From a Kulix by Euphronios, now in the Louvre. Hartwig’s _Meisterschalen_, Plate 53.]
[680] The characteristics are sketched in Thuc. i. 70. Cp. the difference between Florence and Venice in Renaissance Italy.
[681] See also Thuc. i. 6; Athen. 512 B.C.
[682] No doubt all the theorists had a fatal temptation to judge the harmony by the opinion which they held of the race which produced it. The Lydian may have recovered prestige during the fourth century, for it included Karian, and Karia became a great power under Mausolos.
[684] It is the only true Hellenic harmony (Plato, _Lach._ 188 D).
[685] Plato’s opinion of the harmonies is in _Rep._ 398-399. Aristotle, who professes only to summarise the views of experts, discusses them in _Pol._ viii. 7.
[686] Plato apparently accepts this principle with regard to the Korubantic dances (_Laws_, 790 D).
[688] Pind. _P._ 5. 60-63. Cp. the story of Saul and David.
[693] Londoners must devoutly hope that the Hellenic theory is false.
[696] A poetical education probably develops the imagination at the expense of the logical mind. Plato is a good instance of this: his imagination, against his will, outweighs his reason. It may be this personal experience which gives so much bitterness to his attack on poetry.
[698] Children have a natural tendency to act, and need little inducement or instruction.
[700] So in the later Renaissance the “Madonna” is the artist’s wife.
[703] Ionicism = Herakleiteanism, πάντα ῥεῖ [panta rhei]. Doricism = Parmenideanism, τὸ πᾶν μένει [to pan menei].
[704] Plato, _Gorg._ 501-502; _Polit._ 288 C.
[708] The essence of dancing is that it is _orderly_ movement; of singing that it is _orderly_ sound (_Laws_, 654).
[712] Consequently the painter and the poet are, in Plato’s opinion, allies of the Sophist.
[713] This is true, in a less degree, of the audience. Cp. Plutarch’s account of the Spartans (_Lac. Inst._ 239 A): “They did not listen to tragedies or comedies, in order that neither in earnest nor in jest they might hear men gainsaying the laws.”
[715] Plato holds that no one likes to imitate his inferiors; so the good man will not care to imitate any but the good. He ascribes this attitude to the Deity.
The central figure in many parishes in England is a retired Major-General or Colonel. He constitutes the chief pillar of the neighbouring church, reads the Lessons on Sundays, teaches in the Sunday School, gives away the prizes at School-treats held in his own grounds, and heads every subscription list; while his leisure is given to the compilation of a military memoir or two, and perhaps, if he is very literary, of a few short stories. Just such a man was Xenophon. On retiring from active service, he withdrew to the little village of Skillous in Elis, where he owned a house and a park. The whole country swarmed with fish and game, so that he and his sons could have as much hunting as they pleased. Guests were numerous, for past his gates ran the great high-road from Lakedaimon to Olympia. In his grounds he built a chapel to Artemis, the expenses being defrayed from a tithe of the spoils he had taken in the heart of the Persian Empire. The tenth of the produce of his land was paid to the goddess, and once a year he gave a great sacrificial feast in her honour, to which all the neighbours were invited. In this way the retired General lived for twenty years, devoted to his religion, his hunting, and the composition of his books. Having two sons of his own, he naturally gave some attention to the problems of education. His treatise on the constitution of Lakedaimon is simply a sketch of the Spartan school system, no doubt intended for his boys, who were brought up at Sparta. A curious passage in his _Economics_[716] shows that he considered the most effective mode of teaching to be a series of appeals, by means of question and answer, to personal observation and common-sense. Ischomachos asks Sokrates whether he knows how to plant trees. Sokrates at first replies “No,” but when he is questioned point by point, whether on his excursions to Lukabettos, he has noticed the depth of the trenches in the orchards, and some similar details, and when his common-sense has shown him that plants grow quicker through soft than through hard soil, he finds that he is an expert nurseryman, and decides that questioning must be the way to teach.
