We do not know much of Roman childhood, but we can judge from Roman art and epitaphs that when children came they were loved not wisely but too well. Juvenal interrupts his wrath to write a tender passage on the good examples we must place before our children’s eyes, the evil sights and sounds we must keep from them, the respect that we should show them even in the excesses of our love.27 Favorinus, in a discourse premimicking Rousseau, begged mothers to nurse their babes.28 Seneca and Plutarch spoke to the same effect, which was slight indeed; wet-nursing was the rule in all families that could afford it, with no evident tragedies ensuing.IV
Early education came from the nurse, who was usually Greek. There were fairy tales beginning, “Once upon a time a king and a queen . . .” Primary schooling was still entrusted to private enterprise. Rich men often hired tutors for their children, but Quintilian, like Emerson, warned against this as depriving the child of formative friendships and stimulating rivalries. Ordinarily the boy and girl of the free classes entered at the age of seven an elementary school, accompanied each way by a paedagogus (“child-leader”) to guard his safety and his morals. Such schools existed everywhere in the Empire, even in small country towns; the wall scribblings at Pompeii suggest a general literacy, and probably education was then as widespread in the Mediterranean world as at any time before or since. Both the paedagogus and the teacher (ludi magister, “schoolmaster”) were usually Greek freedmen or slaves. In Horace’s youth and native town each pupil paid the teacher eight asses (forty-eight cents) monthly; 30 350 years later Diocletian fixed the maximum fee for the elementary teacher at fifty denarii ($20) per month per pupil; we may judge from this the rise of the teacher and the fall of the as.
About the age of thirteen the successful student, of either sex, was graduated into a secondary or high school; Rome had twenty of these in A.D. 130. Here the scholars studied more grammar, the Greek language, Latin and Greek literature, music, astronomy, history, mythology, and philosophy, generally through lecture-commentaries on the classic poets. Up to this point the girls seem to have taken the same courses as the boys, but they often sought additional instruction in music and dancing. Since the secondary teachers (grammatici) were nearly always Greek freedmen, they naturally emphasized Greek literature and history; Roman culture took on a Greek tint, until by the end of the second century almost all higher education was given in Greek, and Latin literature was swallowed up in the general Hellenic koiné and culture of the age.
The Roman equivalent of our college and university education was provided in the schools of the rhetors. The Empire bristled with rhetoricians who spoke for their clients in court, or wrote speeches for them, or gave public lectures, or taught their art to pupils, or did all four. Many of them traveled from city to city, speaking on literature, philosophy, or politics, and giving exhibitions of how to handle any subject with oratorical skill. The younger Pliny tells of the Greek Isaeus, then sixty-three years old:
He proposes several questions for discussion, gives his audience liberty to call for any they please, and sometimes even to say what side of it he should defend; whereupon he rises, dons his gown, and begins. . . . He introduces his theme with great propriety, his narrative is clear, his controversy ingenious, his logic forcible, and his rhetoric sublime.31
Such men might open a school, employ assistants, and gather a large student body. Pupils entered about their sixteenth year, and paid fees as high as 2000 sesterces per course. The chief subjects were oratory, geometry, astronomy, and philosophy—which included much that is now termed science. These constituted a “liberal education”—i.e., one designed for a well-to-do freeman (homo liber), who would presumably have no physical work to perform. Petronius complained, as every generation does, that education unfitted youth for the problems of maturity: “The schools are to blame for the gross foolishness of our young men, since in them they see or hear nothing at all of the affairs of everyday life.”32 We can only say that they gave the assiduous student that clarity and quickness of thought which have distinguished the legal profession in all ages, and that capacity for unscrupulous eloquence which marked the orators of Rome. Apparently no degrees were granted in these schools. The student might stay as long, and take as many courses, as he liked; Aulus Gellius remained till he was twenty-five. Women also attended, some after marriage. Those who wished further instruction went to Athens for philosophy at its bubbling source, to Alexandria for medicine, or to Rhodes for the last subtleties of rhetoric. Cicero spent $4000 a year maintaining his son in the university of Athens.
By Vespasian’s time the schools of rhetoric had so grown in number and influence that the wily Emperor thought it advisable to bring the more important ones in the capital under governmental control by paying their head professors a state salary—the highest being 100,000 sesterces ($10,000) a year. We do not know to how many teachers or cities Vespasian extended this subsidy. We hear of private endowments for higher education, such as the younger Pliny established at Comum.33 Trajan provided scholarships for 5000 boys who had less money than brains. By the reign of Hadrian governmental financing of secondary schools had been adopted in many municipalities throughout the Empire, and a pension fund had been set aside for retired teachers. Hadrian and Antoninus exempted the leading professors of each city from taxation and other civic burdens. Education reached its height while superstition grew, morals declined, and literature decayed.