The stringed instrument, the cithern, was preferred by the Greeks
to all wind instruments because it was not exciting, and allowed the
accompaniment of recitation or song, i.e. the contemporaneous activity
of the spirit in poetry. Flute-playing was first brought from Asia Minor
after the victorious progress of the Persian war, and was especially
cultivated in Thebes. They sought in vain afterwards to oppose the wild
excitement raised by its influence.

Sec. 212. Grammar comprehended Letters ([Greek: grammata]), i.e. the
elements of literary culture, reading and writing. Much attention was
given to correct expression. The Fables of AEsop, the Iliad, and the
Odyssey, and later the tragic poets, were read, and partly learned by
heart. The orators borrowed from them often the ornament of their
commonplace remarks.

Sec. 213. (3) The internal growth of what was peculiar to the Grecian State
came to an end with the war for the Hegemony. Its dissolution began, and
the philosophical period followed the political. The beautiful ethical
life was resolved into thoughts of the True, Good, and Beautiful.
Individuality turned more towards the internal, and undertook to subject
freedom, the existing regulations, laws and customs, to the criticism of
reason as to whether these were in and for themselves universal and
necessary. The Sophists, as teachers of Grammar, Rhetoric, and
Philosophy, undertook to extend the cultivation of Reflection; and this
introduced instability in the place of the immediate fixed state of
moral customs. Among the women, the _Hetaerae_ undertook the same
revolution; in the place of the [Greek: potnia meter] appeared the
beauty, who isolated herself in the consciousness of her charms and in
the perfection of her varied culture, and exhibited herself to the
public admiration. The tendency to idiosyncrasy often approached
wilfulness, caprice and whimsicality, and opposition to the national
moral sense. A Diogenes in a tub became possible; the soulless but
graceful frivolity of an Alcibiades charmed, even though it was
externally condemned; a Socrates completed the break in consciousness,
and urged upon the system of the old morality the pregnant question,
whether Virtue could be taught? Socrates worked as a philosopher who was
to educate. Pythagoras had imposed upon his pupils the abstraction of a
common, exactly-defined manner of living. Socrates, on the contrary,
freed his disciples--in general, those who ha