education
1. Elementary Education
2. Secondary Education
3. Advanced Technical and Philosophical Curricula
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 27: Musical Education in Greece and Rome
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 28: Medicine
1. Medical Education
2. Medical Practice
3. Greece
4. Rome
5. Late Antiquity
6. Medical Education for Women
Guide to Further Reading
REFERENCES
Text and translation
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 29: Sport and Education in Ancient Greece and Rome
1. Introduction
2. Athletics in Education: Archaic and Classical Greece
3. Greek Sport in Education: Rationale and Origins
4. Sport and Education in Roman Thought
5. Sport as a Paradigm in Greco-Roman Education
6. Conclusion
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 30: Roman Legal Education
1. The Republic
2. The Principate
3. The Later Empire
4. Other Lawyers, Other Legal Educations
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 31: Toys and Games
1. Introduction
2. Ancient and Modern Conceptions of Enculturation
3. Physiological and Cognitive Development
4. Anticipatory Socialization
5. Social and Moral Formation
6. Conclusion
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 32: Slaves
1. Introduction
2. Educated Slaves
3. Slaves as Educators
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 33: Masters and Apprentices
1. Introduction
2. Daily Life of Masters and Apprentices
3. The Economic Rationale for Apprenticeship
4. Apprenticeship and Educational Attitudes
5. Apprenticing, Selling, and Pawning: The Grey Circuit?
6. Concluding Remarks
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
CHAPTER 34: Military Training
1. Greece
2. Rome
REFERENCES
FURTHER READING
Cross-Reference
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 01
Figure 1.1 The young future King Amenophis/Amenhotep II is instructed in archery by his tutor Min, mayor of Egyptian Thebes. Rock relief from Tomb TT109, Thebes; Middle Kingdom Egypt, ca. 1350 BCE.
Chapter 02
Figure 2.1a Relief figures of two elite adolescents, both with distinctive hairstyles, one more senior and authoritative looking than the other: the so-called “Chieftain Cup.” Middle-Late Minoan stone conical drinking cup from Agia Triada, Crete, ca. 1500
BCE
(now in the Archaeological Museum, Herakleion).
Figure 2.1b Two Minoan boys with distinctive hairstyles, boxing. Fresco from West House, Thera (Santorini), ca. 1600–1500
BCE
(now in the National Museum, Athens).
Figure 2.2 An affectionate pair of youths, one bearded, the other not, embrace decorously as a gift of captured game (wild goat) is exchanged. Dedicatory bronze plaque from the sanctuary of Aphrodite and Hermes at Kato Simi Viannou (Crete), ca. 650
BCE
(now in the Louvre).
Figure 2.3 An adolescent boy is instructed in horsemanship (including mounting and controlling two horses at once). Athenian red-figure kylix (cup) ca. 500
BCE
, attributed to Onesimos (
ARV
2
324, 61; Munich 2639).
Figure 2.4 Adolescent boys practice their athletic skills in the
palaistra
(wrestling school) under the supervision of adult gym trainers. Athenian red-figure cup ca. 500–450
BCE
, attributed to the Antiphon painter (
ARV
2
340, 73; Florence, Museo Archeologico Etrusco: 9B38). Upper band (a): one boy is preparing to wrap his fists in boxing-glove thongs; two are engaged in the
pankration
, with a trainer (
paidotribes
) refereeing. Lower band (b): two boys are wrestling, supervised by another
paidotribes
; one (perhaps a slave?) is preparing the ground with a pickax, probably for long jumping, while another boy is donning his boxing thongs.
Figure 2.5 Scenes from a schoolroom: boys are instructed in the lyre (
lura
), pipes (
auloi
), reading, reciting, and writing. Athenian red-figure kylix (cup) ca. 500–480
BCE
, signed by Douris (
ARV
2
431, 48; Antikensammlung, Berlin inv. no. F2285). Upper Band: Aulos lesson (double pipes), and writing lesson, with folded writing tablet, as well as lyre and geometrical ruling square depicted above. The figure to the right with a stick is probably the boy’s tutor/chaperone (
paidagôgos
). Lower Band: Lyre lesson and singing/poetry recitation lesson with teacher’s papyrus roll; above are depicted more lyres and an ornamental manuscript basket. Again, the boy’s tutor sits close by.
Figure 2.6 A women reads from a papyrus roll, in the presence of other women; apparently a domestic scene. Red-figure hydria (water jar) ca. 450
BCE
, painted “in the manner of the Niobid Painter” (
ARV
2
611, 36; London, British Museum Vase E90, registration number 1885, 1213.18).
Chapter 08
Figure 8.1 Wax tablet, schoolboy’s exercise. Approximately 2nd c.
CE
. The two lines at the top, from the comic poet Menander, are written by the teacher as a model. Below, the student has copied it letter by letter in a clumsy hand. Note that the first, somewhat faint letter of the teacher’s model is omitted by the student in both copies, a sign of how little the student understood what the lines read.
Figure 8.2 Ancient Greek book roll. Note the undifferentiated stream of letters, without word spaces.
Figure 8.3 A schoolmaster’s model book, here showing the word lists. Note the divisions between syllables and the progression from words of two syllables to three, four, and five, followed then by a passage from Euripides. The top of each column is lost. Cairo, Egyptian Museum inv. 65445.
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1 Drawing of the early Latin inscription from Osteria dell’Osa (ancient Gabii, Latium), tomb 482. Circa 780–770
BCE
.
Figure 13.2 Difference among working alphabets of the seventh and sixth centuries
BCE
: in the upper line is represented the original Greek model in the form showed by the writing tablet of Marsiliana d’Albegna (circa 675–650
BCE
).
Figure 13.3 Long inscription on the foot of a
bucchero
cup from Narce (Faliscan area: Monte in Mezzo ai Prati, tomb 5). Rome, Etruscan National Museum of Villa Giulia. End of the seventh century
BCE
.
Figure 13.4 Inscription incised on the golden “Fibula Prenestina.” Rome, National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum “L. Pigorini.” Circa 650
BCE
. Above, former version with no mention of the recipient; below, final version.
Figure 13.5 Drawing of the inscription scratched under the foot of a Proto-Corinthian lekythos from Cumae (Fondo Maiorano, tomb 17). Circa 690
BCE
.
Figure 13.6 Inscribed bucchero kyathos from the Calabresi tomb of Caere (southern Etruria). Rome, Vatican Museum. Circa 660–650
BCE
.
Figure 13.7 Drawing of the inscriptions scratched on the opposite sides of the rim of an impasto jug from Sesto Calende (northern Italy: Via Sculati, tomb 12/1993). Sesto Calende, Archaeological Museum. Circa 600–575
BCE
.
Figure 13.8 Inscribed votive bronze tablet from the sanctuary of the goddess Reitia at Este (northern Italy: votive deposit of Baratella). On the surface are incised a dedicatory inscription, a grid containing consonants and vowels of the Venetic alphabet, and a series of groups of letters. Fifth or fourth century
BCE
.
Figure 13.9 Abecedarium scratched under the foot of a bucchero cup from the sanctuary of Juno Sospita at Lanuvium (Latium). Lanuvio, Archaeological Museum. End of the sixth century
BCE
.
Figure 13.10 Drawing of the abecedarium incised on a saucer of the “Genucilia” type from Palo Laziale (ancient Alsium: southern Etruria). Circa 300–270
BCE
.
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 Marble funerary relief of a butcher and his wife (?) from Rome, second century
AD
.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD
This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises approximately twenty-five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.
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A Companion to the Classical Greek WorldEdited by Konrad H. Kinzl
A Companion to the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel C. Snell
A Companion to the Hellenistic WorldEdited by Andrew Erskine
A Companion to Late AntiquityEdited by Philip Rousseau
A Companion to Ancient HistoryEdited by Andrew Erskine
A Companion to Archaic GreeceEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees
A Companion to Julius CaesarEdited by Miriam Griffin
A Companion to ByzantiumEdited by Liz James
A Companion to Ancient EgyptEdited by Alan B. Lloyd
A Companion to Ancient MacedoniaEdited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington
A Companion to the Punic WarsEdited by Dexter Hoyos
A Companion to AugustineEdited by Mark Vessey
A Companion to Marcus AureliusEdited by Marcel van Ackeren
A Companion to Ancient Greek GovernmentEdited by Hans Beck
A Companion to the Neronian AgeEdited by Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter
A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman RepublicEdited by Dean Hammer
A Companion to LivyEdited by Bernard Mineo
A Companion to Ancient ThraceEdited by Julia Valeva, Emil Nankov, and Denver Graninger
Literature and Culture
A Companion to Classical ReceptionsEdited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray
A Companion to Greek and Roman HistoriographyEdited by John Marincola
<UNLA Companion to CatullusEdited by Marilyn B. Skinner
A Companion to Roman ReligionEdited by Jörg Rüpke
A Companion to Greek ReligionEdited by Daniel Ogden
A Companion to the Classical TraditionEdited by Craig W. Kallendorf
A Companion to Roman RhetoricEdited by William Dominik and Jon Hall
A Companion to Greek RhetoricEdited by Ian Worthington
A Companion to Ancient EpicEdited by John Miles Foley
A Companion to Greek TragedyEdited by Justina Gregory
A Companion to Latin LiteratureEdited by Stephen Harrison
A Companion to Greek and Roman Political ThoughtEdited by Ryan K. Balot
A Companion to OvidEdited by Peter E. Knox
A Companion to the Ancient Greek LanguageEdited by Egbert Bakker
A Companion to Hellenistic LiteratureEdited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss
A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its TraditionEdited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam
A Companion to HoraceEdited by Gregson Davis
A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman WorldsEdited by Beryl Rawson
A Companion to Greek MythologyEdited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone
A Companion to the Latin LanguageEdited by James Clackson
A Companion to TacitusEdited by Victoria Emma Pagán
A Companion to Women in the Ancient WorldEdited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon
A Companion to SophoclesEdited by Kirk Ormand
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel Potts
A Companion to Roman Love ElegyEdited by Barbara K. Gold
A Companion to Greek ArtEdited by Tyler Jo Smith and Dimitris Plantzos
A Companion to Persius and JuvenalEdited by Susanna Braund and Josiah Osgood
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman RepublicEdited by Jane DeRose Evans
A Companion to TerenceEdited by Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill
A Companion to Roman ArchitectureEdited by Roger B. Ulrich and Caroline K. Quenemoen
A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman AntiquityEdited by Paul Christesen and Donald G. Kyle
A Companion to PlutarchEdited by Mark Beck
A Companion to Greek and Roman SexualitiesEdited by Thomas K. Hubbard
A Companion to the Ancient NovelEdited by Edmund P. Cueva and Shannon N. Byrne
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient MediterraneanEdited by Jeremy McInerney
A Companion to Ancient Egyptian ArtEdited by Melinda Hartwig
A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient WorldEdited by Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke
A Companion to Food in the Ancient WorldEdited by John Wilkins and Robin Nadeau
A Companion to Ancient EducationEdited by W. Martin Bloomer
A COMPANION TO ANCIENT EDUCATION
Edited by
W. Martin Bloomer
This edition first published 2015© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to ancient education/edited by W. Martin Bloomer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4443-3753-2 (cloth)1. Education, Greek. 2. Education–Rome. 3. Education, Medieval. I. Bloomer, W. Martin. LA71.C65 2015 370.938–dc23 2014050142
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Hermitage, St. Petersburg/The Bridgeman Art Library
Notes on Contributors
Preston Bannard earned his MA in Classics from the University of Virginia after graduating from Princeton University. He currently teaches Latin at The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and serves as the Department Chair for Foreign Languages.
Herbert Bannert teaches Greek and Latin literature and culture at the University of Vienna, Austria. His research interest ranges over Greek epics from Homer to Nonnus of Panopolis, Greek tragedy, ancient historiography, and ancient texts on medicine and alimentation. Recent publications include introductions to Homeric poetry (Homer, Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, eighth edition 2005; Homer lesen, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog 2005) and a new German translation and interpretation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (Sophokles, König Ödipus: Vatermörder und Retter der Polis, Vienna 2013).
Robin Barrow read Classics and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has a PhD from the University of London for his thesis on Plato’s moral and political philosophy and its consequences for education. He has taught both classics and philosophy throughout his career as Assistant Master at the City of London School, Reader at the University of Leicester, and Professor at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of more than twenty-five books and one hundred articles in the fields of classics, philosophy, and education. He was Dean of Education at Simon Fraser University from 1992 to 2002. In 1996 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
W. Martin Bloomer is Professor of Classics and director of the PhD in Literature program at the University of Notre Dame. He is a scholar of Roman literature, ancient rhetoric, and the history of education. His books include Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility (Chapel Hill 1993), Latinity and Literary Society at Rome (Philadelphia 1997), The Contest of Language (Notre Dame 2005), and The School of Rome (University of California Press 2011).
Raffaella Cribiore is Professor of Classics at New York University. She is a specialist in education in the Greek and Roman worlds, papyrology, and ancient rhetoric. She has written three books on ancient education: Writing, Teachers and Students in Greco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta 1996); Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton 2001), which won the prestigious Goodwin Award of the American Philological Association in 2004; and The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch (Princeton 2007). She also coauthored with R.S. Bagnall the book Women’s Letters in Ancient Egypt: 300 BC-AD 800 (Ann Arbor 2006). Her last book came out at the end of 2013 with Cornell University Press: Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality and Religion in the Fourth Century.
Mark Griffith is Professor of Classics, and of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his PhD in Classics from Cambridge University. He has worked primarily on Greek drama, with commentaries on Prometheus Bound and Antigone (Cambridge 1999), a book on Aristophanes’ Frogs (Oxford 2013), and numerous articles. He has also published articles on Hesiod, Greek lyric poetry, and ancient Greek education, and is currently working on the sociology of ancient Greek music.
Stefan Hagel, classicist, software designer, and Musical Archaeologist, holds a research post at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Recent publications include Ancient Greek Music: A New Technical History (Cambridge 2009).
Emily A. Hemelrijk is a professor of Ancient History at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on Roman women. Recent books include Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman Elite from Cornelia to Julia Domna (London 1999/2004) and—with Greg Woolf—the edited volume on Women and the Roman City in the Latin West (Leiden 2013). She is currently preparing a monograph on Hidden Lives—Public Personae. Women and Civic Life in Italy and the Latin West during the Roman Principate.
William A. Johnson, Professor of Classical Studies at Duke University, works broadly in the cultural history of Greece and Rome. He has lectured and published on Plato, Hesiod, Herodotus, Cicero, Pliny (both Elder and Younger), Gellius, Lucian, and on a variety of topics relating to books and readers, both ancient and modern. Recent work has focused on establishing deep contextualization for specific ancient reading communities, with particular attention to the relationship between literary texts and social structure. His books include Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire, A Study of Elite Reading Communities (Oxford 2010); Ancient Literacies (with Holt Parker; Oxford 2009); and Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto 2004).
Nigel M. Kennell is the author of The Gymnasium of Virtue (Chapel Hill 1995) and Spartans (Chichester 2010). He has published numerous articles on Spartan history and Greek citizen training systems. He has held research positions with the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Collège de France, and All Souls College, Oxford. After working for ten years as an instructor at the International Center for Hellenic and Mediterranean Studies in Athens, Greece, and as a member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, he is presently associated with the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia.
Christian Laes is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), and Adjunct Professor of Ancient History at the University of Tampere (Finland). He has published five monographs, three edited volumes and over sixty international contributions on the human life course in Roman and Late Antiquity. Childhood, youth, old age, family, marriage and sexuality as well as disabilities are the main focuses of his scholarly work. From 2014–2016, he is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Social Research, University of Tampere.
Tosca Lynch holds degrees in Classical Piano and Ancient Philosophy. She is currently specializing in Classics at the University of St Andrews and works on Plato’s ethical and aesthetical conceptions of music.
Daniele F. Maras is Corresponding Fellow of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia. After obtaining his PhD in Archaeology (2002), he taught Etruscan and Italic Epigraphy at La Sapienza University of Rome from 2006 to 2010. Since 2010, he has been a member of the Board of Teachers for the PhD in Linguistic History of the Ancient Mediterranean at the IULM University of Milan. Apart from a steady series of contributions in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, he has authored the volume Il dono votivo. Gli dei e il sacro nelle iscrizioni etrusche di culto (Pisa 2009), and, with G. Colonna, Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum, II.1.5 (Veii and the Faliscan area) (Rome 2006).
James R. Muir received his DPhil from the University of Oxford, and has taught at Oxford, and King’s College, Dalhousie University. He is presently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Winnipeg, where he was awarded the Robson Award for Excellence in Teaching. His research examines the relationship between the Isocratic and Platonic traditions in the history of political and educational thought.
Hildegund Müller is an editor of Latin Patristic texts, among others of Augustine’s Psalm sermons (Enarrationes in Psalmos 51–60; 61–70 forthcoming), and most recently of the Vita (vel Regula) Pacomii iunioris (together with Albrecht Diem, forthcoming). She has worked on late ancient sermons and Christian poetry of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Her current research project is a comprehensive study of Augustine’s preaching.
Sarah C. Murray is a cultural historian and archaeologist specializing in the Greek Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. She completed her dissertation on change in the nature and scale of trade after the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces and received her PhD from Stanford University in 2013. She is the author of publications on Greek religion, athletics, and archaeology and is currently Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Nebraska.
David K. O’Connor is a faculty member in the departments of Philosophy and of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. His teaching and writing focus on ancient philosophy, ethics, and philosophy and literature. His essays have appeared in the Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic and the Cambridge Companion to Socrates, and he edited with notes and an introductory essay Percy Shelley’s translation of Plato’s Symposium. He recently published his online lecture course Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love in a Chinese translation.
Robert J. Penella earned a PhD in classics at Harvard University in 1971. He is Professor of Classics at Fordham University, New York, and has held Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. His most recent books are The Private Orations of Themistius (Berkeley and Los Angeles 2000) and Man and the Word: The Orations of Himerius (Berkeley and Los Angeles 2007). He is the contributing editor of Rhetorical Exercises from Late Antiquity: A Translation of Choricius of Gaza's Preliminary Talks and Declamations (Cambridge 2009). His current main interests are ancient declamation and the School of Gaza.
Jerome J. Pollitt is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology and History of Art at Yale University. He is a former editor of the American Journal of Archaeology and is the author of The Ancient View of Greek Art (New Haven 1974), Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge 1972), The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents (Cambridge 1990), and other books.
Anton Powell is the author and editor of important studies in two chief areas, the history of classical Sparta (e.g., Athens and Sparta [London 2001]) and of late republican Roman history and literature (e.g., Virgil the Partisan [Swansea 2008]). He is the founder and director of the University of Wales Institute of Classics and History and the founder and general editor of the Classical Press of Wales.
David M. Pritchard is Senior Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Queensland. Dr Pritchard has had research fellowships at Macquarie University, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Sydney. In 2013 Dr Pritchard was the Charles Gordon Mackay Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. He has authored Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens (Cambridge 2013) and Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens (Austin 2015), edited War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge 2010) and co-edited Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (Swansea 2003). Dr Pritchard is currently writing for Cambridge University Press a monograph on the armed forces of democratic Athens. In 2015 Dr Pritchard will be Research Fellow in Durham University’s Institute for Advanced Study.
Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, MA, MA, PhD (2000) has been Professor of History of the Roman Near East and Assistant in Ancient Philosophy since 2003 (Catholic University Milan). She is currently Full Professor and Britt endowed Chair at the Graduate School of Theology of SHMS (Angelicum University), Senior Visiting Professor in Greek Thought, Senior Fellow (Durham University and Erfurt University), director of international research projects, and academic consultant. She has produced many monographs as well as other publications. She is the recipient of such awards as the Gigante Classics International Prize (2006) and has been named among the Great Minds of the 21st Century and 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century. Her research is particularly focused on Ancient and Patristic Philosophy as well as Late Antiquity.
Gretchen Reydams-Schils is Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, holding concurrent appointments in Philosophy and Theology. She specializes in the traditions of Platonism and Stoicism. She is the author of Demiurge and Providence, Stoic and Platonist Readings of Plato’s Timaeus (Turnhout 1999); and The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection (Chicago 2005). She is currently chair of the Program of Liberal Studies and also directs the Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy.
Andrew M. Riggsby is Professor of Classics and of Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published a variety of work on the cultural history of political institutions in the Roman world, including Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans (Cambridge 2010). He is also interested in the cognitive history of the ancient world and the development of (ancient) information technology.
Enrica Sciarrino is Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). She has published a variety of articles on Latin literature. She is the author of Cato the Censor and the Beginnings of Latin Prose: From Poetic Translation to Elite Transcription (Columbus, Ohio 2011) and editor with Siobhan McElduff of Complicating the History of Western Translation: The Ancient Mediterranean in Perspective (Manchester 2011). She is a Member of the Advisory Board of the Fragments of Roman Republican Oratory (FRRO) and is currently working on a project on Roman authorship.
Leslie J. Shumka is a part-time lecturer in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, British Columbia. She is currently researching the lives of the poor in Roman antiquity. A liberorum turba magna in the households of immediate and extended family members, and close friends, provided much inspiration for her chapter.
Nathan Sidoli received his PhD from the University of Toronto with a dissertation on the mathematical methods of Claudius Ptolemy. He worked for a few years as a postdoctoral fellow (UofT, NSF, JSPS), studying the transmission of Greco-Roman mathematical sciences in medieval Arabic sources, and is currently Assistant Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Waseda University, Tokyo. His recent work focuses on foundations and methods in Greek mathematics and the transmission of Greek mathematical sciences in Arabic sources.
Elżbieta Szabat is Assistant Professor at the Institute of History, University of Warsaw. Her interests focus on the culture and education in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium.
Susan Treggiari retired from Stanford University in 2001 and lives in Oxford, where she is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and associated with the Faculty of Classics. Her many publications include Roman Marriage (1991).
Aleksander Wolicki is Assistant Professor in ancient history at the University of Warsaw. His research focuses on political and social history of ancient Greece. Currently he is working on a project on the honorary inscriptions for women as a sign of the evolution of the Greek city between the fifth century BCE and the second century CE.
Kelly L. Wrenhaven is Associate Professor of Classics at Cleveland State University. Her main area of interest is Greek slavery, in particular the ideology of slavery in the classical Greek world. Her first book, Reconstructing the Slave: The Image of the Slave in Ancient Greece, was published in 2012. She has also published articles on Greek prostitution, Greek comedy, and Greek manumission. Her current project, Animate Tools and Invisible Men (under contract), is a comparative study of the ideology of slavery in Classical and American contexts. Professor Wrenhaven holds degrees from the University of St Andrews, the University of Cambridge, and the University of British Columbia, and has taught at universities in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
Sophia Xenophontos (MSt., DPhil. Oxon) is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow. She has published extensively on ethics and education in Plutarch, and worked on his revival in Byzantium and the Enlightenment. She is about to publish her monograph entitled Teaching and Learning in Plutarch: the dynamics of ethical education in the Roman Empire (Berlin-New York, De Gruyter) and is preparing an English translation with Introduction and Notes of Metochites’ Ethikos for Harvard University Press (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series). She is also co-editing the first-ever Companion to the Reception of Plutarch for the Brill's Companions to Classical Reception. In her new project, she is interested in Galen’s psychological writings with a view to exploring his moralising rhetoric along the therapy of the soul.
David Wolfsdorf is a Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. He specializes in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and has strong interests in metaethics and the history of ethics. He is the author of Trials of Reason: Plato and the Crafting of Philosophy (New York 2008) and Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Cambridge 2013) as well as numerous articles on various topics from the Presocratics to the Hellenistic Period.
Introduction
W. Martin Bloomer
The second-century CE essayist and ironist Lucian recounts in a dream how two ladies came to vie for his attention: Paideia (education) promised the not so diligent schoolboy fame and fortune in the future, while Technê (the vocational maestra) had material rewards at hand. A great deal of misty nostalgia fills and thrills the audience, that is, all those who care about Lady Paideia. As scholars we hope not to be engaging in fictitious dreams about the greatness of our subject, but we may be forgiven if we think there is something of abiding value in how the Greeks and Romans organized their educational cultures. When as a society we ask such questions as what should the young read, who should teach them, where, or at whose expense, we are tightly in the grip of the ancient theoretical and practical debates about the right education. Yet in approaching the topic of ancient education, many have not seen the variety of practices that made up ancient educations. Educational nostalgia encourages the teacher or student, whether in the days of late antiquity or in the European Enlightenment, to imagine that the classical is new again. Indeed, by sitting in school and reading the old texts, it is easy, almost natural to identify with the protagonists of those texts. School compositions—writing a speech in character, for instance—can even encourage such identifications. Classical education has often been a stirring call to the van, to educate today’s youth in the way that one was educated or wished to have been educated or that one imagines across the span of millennia that Plato and Xenophon, Cicero, or the young Augustine were taught in Athens, Rome, or Carthage. There is in education a strong desire to repeat—to repeat the way it was for us, our parents, or grandparents, or for aspirational ancestors.
Advocates of a classical education can thus be calling for a return to Athens or Rome, but quite often, such advocacy is more negative than positive. The new old education being proposed is a turn away from disapproved movements such as scholasticism or decadence or modernism or, as in the hands of contemporary homeschoolers, the state provided curriculum and institution. But aside from the fun that Lucian is having with all the serious-minded champions of liberal education, the tug of the two ladies reminds us that Paideia inherently involves a choice of life and values. She can be parodied as an exclusionary and domineering mistress, but there is considerable bite to this parody. No single education has served for all. Many do not have the opportunity, time, and resources to pursue the deferred good that a long education in literature and history and philosophy, with some math and science and perhaps music promises to be. Maybe too, her lofty methods and purpose are simply another craft, different but no better in kind than the manual crafts of the artist and artisan. Lucian had been anticipated by Isocrates (see Muir below), who had flatly declared in his first educational writing, Against the Sophists (ca. 390 BCE) that the primary problem in education was that teachers have a poor reputation because they promise that education can attain much more than it can actually do.
Ancient education draws some of its grandeur, like an aging diva, from those who remember her in her prime. Memory may be unreliable—for, after all, memories of childhood education are often told pointedly by adults to children. In addition, great ancient theorists have encouraged a veneration for the old curriculum. Historians of education and proponents of classical education follow in the traces of Plato, Quintilian, and Plutarch. In the enthusiasm to recover ancient education (and classical culture more generally), adulation works at cross purposes with a properly historical understanding of the old curriculum. But the fans do not deserve all the blame. Education is something of a diva, which is to say, that the institution of education is particularly adept at generating explanations for its own existence and practice. This is again a reflex of its tendency toward replication—many social, political, and religious institutions are concerned with their own survival, but the school gets to practice this each day. Every class of students is encouraged to learn and very often encouraged to see the sometimes harsh practices of learning as necessary. To recover education is in some fundamental way to refound society. Such a recuperation can be a great, productive force or at least one of those sustaining hopes of a society: perhaps the current generation of those to be educated can be so trained as to make them better than the present. What that “better” means is a vexed issue: more pious, more civic, more informed, more critical, more imaginative, or perhaps only better informed on topics that someone or some tradition or some institution deems necessary or important. The reasons to study ancient education are thus complex and fascinating, especially because we—all of us students—are involved in the institution we examine, and our involvement includes hope for the old lady. The historian of education must be alert to the presumptions and normative judgments, past and present, about the value, purposes, and universality of classical education.
The two most famous twentieth-century histories of classical education illustrate the fascinating ideological impulses in studying and writing of education, and also the mature state of the subject. To take the latter first: the study of Greek and Roman education has benefited from the great flowering of classical studies in Europe since the Renaissance. For many generations have treated paideia, a Greek-style education in the liberal arts, as classical culture. This is no longer so as ancient culture is now understood in more rigorous historical and anthropological modes, but generations of scholars had sought in ancient education the ideals and techniques for their ages and for their own intellectual and ethical formation. These same two mid-century works show also the deep ideological divisions inherent in describing educational practice and theory. Werner Jaeger’s Paideia (published and enlarged from 1934 in Berlin to 1947 in the United States) brims with the hope that Greek cultural history can renew the decadent West, although it must be said his emigration and growing antipathy for National Socialism only tempered in part what seemed even then an unrealistically nineteenth-century enthusiasm for a national culture. Henri Marrou’s History of Education (originally Paris 1948) is far less philosophical—he does not so much write about the evolution and triumph of ideas as trace early practices growing toward systematization and universality. Far richer in detail and process, and still of fundamental importance, his magnum opus, it must be said, flattens out the complexity of ancient educations to something like an imperial system. The wealth of studies that have followed have been enriched by the turn to social and institutional history. In addition, a sensitivity to the agents and kinds of education not noticed by the ancient theorists has greatly improved our understanding of ancient education and the ancient world.
The present volume, conscious of the luminaries who have come before, offers a reassessment of the breadth and purposes of education in ancient society. This volume demonstrates the array of instruction that ancient Greeks and Romans deemed sufficiently valuable to merit special techniques or at least special materials, venues, or teachers. The various chapters aim to bring before the reader the educational systems from the return of literacy to the Greek world in the eighth century BCE to the (partial) collapse or transformation of the Roman order in the fifth century CE. The full map of the topic should track at least thirteen centuries of students, at first in the Greek communities about the rim of the Mediterranean and then extending and contracting with military, political, and cultural conquests to Egypt and North Africa, most of what we now call Europe, Asia Minor, and the Levant. Ideally, the reader should be led through the schools of Hellas and the schools of the Roman empire, introduced to the methods of inculcating literacy and numeracy, and given some notice of the higher or supplementary educations in music, mathematics and science, and athletics. The 33 chapters of this volume present the interpretations of leading scholars on essential aspects of this grand history. Yet the narrative of this history is here scrutinized in ways that reveal the debts and affinities of educational practice to those of other civilizations. This volume takes up the fundamental and traditional question of how Greeks and Romans educated (mostly elite) children in skills of literacy and numeracy and yet also considers the larger set of topics and methods for formal instruction (e.g., the education of slaves, of apprentices, education through toys and games).
The contributors to this volume have been careful to ask what education was thought to be doing and what it was doing. The chapters attend to the complexity of the ancient phenomena of education and to a lesser degree to the ongoing influence and importance of their topics. The myth-making that accompanies ideas about education is perhaps most acutely felt in the stories of the origins and transfer of education (see Griffith, Maras, and Sciarrino especially) and in those groups or figures singled out as exceptions (preeminently symbolic groups—famously the alleged differences between the Athenians and the Spartans; see Kennell and Powell—and symbolic educators, most famously Socrates; see O’Connor). As a handbook, however, this volume and the chapters just noted are most concerned with the breadth of phenomena that made up ancient education. Thus, the chapter on the coming of education to Greece (Griffith) describes in detail the relations to the Near Eastern civilizations that invented, revised, and transmitted writing and a special schooling in writing for various religious, political, and diplomatic purposes. In the ancient Near East, education had already been conducted in a non-native, archaic language often for a scribal class in service to a palace bureaucracy. The adaptation of this system for the Greek city state and its citizen class is a cultural transformation of enormous significance, but other educations, musical and martial especially (see Hagel and Lynch, and Bannard), benefited or were influenced by changes brought about by the new system of education in literacy and numeracy. In similar fashion, Maras broadens (and complicates) what we thought we knew about the coming of education to Rome by describing the world of Italic literacy and education from the seventh century BCE.
In such richly comparative and synthetic accounts, the singularity alleged for Greece or Rome may recede, but we gain a more precise understanding of the relation of education to the specific social, cultural, and religious life of the societies. Those readers interested in following the historical developments of education may choose to read sections two through five, which move from the world of the sophists in early classical Greece through the Hellenistic period to the city of Rome and then again more broadly to the worlds of Greek and Roman late antiquity. The discussions of the material realities deriving from the Hellenistic schools in section four, while deeply aware of historical changes, attempt to describe the experience of schooling in the ancient school. A separate section of seven chapters has been reserved for “Theories and Themes of Education,” which treats the greatest theorists of education. Here too, the education of women is discussed, in part because it was an issue of great interest to the ancient theorist and in part because it does not properly belong to the final rubric of non-elite and non-literary education. This final section treats directly the range of educational spheres in the ancient world that had been neglected in great measure and even directly belittled by the champions of liberal education. In studying these, we may have an antidote to the claims of liberal education that troubled Isocrates and Lucian and also strong evidence for the variety of agents, materials, and spheres of life that pursued trainings essential to their ancient societies.
PART ILiterary and Moral Education in Archaic and Classical Greece
CHAPTER 1Origins and Relations to the Near East
Mark Griffith
1. General Issues: Neighbors, Greeks, and Cultural Contacts
This chapter aims to set the stage for our investigation (in the next chapter) of the earliest forms of Greek training and education for the young, by providing a sketch of the relevant features of those neighboring societies with which Bronze and early Iron Age “Greeks” are known to have had significant contact. Sometimes it is possible to identify likely connections and derivations for early Greek practices from among those Near Eastern neighbors and predecessors. Even when such direct connections are absent, useful analogies and contrasts may often be drawn. In the case of some of these societies, their educational practices are well known to specialists in those fields, though this knowledge is not widely shared by Classicists. In other cases, the evidence is much scantier altogether, but can be supplemented by comparative material or by plausible inference from later periods. Overall, the remarkable range of institutions and techniques that we find operating in these regions should serve as a valuable reminder of the diversity and complexity of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures out of which Western civilization first began to take shape, and of the many different strands and impulses that came together in the earliest “Greek” educational systems.
It has long be60,638en recognized that during both the Bronze Age (the so-called “Mycenaean” culture, ca. 1650–1200 BCE) and during the Archaic period (ca. 800–450 BCE), Greek architecture, visual art, technology, religion, mythology, music, and literature absorbed multiple influences, at different times and places, from Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Crete, Cyprus, and elsewhere (Vermeule 1972; Hägg and Marinatos 1987; Laffineur and Betancourt 1997; Morris 1992; Burkert 1992; West 1971, 1997; Kingsley 1995; Franklin 2007; Haubold 2013). Those same regions also present us with distinctive administrative and educational programs that were essential to their operations and character, and these will be discussed in what follows. I shall also briefly examine two more distant cultures: the Mesopotamian societies of Sumeria-Babylonia-Assyria and the Vedic-Brahmanic educational system of N. India, whose direct connections with Aegean (and specifically Greek) society during these periods are much less certain. In both cases, their educational systems were so elaborate, long-lasting, and influential that they deserve our close attention, whether or not we can demonstrate their direct impact on Greek culture before the Hellenistic period. By contrast, we know much less about the social structure and institutions of those northern and western neighbors (especially Thrace, Scythia, Italy, and Sicily) with whom Greeks certainly enjoyed extensive cultural contact from at least the eighth century BCE on, through settlement, trade, slavery, mercenary employment, etc. Our ignorance is due in part to the fact that literacy was not yet developed in those regions. But we are still able to recognize in certain cases the origins of some important new kinds of specialized training and instruction that filtered through to other regions of Greece during the Archaic period, sometimes with quite radical consequences.
Scholarly opinions continue to diverge sharply, not only about the nature and degree of contact between these neighboring societies and the earliest Greeks, but also concerning the continuities between Bronze Age (Mycenaean-Minoan) Greek culture and that of the Archaic period. This is not the place to attempt to resolve all these questions (though we will have to consider some particular cases as we proceed, especially in the next chapter). But it would surely be a mistake to attempt any comprehensive account of early “Greek” education without considering the practices of their predecessors and neighbors. So even though parts of this chapter and the next must necessarily be speculative and/or lacunose, the investigation nonetheless seems relevant and worthwhile.
