we have lingered long chatting on many of the topics the house and
its denizens suggest, we will turn again to the streets to seek
the school where one of the young sons of the family has been duly
conducted (possibly, one may say, driven) by his pedagogue. We
have not far to go. Athenian schools have to be numerous, because
they are small. To teach children of the poorer classes it is
enough to have a modest room and a few stools; an unrented shop
will answer. But we will go to a more pretentious establishment.
There is an anteroom by the entrance way where the pedagogues can
sit and doze or exchange gossip while their respective charges are
kept busy in the larger room within. The latter place, however,
is not particularly commodious. On the bare wall hang book-rolls,
lyres, drinking vessels, baskets for books, and perhaps some simple
geometric instruments. The pupils sit on rude, low benches, each
lad with his boxwood tablet covered with wax[*] upon his lap, and
presumably busy, scratching letters with his stylus. The master
sits on a high chair, surveying the scene. He cultivates a grim
and awful aspect, for he is under no delusion that "his pupils
love him." "He sits aloft," we are told, "like a juryman, with an
expression of implacable wrath, before which the pupil must tremble
and cringe."[+]

[*]This wax tablet was practically a slate. The letters written
could be erased with the blunt upper end of the metallic stylus,
and the whole surface of the tablet could be made smooth again by
a judicious heating.

[+]The quotation is from the late writer Libanius, but it is
perfectly true for classic Athens.