[10] Such careful physical training as was given in a Greek palaestra and gymnasium would have been regarded by the Romans as most effeminate. Unlike the Greeks, who strove for a harmonious bodily development, the Romans exercised for usefulness in war. Cicero exclaims, with reference to Greek gymnasial training: "What an absurd system of training youth is exhibited in their gymnasia! What a frivolous preparation for the labors and hazards of war!"

[11] Macaulay, in his Horatius, describes the results of the education of this early period as follows:

"Then none were for the party,
But all were for the State;
And the rich man loved the poor,
And the poor man loved the great.
Then lands were fairly portioned
And spoils were fairly sold;
For the Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old."

[12] "The Romans," says the historian Wilhelm Ihne, "were distinguished from all other nations, not only by the extreme earnestness and precision with which they conceived their law and worked out the consequences of its fundamental principles, but by the good sense which made them submit to the law, once established, as an absolute necessity of political health and strength. It was this severity in thinking and acting which, more than any other cause, made Rome great and powerful."

[13] The lot of a captive in war, everywhere throughout the ancient world, was to be taken and sold as a slave by his captors. Many educated Greeks were thus taken in the capture of Greek cities in southern Italy and sold as slaves in Rome. These were let out by their masters as teachers of the new learning. Even the thrifty Cato, who vigorously opposed the new learning on principle, was not averse to permitting his educated Greek slaves to conduct schools and thus add to his private fortune.

[14] These men had little choice otherwise. Grain from Spain and Africa became so cheap that a farmer could not raise enough on his small farm to pay his taxes and support his family, so he was obliged to sell his land to men who turned it into large cattle and sheep ranches. He would not emigrate to the provinces, as Englishmen have done to Canada and Australia, but instead went to the cities, where he led a hand-to-mouth existence in a type of tenement house. It was from such sources that the Roman mob, demanding free grain and entertainment in return for its votes, was made up.

[15] Arithmetic was not easy for the Romans, partly because they had no figure or other sign for zero, partly because they used a decimal system for counting and a duodecimal for their money, and partly because the Roman system of notation (I, V, X, L, C, D, M) did not adapt itself to quick calculation. Try, for example, these simple sums:

Add: CCLVII Subtract: LXVIII
CIX XXXIV
——— ———

Multiply: CXXV Divide: XII |CXXXII
XII ———
——

[16] Finger reckoning (whence digits) with the Romans attained a prominence probably never reached with any other people. Bills and accounts were reckoned up on the fingers, in the presence of the patron. Eighteen positions of the fingers of the left hand stood for the nine units and the nine tens, and eighteen positions of the fingers of the right hand stood for the nine hundreds and the nine thousands. For larger sums, such as ten thousand and more, various parts of the body were touched. Any one who betrayed, according to Quintilian, "by an uncertain or awkward movement of his fingers, a want of confidence in his calculations," was thought to be but imperfectly trained in arithmetic.