Volume 5: The Hegemon of Southern Italy, Chapter 48: Dionia School (Part 3)

The Daonia classrooms were cubes three and a half meters high, built as colonnaded structures. Except for the north side, which was a brick wall plastered with cement and coated with gypsum to keep the surface smooth and painted black, the other three sides were open, supported by countless stone columns for a roof, ensuring plenty of light—thus it was an open building.

Patroclus hadn’t even entered the classroom when he saw many children already sitting inside. If Patroclus didn’t want to sit outside the columns and be exposed to the sun for a long time, he could only take a seat in the back row. He wasn’t happy about that, and seeing that it was all boys (though the Senate had approved the proposal that “girls could also attend school,” long-standing traditions still imposed restrictions—boys and girls could not be in the same classroom), his usual unruly nature began to flare up.

He carried his folding wooden chair, pushed straight forward, and shouted loudly, “Move back! Make room for me!”

Most of the boys in the classroom were only seven or eight years old, so thirteen-year-old Patroclus seemed tall and imposing. Everyone reluctantly backed away out of fear, but one child stepped forward to confront Patroclus.

The two refused to yield to each other, and their verbal quarrel escalated into a physical fight. By the time the teacher arrived, he saw Patroclus throwing the boy to the ground.

He hurriedly stepped in to stop them, and after asking about the cause of the fight, immediately ordered the instigator to stand outside the classroom as punishment.

Patroclus protested.

The teacher said sternly, “If you refuse to accept the punishment, then you don’t need to come to school anymore!”

Though unruly, Patroclus knew the seriousness of the matter and obediently walked out of the classroom. Unexpectedly, the boy who had been beaten took the chance to kick him in the butt, enraging the teacher, who shouted, “You get out and stand there too!”

After dealing with the fight, the teacher placed a large hourglass on a wooden table, sat down on a wooden chair, took out a student roster, and said to the children sitting around him, “From today onwards, I am the teacher in this classroom who will teach you to recognize Greek letters. My name is Onatas…”

“Hey, big guy, I’m Stiphlos, the adopted son of Amyntas. What’s your name?” Grudges between boys came and went quickly, and the boy standing outside, feeling quite helpless, couldn’t help speaking to his recent opponent.

“Patroclus, son of Pariandolos,” he replied casually, then thinking of something, he quickly asked, “Your father is Amyntas? Which Amyntas?!”

“Of course, the brave Amyntas of the First Army Corps!” Stiphlos said proudly.

“My father, Pariandolos, is a soldier under your father, Amyntas,” Patroclus said in surprise.

The two boys thus became closer…

In these two years, a consequence of Dionysius’s military campaign to unify southeastern Sicily was that many people from the city-states there were forced to flee their homes. Most of them, attracted by the Daonia Immigration Act, chose to come to Thurii, which was not too far from Sicily.

Sicily, as the earliest Greek colony in the western Mediterranean, not only had advanced agriculture and commerce but also had closer cultural ties with mainland Greece, and its cultural foundation was deeper than that of the city-states on the Italian peninsula. Therefore, some Sicilians successfully passed the tests organized by Antistanos and became teachers in the Daonia Alliance. Onatas was one of them.

He chose to become a teacher in the newly established Daonia school. Although the salary was not as high as that of a private tutor, he could immediately become a Daonia citizen and receive a land allotment.

The school had no unified textbooks; the content and pace of teaching were left to the teachers’ discretion. However, the school required that after three academic years, students in primary education must be able to recognize and write at least one thousand Greek letters, recite letters with accurate pronunciation, and write short, coherent, and clear articles, so that they could pass the test into secondary education. Moreover, every teacher’s teaching performance would be assessed each year, and those who performed poorly for three consecutive years would lose their teaching qualifications, meaning they would be stripped of all rights granted to teachers by Daonia.

Thus Onatas felt a sense of urgency. As an educated man with a higher education, he could not allow himself to lose to other teachers. However, when he had learned knowledge, his parents had hired a teacher to teach him one-on-one at home. Now he was in a school facing over thirty students—how could he ensure the effectiveness of his teaching?

Onatas had thought it through carefully beforehand. So upon entering, he first punished the two fighting children, then after taking attendance, he sternly emphasized the need to observe classroom discipline, stating that violators would be criticized and punished, and serious cases would be expelled from school.

As a result, the previously noisy classroom became quiet.

Onatas was very satisfied with this effect. He stood up, picked up a white chalk from the wooden table—it was said to be made from limestone pulp mixed with animal fat and other substances, then dried in the sun. Onatas had tried it before; it wrote very clearly on the black wall and could be seen clearly even from the back row.

Facing over thirty pairs of curious eyes, Onatas couldn’t help but feel deeply emotional: this newly emerging city-state alliance placed so much importance on the quality education of its citizens. Not only did it create an unprecedented teaching system among Greek city-states, but it also attracted highly qualified foreigners to serve as teachers by offering various favorable conditions. Even teaching supplies were meticulously researched and produced. How fortunate were the children growing up in this alliance!

At that moment, he, now a Daonia citizen, felt a surge of pride. Supporting himself against the smooth wall with his left hand, he wrote a series of letters on the wall with his right hand: “Before I teach you the Greek alphabet, I want you to recognize this word: ‘Daonia’! Whether you are Greek or Lucanian, you live in Daonia, you grow up in Daonia, and you will all be Daonia citizens in the future. So, together with me, shout loudly: ‘Da—o—ni—a’…”

“Daonia!!…”

For most children of citizens, by the age of six or seven, they had already begun to learn basic letters under their parents’ guidance. Therefore, compared to classmates who enthusiastically answered questions, Patroclus struggled with his learning progress.

However, when it came to arithmetic class, having been exposed to market dealings with his mother since childhood, he showed strong sensitivity to numbers. Even the teacher from the Mathematics Research Institute cast a curious glance at his performance.

By noon, classroom teaching was over.

Originally, Greeks had two meals a day, morning and evening. But influenced by Davos and military training, Daonia citizens had begun to get used to three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Children living in Thurii city could go home for lunch. Those who lived farther away, like Patroclus, had been notified by the school in advance and prepared dry rations for lunch. Some other children had household slaves buy lunch from the city market…

In the afternoon, the classes were mainly outdoors: for girls, dance and music, taught by priestesses from the Temple of Hera; for boys, physical training, running, and long jump, interspersed with the simplest military exercises, such as queuing, forming ranks, and moving forward in formation. These were taught by disabled veterans, so that children from a young age could cultivate a martial spirit, gradually understand and become familiar with the changes in Daonia’s heavy and light infantry formations and some basic tactics, and learn unity and cooperation. When they came of age, upon conscription, they could easily integrate into the Army Corps. In this regard, Davos and the Senate humbly drew on some of Sparta’s practices.

After military training, the children’s favorite activity was a new ball game invented by the magistrate Davos—football—because it was not as intense as rugby and less likely to cause injuries.

Children chased each other, skillfully controlling a roughly spherical leather ball sewn from cowhide and stuffed with an inflated cow stomach. They passed and dribbled, until they kicked the ball into the goal…

“On the road we originally designed, the trees were too close to the road. Over time, the roots tend to break through the surface and damage the roadbed. The Thurii–Amendolara highway has already experienced this many times… Also, currently, pedestrians, pack animals, and carriages all travel on the same road. During busy daytime hours, the road is crammed with people and livestock, not only causing long blockages but also frequent collisions.

My suggestion is to cut down the trees on both sides of the road and build a separate pedestrian path outside the drainage ditch. This way, people and animals each have their own path without interfering with each other, and the road will become much smoother…”

Davos listened, reading Little Heracleides’s “Road Reconstruction Plan” while hearing his explanation. At this point, he felt a shock in his heart.

He had to admit that there were some flaws in his original design when building the road, such as the issue with roadside trees, and not anticipating that Daonia would develop so rapidly. In just over a year, the four-horse-wide road was no longer sufficient…

But he hadn’t expected Little Heracleides to come up with the idea of building a sidewalk so soon. Of course, he knew that sidewalks were not something that only appeared in the technological age; in the middle and late Roman Republic, there had been a complete road system with highways, sidewalks, drainage ditches, and so on.

He let out a light breath, and with a gentle expression asked, “Is there anything else that needs improvement?”

Little Heracleides considered carefully and said, “Honorable Magistrate, if a foreigner sets out from Croton on foot to reach Thurii, after walking for a long time, he becomes tired, thirsty, and hungry. He doesn’t know how far ahead the nearest town is, where he can find a restaurant to eat, or where he can find an inn to stay. To make it convenient for travelers, could we erect stone markers at intervals along the road, indicating the distance to nearby towns… and also… well, since we are building relay stations, we could carve the distance to the relay stations on the stone markers as well. That way, when travelers see the markers, they can plan their journey according to the information, avoiding having to sleep in the wilderness at night…”