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Education in Ancient Rome
Ave, magister!
Overview of Roman Education
• Early Republic (750-350BC)
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Domestic education by parents, esp. paterfamilias
Agricultural, domestic, moral, & civil skills, for both boys/girls
No strong national literature
Spurius Carvilius = first fee-paying “ludus”
• Late Republic (300-0BC)
• Emergence of more formal, tiered schools, by ability > age
• Greek influence strengthens w/ private tutors, literature, higher ed.
• Yet Roman reject Greek music, athletics in favor of oratory, law, and
“practical” skills
• Empire
• Abundance of private schools
• More international student body
I didn’t learn geometry and literary criticism and useless nonsense like that. I learned
how to read the letters on public inscriptions. I learned how to divide things into
hundreds and work out percentages and I know weights, measures and currency.
-Petronius, Satyricon, 58
Types of schools
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Primary School (w/ litterator or magister ludi)
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Secondary School (w/ grammaticus)
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Reading w/ simple letters, phrases from texts & inscriptions
Writing w/ erasable wax tablet & stylus (CAPS only)
Simple math w/ abacus or pebbles (and Roman numerals)
Low fees, open to any student, mixed social classes
Writing w/ parchment & quills for advanced students
Latin & Greek for elite students
Oratory, beg. rhetoric, poetry, grammar = civic/political training
Oratory School/”College” (w/ rhetor)
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More advanced rhetoric; typically noble students
School Life
• Academic Year
• Began March 24 (Feast of Minerva)
• 7 days/week, but many holidays (e.g., Quinquatria (Mar. 19-24)
• Sunrise start, followed by lunch/siesta & classes
• Corporal Punishment common
• Knuckles, ears, hair, posterior all fair targets
• Horace referred to his teacher Oribilus as a “plagosus” (thrasher!)
• Pedagogy
• Oral emphasis (dictation, lecture, disputation)
• Memorization and recitation, enunciation
• Quaestiones (abstract concepts) vs. causae (specific situations)
vs. declamatio (advocacy of action)
• No systematic study or curriculum until 1st c. BC
Roman tools for school
Roman Writing Tablets
Roman Abacus
School Life II
• Paedagogus (“child leader”)
• Family slave (often Greek)
who accompanied boy to/from
school, provided tutoring &
safety
• School Buildings
• Rarely purpose-built buildings
• Rough, backless benches
• Apprenticeships for older
students
• Vital for students to network,
and to gain experience in
diplomacy, military tactics
Famous Roman Teachers
• Cicero (103BC-43BC)
• Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, political
scientist, & prose stylist
• Sent his son Marcus to Athens to complete his
education, as many wealthy families did
(=Grand Tour)
• Quintilian (35-100 AD)
• Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
• Trained in Rome—lawyer in Spain--assistant to
Emperor Galba—opens a school of Rhetoric in
Rome.
• Tutor to Domitian’s grand-nephews
• Author of Istitutio Oratorio, on technical points
of speech and training of orators—
Plutarch on Cato the Elder
• …And when the child was old enough to read, Cato
himself took charge and taught him to read and write,
even though he owned an accomplished slave …who
was a teacher and had instructed many boys. But Cato
did not think it proper for his son to be criticized by a
slave or to have his ears tweaked by a slave when he
was a slow learner, or to owe to a slave so precious a
gift as his education. Therefore, Cato was his reading
teacher, his law professor, his athletic coach. …He also
says that he wrote his book in large letters so that his
son might have the opportunity at home to become
familiar with his society’s ancient customs and traditions.
He was careful to avoid indecent language in his son’s
presence.
Juvenal’s Satires on teacher’s
salary
• What grammaticus …ever receives the salary which his
hard work deserves? And then this amount, however
small ( certainly less than a rhetor earns) is further
diminished by bribes to greedy paedogogues and fees to
accountants….resign yourself. As long as you get some
money for sitting in a classroom in the middle of the night
when no laborer or woolworker would be on the job! As
long as you get some money for enduring the stink of oil
lamps ( olive oil)…and yet rarely do you get your money
without a court case. But still the parents set impossible
standards for you. You must know the rules of grammar
perfectly, memorize history books and .. Then the
parents say, "Do your job well, and when the end of the
year comes, we’ll pay you for the twelve month period
the same amount that a chariot driver earns in one race.
Roman Education
Lector emptor!
Additional Resources
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See our Wiki
See Ancient History Sourcebook
See printed books on the desk
See ThinkQuest and Wikipedia