Rhetorical Schools.—The ‘rhetorical’ schools were a development of work in debate that had gradually grown up in the grammar schools. The earliest of these institutions at Rome were Greek, but by the first century B. C., there had arisen a number in which Latin was used. While they afforded a legal and forensic training, and Professional, but broad training. seem more professional in spirit than the grammar schools, they were by no means narrow. The orator was for the Roman the typical man of culture and education, and he was supposed not only to have been trained in eloquence and law and history, but to possess wide learning, grace, culture, and knowledge of human emotions, sound judgment, and good memory. Besides a training in oratory, these schools furnished a linguistic and literary education of some breadth. They may be considered as belonging partly to the secondary and partly to the higher stage of education. The youths were exercised first in declamation on ethical and political subjects, which would bring in fine distinctions in Roman law and ethics, and later they were given practice in three types of speeches,—deliberative, judicial, and panegyric. Attention was given to all the various factors in making a successful oration: the matter, arrangement, style, memorizing, and delivery.
Universities.—When the young Roman had completed his course at a rhetorical school, he might, if he were ambitious, go to the university at Athens, Alexandria, Spread throughout the empire. or Rhodes for a higher training. Later, a university also sprang up at Rome, and before long these institutions spread throughout the empire. The Greek influence caused a large number of these institutions to be established in the East, but some were also located in the West. The latter gave more emphasis to practical subjects. In several instances the universities found their nucleus in one of the many libraries that were started with books brought from the sacking of Greece and Asia Minor.
Subsidization of Education.—Thus, through the adoption of the institutions of the Greeks, Roman education became thoroughly Hellenized. Although all the types of schools spread everywhere in the empire, there was, of course, no such thing as a real school system, except as the government gradually came to subsidize all schools. This the different emperors accomplished in Imperial control of schools. various ways,—by contributing to school support, paying a salary to certain teachers, or granting them exemption from taxation and military service, or offering scholarships to a given number of pupils. As a result, schools came to be established in many cases for the purpose of getting these special privileges for the teachers, rather than for promoting education. To stop these abuses, the emperor in 425 A. D. decreed that he had the sole authority to establish schools, and that a penalty would be laid upon anyone else assuming this prerogative. In this way the schools came fully into the hands of the imperial government, and the basis for the idea of public education was laid for the first time in history.
Decay of Education.—Before this, however, Roman education had deteriorated. With the political and moral decay that were obvious after the second century Formal and superficial character. A. D., it became a mere form and mark of the aristocracy. The training in oratory was continued, because it was a necessary qualification for entering the senatorial class, but it had lost its real function, since there was no longer any occasion for oratory when the emperor dominated all the government and law. It was not intended to furnish a training of any value in life, and the careful literary preparation was more and more shirked. While the grammarians and rhetoricians were still held in high esteem, they contented themselves with mere display, and wandered from town to town more for the purpose of entertaining than of teaching. Glittering phrases, epigrams, and other artificialities took the place of instruction and argument.
Influence of Roman Education.—But the Roman education and civilization had left their impress upon the world. This was accomplished by the practical nature of the Romans, and by their ability to make abstract ideals concrete and embody them in institutions that have been useful to civilization and progress. Through them was created the idea of a universal empire, which has been influential throughout the world’s history. Institutions furnished for the ideals of Judea and Greece. Similarly, the concept of law originating with the Greek philosophers became in the hands of the Romans the great system of principles that underlies and guides all our present civilization. And it was the Roman genius for organization that institutionalized a despised religious sect and expanded it into the position of the greatest world religion. If Judaism furnished the world with exalted religious ideals, and if from Hellenism came striking intellectual and æsthetic concepts, the institutions for realizing these ideals originated with Rome.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Graves, Before the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1909), chap. XIII; Monroe, Text-book (Macmillan, 1905), chap. IV. Interesting brief monographs on the subject are Clarke, G., Education of Children at Rome (Macmillan, 1896), and Wilkins, A. S., Roman Education, (Cambridge University Press, 1905). See also the treatment in Laurie, Pre-Christian Education (Longmans, Green, 1900), pp. 319-436.