LONG SEASONS OF STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE

After they left the freedom of the nursery, Athenian children were strictly reared. Plato recorded Protagoras' words: "Mother and nurse and father and tutor are vying with one another about the improvement of the child as soon as ever he is able to understand what is being said to him... If he obeys, well and good; if not, he is straightened by threats and blows, like a piece of bent or warped wood." From their seventh to 18th years, boys at

Tended private schools, often under the guard of a slave. In daily classes, sometimes held in the open streets by harassed schoolmasters who were publicly disdained and often unpaid, students learned reading, writing, arithmetic, poetry and music. Paradoxically, these institutions came into existence because the law required parents to educate their sons but did not require the state to provide schools —and they became the best in the classical world.

A BOY FISHERMAN IS intently playing a fish that is nibbling on his line (right). He may have beeti playing hooky from the classroom, but an overflowing creel might well calm his displeased parents.

IN THE CLASSROOM two scholars (below), in front of their seated teachers, learn to play the pipes and to write. At the right sits the pedagogue, an elderly slave who brings the student to school.

A SIMPLE MEAL, suc/i fls might have been prepared by the wife of a humble Athenian 2,400 years ago, is displayed on the opposite page. The tableware and utensils date from the Fifth Century B. C. Spread out are leeks, olives, cheese, fish, bread, drinking mugs, flasks for oil and vinegar, and a stone grinder in a round bowl. High in the background is the Acropolis. Athenians usually ate little or no breakfast, a light lunch and then, in late afternoon, consumed a heavier dinner.