Schools of Hellas

Schools of Hellas is an essay on the practice and theory of ancient Greek education. The introduction says the meeting-place of two streams has always a curious fascination for the traveller, and that to the student of history or of psychology the meeting-place of two civilisations has a similar charm. The text says any Spartan boys who flinched before the hardships of their national education lost their status and were disfranchised, if they did not persevere.

The text says that at seven the boys were taken away from home and organised in a most systematic way, and that the packs fed together, slept together on bundles of reeds for bedding, and played together. The text says the boys had to go barefoot always, and wore only a single garment summer and winter alike. The text says the duties of such an aristocracy did not consist in heaping up riches, that its members had a contempt for trade, and that their work was, in brief, to govern and to fight.