DOCUMENT 4

Athenian Education

The training an Athenian received depended on social and economic status. About a week after being born, a male child received a name and was enrolled as a citizen. Because Athens expected every citizen to hold public office at some time in his life, it required Athenian citizens to educate their sons. With few exceptions, Athenian girls – who would not participate in governing the democracy of Athens- did not receive a formal education. Instead, a girl learned household duties, such as weaving and baking, from her mother.

Private tutors educated the boys from wealthy upper-class families, while other students paid a small fee to attend a private school. Much of their education was picked up in the agora, through daily conversations and debates in the Assembly.

Athenian boys entered school at age 7 and graduated at age 18. Their main textbooks were the Iliad and the Odyssey, and students learned each epic by heart. They studied arithmetic, geometry, drawing, and music in the morning and gymnastics in the afternoon. When boys reached their teens, they added rhetoric, or the art of public speaking, to their studies. Because lawyers did not represent participants in a court case, an Athenian needed to be accomplished in rhetoric to argue his own position.

When young Athenian men reached 18, they left for two years of military service. Before entering the army, however, they went with their fathers to the temple of Zeus, where they swore the following oath:

“I will not bring dishonor upon my weapons nor desert the comrade by my side. I will strive to hand on my fatherland greater and better than I found it. I will not consent to anyone’s disobeying or destroying the constitution by will prevent him, whether I am with others or alone. I will honor the temples and the religion my forefathers established.”

-Oath of enrollment in Epheboi corps,

Early 400 BCE

Use these questions to help you add to your chart.

  1. What was education like for girls? What did they learn?
  2. How long did Athenian boys attend school?
  3. What were their textbooks? Why do you think they used these?
  4. What subjects did they study?
  5. How did their time in the military differ from that of Sparta?
  6. What values are reflected in the oath?
  7. In contrast to the Spartans, how did Athenians spend most of their youth?
  8. If you had to summarize the values of Athenians based on their education, what three values do they hold most dear?

Excerpt (not questions) from World History: the Human Experience