The Private Life of the Romans. Harold Whetstone Johnston

FIGURE 22. CHILDREN PLAYING BALL

FIGURE 23. BOY AND GOOSE

103 Pets and Games.—Pets were even more common then than now, and then as now the dog was easily first in the affections of children (Schreiber, LXXXII, 6). The cat, on the other hand, was hardly known until very late in the history of Greece and Rome. Birds were very commonly made pets, and besides the doves and pigeons which are familiar to us as well, we are told that ducks, crows, and quail were pets of children. So also were geese, odd as this seems to us, and the statue of a child struggling with a goose as large as himself is well known (Fig. 23). Monkeys were known, but could not have been common. Mice have been mentioned already. Games of many kinds were played by children, but we can only guess at the nature of most of them, as we have hardly any formal descriptions. There were games corresponding to our Odd or Even, Blindman's Buff, Hide and Seek, Jackstones (§320), and Seesaw (Schreiber, LXXIX and LXXX). Pebbles and nuts were used in games something like our marbles, and there were board-games also. To these may be added for boys riding, swimming, and wrestling, although these were taken too seriously, perhaps, to be called games and belonged rather to their training for the duties of citizenship.

      104 Home Training.—The training of the children was conducted by the father and mother in person. More stress was laid upon the moral than upon the intellectual development: reverence for the gods, respect for the law, unquestioning and instant obedience to authority, truthfulness, and self-reliance were the most important lessons for the child to learn. Much of this came from the constant association of the children with their parents, which was the characteristic feature of the home training of the Romans as compared with that of other peoples of the time. The children sat at table with their elders or helped to serve the meals. Until the age of seven both boys and girls had their mother for their teacher. From her they learned to speak correctly their native tongue, and Latin rhetoricians tell us that the best Latin was spoken by the noble women of the great houses of Rome. The mother taught them the elements of reading and writing and as much of the simpler operations of arithmetic as children so young could learn.

105 From about the age of seven the boy passed under the care of regular teachers, but the girl remained her mother's constant companion. Her schooling was necessarily cut short, because the Roman girl became a wife so young (§67), and there were things to learn in the meantime that books do not teach. From her mother she learned to spin and weave and sew: even Augustus wore garments woven by his wife. By her mother she was initiated into all the mysteries of household economy and fitted to take her place as the mistress of a household of her own, to be a Roman mātrōna, the most dignified position to which a woman could aspire in the ancient world (§§90, 91).

      106 The boy, except during the hours of school, was equally his father's companion. If the father was a farmer, as all Romans were in earlier times, the boy helped in the fields and learned to plow and plant and reap. If the father was a man of high position and lived in the capital, the boy stood by him in his hall as he received his guests, learned to know their faces, names, and rank, and acquired a practical knowledge of politics and affairs of state. If the father was a senator, the boy, in the earlier days only it is true, accompanied him to the senate house to hear the debates and listen to the great orators of the time; and the son could always go with him to the forum when he was an advocate or concerned in a public trial.

      107 Then as every Roman was bred a soldier the father trained the son in the use of arms and in the various military exercises, as well as in the manly sports of riding, swimming, wrestling, and boxing. In these exercises strength and agility were kept in view, rather than the grace of movement and symmetrical development of form, on which the Greeks laid so much stress. On great occasions, too, when the cabinets in the atrium were opened and the wax busts of their ancestors displayed, the boy and girl of noble family were always present and learned the history of the family of which they were a part, and with it the history of Rome.

      108 Schools.—The actual instruction given to the children by the father would vary with his own education and at best be subject to all sorts of interruptions due to his private business or his public duties. We find that this embarrassment was appreciated in very early times, and that it was customary for a pater familiās who happened to have among his slaves one competent to give the needed instruction, to turn over to him the actual teaching of the children. It must be remembered that slaves taken in war were often much better educated than their Roman masters. Not all households, however, would include a competent teacher, and it would seem only natural for the fortunate owner of such a slave to receive into his house at fixed hours of the day the children of his friends and neighbors to be taught together with his own.

109 For this privilege he might charge a fee for his own benefit, as we are told that Cato actually did, or he might allow the slave to retain as his pecūlium (§33) the little presents given him by his pupils in lieu of direct payment. The next step, one taken in times too early to be accurately fixed, was to select for the school a more convenient place than a private house, one that was central and easily accessible, and to receive as pupils all who could pay the modest fee that was demanded. To these schools girls as well as boys were admitted, but for the reason given in §105 the girls had little time for studying more than their mothers could teach them, and those who did carry their studies further came usually of families who preferred to educate their daughters in the privacy of their own homes and could afford to do so. The exceptions to this rule were so few, that from this point we may consider the education of boys alone.

FIGURE 24. WAXED TABLETS AND STILUS

110 Subjects Taught in Elementary Schools.—In these elementary schools the only subjects taught were reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the first, great stress was laid upon the pronunciation: the sounds were easy enough but quantity was hard to master. The teacher pronounced first syllable by syllable, then the separate words, and finally the whole sentence, the pupils pronouncing after him at the tops of their voices. In the teaching of writing, wax tablets (Fig. 24) were employed, much as slates were a generation ago. The teacher first traced with a stilus the letters that served as a copy, then he guided the pupil's hand with his own until the child had learned to form the letters independently. When some dexterity had been acquired, the pupil was taught to use the reed pen and write with ink upon papyrus. For practice, sheets were used that had had one side written upon already for more important purposes. If any books at all were used in these schools, the pupils must have made them for themselves by writing from the teacher's dictation.

FIGURE 25. ABACUS

      111 In arithmetic mental calculation was emphasized, but the pupil was taught to use his fingers in a very elaborate way that is not now thoroughly understood, and harder sums were worked out with the help of the reckoning board (abacus, Fig. 25). In addition to all this, attention was paid to the training of the memory, and the pupil was made to learn by heart all sorts of wise and pithy sayings and especially the Twelve Tables of the Law. These last became a regular fetich