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Book II Chapter 31

Chapter 31

On Upbringing and Education.¹⁰⁶⁵

Euripides, from Hecuba

A good upbringing also, ⟨you know⟩, teaches something of goodness;¹⁰⁶⁶ and whoever learns this well recognizes what is shameful, having learned by the standard of what is noble.¹⁰⁶⁷

From the same author

While still a boy, keep clear of shameful deeds; for one who is not badly brought up is ashamed, once a man, to do shameful things.¹⁰⁶⁸ But when someone commits many wrongs in youth, he carries that fault into old age, rooted in his very character.¹⁰⁶⁹

Euripides, from Suppliants

For an upbringing that is not bad brings a sense of shame; every man who has practiced goodness is ashamed to be called bad. Manly courage is teachable,¹⁰⁷⁰ if even little children are taught to speak and listen, things whose learning is a matter of speech. What someone learns tends to be preserved into old age. So educate your children well.¹⁰⁷¹

Euripides, from Daughters of Pelias

For the man you associate with, if he happens to be bad, trains his companions to be like himself; while a good man trains them to be good. So, young men, make it your concern to seek out noble company.¹⁰⁷²

Sophocles

Since all that concerns the god has been well done,¹⁰⁷³ let us go now, children, to the wise men’s schools of music. For one must always gain instruction day by day, ⟨and⟩ as long as one can, learn better things.¹⁰⁷⁴ A child, after all, knows how to do something bad at no cost, learning it from himself without toil; but good things, even if he gets a teacher, he has not kept in mind; he barely makes them his own. Let us therefore guard against this and labor, children, so that we may neither seem to be among uneducated mortals, with a father at home * * *¹⁰⁷⁵

Empedocles

But come, listen to my words: learning makes the mind grow.¹⁰⁷⁶

Sophocles, from Ajax

For those poor in judgment, though they hold a good thing in their hands, do not recognize it until someone casts it away.¹⁰⁷⁷

Euripides, from Hippolytus

O humans, who make so many errors in vain,¹⁰⁷⁸ why do you teach countless arts and devise and discover everything, yet not know one thing, nor have yet hunted it down: to teach good judgment to those who have no sense?¹⁰⁷⁹

Antiphanes

For being truly educated, if one has only this,¹⁰⁸⁰ also means not to exact the deserved penalties for ⟨the⟩ wrongs, but to show mercy in every case.¹⁰⁸¹

Proverb

Practice, with time, becomes nature.¹⁰⁸²

Alexis

Child, bringing you up properly is my greatest contribution;¹⁰⁸³ for what I myself received from my father I must repay to you.¹⁰⁸⁴

Aristophanes, from Clouds

[Stronger Argument] I will explain how education was arranged in the old days, when I flourished by speaking what was just, and temperance was the rule.¹⁰⁸⁵ First, no one was to hear a boy’s voice—not even a grunt; then the boys of each district had to walk in orderly groups along the streets to the kithara teacher’s, lightly clad, even if snow fell thick as meal.¹⁰⁸⁶ Next he taught them to learn a song, ⟨not⟩ pressing their thighs together: either “Dread Pallas, sacker of cities,” or “Some far-traveling cry,” putting their voices to the mode their fathers had handed down.¹⁰⁸⁷

The Stronger Argument continued

If any of them played the buffoon or twisted one of those twists the moderns use in Phrynis’s style, those hard-to-twist twists, he was thrashed with many blows for torturing the Muses.¹⁰⁸⁸ When sitting at the physical trainer’s, the boys had to extend a thigh so that they showed onlookers nothing indecent; then, getting up again, they had to smooth the surface and take care not to leave their lovers an impression of their pubic parts.¹⁰⁸⁹ No boy then would anoint himself below the navel, so that dew and down bloomed on his genitals as on fruit.¹⁰⁹⁰

1065.Ἀγωγή is upbringing or the guidance through which character is formed; παιδεία is education or training in a broader sense than formal schooling. Surviving excerpts resume here after the preserved headings and missing-text notices of Chapters 16–30.

1066.Hecuba 600–602. The supplied particle ⟨τοι⟩, which addresses or assures the listener, is marked as ⟨you know⟩. In the play Hecuba reflects on character and upbringing after hearing of Polyxena’s courageous death. The anthology selects these three verses from her speech.

1067.Κανών is a rule or measuring standard. What is noble, τὸ καλόν, supplies the standard by which the shameful, τὸ αἰσχρόν, is recognized. The educational comparison concerns moral discrimination; it does not turn the isolated verses into an exhaustive statement of Euripides’s own views.

1068.The same author refers to Euripides. Wachsmuth cites fragment 926 in Nauck’s numbering without naming a play. The Greek has μὴ κακῶς, not badly: good upbringing fosters reluctance to do shameful things in adulthood. Neither a particular speaker nor a lost dramatic setting is supplied.

1069.The closing phrase αὐτοῖς τοῖς τρόποισιν means in the very dispositions or traits of character. Repeated wrongdoing in youth is described as taking root and persisting into old age. The noun ἁμαρτία here is fault or wrongdoing; a later technical or theological meaning is not imposed.

1070.Suppliants 911–917. Αἰδώς is a sense of shame or moral regard; εὐανδρία is manly excellence or courage. The passage follows Adrastus’s praise of Tydeus, already excerpted at II.15.2. The argument connects practiced goodness, concern about a bad name, and the possibility of teaching courage.

1071.The local phrase ὧν μάθησις ἐν λόγῳ, whose learning is a matter of speech, is difficult. It is retained with its reference to learning to speak and listen, rather than replaced by the different wording of the separate play. Βρέφη means infants or very young children. The conclusion stresses the persistence of what is learned into old age.

1072.The same-author heading continues the attribution to Euripides and names his lost Daughters of Pelias, Πελιάδες; Wachsmuth cites fragment 612 in Nauck’s numbering. Association is itself treated as education: a companion forms those around him after his own character. The excerpt supplies no identifiable dramatic speaker.

1073.The heading attributes these verses to Sophocles; Wachsmuth cites fragment 736 in Nauck’s numbering. His apparatus records Nauck’s doubts about the attribution and Meineke’s response. No play or particular dramatic speaker is named here.

1074.Μουσική can include poetic and musical education; παιδεύματα are lessons or training. Supplied ⟨τ’⟩ is marked as ⟨and⟩. The following contrast pictures bad conduct as freely acquired through self-teaching without toil, but good conduct as difficult to remember and make one’s own.

1075.The final μήτ’, neither, anticipates an unfinished paired construction. The printed κατοδημοῦντος πατρός means a father being at home or in residence. Wachsmuth marks a gap immediately afterward; its extent and the missing continuation are not supplied.

1076.Wachsmuth cites verse 74 in Stein’s numbering. Μῦθοι here are spoken words or an account; φρένες denotes the mental faculties. The verse connects listening and learning with the growth of understanding.

1077.Ajax 964–965. Tecmessa speaks after Ajax’s death. In the preceding verses she says that those rejoicing over him may mourn his loss when they need his spear. The good held but unrecognized is illustrated by Ajax’s military service; the anthology gives only the general maxim.

1078.Hippolytus 916–920. Theseus speaks to Hippolytus after Phaedra’s death and her accusation against him. He wrongly thinks his innocent son guilty; the angry complaint therefore belongs to a dramatic misjudgment. The anthology selects these five verses from their exchange.

1079.Τέχναι are teachable skills or arts. Φρονεῖν is to exercise understanding or sound judgment, and νοῦς is understanding. The one thing missing is the ability to teach good judgment to those who lack it; the question contrasts this failure with the many arts people already teach.

1080.The heading names Antiphanes without identifying a play or speaker. The opening is compressed, especially the parenthesis if one has only this. Wachsmuth retains ἀληθές, true, while recording its disputed status. The English preserves the claim about true education without replacing the adjective by a proposed alternative or supplying a lost comic context.

1081.Supplied ⟨τῶν⟩ is marked as ⟨the⟩. Here taking the penalties is understood as exacting punishment, in contrast with showing mercy. The excerpt does not restrict its wrongs to a particular kind or reduce πάντως, in every case, to an occasional recommendation. Its isolated comic voice should not simply be treated as Antiphanes’s personal doctrine.

1082.Μελέτη is practice or repeated exercise, and χρονισθεῖσα indicates its continuation over time. Nature renders φύσις: the line describes an acquired practice becoming settled in someone. The source labels it a proverb, rather than attributing it here to a named tragedian. The same verse occurs at II.7.11m.1, supporting the reported view that training can contribute to aptitude for virtue.

1083.Alexis is named without a play or dramatic speaker. Ἔρανος can mean a contribution, a loan, or a favor to be returned; here it supplies a financial image for upbringing. Κατὰ τρόπον means properly or in the fitting manner. The metaphor does not establish the details of a legal loan.

1084.The recipient of the repayment is the child addressed, σοί, not the speaker’s own father. What the speaker received from that father is returned through care for the next generation. The shift of recipient is part of the verse’s image, rather than a debt the child is being asked to repay.

1085.Clouds 961–1008. The personified Stronger, or Just, Argument defends older education against the Weaker, or Unjust, Argument in a contest over Pheidippides’s training. Speaker labels and continuation headings are editorial. These are rival comic voices, not an unqualified statement of Aristophanes’s own educational program.

1086.Γυμνούς can mean naked or lightly clad, including wearing only a tunic without a mantle. Here the walk through winter weather stresses hardiness; complete street nudity is not required by the word. The later scene at the physical trainer’s has a different setting.

1087.The quoted phrases are openings of songs. Ἁρμονία is the musical mode or melodic arrangement handed down from the fathers. Supplied ⟨μή⟩ is rendered ⟨not⟩; the instruction explicitly keeps the thighs apart. The verse joins traditional music to disciplined bodily posture.

1088.The repeated καμπ- words parody elaborate melodic turns associated here with Phrynis. The local reading βασανίζων, torturing the Muses, is retained. The joke treats musical novelty as an injury to the Muses and answers it with physical punishment.

1089.Training in the gymnasium involved male nudity. The bodily imprint is to be smoothed away from the surface on which the boys sat; ἥβη, youth or puberty, here indicates the pubic region. The ἐρασταί are adult male lovers in the pederastic setting. The speaker’s ideal of modesty includes managing what those lovers can see.

1090.The imagery of dew and down compares the natural covering of the pubic region to the bloom on fruit. Μῆλα can denote apples or other tree-fruit. The speech’s praise of sexual restraint itself employs erotic imagery, a tension that belongs to the comedy.