ABSTRACT
The earliest written evidence for the Greek language dates to c. 1450–1200, a time frequently called the Mycenaean Period after the most famous Bronze Age site on the Greek mainland. The thousands of Linear B tablets and fragments that have come to light do not, however, provide direct evidence for education in Bronze Age Greece. The Greeks themselves preserved fairly specific memories about the origin of their alphabet, though they ascribed it to their mythical past. The fact that Xenophanes attacks conventional education and its sources is characteristic of many Greek philosophers in all periods of antiquity. The children who died in the incident are described as paides and as engaged in the learning of letters; they are therefore in the early years of their education. Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos probably in the last decades of the seventh century bc and the early years of the sixth.
