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Diogenes, when he saw a child eating sweet-meats, gave the boy’s tutor a cuff, rightly judging the fault to be, not that of him who had not learned, but of him who had not taught. Then, when it is impossible to eat and drink politely in company if one has not learned from childhood, as AristophanesAdapted from Clouds, 983. says, Not to laugh like a clown, nor dainties gulp down, nor to cross one leg on the other; yet can men enter without censure the fellowship of a household, a city, a marriage, a way of life, a magistracy, if they have not learned how they should get along with fellow-beings? When Aristippus was asked by someone, So you are everywhere, it seems, aren’t you? Well then, he replied with a laugh, I am wasting my fare, Cf. Juvenal, viii. 97: furor est post omnia perdere naulum, which indicates the proverbial character of the expression. Aristippus, having the entree everywhere, need waste no money in transit. if indeed I am everywhere. Why, then, would you also not say, If men do not become better by teaching, the fee given to their tutors is wasted? For these are the first to receive the child when it has been weaned and, just as nurses mould its body with their hands, Cf.Moralia, 3 e; Plato, Republic, 377 c. so tutors by the habits they inculcate train the child’s character to take a first step, as it were, on the path of virtue. So the Spartan, Cf.Moralia, 452 d, infra. when he was asked what he effected by his teaching, said, I make honourable things pleasant to children. And yet what do tutors teach? To walk in the public streets with lowered head; to touch salt-fish with but one finger, but fresh fish, bread, and meat with twoThe point is obscure and the text corrupt.; to sit in such and such a posture; in such and such a way to wear their cloaks. Cf.Moralia, 5 a and 99 d. See Aristophanes, Clouds, 973 ff., for the way good boys should sit and walk in public; Birds, 1568, for the proper way to wear a cloak.
