When we learned to read was it not necessary at first to know the name of the letters, their shape, their value in syllables, their differences, then the words and their case, their quantity long or short, their accent, and the rest?
Arrived at this point we began to read and write, slowly at first and syllable by syllable. Some time afterwards, the forms being sufficiently engraved on our memory, we read more cursorily, in the elementary book, then in all sorts of books, finally with incredible quickness and without making any mistake.
[Illustration: FIG. 21. ROMAN WRITING-MATERIALS.
Inkstand, pen, letter, box of manuscripts, wax tablets, stylus.]
Writing seems rather to have followed reading, and, as in the Greek schools, the pupils copied down from dictation and made their own books (dictata). Literature received no such emphasis in the elementary schools of Rome as in those of the Greeks, and the palaestra of the Greeks was not reproduced at Rome.
Due in part to the practical character of the Roman people, to the established habit of keeping careful household accounts, to the difficulties of their system of calculation, [15] to the practice of finger reckoning, and to the vast commercial and financial interests that the Romans formed throughout the world which they conquered, arithmetic became a subject of fundamental importance in their schools, and much time was given to securing perfection in calculation and finger reckoning. [16] Hence it occupied a place of large importance in the primary school. An abacus or counting-board was used, similar to the one shown in Figure 22, and Horace mentions a bag of stones (calculi) as a part of a schoolboy's equipment.
[Illustration: FIG. 22. A ROMAN COUNTING-BOARD. Pebbles were used, those nearest the numbered dividing partition being counted. Each pebble above when moved downward counted five of those in the same division below. The board now shows 8,760,254.]
THE LUDI MAGISTER. The ludi magister at Rome held a position even less enviable than that held by the grammatist at Athens. "The starveling Greek," who was glad to barter his knowledge for the certainty of a good dinner, was sneered at by many Roman writers. Many slaves were engaged in this type of instruction, bringing in fees for their owners. It was not regarded as of importance that the teachers of these schools be of high grade. The establishment of and attendance at these primary schools was wholly voluntary, and the children in them probably represented but a small percentage of those of school age in the total population. These schools became quite common in the Italian cities, and in time were found in the provincial cities of the Empire as well. They remained, however, entirely private-adventure undertakings, the State doing nothing toward encouraging their establishment, supervising the instruction in them, or requiring attendance at them. They were in no sense free schools, nor were the prices for instruction fixed, as in our private schools of to-day. Instead, the pupil made a present to the master, usually at some understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the liberality of their pupils. [17] The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was nearly always an old or infirm slave of the family.
[Illustration: FIG. 23. A ROMAN PRIMARY SCHOOL(Ludus) (From a fresco found at Herculaneum). This shows a school held in a portico of a house.]
The schools were held anywhere—in a portico (see Figure 23), in a shed or booth in front of a house, in a store, or in a recessed corner shut in by curtains. A chair for the master, benches for the pupils, an outer room for cloaks and for the pedagogues to wait in, and a bundle of rods (ferula) constituted the necessary equipment. The pupils brought with them boxes containing writing-materials, book-rolls, and reckoning-stones. Schools began early in the morning, pupils in winter going with lanterns to their tasks. There was much flogging of children, and in Martial we find an angry epigram which he addressed to a schoolmaster who disturbed his sleep (R. 23 a).
THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS. Secondary or Latin grammar schools, under a grammaticus, and covering instruction from the age of twelve to sixteen, had become clearly differentiated from the primary schools under a ludi magister by the time of the death of Cato, 149 B.C. At first this higher instruction began in the form of private tutors, probably in the homes of the wealthy, and Greek was the language taught. By the beginning of the first century B.C., however, Latin secondary schools began to arise, and in time these too spread to all the important cities of the Empire. Attendance at them was wholly voluntary, and was confined entirely to the children of the well-to-do classes. The teachers were Greeks, or Latins who had been trained by the Greeks. Each teacher taught as he wished, but the schools throughout the Empire came to be much the same in character. The course of study consisted chiefly of instruction in grammar and literature, the purpose being to secure such a mastery of the Latin language and Greek and Latin literatures as might be most helpful in giving that broader culture now recognized as the mark of an educated man, and in preparing the young Roman to take up the life of an orator and public official (R. 24). Both Greek and Latin secondary schools were in existence, and Quintilian, the foremost Roman writer on educational practice, recommends attendance at the Greek school first.