Inscription Shows a Greek City Paid Its Music Teacher More Than the Reading Teachers

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A marble law from the Greek city of Teos, back in the news this week after a feature on the excavations there, sets out what each teacher in a publicly funded school would earn per year. The music teacher got 700 drachmas. The three teachers of reading and letters got 600, 550 and 500, depending on which class they took. The two athletics trainers got 500 each. The fencing master got 300, and the instructor in archery and javelin got 250.

So the music teacher outearned everyone else on the staff, and while the inscription records the gap, it does not explain it.

Why the Story Is Back

The text is not a new find, since editions go back to the 19th century and it appears in the collection Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum as Syll.3 578. The Oxford CHANGE project’s database of inscriptions dates it to about 200 BC, while the Teos excavation team and the German edition by Kai Brodersen, Wolfgang Günther and Hatto H. Schmitt place it in the 2nd century BC.

What is new is the attention, because on October 28, 2026, the archaeology news site Arkeonews ran a feature on the law, drawing on the excavation team led by Professor Musa Kadıoğlu of Ankara University. According to Arkeonews, Kadıoğlu explained that the highest paid instructors taught stringed instruments. He also described the teachers taking part in decisions about what students would study, with an administrator over the age of 40 able to step in when the staff disagreed.

The same report brings fresh news from the ground. Excavations around the Temple of Roma and Augustus in 2026 exposed monument bases and architectural blocks reused in the foundations of a stone paved square. Archaeologists identified 13 inscriptions on these blocks, Arkeonews reports. One mentions Parmenion, a leading general of Alexander the Great. Others record decisions about judges invited from Miletus, Smyrna and Mytilene to help settle public legal disputes in Teos. Arkeonews gives no further detail on what the 13 texts say.

One Rich Man and 34,000 Drachmas

The school ran on a gift, and the surviving text, as given in the Packard Humanities Institute’s Greek inscriptions database (Teos 41), says a citizen named Polythrous son of Onesimos gave 34,000 drachmas so that all the freeborn children could be educated. The law calls the gift a monument to his own love of honor.

His name comes in several spellings, since the Greek text has Polythrous, the German edition uses Polythrus, and Arkeonews and the Teos project write Polythros.

The money came with rules, and the law spells them out. Under the German translation by Brodersen, Günther and Schmitt, the city was to choose a supervisor of the boys, the paidonomos, who had to be no younger than 40. Every year, at the elections for public offices and after the secretaries had been chosen, the citizens were to elect three teachers of letters, the grammatodidaskaloi. If the letters teachers argued over how many pupils each should take, the paidonomos would decide and they had to obey.

What the Text Says About Girls

The wording on girls is short and specific. The Greek text says the three teachers of letters were to teach tous paidas kai tas parthenous, which Brodersen, Günther and Schmitt render in German as the boys and the girls (“die Knaben und die Mädchen”). The Teos excavation project’s own summary puts it this way: “In the Gymnasium, both girls and boys took reading, writing and literature lessons from three different teachers who were paid 500-600 drachmas per year.”

That clause is the only place where girls are named. The other lessons are framed for boys and young men. The music teacher, according to the law, was to teach the boys due to finish the next year and those one year younger, in music and in playing the kithara with a plectrum or with the fingers. The ephebes were to get music only. The fencing master and the archery and javelin instructor were to teach the ephebes and the boys who were also down for music.

Arkeonews makes a similar point, noting that the inscriptions “do not establish that every student received identical instruction.” What the law shows is that girls were named as pupils of the reading teachers in a school paid for out of a public fund, a detail worth setting beside childhood and education in the ancient world more broadly.

Why Did Music Pay Best?

The law sets the salary but gives no reason for it, and Arkeonews says the same. Kadıoğlu, as reported there, linked the pay to the importance the foundation placed on musical training. That is his reading of the figures, while the stone itself is silent on motive.

What the text does show is how the job was defined. The city could hire either a kitharistes or a psaltes. The German edition explains that the first played the kithara with a plectrum and the second with the fingers.

Exams in the Council House

The law says the displays, called apodeixeis, which were supposed to take place in the gymnasium, were to be held by the letters teachers and the music teacher in the bouleuterion, the council house. Arkeonews adds that researchers believe tests in physical training and military skills took place in the gymnasium to the north.

According to Arkeonews, the council house could seat about 800 people in 17 rows. Restoration in 2026 has made it fit for cultural events again, the report says.

The Curse on Anyone Who Touched the Fund

The law states that any official or private citizen who proposed spending the fund on anything else, or tried to cancel the law, would have his actions declared void. The next treasurers were then to replace the money from city revenues.

The penalties went further, and under the German translation, anyone who broke the law was to be utterly destroyed along with his family, and treated as a temple robber, a hierosylos. Each offender also owed the city 10,000 drachmas, and anyone who wished could bring the case. A convicted man paid double, with half going to the city as sacred money of Hermes, Heracles and the Muses and half to the person who had prosecuted him. The timouchoi were to announce at the public curse that anyone who diverted the money given by Polythrous for the education of the freeborn children should perish. Treasurers who failed to invest the capital or pay the staff owed 2,000 drachmas each.

That is a lot of legal armor for a school budget. The Oxford CHANGE database lists the text as a decree “outlining the administration of the fund for teachers’ salaries set up by Polythrous.”

Teos in Brief

The Ionian city of Teos lay near modern Seferihisar in İzmir Province. Arkeonews describes it as one of the twelve Ionian cities and an important center of trade and the arts, served by two harbors. It was the birthplace of the lyric poet Anacreon and was later linked with a prominent guild of performers of Dionysos.

The gymnasium that gives the foundation its modern name is still mostly underground. The Teos project says it was probably built in the Hellenistic period and lies northeast of the acropolis.

How we label claims

Established: the Polythrous foundation of 34,000 drachmas, the salary figures, the three letters teachers teaching boys and girls, the paidonomos of at least 40, the displays in the council house, and the 10,000 drachma penalty, all from the published Greek text and the German edition. Established as reported by the excavation team via Arkeonews: the 13 inscriptions found in 2026. Unverified: any details of those inscriptions beyond the Arkeonews summary, and any reason for the music teacher’s higher pay.

The Temple of Dionysos at Teos, photographed in 1991. (Photo by Mark Landon, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

By Aris Manus