[*]No doubt frequently the pedagogue would be an old family servant of good morals, loyalty, and zeal.  In that case the relation might be delightful.

The assigning of the pedagogue is simultaneous with the beginning of school days; and the Athenians are not open to the charge of letting their children waste their time during possible study hours.  As early as Solon’s day (about 590 B.C.) a law had to be passed forbidding schools to open before daybreak, or to be kept open after dusk.  This was in the interest not of good eyesight, but of good morals.  Evidently schools had been keeping even longer than through the daylight.  In any case, at gray dawn every yawning schoolboy is off, urged on by his pedagogue, and his tasks will continue with very little interruption through the entire day.  It is therefore with reason that the Athenian lads rejoice in the very numerous religious holidays.

54.  An Athenian School.—­Leaving the worthy citizen’s home, where we have lingered long chatting on many of the topics the house and its denizens suggest, we will turn again to the streets to seek the school where one of the young sons of the family has been duly conducted (possibly, one may say, driven) by his pedagogue.  We have not far to go.  Athenian schools have to be numerous, because they are small.  To teach children of the poorer classes it is enough to have a modest room and a few stools; an unrented shop will answer.  But we will go to a more pretentious establishment.  There is an anteroom by the entrance way where the pedagogues can sit and doze or exchange gossip while their respective charges are kept busy in the larger room within.  The latter place, however, is not particularly commodious.  On the bare wall hang book-rolls, lyres, drinking vessels, baskets for books, and perhaps some simple geometric instruments.  The pupils sit on rude, low benches, each lad with his boxwood tablet covered with wax[*] upon his lap, and presumably busy, scratching letters with his stylus.  The master sits on a high chair, surveying the scene.  He cultivates a grim and awful aspect, for he is under no delusion that “his pupils love him.”  “He sits aloft,” we are told, “like a juryman, with an expression of implacable wrath, before which the pupil must tremble and cringe."[+]

[*]This wax tablet was practically a slate.  The letters written could be erased with the blunt upper end of the metallic stylus, and the whole surface of the tablet could be made smooth again by a judicious heating.

[+]The quotation is from the late writer Libanius, but it is perfectly true for classic Athens.