Music lessons

Pedagogues—enslaved people in charge of their owner’s children—taught musical skills to their young charges at home. This Boeotian cup depicts seated boys playing lyres in the presence of standing men. Perhaps they are pedagogues who supervise them. The man leaning on a stick may represent a pedagogue or perhaps a more formal music teacher. As early as the 6th century BC some Athenian boys between the ages of 13-16 were taught in schools of music to play the lyre and to sing, accompanied by the teacher. But just what kind of music was best to teach children was fiercely debated by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

An Athenian cup fragment preserves part of a similar scene, showing a boy who plays the lyre. We can just about see part of his left arm, a fold of his robe, the top of the cushioned stool on which he sits, and the tortoiseshell pattern of the lyre he plays. The fragment also preserves the last part of the signature of the Athenian artist, Douris, who painted many such ‘school scenes’.

See more information about the Boeotian kylix at http://uremuseum.org/cgi-bin/ure/uredb.cgi?rec=25.6.2 and about the Attic fragment at http://uremuseum.org/cgi-bin/ure/uredb.cgi?rec=39.8.5