ÆOLIAN OR THEBAN EDUCATION

Hesiod is the teacher of most.—Heraclitus.

The Æolians appear to have been the earliest of the Greek races to make any considerable advance in culture. Their claim to Homer can hardly be sustained; but they certainly produced Hesiod, most of the greater lyric poets and poetesses, and the first historian. For a time they bade fair to lead the culture of Greece. But the promise was not fulfilled. During the palmy period of Greek history, they were not only the most uncultured and uncouth of the Greeks, but they even prided themselves upon their boorishness of speech and manner, and derided culture. In the glorious struggle in which Greece maintained the cause of culture and freedom against Persia, Thebes, then the chief centre of Æolianism, sided with the barbarian, as, indeed, was natural. Theban education was, of course, a reflex of the character of the Theban and, indeed, of the Boeotian, people. Its main divisions were those of Greek education generally,—Gymnastics and Music; but the former was learnt solely for athletic purposes, and the latter mainly for use at banquets and drinking-bouts, in which the Boeotians found their chief delight. Letters were studied as little as at Sparta (see p. 47), and the language of the people remained harsh and unmusical. Of higher education there was hardly a trace. The sophists passed Boeotia by. Even Pindar, who was by birth a Theban, and a sincerely patriotic one, sought and found recognition anywhere rather than among his own people. He did not even write in their dialect.

The reason for this backwardness on the part of the Boeotian Æolians lay in the fact that they lived, as a conquering race, in the midst of a people superior to them in every respect save strength, and could maintain their ascendency only by brute force. When this failed, and the conquered race, which had never forgotten Cadmus and its ancient traditions, came to the front, education and culture found their way even to Thebes. It was due to this change in political conditions that a Pindar could arise, and it was doubtless the demand for culture consequent thereupon that induced certain members of the scattered Pythagorean school (see p. 54) to seek refuge in Thebes and there devote themselves to teaching. Among these were Philolaus[1] and Lysis, the latter of whom was probably the author of the famous "Golden Words" (see p. 57). But he has a better claim to fame than this; for he was the teacher of the bravest and most lovable man that Greece ever produced—Epaminondas.

If any enthusiastic believer in the power of education desire to fortify his cause by means of a brilliant example, he will find none superior to Epaminondas; for there can hardly be any question that it was the earnest, systematic, religious, and moral Pythagorean training which he received from the aged Lysis, whom he treated as a father, that made him what he was, and enabled him to do what he did,—which was nothing less than to place Thebes at the head of Greece. Thebes rose and fell with Epaminondas. But that was not all. It was the example of Epaminondas that kindled the ambition of Philip of Macedon, who was educated under his eye, and of his far more famous son, Alexander, who made all Greece a province of his empire. Pythagoras, Lysis, Epaminondas, Philip, Alexander—in five brief generations an earnest teacher conquers a world!

From the time of Epaminondas on, Thebes followed the ordinary course of Greek education.