89. EDUCATION AND THE CONDITION OF CHILDREN
IMPORTANCE OF MALE CHILDREN
The coming of a child, to parents in antiquity as to parents now, was usually a very happy event. Especially welcome was the birth of a son. The father felt assured that through the boy his old age would be cared for and that the family name and the worship of the family ancestors would be kept up after his own death. "Male children," said an ancient poet, "are the pillars of the house." [2] The city, as well, had an interest in the matter, for a male child meant another citizen able to take the father's place in the army and the public assembly. To have no children was regarded as one of the greatest calamities that could befall a Greek or a Roman.
INFANTICIDE
The ancient attitude toward children was in one respect very unlike our own. The law allowed a father to do whatever he pleased with a newly born child. If he was very poor, or if his child was deformed, he could expose it in some desert spot, where it soon died. An infant was sometimes placed secretly in a temple, where possibly some kind-hearted person might rescue it. The child, in this case, became the slave of its adopter. This custom of exposure, an inheritance from prehistoric savagery, tended to grow less common with advancing culture. The complete abolition of infanticide was due to the spread of Christian teachings about the sacredness of human life. [3]
NAMES
A Greek boy generally had but one name. The favorite name for the eldest son was that of his paternal grandfather. A father, however, might give him his own name or that of an intimate friend. The Romans at first seem to have used only the one name, then two were given; and later we have the familiar three-fold name, representing the individual, the clan, and the family. [4]
GREEK EDUCATION
Greek education consisted of three main branches, known as gymnastics, music, and grammar. By gymnastics the Greeks meant the physical training in the palestra, an open stretch of ground on the outskirts of the city. Here a private teacher gave instruction in the various athletic sports which were so popular at the national games. The training in music was intended to improve the moral nature of young men and to fit them for pleasant social intercourse. They were taught to play a stringed instrument, called the lyre, and at the same time to sing to their own accompaniment. Grammar, the third branch of education, included instruction in writing and the reading of the national literature. After a boy had learned to write and to read, the schoolmaster took up with him the works of the epic poets, especially Homer, besides Aesop's Fables and other popular compositions. The student learned by heart much of the poetry and at so early an age that he always remembered it. Not a few Athenians, it is said, could recite the entire Iliad and Odyssey.
[Illustration: AN ATHENIAN SCHOOL (Royal Museum, Berlin) A painting by Duris on a drinking-cup, or cylix. The picture is divided by the two handles. In the upper half, beginning at the left: a youth playing the double flute as a lesson to the boy before him; a teacher holding a tablet and stylus and correcting a composition; a slave (paedagogus), who accompanied the children to and from school. In the lower half: a master teaching his pupil to play the lyre; a teacher holding a half- opened roll, listening to a recitation by the student before him; a bearded paedagogus. The inner picture, badly damaged, represents a youth in a bath.]
ROMAN EDUCATION
A Roman boy began his school days at about the age of seven. He learned to read, to write with a stylus on wax tablets, and to cipher by means of the reckoning board, or abacus. He received a little instruction in singing and memorized all sorts of proverbs and maxims, besides the laws of the Twelve Tables. [5] His studying went on under the watchful eyes of a harsh schoolmaster, who did not hesitate to use the rod. After Rome began to come into close contact with Greece, the curriculum was enlarged by the study of literature. The Romans were the first people who made the learning of a foreign tongue an essential part of education. Schools now arose in which the Greek language and literature formed the chief subject of instruction. As Latin literature came into being, its productions, especially the orations of Cicero and the poems of Vergil and Horace, were also used as texts for study.
[Illustration: A ROMAN SCHOOL SCENE
Wall painting, Herculaneum.]
[Illustration: YOUTH READING A PAPYRUS ROLL Relief on a sarcophagus. The papyrus roll was sometimes very long. The entire Iliad or Odyssey might be contained in a single manuscript measuring one hundred and fifty feet in length. In the third century A.D. the unwieldy roll began to give way to the tablet, composed of a number of leaves held together by a ring. About this time, also, the use of vellum, or parchment made of sheepskin, became common.]
TRAVEL AND STUDY ABROAD
Persons of wealth or noble birth might follow their school training by a university course at a Greek city, such as Athens, Alexandria, or Rhodes. Here the Roman youth would listen to lectures on philosophy, delivered by the deep thinkers whom Greece still produced, and would profit by the treasures of art and science preserved in these ancient capitals. Many famous Romans thus passed several years abroad in graduate study. During the imperial age, as we have already seen, [6] schools of grammar and rhetoric arose in the West, particularly in Gaul and Spain, and attracted students from all parts of the empire.