A History Of Education In Antiquity (Wisconsin Studies in Classics) [Paperback]

H.I. Marrou (Author), George Lamb (Translator)

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Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 488 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (April 15, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299088146
• ISBN-13: 978-0299088149
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #628,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Massive Scholarly Undertaking, January 20, 2005

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History Of Education In Antiquity (Wisconsin Studies in Classics) (Paperback)

This book is a massive scholarly overview of education in ancient Greek, Roman, and early Christian cultures, from 1000BC to 500AD. It is divided into 3 main sections: Origins of Classical Education from Homer to Isocrates, Classical Education in the Hellenistic Age, and Classical Education and Rome. The first section describes Greek education from very early times, going as far back as Homer. This section includes discussion of Spartan education and the role of military training and sport in education, pederasty in early Greek education, and education at the time of Plato and Isocrates. The second section explores classical Greek education in greater detail, focusing on the subjects that were studied, namely, physical education, artistic education (especially music and rhetoric), and science. It also discusses educational institutions, primary schools, secondary schools, and higher education. We learn about methods of teaching reading in ancient Greece, classroom atmosphere and discipline, and the lowly station of teachers in Greek society.

In the third section, Marrou details how Greek methods and topics of education were adopted by Roman society, with some differences and modifications. For example, the Romans had very little use for physical education, whereas physical education had formed a core element of Greek education. Another difference was the status given to teachers; in Roman society, teachers were well-respected and many used the teaching profession as a stepping stone to gain high political appointments. Paralleling the topics of the second section, this section includes information about the subject areas studied and the institutions were education took place. This section also includes shorter descriptions of topics, institutions, and methods of education during early Christian times, Byzantine education, and monastic education up to the Carolingian Renaissance.

This is a massive scholarly undertaking. Ancient sources are analyzed throughout the text; footnotes referring to these sources appear on almost every page. End material includes a large section of additional notes, references, and an index. The book contains information about an enormous range of topics, from the origins of rhetoric, to the ancient Greek modes in music, to rules of ancient Greek wrestling and the first Olympic games. In his introduction, Marrou makes some general observations about education that are well worth pondering, "Education is a collective technique which a society employs to instruct is youth in the values and accomplishments of the civilization within which it exists....A civilization must achieve its true form before it can create the education in which it is reflected." He discusses the education of girls as well as boys.

The book is not easy reading. The text is sprinkled liberally with Greek words that are neither translated nor transliterated-a basic familiarity with the Greek alphabet would be a very useful asset for readers of this book. Marrou also assumes that the reader has a thorough grounding in classical literature and the history of the ancient Greeks. Sentences like "Everyone knows the set-back which Plato's ambition received from the final defeat of the reactionary aristocracy to which he belonged" abound in this book. If you are a little hazy on the details of Plato's ambitions, or have perhaps never even heard of them, you may have a tough time getting through this text because Marrou doesn't slow down to explain. Marrou's style of writing is very much in accordance with European academic style; that is, he peppers the text with numerous factoids that have little bearing on the main points but serve mainly to show that his knowledge of this topic and related ones goes far beyond what he has chosen to focus on here. This style can be somewhat annoying for readers more used to straight-forward writing. Nevertheless, the book is so informative that even casual readers are bound to find something of interest in it.

11 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Historic Work Of History, July 21, 2003

By 

Colin McLarty (Chardon, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History Of Education In Antiquity (Wisconsin Studies in Classics) (Paperback)

Walk down the Boulevard St. Michel in Paris, past walls pitted with bullet holes, marked by plaques commemorating Resistance fighters from WW II. Stop on a stone bench beneath the massive stone walls of the Sorbonne. Or take the narrow streets up to the Pantheon temple to the great men of France (the first woman elected to it was Marie Curie in 1995). Who lived in this already-ancient and recently bullet-ridden carved-stone world in 1948? Well, Henri Irénée Marrou, for one.

Marrou was a great product of French education and a great thinker on it. What he says of studying the Greeks, we can as well say of studying him today: "The fecundity of historical knowledge lives above all in the dialogue it creates in us between the Same and the Other". (I hope you did not think that "the Same and the Other" were postmodern ideas. The phrase is already in Plato's Timaeus.)

Present and past illuminate each other. Hitler's Germany teaches us not to naively admire the militarist slave-state of Sparta. Other ancient examples were just the thing, in 1948, to "reanimate the flame of liberty in the hearts of the young". Here is tremendous erudition aiming at the love of freedom. Not a bad idea today either.

This book is a history of Greek education and is still frequently cited. No more recent study seems to have supplanted it yet and none seem to still be in print. For the content of the book you can look into it here at amazon.com.

The French history I stress is mostly found in the introduction but for Marrou it is all our history. If you read the book in French (you can get it at amazon.fr) you will feel like you are in Paris, indeed an austere post-war Paris which no longer exists. But that is not necessary. Read it in any language to learn something of:

"Wisdom---this admirable word which we have forgotten and which the example of the ancients may help us to recover."