The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-12
The .sBirch,, I'm Classical Times.

FROM the Ig0fd0n SpectdtOT.
I'VE are aware that the title which we have
chosen is, strictly speaking, q misnomer
There was no 'birch" in classical times-th
is, there was nothing exactly corresponding
to the ultimd ratio of the modern school
mater, though the Greek and Roman in
structors of youth had material auxilaries
wanting neither in variety nor in effective
ness. With a somewhat remarkable incon-
sistency, the alumni of the great public
schools, which ought, more than others, to
be conservative of classical usage have in this
important matter, which may be called
the one permanent element of education,
favored modern innovation. The
bundle of twigs-whether they be those of
the apple, as is the use of Winchester, or of
the birch, according to the practice of Eton
has no Augustan, or even post-Augustan,
authority. The cane, to which, as we learn
from the report of the Public School Com
missioners, the nice honor of these aristo-
cratic institutions refuses to submit, has
what ought to be the prevailing recommenda-
tion of bearing the closest resemblance of
any available instrument to the feruLd of the
schoolmaster of antiquity. Not that the cane
itself, as we now commonly use the word in
this ccnnection-that is, of a slender, solid,
and pliable reed-can claim this merit of an
tiquity. It is doubtful whether it was known
to the ancients, and even in more recent
times this one of its many utilities seems
not to have been discovered. If we
look into an English dictionary a hun
dred years old, we shall probably find the
verb ''to cane" defined as meaning "to beat
with stick" by "a stick" being intended a
walking stick" for which article of use or
ornament the bamboo cane has always been
a favorite material. It is indeed in some
variety of the bamboo cane, or anyhow in
some plant resembling it in the essential poin6
of being hollow, that we must look for what
may be generally described as the rod of clas-
sical antiquity. The elder Pliny seems to
have been thinking of the bamboo itself when
he spoke of the ndrthes or feruEa as being
produced in hot places, and beyond the seas;
but something that bore the same name, and
was turned to the same uses, was grown in the
islands of the Grecian Archipelago, and even
In Southern Italy, as notably in Apulia,
where the famous Canine took its name from
the plant. 1t may be doubted whether
Aristotle does not refer to something different
from both of these plants when he discusses
the curious question, profoundly interesting
without doubt to the schoolboys of antiquity,
how it was that the soft wood of the n0rtltez
inflicted more pain than was given by those
of a harder kind, and suggests as a cause the
conjecture that there was double action,
the flesh receiving the stroke, and inficting
another upon itself as it rose to meet the
yielding wood. The cane, however, is quite
as hard as any other wood; and we may con-
lecture that possibly some kind of green
stalk is spoken of. Besides the hollow f6rWLd,
there was also used the solid oirga, for which,
if it resembled the 0irgg of which the fasces
of the lictors were made up, the wood of
the 6etuHG or birch tree was employed
and which, therefore, SO far corresponded
to the modern implement, differing how
ever, in the important respect of being a
single stick, not bundle of twigs. The
gtrgG may claim an antiquity far exceeding
that of its rivals, if we may accept the autho-
rity of Juvenal, who tells us that it was used
10y the first recorded schoolmaster, the CEN
taur Chiron, to keep in order such high
spirited pupils as Achilles, to correct their
mistakes in singing and to deter them from
laughing at their teachers tail. A third in
strument of punishment was the hinaas, of
which the Latin equivalents were lOrunn and
sclttic0, and of which Scotland, so far more
classical than her southern neighbor, pre-
serves the tradition in the ''taws" This was
thong of undressed hide, in the manufac-
ture of which the hardest portions were care
fully selected. Horace, indeed, describes the
scutica as being milder alternative than the
''horribile fagellum," which indeed it might
well be, considering that the .1tdgeIIoCm was a
sort of cato -three-tails," each tail being
furnished with many formidable knots But
it was, nevertheless, sufficiently effective,
Lucian expressly mentioning the ''weals'
which its infiiction was wont to leave upon
him in his youth
AS to the manner in which the stick or
thong was applied to the pers ons of indolent
or refractory youth, the custom of antiquity
may be seen preserved in the practice of
modern teachers, there being, indeed, no
room for change. The hand was the member
that most frequently suffered. Thus, in a
well-known passage (Sat. j, / -, Juvenal in
genuously confesses that he had sometimes
shirked the inhiction by withdrawing his
hand from the coming blow, and Fulgentius
speaks of having had his hands swollen by
blows endured in acquiring the rudiments of
learning. But the hinder part of the body
was then, as now, also liable to punishIent
Apuleius describes the spectacle, not unfa-
miliar in most of our public schools, of
''horsing" victim, when he speaks of the
schoolmaster, ''altissihe sublato puero mates
ejus obverberans," and representation of
the process is to be found among the curious
pictures of ancient life which have been pre-
served for us in the frescoes of Pompeii.
Any future historian of the ''birch" in Eng
land will probable connect it with the name
of Busby of Westminster, or Keate of Etsn.
The classical Busby may be found in the
Orbilius whom Horace, himself probably a
victim in his boyhood, has immortalized by
the epithet pIagOSuS, 'given to blows" and
of whom Suetonius has given us detailed
account He served as soldier in his youth,
and may be supposed thus to have acquired
his notions of severity. After teaching foi
some time in his native town of Beneventum,
he migrated in the fiftieth year of his
age to Rome, reaching that city during
the consulship of Cicero. There fol-
the next fifty years-for, ike Buzby
who completed more than half q century il