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The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The compensation of musicians, and of theatrical performers, was very high. Amœbeus, a singer of ancient Athens, received every time he sang in public, an Attic talent. That the players on the flute demanded a high price for their services, is well known. In a Corcyræan inscription, a late one indeed, but executed before the dominion of the Romans was established in that island, fifty Corinthian minæ were designated as the compensation, beside their expensive maintenance, for the services of three players on the flute, three tragedians, and three comedians at the celebration of a festival. The compensation of distinguished theatrical performers was not less, although, beside the period of their engagement at Athens, they earned large sums in travelling, and performing at the various cities and places on their route. For example, Polus or Aristodemus is said to have earned a talent in two days, or even in one day, or for performing in a single drama. All these artists received, in addition, prizes of victory. Also common itinerant theatrical performers, jugglers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, enjoyed a competency; although the sum paid by the individual spectator was small, a few chalci, or oboli, but sometimes even a drachma. The custom of paying fees for apprenticeship to the trades and arts, and also to the medical profession, was established even in the time of Socrates. For a part of the instruction in music, and for athletic exercises, it was the duty of the tribes in Athens to provide. Each tribe had its own teachers, whose lessons the youth of the whole tribe attended. In the other schools each individual paid for his instruction; we know not how much. The legislation of Charondas, in which the salaries of the teachers are said to have been permanently established, would have made an exception, if the laws from which Diodorus derived his information, had not been fictitious.
The teachers of wisdom and eloquence, or sophists, were not paid by the state until later times. But in earlier periods, they required large sums from their scholars. In this they imitated the mercenary lyric poets, whose inspiration frequently slumbered until incited by gold. Protagoras of Abdera is said to have been the first who taught for money. He required from each scholar, for a complete course of instruction, an hundred minæ (£350 or $1750). Gorgias asked the same price, and yet his property at his death amounted to only one thousand staters. Zeno of Elea, in other respects unlike the sophists, required the same amount. Since the price for teaching wisdom was so high, it was natural that there should be chaffering about it, and that an agreement upon reasonable terms should be sought. Hippias earned, while yet a young man, in connection with Protagoras, in a short time, 150 minæ. Even from a small city he earned more than twenty minæ, not by long courses of lessons, as it seems, but by a shorter method of proceeding. But gradually the increased number of teachers reduced the price. Evenus of Paros, as early as the time of Socrates, required, to the general derision, only ten minæ (£35 or $175); while for the same sum Isocrates taught the whole art of oratory. And this appears to have been in the age of Lycurgus, the usual honorary of a teacher of eloquence. At length the Socratic philosophers found it convenient to teach for a compensation. Aristippus was the first who did so. Moreover, payment was also sometimes required from each auditor for single discourses, as, for example, by Prodicus, one, two, four, to fifty drachmæ. Antiphon was the first who wrote speeches and orations for money. He required high prices for them.b
SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, AND BOOKS
It is remarkable that the frequent notices which occur of schoolmasters and their schools, supply so little clear information as to the habits or social position of this important part of the community; nor does it appear whether they were a distinct class, or merely a lower grade of sophists or rhetors. They seem, however, to have belonged to the upper rank of citizens in some states, and to have been received in the best circles. Such as they were, the lessons they taught were limited to the Greek tongue. Instruction in foreign languages was never esteemed in Greece either a necessary or an important branch of general education. This is a peculiarity which forms also a signal defect of Greek culture as compared with that of modern times.
In Athens, and probably in other Greek republics, every citizen was under at least a moral obligation to provide his sons with a competent knowledge of letters. The discipline of the schools was also under state control. Yet the government nowhere seems to have provided or maintained them, or to have appointed or paid the schoolmasters, whose livelihood depended on the fees of their pupils. The amount of those fees has not been recorded. But more distinct notices have been transmitted of the charges made by literary professors of the higher class. The fees said to have been paid for a course of instruction to some of the earlier and more distinguished sophists and philosophers are so extravagant as to be scarcely credible, even when attested, as they are in some instances, by the best contemporaneous authority. Protagoras is taunted by Plato as the first professor of the higher branches of learning who taught for hire. If this imputation be well founded, his older contemporaries, Zeno and Gorgias, must have been speedily led to follow his example: for Zeno is said by Plato himself to have been paid 100 minæ, or upwards of £400 [$2000], by each disciple, for a course of lectures; and Gorgias also to have been richly remunerated by his pupils. The fees of both Protagoras and Gorgias are rated by other authorities at the same amount as those of Zeno. This sum, taking into account the high value of the precious metals in ancient times, would be equal to about £2000, or $10,000. But prices were afterwards greatly reduced, as the number of professors increased, and the former blind veneration for their magic powers of communicating knowledge, or for the value of the knowledge communicated, declined. Isocrates, the younger contemporary of Protagoras, and probably the better master of the two, was satisfied with ten minæ [£40 or $200] for the course; which sum seems afterwards to have remained the ordinary rate of payment.
No distinct notice occurs of the existence, during the Attic period, either at Athens or elsewhere, of a public library, in the familiar sense of a miscellaneous collection of books for the use of the citizens; although, as in the time of Pisistratus, standard editions of the popular works recited at public solemnities, and more especially of the dramas of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, were preserved at Athens under the charge of the city clerk. Private libraries had, however, already become sufficiently voluminous or curious to merit being specially recorded. Such were those of Euripides, the poet, and of Plato, part of whose collection was purchased at Tarentum, in Italy, from the heirs of its former proprietor, Philolaus, and another part at Syracuse; those of Euthydemus mentioned by Xenophon, of Aristotle, of Nicocrates of Cyprus, and of the Athenian archon, Euclides. The varied character of the works stored in the library of a literary professor, towards the close of this period, is illustrated by a scene in a comedy of Alexis, the humour of which turns on the gluttony of Hercules, a hero habitually burlesqued for that failing in Greek satirical literature. The youthful demigod, when directed by his master, the poet Linus, to select the book he preferred from his preceptor’s collection,—described as containing the poems of Homer, Orpheus, Hesiod, Chœrilus, Epicharmus, the tragedians, and the popular prose classics,—makes choice of a cookery book.
That books of all kinds, then commonly in use, abounded during the greater part of the Attic period appears, not only from the general familiarity which the educated ranks possessed with the text of the national classics, but still more from the absence of any allusion to a scarcity of copies as interposing a serious obstacle to the attainment of such knowledge. The book trade, as a distinct branch of commerce, seems indeed to have been still limited, as in truth it was, comparatively, in every age prior to the invention of printing; and remained, probably in a great measure, in the hands of professional copyists.