Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals

BIBLIOGRAPHY

It is not intended here to give a complete Bibliography of Greek Education, but merely to point the readers of this book, who may desire to pursue the subject further, to the chief sources of information.

1. ANCIENT WORKS

For the first part of the Hellenic Period, that of the "Old Education," our authorities are fragmentary, and often vague. They are the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers (collected by Mullach, in his Fragmenta Philosophorum GrÆcorum, Paris, Didot, 1860-81, 3 vols. 4to), and the comedies of Aristophanes, especially the Clouds. For the second part of the same period, that of the "New Education," the chief authorities are the tragedies of Euripides, the Clouds of Aristophanes, the dialogues of Plato, especially the Protagoras, Lysis, Republic, and Laws, and the CyropÆdia, Œconomics, and Constitution of LacedÆmon of Xenophon.

For Aristotle's educational doctrines, we are confined for information to his own works, and, among these, to the Ethics and Politics. Of the latter, the closing chapters of the seventh, and the whole of the eighth, book deal professedly with education. Some information may also be gleaned from the recently discovered Constitution of Athens.

For the Hellenistic Period, our information is derived chiefly from inscriptions, from the writings of Philo JudÆus, Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch (On the Nurture of Children), Ælian (Miscellanies), Lucian (Anacharsis chiefly), StobÆus, Plotinus, Varro, Cicero, Seneca, Quintilian (Education of the Orator), Martianus Capella (Nuptials of Mercury and Philology), and Cassiodorus, and from stray notices in other poets, historians, and philosophers.

Of the works referred to, these deserve special mention:—

1. Aristophanes, Clouds. Translations by John Hookham Frere, Thomas Mitchell, and W.J. Hickie (in Bohn's Library).
2. Xenophon, CyropÆdia. Translation, in Whole Works translated by Ashley Cooper and Others, Philadelphia, 1842, and by J.S. Watson and H. Dale (in Bohn's Library).
3. Plato, Republic. Translations by J. Ll. Davies and D.J. Vaughan, by B. Jowett, and by Henry Davis (in Bohn's Library).
4. Plato, Laws. Translations by B. Jowett, and by G. Burges (in Bohn's Library).
5. Aristotle, Politics (Books VII, VIII). Translations by B. Jowett, J.E.C. Weldon, and E. Walford (in Bohn's Library).
6. Plutarch, On the Nurture of Children. Translation in Morals, translated from the Greek by several hands, corrected and revised by W.W. Goodwin, Boston, 1878.
7. Quintilian, Education of an Orator. Translation by J.S. Watson (in Bohn's Library).

2. MODERN WORKS

These are very numerous; but the most comprehensive is Lorenz Grasberger's Erziehung und Unterricht im klassischen Alterthum, mit besonderer RÜcksicht auf die BedÜrfnisse der Gegenwart, WÜrzburg, 1864-81, 3 vols. The first volume deals with the physical training of boys, the second with their intellectual training, and the third with the education imparted by the State to young men (?f???). A volume of plates is promised. The work is badly constructed, but is a mine of information and of references.

Along with this may be named O.H. JÄger, Die Gymnastik der Hellenen, in ihrem Einfluss auf's gesammte Alterthum und ihrer Bedeutung fÜr die deutsche Gegenwart, Esslingen, 1850; Fournier, Sur l'Education et l'Instruction Publiques chez les Grecs, Berlin, 1833; Becq de FouquiÈre, Les Jeux des Anciens, Paris, 1869; De Pauw, Recherches Philosophiques sur les Grecs; Fr. Jacobs, Ueber die Erziehung der Hellenen zur Sittlichkeit, Vermischte Schr. Pt. III.; Albert Dumont, Essai sur l'EphÉbie Attique, Paris, 1876-6; Dittenberger, De Ephebis Atticis; Chr. Petersen, Das Gymnasium der Griechen nach seiner baulichen Einrichtung beschrieben, Hamburg, 1858; Alexander Kapp, Platon's Erziehungslehre, Minden, 1833, and Aristotle's StaatspÆdagogik, Hamm, 1837; J.H. Krause, Geschichte der Erziehung des Unterrichts und der Bildung bei den Griechen, Etruskern und RÖmern, Halle, 1851.

Chapters on Greek Education may be found in W.A. Becker's Charicles and Gallus; in Guhl and Koner's Life of the Greeks and Romans—all three translated into English. In Hellenica is an essay, by R.S. Nettleship, on the Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato, Rivington, 1880, and in Edwin Hatch's Influence of Greek Ideas upon the Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures) is a chapter on Greek Education (Lecture II).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is worth while to note that it was a passage from Philolaus that suggested to Copernicus the revolution of the earth round a centre.

[2] This is represented in the charming Apoxyomenos of the Vatican.

[3] So says Aristotle, who tells us further that in his time on this occasion they were presented with spear and shield by the people (see p. 97).

[4] I am here using the terms "objective" and "subjective" in their modern acceptation, which almost exactly inverts the ancient usage. See Martineau, Study of Religion, vol. i, p. 385, n. 2.

[5] Like "Peter Piper," etc., and the German "Messwechsel Wachsmaske."

[6] It must be borne in mind that the Greek t????, art, corresponds almost exactly to what we mean by "science." It is defined by Aristotle, Metaph., A. 1; 981 a 5 sqq. Schwegler, in his translation of the Metaphysics, renders it by Wissenschaft. ?p?st?? is our "philosophy."

[7] See Jebb, Homer, pp. 110 sqq.

[8] It is a pity that we cannot fix the date of the so-called Picture of Cebes (???t?? ???a?). In this we find enumerated the votaries of False Learning, (1) Poets, (2) Rhetoricians, (3) Dialecticians, (4) Musicians, (5) Arithmeticians, (6) Geometricians, (7) Astrologers (if we count Poets = Grammarians, we have exactly the Seven Liberal Arts), (8) Hedonists, (9) Peripatetics, (10) Critics, "and such others as are like to these." The "Hedonists" (?d??????) are the Cyrenaics; the "Critics" (???t????) can hardly be the grammarians, though that is usually the meaning of the term in later times. Should we not read ????????

[9] "Liberal" means fit, "illiberal" unfit, for freemen. The sum of the liberal arts was called ????????pa?de?a, which we have corrupted into EncyclopÆdia.

[10] Bonn, 1845.

[11] See Boissier, Étude sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de M.T. Varron, pp. 332, sqq.

[12] See Bekker's Anecdota GrÆca, ii., 655.

[13] I am indebted for a number of these facts to an article by Professor A.F. West, in the Princeton College Bulletin, November, 1890.

[14] These terms, which we still find in Isidore and Hrabanus Maurus, are afterwards, in the thirteenth century, replaced by their Latin equivalents: Natural, Rational, and Moral. In the case of the second, this caused considerable confusion, inasmuch as when it ceased to be used as "rational," it took the place of "dialectic."

[15] In the XXVIIIth Canto of the Paradise, these angelic powers are arranged somewhat differently, in deference to Dionysius Areopagita and St. Bernard.

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