SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:
12. The Laws of the Twelve Tables.
13. Cicero: Importance of the Twelve Tables in Education.
14. Schreiber: A Roman Farmer's Calendar.
15. Polybius: The Roman Character.
16. Mommsen: The Grave and Severe Character of the Earlier Romans.
17. Epitaph: The Education of Girls.
18. Marcus Aurelius: The Old Roman Education described.
19. Tacitus: The Old and the New Education contrasted.
20. Suetonius: Attempts to Prohibit the Introduction of Greek Higher
Learning.
(a) Decree of the Roman Senate, 161 B.C.
(b) Decree of the Censor, 92 B.C.
21. Vergil: Difficulty experienced in Learning to Read.
22. Horace: The Education given by a Father.
23. Martial: The Ludi Magister.
(a) To the Master of a Noisy School.
(b) To a Schoolmaster.
24. Cicero: Oratory the Aim of Education.
25. Quintilian: On Oratory.
26. Constantine: Privileges granted to Physicians and Teachers.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Give reasons why the Laws of the Twelve Tables (12) were considered of such fundamental importance (13) in the education of the early Roman boy? How do you explain their being supplanted later by the Latinized Odyssey?
2. What does the Farmer's Calendar (14) reveal as to the character of Roman life?
3. Contrast the Roman character (15, 16) with that of the Athenian.
4. Compare the education of a Roman matron, as revealed by the epitaph (17), with that of a girl in later American colonial times.
5. After reading Marcus Aurelius (18) and Tacitus (19), what is your judgment as to the relative merits of the old and the new education: (a) as a means of training youths? (b) as adapted to the changed conditions of Imperial Rome?
6. How do you account for the attempts of the conservative officials of the State to prohibit the introduction of Greek higher schools (20 a-b) proving so unsuccessful?