UNLOCKING ANCIENT ATHENS

Hello, my fellow gossipers, and welcome or welcome back to the Agora Gossip podcast. I’m your host, Freya, a lover of the classical world and all it has to offer. If you want to know about the world of ancient Athens, then you are precisely in the right place. From your marriages to your meals and your education to your occupation, I will tell you everything you need to know about the place the Athenians called home. Are you ready to take a deep dive into what life was like thousands of years ago? I hope so, because there is a lot to cover…

 

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Welcome to the first episode of Agora Gossip!

 

A little fact for those of you who are listening is that today actually marks one year since I graduated from the University of Birmingham, which, for those of you who don’t know, is where I did my undergraduate degree. So happy graduation-adversary to me! Reflecting on this got me thinking about how fortunate I have been to receive an education and how much I have learnt. It’s amazing to think about how much education has changed over time…from blackboards to smartboards, O-levels being replaced by GCSEs, and I mean, I was the first school year that had all our GCSE grades switch from letters to numbers, and I still couldn’t tell you if a 5 was a C or a B!

 

Besides all that, it also made me curious. If our schooling system has changed this much in a short amount of time, how much has it changed in the last couple of thousand? The short answer is…a lot. But we do share some similarities…

 

If you haven’t guessed by now, then today’s episode is all about education! So, if you want to know what it was like to be educated in ancient Athens for both boys and girl,s then keep on listening.

 

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In the modern day, even though, unfortunately, not everyone is receiving an equal education, we are beginning to see the disproportionate gap between the amount of girls and boys in school close. This is definitely an improvement from ancient Athens because back then, education most certainly wasn’t for everyone.

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Who received an education?

The traditional male education in ancient Athens was not compulsory. It was an exclusive rite that was reserved for the wealthy. In Plato’s work Protagoras, he writes that the three fields of traditional male education are only done by ‘who are most able; and the most able are the wealthiest. Their sons begin school at the earliest age, and are freed from it at the latest’.

 

The boy’s father would be in control of his son’s education. He would choose what subjects his son would study, find suitable teachers, and decide how long he would be in education for. The number of subjects a boy could study and how long he would learn for depended mostly on how wealthy his family was. This is because, as each subject was taught individually, you had to pay all three teachers which could cost a lot of money.

 

Also, in order to participate in each of these classes, you had to have time in your day, which is something the sons of wealthier families most likely had. The wealthy didn’t have to labour; they lived their days in luxury, therefore, they would have had the time to pursue various extra activities. This is something the poor just couldn’t afford, not only financially but in terms of time. Those who struggled for money would have had to work to support themselves, and they may not have had enough slaves to help the running of their businesses; therefore, they might have had to sacrifice educating their son to keep him at home to help out.

 

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What lessons did they learn?

In Plato’s work Laws, he suggests that boys should typically begin their education at around six years old. He states that ‘after the age of six each sex shall be kept separate, boys spending their time with boys, and likewise girls with girls’. He also goes on to say what he believes to be the first activities of education, he says that boys ‘must go to teachers of riding, archery, javelin-throwing and slinging, and the girls also, if they agree to it, must share in the lessons’.

 

The traditional male education consisted of three subject areas: music, letters, and physical education. Each subject was taught by a different teacher that specialised in that area. Music (or mousike) was taught by a kitharistes, they taught their students how to sing various poems and how to play the kithara, which was kind of like a lyre. Whilst learning the ability to read and write, and learn physical education was illustrative of having useful and knowledgeable skills, learning music showed you had artistic and cultural skills as well.

 

As I mentioned earlier, since education was not compulsory, the boy’s father basically decided what lessons he wanted to put his son into. If they could afford it and a father wanted his son to learn everything, he would do all three, but if the family couldn’t afford to pay all three teachers or perhaps the father didn’t want his son learning a specific lesson, he didn’t have to do them all. Frederick Beck argues that if a father had to decide what lesson to have his son miss out on, it was most likely to be music. Therefore, that’s why not being able to sing or play the kithara was a signal of low status because it showed you couldn’t afford to pay for all three lessons.

 

Physical education (or gumnastike) was taught by a paidotribēs. He was meant to be the subject matter expert and be able to decide what training exercises were the best for each boy he taught. They taught their students in the palaestra, which was a wrestling school and training area that was equipped with all the correct apparatus for the boys to use. They would also carry a y-shaped stick to remind his students why he was there and that he had the ability to punish them if they misbehaved.

 

Letters (or grammata) was taught by grammatistes, they taught their students literacy, and perhaps also numeracy. Students mostly began with the basics, such as learning the alphabet. They were often tested on their progress, kind of like how we might have had a spelling test when we were at school. Teachers wanted to make sure their students were actually learning something! Once the basics were mastered, the lessons got a bit trickier, and attention was turned to teaching students how to read passages from the works of epic poets, such as Homer. However, despite being taught all of this, in classical Athens, emphasis was placed not so much on teaching the boys practical skills but more so how to be a virtuous man. It was believed that these lessons complemented each other and learning these lessons would balance boys out and help them to become morally good citizens.

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The Paidagogos

The literal translation of paidagogos is ‘leader and conductor of children’. The first recorded mention of the paidagogos is in Herodotus’ work The Histories. He writes, ‘Themistocles secretly left the assembly, and sent a man by boat to the Median fleet after ordering him what to say. His name was Sicinnus, and he was Themistocles’ servant and his sons’ attendant’.

 

Boys were taken to their lessons by the paidagogos, who was employed by the boy’s family to look after him whilst they were out and make sure he obeyed the rules and didn’t get into any trouble. Kind of like having a childminder with you at all times! Even though technically the paidagogos was a slave, they were viewed as a member of the family they served. Unlike the teachers of letters, music, and physical education, the paidagogos was with their assigned child all day. They therefore became very important in their upbringing and helped to shape their overall moral character.

 

We also see mentions of the paidagogos in several famous ancient Athenian plays, for example, Euripides’ tragedy Electra. The paidagogos is the one who saves Orestes from being killed by his mother Clytemnestra.

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Female education

Now we’ve covered what education looked like for boys, let’s turn our attention to the girls. Straight off the bat, I can tell you that the difference between their education and that of the boys is quite strong.

 

Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the education of girls, but what we do know is that typically, girls were raised to become housewives. They were taught how to look after their future children and be a good mother, how to clean their house, and how to cook. Unlike the boys who went to school and were physically taught how to do something, girls learnt through the art of observation. Daughters followed their mothers around and mimicked their actions in the hopes that they would begin to naturally assume their eventual motherly role.

 

Similarly to the boys, a girl's education most likely began when she was around six years old because this marked the time when boys and girls were begun to be treated differently and they began to assume the roles they would have for the rest of their lives. Whilst the boys went to school, typically the girls stayed at home with their mothers, until they got married, and then they would live with their new husband.

 

Apart from following their mothers around like a shadow, girls were taught a few specific lessons which were all designed to assist them in becoming a morally good woman. They were taught how to be restrained when consuming food and drink, and how to be a loyal and obedient wife. They were also taught physical lessons, such as the art of weaving, spinning, and cooking. Being able to weave was not only a duty of women but it was a sign she had good moral values. Women weaving is written about a lot in Homer’s works The Odyssey and the Iliad, it’s something done by both mortals and goddesses.

 

However, there are various archaeological finds that do indicate to us that, actually, girls weren’t confined to their homes, learning how to cook and weave, some girls did go to lessons. For example, there are vases depicting girls being taken to school by other women, holding learning apparatus, and there’s a dice-box which shows girls being taught how to dance. So perhaps some girls were given the opportunity to learn, but it’s most likely something that was only reserved for the wealthy.

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So that concludes the first episode of Agora Gossip! Well, we definitely share some similarities with the ancient Athenian education, such as learning literacy and numeracy, music, and physical education. Although I must say I am so glad PE teachers no longer carry around a forked stick with them, that would have been pretty scary on sports day when I didn’t want to do the 800-metre dash!

 

Education for some ancient Athenians didn’t just stop there, though. After they had finished learning, there were opportunities for some students to go on to a form of higher education. If you would like me to do another episode on this, then please let me know! Or perhaps you might wonder how other places in ancient Greece interpreted the education system, such as the Spartans? I can tell you almost instantly that their learning methods were vastly different!

 

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and I will see you next time, my fellow gossipers!