“This education,” he goes on, “produced a good chest, sound complexion, broad shoulders, small tongue; the new style produces pale faces, small shoulders, narrow chest, and long tongue, and makes the boy confuse Honour with Dishonour: it fills the Baths, empties the Palaistra.”
The next witness to be called is Isokrates. He is somewhat prejudiced by his dream of restoring the Areiopagos to its old power, but he is an educational expert and his evidence is supported by that of many others. In the days when the Areiopagos had the superintendence of morals, he says,[196] “the young did not spend their time in the gambling dens, and with flute-girls and company of that sort, as they do now, but they remained true to the manner of life which was laid down for them.… They avoided the Agora so much, that, if ever they were compelled to pass through it, they did so with obvious modesty and self-control. To contradict or insult an elder was at that time considered a worse offence than ill-treatment of parents is considered now. To eat or drink in a tavern was a thing that not even a self-respecting servant would think of doing then; for they practised good manners, not vulgarity.”
Call Plato next.[197] “In a democratic state the schoolmaster is afraid of his pupils and flatters them, and the pupils despise both schoolmaster and paidagogos. The young expect the same treatment as the old, and contradict them and quarrel with them. In fact, seniors have to flatter their juniors, in order not to be thought morose old dotards.”
The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. The old regime had strictly forbidden luxury. Warm baths had been regarded as unmanly, and were even coupled with drunkenness by Hermippos.[198] The boys had only worn a single garment, the sleeveless chiton, a custom which survived till late times in Sparta and Crete; but at Athens they began to wear the ἱμάτιον [himation] or overcoat as well. Xenophon, blaming parents “in the rest of Hellas” (_i.e._ elsewhere than in Sparta), says: “They make their boy’s feet soft by giving him shoes, and pamper his body with changes of clothes; they also allow him as much food as his stomach can contain.”[199] Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters. Alkibiades even smacked a literature-master. A similar change came over the position of children in England during the latter half of the nineteenth century. If Maria Edgeworth could have met a modern child, she would have uttered quite Aristophanic diatribes against the decay of good manners.