Martial elsewhere refers to "Ferulaeque tristes, sceptra pedagogorum"—melancholy rods, sceptres of pedagogues—and it appears from one of Juvenal's satires that "to withdraw the hand from the rod" was a phrase meaning "to leave school."
[17] Woman Through the Ages, Vol. I, pp. 110, 111, by Emil Reich, London, 1908.
Schoolhouses among the Romans, as well as among the Greeks, were quite different from our modern, well-equipped buildings. Usually, at least, in earlier times, instruction was given in the open air, in some quiet street corner or in tabernæ—sheds or lean-tos—as in certain Mohametan countries to-day. Horace refers to this in Epistola XX, Lib. I, when he writes:
"Ut pueros elementa docentem
Occupet extremis in vicis balba senectus."
In such schools the pupils sat on the floor or the bare ground, or, if the lessons were given on the street, they sat on the stones. There were no desks, or, if there were any benches, they had no backs. The pupils were, therefore, perforce obliged to write on their knees.
Cf. Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education, pp. 278 and 346, by S. S. Laurie, London, 1900.
[18] Cf. his Tiberius Gracchus. Cicero says of them, "Non tam in gremio educatos quam sermone matris."
[19] Ibidem, Life of Pompey.
[20] De Oratore, Lib. III, Cap. XII.
[21] "Potiorem iam apud exercitus Agrippinam quam legatos, quam duces; compressam a muliere seditionem, cui nomen principis obsistere non quiverit." Annales, Lib. I, Cap. 69.