Educational System

Education held great importance to the Ancient Romans, and it developed from an informal, familial system of education in the early Republic to a formal system during the late Republic and the Empire. Most important, however, were the moral and civic responsibilities which were expected from the citizens of the Republic. Hence Roman education not only provided the basic skills which were necessary for survival, but also conveyed the traditional social code which created a coherent society. This system which seemed to be perfect in many ways was in fact deeply flawed. In that society, education which is a social need, was made a luxury and was only acquired by those who could afford it. Even those who did acquire it, simply did it so that they could earn more and become politicians. The morals of these politicians and the elite class of ancient Rome are not hidden from anyone. The world knows that a few of these so called morally educated people were incestuous bisexuals who had no problem in copulating with women or men. They considered themselves to be the most supreme beings on earth and considered it their right to rule and plunder others. Hence, the world can understand how morally educated they were.

Roman education differed from other civilized nations of the olden times because the state took no cognizance of it, and made no provision for it: not even in the manner in which this was done in Athens. Education was, therefore, in Rome a domestic matter; and it was at the domestic fireside, around the sacred Lares, that the children acquired what knowledge was necessary for the purposes of life, in that primitive period, until the state ordered that the young should be exercised in arms. ¹

The traditional classical education also continued to be what formed young Romans. The materials used, for both elementary and higher (rhetorical) education, remained largely unchanged for centuries. There was some debate by some Christian writers about the appropriateness of pagan literature, but this continued to be the basis of education, and rhetoric served successive generations of Roman youths well in a variety of careers, including the Church.

As the father had, by law, the absolute right of regulating the life of the son as he pleased, so he naturally had the entire control over his education. The training of the youth included the learning of both; moral qualities and intellectual capacities, which enabled them to be of service to the state. A father was allowed to criticize the one who failed to do his best to secure this. But to lay down in detail which these were, and how they should be acquired, would have been regarded as an encroachment on the sacred sphere of the family, in which the father reigned alone and supreme. ²

For more modest vocational training, many small businesses and workshops were family-based. The little evidence which we have for formal apprenticeships identifies the relationship as being with teacher or trade-master rather than with fathers. But Treggiari uses the evidence of women in trades to sketch a picture of a family activity. This was the framework within which identities were formed: family and education. But education and socialization went beyond a formal curriculum. The physical context in which lives were lived played a major role. The city remained the same in basic ways: its contours, its ritual, the public life of the streets, the baths, theatres, amphitheaters and circus.

The urban fabric and layout and ceremonial life provided the opportunities for families to participate – often only as observers, but in ways that enabled them to share an image of Rome and to develop a Roman identity together. They could gather to cheer on a military triumph, or join in prayers at a religious festival and then share in feasts following a sacrifice, or sit together to watch the chariot and horse racing in the circus. Apart from the grand occasions in the central city, the local neighborhood (the vicus) provided a more intimate setting for family and other relationships.

Families could share in a wide range of public activities in Rome. And yet the situations in which families participated, but on a basis other than family, bear scrutiny. As permanent theatres and amphitheaters developed, a hierarchy of seating was established, based on criteria such as rank, marital status, citizenship, gender and age. So, doing things ‘as a family’ was not the only basis for learning to be a Roman, or a man, or a woman. One of the most striking occasions for displaying and instilling civic and family values was the public funeral of distinguished citizens. ³

In early republican times, boys were taught by their fathers to read, write and use weapons, and they accompanied them to religious ceremonies and public occasions, including the Senate if their father was a member. At the age of 16, sons of the nobility were given a political apprenticeship by being attached to a prominent figure, and from the age of 17 they spent the campaigning season with the army. This method of education persisted into imperial times for some families.

From the 3rd century B.C., a different Roman system of education developed which was different from the Greek tradition, often with a Greek slave or freedman for teacher—the litterator or ludi magister. The education was based mainly on the study of Latin and Greek literature in order to produce effective speakers. The earliest education, from 7 to 11 years, involved teaching both boys and girls, reading, writing and arithmetic, while Greek was sometimes taught by a paidagogus. ⁴

In the austere days of the republic, Cato the Censor claimed that he alone had the right to educate his son and boasted that he had himself taught the boy to read, write, fence, and swim. This accords with Pliny's statement that in the past every parent was his child's teacher; and although the father alone is expressly mentioned, we know from other sources of the important part played by certain Roman matrons in the education of their children.

When slaves were hired to teach the child, then the spoiled son of a wealthy family had a splendid time putting his so-called ‘master’ in his place, the place suited to a servant, whether he called himself a tutor or not. Instruction in the elementary school, the Indus litterarius, was limited to three subjects: reading, writing, and arithmetic. The teacher (magister) had to depend entirely on the small fees paid to him by the parents of his pupils and was often constrained to supplement his income as schoolmaster by other activities.

The Roman schoolmaster did not seem to have spoiled many children by sparing the rod. Naturally discipline had to be preserved when boys and girls were crowded together in one inconvenient spot without distinction of age or sex. But Quintilian noted the hypocrisy and cowardice, which is an abuse of corporal punishment, was apt to call forth in the pupil and spoke also of the brutal teacher of those societies. ⁵

Infant Education

As soon as a child was born, he was not given in charge to a hired nurse, to live with her in some pitiful hole that served for her lodgings; but was brought up in the lap and bosom of the mother, who reckoned it among her chief commendations to keep the house, and to attend on the children. Some ancient matron was pitched on out of the neighbors, whose life and manners rendered her worthy of that office, who also took care of the children of all the families. She not only had an eye only on their instruction, and the business that they were to follow, but with an equal modesty and gravity, she regulated their very divertissements and recreations. Thus Cornelia, Aurelia, and Attica, mothers to the Gracchi, Julius Caesar, and Augustus, are reported to have undertaken the office of governesses, and to have employed themselves in the education of noblemen's children. The strictness and severity of such an institution had a very good design, that the mind being thus preserved in its primitive innocence and integrity, and not debauched by ill custom or ill example, might apply itself with the greatest willingness to liberal arts, and embrace them with all its powers and faculties. ⁶

The old custom of Rome was for young people to learn from their elders the proper course of conduct, by watching their behavior as well as by listening to their instructions. Each one took his parent for his guide, or, if he had no parent, he chose the noblest and most aged Senator to take over the place of the parent or guide. The boy, when he was not at school, was constantly with his father. If he were a farmer, the boy would help in the work of the fields; if the family lived in the city, the boy would be expected to stand gravely and respectfully at his father's side when he received his guests, and he would accompany him to the Forum when a distinguished orator was to address the people, in order that he might listen to what the great Romans of the time had to say. At one time the boys were allowed to go with their fathers in the Senate, but this was stopped, because it was said that their mothers tried to find out from them afterwards what had been discussed. Another problem with this approach was that when the children would see the unethical and immoral lifestyle of their parents, they would forget some of the morals which they learnt at school and adopted the immoral lifestyle of their parents.

In the earlier days of the Republic one of the first things a boy had to learn was the Laws of the Twelve Tables. He generally learnt them at the time when he received his first lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic. Later there was less insistence on the Twelve Tables and Cicero remarks that, ‘when we were boys, we had to learn the Twelve Tables by heart like a kind of hymn.’

Most Roman boys, both of the later Republic and of the Empire, went to school. There were three kinds of schools for them to attend: The Elementary School, the Grammar School, and the School of Rhetoric. Such schools were found not only in Rome, but in most of the important provincial cities, for Roman education was of the same type in all parts of the Empire.

As soon as a boy was old enough to go to school, he was given a pedagogue, generally a well-educated slave, who took him to school every morning, waited for him until the lessons were over, and sometimes carried his books for him. Out of school hours the pedagogue was expected to look after the boy unless he was with his father, help him with his lessons, punish him, if necessary, and in general be his companion and friend. ⁷

Schooling was ideally divided into three subsequent phases: first, the child was exposed to the basics of literacy and arithmetic from the litterator or ludi magister; then the child read poetry and prose in Greek and Latin with the grammaticus calling attention to diction, spelling, and rhetorical figures; and finally, boys were trained in speech making and declamation by a rhetorician. ⁸

School

The primary school of Rome debauched the children it was supposed to instruct; and on the other hand, it rarely woke in them any feeling for the beauty of knowledge. School opened at dawn and continued without a break till noon. It was held under the awning outside some shop, and was invaded by all the noises of the street with only a tent cloth separating it. Its scanty furniture consisted of a chair for the master and benches or stools for the pupils, a blackboard, some tablets, and some calculating boards (abaci). Classes were continued every day of the year with exasperating monotony, broken only by the eighth-day pause (nundinae), the Quinquatrus, and the summer holidays. The master's sole ambition was to teach his pupils to read, write, and count; as he had several years at his disposal in which to accomplish this, he made no attempt to improve his wretched teaching methods or to brighten his dismal routine. ⁹

Lessons started with learning the alphabet, and to read and write in Latin and Greek. Exercises were done with a metal or bone stylus to write on a wooden tablet coated with wax. When the space was used up, the wax would be scraped off and a fresh layer quickly applied. Some tablets had several wooden leaves, attached with cord on one edge, to make a sort of a book.

The writing stylus had a flat scraper at one end for erasing small errors. When an exercise finished and was checked by the teacher, the pupil erased the whole work by wiping a warmed cloth over the wax surface, making it ready to use again. Discipline was harsh, and slackers risked frequent thrashings with the cane, leather thong, or eel-skin strap. Fathers expected no less of the hired teacher—endurance of pain was a part of training for the future soldiers of the empire. Richer families sent a specialized servant called a litterator along to the ludus with the boy, to make sure he behaved well and applied himself to his lessons. The litterator could also apply the rod if his pupil slacked. ¹⁰

At that time, public schools did not exist in Rome. It is true that we find schools referred to more than one of the old legends. It would be hardly more perilous to draw an inference, as some have, from the fact that Plutarch tells us that Romulus and Remus went to school at Education in the Early Republic Indeed apart from the definite statement which assigns the introduction of public schools to a much later date, it is not easy to say what would have been the need for them at this early epoch. In those institutions it was because fresh subjects had been brought into education, for which there was no room in the old home training. But the teaching of the school always supplemented and followed this and did not take its place. So long as no national literature existed, there could be no demand for schools in which it was taught. ¹¹

Secondary Education

At about the age of 11, some boys went to a grammaticus (secondary or high school), where they taught philosophy, history, geography, higher mathematics, music, and astronomy. Romans respected the knowledge of the Greeks so learning Greek was an important part of the grammaticus curriculum. One purpose of secondary education was to prepare the student for study with a teacher of public speaking called a rhetor. The sons of senators, state officials, or senior military men started this training for their future political life at about the age of 14. ¹²

From the 1st century B.C. contemporary poets, such as Virgil, were also studied. From the 2nd century B.C. rhetoric was taught by Greek teachers in secondary education to pupils over 16, but a Latin style of rhetoric became increasingly predominant. The practice of political oratory with debates in the Senate declined under the empire, as political decisions were taken by the emperor and not through public debate. However, rhetoric was still the major element in education, preparing boys mainly for careers as advocates in the law courts, and rhetoric had a major influence on literature. Professorships of rhetoric were set up in the major cities of the empire. Famous teachers in the late Roman period included St. Augustine, St. Ambrose and Ausonius. ¹³

In general, the wealthy could afford better education for their children—both boys and girls—than could the poor and this caused discrimination in the upper and lower class. Poor students might learn some basics at home or with a local tutor, but their schooling ended by the time they were 10 or 11 years old because of their financial instability. Children from wealthier families, usually boys, went on to study with a teacher called a grammaticus which means ‘from letters’ and is the source of the English word grammar. With a grammaticus, students improved their reading and writing skills and learned Greek. A small number of teenage boys received further private education to prepare them for certain careers, such as law or politics. ¹⁴

The school building was a very simple affair. Often it was not much more than a kind of shed built on to the side of a public building, sheltered by a roof, but open at the sides. The school day began early, often before dawn, and it is said that the people who lived near a school found it to be a very noisy neighborhood. They complained that there was no chance of sleep in the early morning hours, because even before cockcrow the streets were full of the sound of noisy schoolboys and the angry voice of the schoolmaster trying to keep order. ¹⁵

In the Elementary School not much beyond reading, writing and arithmetic was taught. Great stress was laid from the very beginning on the careful and correct pronunciation of words. The pupils had to stand before the teacher and repeat them after him syllable by syllable until they had mastered both pronunciation and spelling. Writing was taught first by means of wax tablets on which the letters were scratched with a stilus. Then, when the forms of the letters were familiar, the boy was allowed to write on papyrus. The Romans were a businesslike race and they insisted that their boys should be thoroughly grounded in arithmetic, especially in all forms of mental calculation. The work of the Elementary School included very little that was not strictly utilitarian in nature. On the whole it was the kind of education the early Romans desired for their sons, but occasionally such purely Utilitarian aims met with sharp criticism because of their erroneous nature.

Roman boys were also taught gymnastics. They went to the Campus Martius and the Tiber and learned to ride, run, jump, wrestle and swim. But this training was for the sake of making them hardy and strong and fit to endure hardships, not as with the Greek, for the sake of making the body as beautiful as it could become.

The third school to which the Roman boy would go was the School of Rhetoric. He often went to it before attaining manhood and sometimes afterwards. These were the schools in which Greek influence was most deeply felt. Authors rather than poets studied here, and great attention was paid to the practice of composition and oratory. The aim of the study of rhetoric was to form the taste and judgment and to learn how to say the right thing in the right way, especially when speaking in public. Towards the end of their tenure, students would be given speeches to prepare, so they would argue and debate with each other. In studying the art of speaking in public, great importance was attached by the teacher to the arguments chosen, the order in which they were presented, the language used, the tones of the voice and the gestures employed. Because this teaching was of Greek origin when it was first introduced, some of the older Romans regretted it, thinking it would lead the youths astray.

By the last century of the Republic, however, the Schools of Rhetoric were firmly established in Rome and they became increasingly important under the Empire. Treated as an end and not a means, oratory could become a very dangerous thing.

The best Roman orators understood that real oratory required not only study and practice, but a wide knowledge of what great men of all ages had thought, and that for oratory to be used for the highest ends and for the good of the state, it must be joined to high ideals and honorable conduct.

The Romans had no special education for professions such as law, political administration or the army, but the Roman gentleman was expected to take his share in these practical duties that concerned the state. In order to gain experience, sometimes after, sometimes instead of his travel and study abroad, the young, man would attach himself to some distinguished lawyer, governor or general, and by observing and assisting him in his duties, he would gain practical knowledge that would be of the highest value to him later. In all these ways, the Romans trained their sons and endeavored to fit them for the strenuous life which lay before all Roman citizens who worthily fulfilled their obligations.¹⁶

Geometry and Music

The rudiments of geometry and music were also studied by the pupils of the grammar schools, though instruction of these subjects were given by special teachers. Geometry as it was taught by the Romans was given more of a practical than a scientific application. Cicero says, ‘Among the Greeks, geometry was in the highest honor, but we have set the limits of this science at its practical applicability in measuring and calculating.’ Quintilian thought that the study of geometry was very valuable in education because of its logical nature. He thought that it sharpened the wits and trained the mind to think, and promoted habits of orderly arrangement and logical deduction. Music among the Romans never developed as an art for its own sake. In schools, music was taught merely that the students might gain knowledge of the principles of rhythm and melody. They were taught to study the meter of poetry, to read poetry with proper inflection and to control their gestures while speaking. Some teachers thought that the music of the old days furnished better material for teaching than did the modern music. For they felt that modern music lacked the solidity of the earlier compositions, and that the modern themes and the performers were far less sincere and less worthy of imitation than those of the older times. ¹⁷

Oratory

Oratory was one of the most important fields of study in Rome. The art of speaking with skill, manipulating the emotions of listeners and attaining victory because of the logical sequence and delivery of words, was highly regarded by the Roman society. Training to become proficient in oratory took many years. Similar to a doctor's medical education, a prospective speaker would attach himself to a noted orator, who would teach by example. Schools of oratory forced students to deliver speeches on matters of pure fiction; Cicero, in Brutus, detailed such a course of instruction. During the Republic, oratory was more skilled and important than during the Empire. As the historian Tacitus mentioned in his Dialogue, the cause for this may have been the need for a Republican politician to establish his career on the basis of his words, whereas in the Empire one was more dependent upon the goodwill of the occupant of the throne. Whatever the cause, from the time of Augustus onward, oratory suffered a decline in elegance. Advocate, or lawyers, still practiced for a time, but most of the great speeches were made by the emperors themselves, or were panegyrics by grateful courtiers or were made to propose changes in legislation. ¹⁸

Education for Women

A girl concentrated on what she needed to know to become a good wife and mother. However, the ancient tradition of the Roman matron, similar to her Greek counterpart, sitting at home spinning and weaving, largely disappeared when the Roman Empire expanded. The wealthy Roman wife had plenty of slaves to do her domestic chores, and plenty of stores selling clothes, bed linen, and furnishings. Therefore old, virtuous matronly skills were rarely learned. This allowed time for girls to concentrate on learning how to read and write from a private tutor. ¹⁹

Special teachers were hired for educating girls at home. Cicero mentions his friend Atticus who kept a slave paedagogus for his daughter’s elementary education, and a freedman grammaticus for her education in grammar. Pliny mentions Minicia Marcella and her sister, the daughters of a friend, who had their own paedagogy for their elementary education and praeceptores for grammatical education and the liberal arts. Even at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century A.D. private education still enjoyed tremendous prestige.

The education of rhetoric was only limited to the boys since they required knowledge of rhetoric for participation in public life, whereas women played no active role in it. Higher instruction was given in the rhetorical schools, where young men studied rhetoric and all the arts, which could make an effective orator. Attention was also given to literature and law. Roman girls probably did not attend these rhetorical schools because they married early and the legal minimum age was twelve, and upper-class girls usually married between this age and their late teens, whereas other girls married somewhat later, that is in their late teens or early twenties. Since formal education usually stopped once the girl married, it seems logical that girls who married younger, that is at twelve or thirteen, at a stage when they had not yet completed their grammar school education, were not as well educated as their much older husbands. However, not all girls got married so early, and many would therefore indeed have completed their grammar education by the time they eventually got married. In many cases their education continued after marriage: Some even received further education from their husbands or by a private teacher and it is also possible that women from the higher classes made use of private libraries. As result of the high social status Roman women enjoyed in society, it is also possible that their husbands discussed business matters with them, and since Roman women joined their men at social functions where financial transactions must invariably have been discussed, they will have learned much in this way too. ²⁰

Influence of Christianity

With the passage of time and the general conversion of Roman society and particularly of its ruling class, Christianity, overcoming its reserve, completely assimilated and took over Classical education. In the 4th century Christians were occupying teaching positions at all levels—from schoolmasters and grammarians to the highest chairs of eloquence. In his treatise De doctrina Christiana (426 A.D.), St. Augustine formulated the theory of this new Christian culture: being a religion of the Book, Christianity required a certain level of literacy and literary understanding; the explication of the Bible required the methods of the grammarian; preaching a new field of action required rhetoric; theology required the equipment of philosophy. The synthesis of Christianity and Classical education had become so intimate that, when the barbarian invasions swept away the traditional school along with many other imperial and Roman institutions, the church, needing a literary culture for the education of its clergy, kept alive the cultural tradition that Rome had received from the Hellenistic world of the time. ²¹

Book Burning

The complexity of the ancient practice of book burning was nowhere more evident than in the burning of the texts of magicians, astrologers, diviners, and other practitioners of religious disciplines in the Roman world. Occult religious texts were among the earliest sacred or ritual texts subjected to destruction on religious grounds and they continued to be sought out and were purged perhaps more frequently than almost any other religious literature in the Mediterranean world in the period from the Republic through the late Empire. In addition to the frequency and wide geographic dispersal of this phenomenon, the immolators themselves represent a much wider spectrum of society than the often quite specific perpetrators and contexts in which other types of sacred or religious texts were destroyed. During the Republic and early empire, the writings of itinerant diviners, ritual experts, astrologers, and prophets came to be forcibly rounded up and, at times, burned by the state. The public destruction of these writings, like public execution, was an event designed to assert the power of the authorities in whose name the action was carried out and the manner in which it occurred expressed clear religious and social messages. The destruction of these banned writings was, however, sporadic and never became systematic. They were temporary measures enacted by individuals and parties with genuine religious concerns to meet specific religious circumstances. In the Republic and early Empire, these individuals were representatives of the state acting in their capacity as officers of the state. ²²

The educational system of ancient Rome kept developing over time but was unable to achieve the goals which a perfect educational system generally strives to achieve. Since they had made education a luxury, the poor could not afford it and resultantly, the rich would get better jobs and get richer while the poor would find it difficult to survive and get poorer. This way, the society got divided into two extremes where the rich did not care about the poor, but rather they believed that the poor were obliged to obey and serve them. Secondly, even in that vulgar and open society, women did not have open access to education. However, on the other hand, Islam declared that it was mandatory for men and women to acquire education. It made education a fundamental right of every human being. Societies which followed the Islamic model with sincerity saw how poverty was alleviated, how moral and ethical the people became, and how the crime rates were reduced to almost zero. Still after looking at the facts, the world blindly adopted the Roman model of education just because a few greedy people saw it fit even though they had seen and are still seeing its disastrous effects such as increase in poverty, and destruction of moral values of a family, the family structure, and then the society itself.

• ¹ H. I. Smith (1842), Education: History of Education Ancient and Modern, Harper & Brothers, Part 1, New York, USA, Pg. 84-87.
• ² A. S. Wilkins (1905), Roman Education, Cambridge at the University Press, Cambridge, U.K., Pg. 6.
• ³ Paul ErdKamp (2013), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K, Pg. 107-108.
• ⁴ Lesley Adkins & Roy. A. Adkins (2004), Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 231.
• ⁵ Jerome Carcopino (1941), Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire, George Routledge & Sons Ltd., London, U.K., Pg. 103-105.
• ⁶ Basil Kennet (1746), Antiquities of Rome in Two Parts, F. Lucas Jun, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, Pg. XV-XVI.
• ⁷ Dorothy Mills (1937), The Book of the Ancient Romans, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, USA, Pg. 321-323.
• ⁸ W. Martin Bloomer (2015), A Companion to Ancient Education, Wiley Blackwell, West Sussex, U.K., Pg. 227.
• ⁹ Jerome Carcopino (1941), Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire, George Routledge & Sons Ltd., London, U.K., Pg. 105.
• ¹⁰ Norman Bancroft Hunt (2009), Living in Ancient Rome, Chelsea House, New York, USA, Pg. 20-21.
• ¹¹ A. S. Wilkins (1905), Roman Education, Cambridge at the University Press, Cambridge, U.K., Pg. 8-9.
• ¹² Norman Bancroft Hunt (2009), Living in Ancient Rome, Chelsea House, New York, USA, Pg. 20-21.
• ¹³ Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins (2004), Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 231.
• ¹⁴ Michael Burgan (2009), Empire of Ancient Rome, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, USA, Pg. 94.
• ¹⁵ Dorothy Mills (1937), The Book of the Ancient Romans, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, USA, Pg. 323-324.
• ¹⁶ Dorothy Mills (1937), The Book of the Ancient Romans, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, USA, Pg. 327-330.
• ¹⁷ Effie Sherwood Goozee (1923), Roman Education under the Early Empire, Boston University, Boston, USA, Pg. 15
• ¹⁸ Mathew Bunson (1994), Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 739.
• ¹⁹ Norman Bancroft Hunt (2009), Living in Ancient Rome, Chelsea House, New York, USA, Pg. 20-21.
• ²⁰ Rena Van Den Bergh, The Role of Education in the Social and Legal Position of Women in Roman Society, Pg. 355-360: http://local.droit.ulg.ac.be/sa/rida/file/2000/vandenbergh.pdf: Retrieved: 29-11-2018
• ²¹ Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Education-in-the-later-Roman-Empire: Retrieved: 30-11-2018
• ²² Daniel Christopher Sarefield (2004), Burning Knowledge: Studies of Book Burning in Ancient Rome, The Ohio State University, Ohio, USA, Pg. 30-31.