An alien symmetry

The progress of education in antiquity moves along as quickly as Marrou's prose is to read. Stops for sounding out the Ancient Greek he peppers it with notwithstanding.

So, by Marrou's reckoning, ancient Greek education had reached the point where the spiritual and intellectual had started to overcome (or at least come into conflict with) the physical in the time of Socrates and Plato (around the fifth/fourth centuries BC). During this period the influx of the newly wealthy was starting to cramp the space for the old style of education, and schools were slowly cropping up.

Curiously, these early institutions were argued against not just because they were viewed as a pretensions, but also because of an old Greek idea that education's not about putting knowledge and skills into people, but rather nurturing and drawing out their own inborn abilities and inclinations. Hence, the general limiting of education to the upper classes, those who actually had skills to nurture - unlike the peasantry who were, so it seems from reading Marrou, regarded as simply drones.

Of course, this comes largely down to money, too. Education, because of its physical basis (especially if it involved riding or fencing) was costly, and if you couldn't afford the equipment required, you couldn't do it. It was as simple as that.

But, and this is what marks the strongest differentiation between ancient Greek society and modern Western society, the physical beauty that you could achieve through the old education was quite different from our own. Quoting Marrou's quote from Aristophanes' The Clouds:

"If you do what I tell you, and apply your whole mind to it [participate in physical competitions/training with friends], you will always have a powerful chest, a good complexion, broad shoulders, a short tongue, massive buttocks, and a little rod. ...But if you follow present day practices [the contemporary intellectual education] you will have a pale complexion, narrow shoulders, a pigeon chest, a long tongue, bony buttocks, and a big rod..." (74-75).

Yeah. Apparently being physically active dissipates the body's energies and gives you a big butt and little "rod," while intellectual pursuits left you with some sort of excess of energies resulting in a small butt and a big "rod." I'm not even sure what to make of the whole short tongue/long tongue thing - though maybe tongue length is related to the medieval idea of gap-toothed people being loquacious and lusty (see Chaucer's Wife of Bath).

The ancient Greeks prized symmetry as the basis of beauty, and somehow reversing what was considered symmetrical doesn't just result in another kind of equally praised symmetry.