It was an education also in demeanour, and especially in obedience[266] and modesty. In that chapter of Plutarch's Life of Cato which has been already quoted, after describing how the father taught his boy to ride, to box, to swim, and so on, he goes on, "And he was as careful not to utter an indecent word before his son, as he would have been in the presence of the Vestal Virgins." The pudor of childhood was always esteemed at Rome: "adolescens pudentissimus" is the highest praise that can be given even to a grown youth;[267] and there are signs that a feeling survived of a certain sacredness of childhood, which Juvenal reflects in his famous words, "Maxima debetur puero reverentia." The origin of this feeling is probably to be found in the fact that both boys and girls were in ancient times brought up to help in performing the religious duties of the household, as camilli and camillae (acolytes); and this is perhaps the reason why they wore, throughout Roman history, the toga praetexta with the purple stripe, like magistrates and sacrificing priests.[268] It is hardly necessary to say that this religious side of education was an education in the practice of cult, and not in any kind of creed or ideas about the gods; but so far as it went its influence was good, as instilling the habit of reverence and the sense of duty from a very early age. Though the Romans of Cicero's time had lost their old conviction of the necessity of propitiating the gods of the State, it is probable that the tradition of family worship still survived in the majority of households.
Again, we may be sure that the idea of duty to the State was not omitted in this old-fashioned education. Cato wrote histories for his son in large letters, "so that without stirring out of the house, he might gain a knowledge of the illustrious actions of the ancient Romans, and of the customs of his country": but it is significant that in the next two or three generations the writers of annals took to glorifying—and falsifying—the achievements of members of their own families, rather than those of the State as a whole. Boys learnt the XII Tables by heart, and Cicero tells us that he did this in his own boyhood, though the practice had since then been dropped.[269] That ancient code of law would have acted, we may imagine, as a kind of catechism of the rules laid down by the State for the conduct of its citizens, and as a reminder that though the State had outgrown the rough legal clothing of its infancy, it had from the very beginning undertaken the duty of regulating the conduct of its citizens in their relations with each other. Again, when a great Roman died, it is said to have been the practice for parents to take their boys to hear the funeral oration in praise of one who had done great service to the State.[270]
All this was admirable, and if Rome had not become a great imperial state, and if some super-structure of the humanities could have been added in a natural process of development, it might have continued for ages as an invaluable educational basis. But the conditions under which alone it could flourish had long ceased to be. It is obvious that it depended entirely on the presence of the parents and their interest in the children; as regards the boys it depended chiefly on the father. Now ever since the Roman dominion was extended beyond sea, i.e. ever since the first two Punic wars, the father of a family must often have been away from home for long periods; he might have to serve in foreign wars for years together, and in numberless cases never saw Italy again. Even if he remained in Rome, the ever increasing business of the State would occupy him far more than was compatible with a constant personal care for his children. The conscientious Roman father of the last two centuries B.C. must have felt even more keenly than English parents in India the sorrow of parting from their children at an age when they are most in need of parental care. We have to remember that in Cicero's day letter-writing had only recently become possible on an extended scale through the increasing business of the publicani in the provinces (see above, p. 74); the Roman father in Spain or Asia seldom heard of what his wife and children were doing, and the inevitable result was that he began to cease to care. In fact more and more came to depend on the mothers, as with our own hard-working professional classes; and we have seen reason to believe that in the last age of the Republic the average mother was not too often a conscientious or dutiful woman. The constant liability to divorce would naturally diminish her interest in her children, for after separation she had no part or lot in them. And this no doubt is one reason why at this particular period we hear so little of the life of children. There is indeed no reason to suppose that they themselves were unhappy; they had plenty of games, which were so familiar that the poets often allude to them—hoops, tops, dolls, blind man's buff, and the favourite games of "nuts" and "king."[271] But the real question is not whether they could enjoy their young life, but whether they were learning to use their bodies and minds to good purpose.
When a boy was about seven years old, the question would arise in most families whether he should remain at home or go to an elementary school.[272] No doubt it was usually decided by the means at the command of the parents. A wealthy father might see his son through his whole education at home by providing a tutor (paedagogus), and more advanced teachers as they were needed. Cato indeed, as we have seen, found time to do much of the work himself, but he also had a slave who taught his own and other children. Aemilius Paullus had several teachers in his house for this purpose, under his own superintendence.[273] Cicero too, as we have seen, seems to have educated his son at home, though he himself is said to have attended a school. But we may suppose that the ordinary boy of the upper classes went to school, under the care of a paedagogus, after the Greek fashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman of attaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him to learn to read, write, and cipher.[274] This elementary work must have been done well; we hear little or nothing of gross ignorance or neglected education.
There were, however, very serious defects in this system of elementary education. Not only the schoolmaster himself, but the paedagogus who was responsible for the boy's conduct, was almost always either a slave or a freedman; and neither slave nor freedman could be an object of profound respect for a Roman boy. Hence no doubt the necessity of maintaining discipline rather by means of corporal punishment (to which the Romans never seem to have objected, though Quintilian criticises it)[275] than by moral force; a fact which is attested both in literature and art. The responsibility again which attached to the paedagogus for the boy's morals must have been another inducement to the parents to renounce their proper work of supervision.[276] And once more, the great majority of teachers were Greeks. As the boy was born into a bilingual Graeco-Roman world, of which the Greeks were the only cultured people, this might seem natural and inevitable; but we know that in his heart the Roman despised the Greek. Of witnesses in their favour we might expect Cicero to be the strongest, but Cicero occasionally lets us know what he really thinks of their moral character. In a remarkable passage in his speech for Flaccus, which is fully borne out by remarks in his private letters, he says that he grants them all manner of literary and rhetorical skill, but that the race never understood or cared for the sacred binding force of testimony given in a court of law.[277] Thus the Roman boy was in the anomalous position of having to submit to chastisement from men whom as men he despised. Assuredly we should not like our public schoolboys to be taught or punished by men of low station or of an inferior standard of morals It is men, not methods, that really tell in education; the Roman schoolboy needed some one to believe in some one to whom to be wholly loyal; the very same overpowering need which was so obvious in the political world of Rome in the last century B.C.[278]
Of this elementary teaching little need be said here, as it did not bear directly on life and conduct. There is, however, one feature of it which may claim our attention for a moment. Both in reading and writing, and also for learning by heart, sententiae [Greek: gnomai] were used, which remind us of our copy-book maxims. Of these we have a large collection, more than 700, selected from the mimes of Publilius Syrus, who came to Rome from Syria as a slave in the age of which we are writing, and after obtaining his freedom gained great reputation as the author of many popular plays of this kind, in which he contrived to insert these wise saws and maxims. It is not likely that they found their way into the schools all at once, but in the early Empire we find them already alluded to as educational material by Seneca the elder,[279] and we may take them as a fair example of the maxims already in use in Cicero's time, making some allowance for their superior neatness and wisdom. Here are a few specimens, taken almost at random; it will be seen that they convey much shrewd good sense, and occasionally have the true ring of humanity as well as the flavour of Stoic sapientia. I quote from the excellent edition by Mr. Bickford-Smith.[280]
Avarus ipse miseriae causa est suae.
Audendo virtus crescit, tardando timor.
Cicatrix conscientiae pro vulnere est.
Fortunam[281] citius reperias quam retineas.
Cravissima est probi hominis iracundia.
Homo totiens moritur, quotiens amittit suos.
Homo vitae commodatus, non donatus est.
Humanitatis optima est certatio.
Iucundum nil est, nisi quod reficit varietas.
Malum est consilium quod mutari non potest.
Minus saepe pecces, si scias quod nescias.
Perpetuo vincit qui utitur clementia.
Qui ius iurandum servat, quovis pervenit.
Ubi peccat aetas maior, male discit minor.
I have quoted these to show that Roman children were not without opportunity even in early schooldays of laying to heart much that might lead them to good and generous conduct in later life, as well as to practical wisdom. But we know the fate of our own copy-book maxims; we know that it is not through them that our children become good men and women, but by the example and the un-systematised precepts of parents and teachers. No such neat [Greek gnomai] can do much good without a sanction of greater force than any that is inherent in them and such a sanction was not to be found in the ferula of the grammaticus or the paedagogus. Once more it is men and not methods that supply the real educational force.
Probably the greatest difficulty which the Roman boy had to face in his school life was the learning of arithmetic; it was this, we may imagine, that made him think of his master, as Horace did of the worthy Orbilius,[282] as a man of blows (plagosus). This is not the place to give an account of the methods of reckoning then used; they will be found fully explained in Marquardt's Privatleben, and compressed into a page by Professor Wilkins in his Roman Education[283]. It is enough to say that they were as indispensable as they were difficult to learn. "An orator was expected, according to Quintilian (i. 10. 35), not only to be able to make his calculations in court, but also to show clearly to his audience how he arrived at his results." From the small inn-keeper to the great capitalist, every man of business needed to be perfectly at home in reckoning sums of money. The magistrates, especially quaestors and aediles, had staffs of clerks who must have been skilled accountants; the provincial governors and all who were engaged in collecting the tributes of the provinces, as well as in lending the money to enable the tax-payers to pay (see above, 71 foll.), were constantly busy with their ledgers. The humbler inhabitants of the Empire had long been growing familiar with the Roman aptitude for arithmetic.[284]
Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, praeter laudem nullius avaris. Romani pueri longis rationibus assem discunt in partes centum diducere. "Dicat films Albini: si de quincunce remota est uncia, quid superat? poteras dixisse." "triens." "eu! rem poteris servare tuam."[285]