The account which the Emperor Marcus Aurelius gives of his own education, as late as the second Christian century, suggests how extensively the old customs and ideas persisted even so late in the imperial period.1

Third or Imperial Period: The Hellenized Roman Education. During this period, including about one century B.C. and two centuries A.D., the Romans attempted to introduce the new wine of Greek culture and intellectual activity and individualism into the old bottles of Roman institutional life. Never before, perhaps never at any time, has one people attempted to appropriate so thoroughly the intellectual life of another. The native vigor of the Roman character made it possible to do this without a complete surrender of their own characteristics and consequently rendered some modification of the Greek intellectual and educational characteristics necessary. The Romans never acquired the intellectuality, versatility or the originality of the Greeks; at most, they succeeded in mastering the external; at best, they perfected the form of literature; at worst, in the later centuries of the empire, in intellectual life and literature their education became one of pure form possessing little content or real value.

The general means by which the Romans appropriated the Greek culture was by an adoption of their educational institutions, now perfected into a system such as the Greeks never developed.

The School of the Literator (or Ludimagister) during this period was somewhat more fully developed, though the details of its work are not fully known. Even at this time this elementary school never attempted to give more than the merest rudiments of the arts of reading, writing, and calculation. Since reading was taken up in the grammatical school as a fine art, it is probable that, when the boy had mastered the art of reading ordinary prose, he was immediately transferred to

1 Source Book, pp. 377-385.

the higher school. By the time of Cicero, the Laws of the Twelve Tables disappeared from these schools, and their place was taken by portions of the Latinized Odyssey or by versified moral maxims. Though there are frequent exceptions, as in the case of Horace (p. 186), whose description of school life is pertinent in this connection, the Greek pedagogue had generally replaced the father in the direct oversight of the child. More attention was given at Rome to the selection of the pedagogue than in Greece. That they were not all ignorant is evidenced by the case of Palæmon, author of one of the earliest scientific treatises on Latin grammar, who first distinguished the four declensions, who was the instructor of Quintilian, and was himself one of the most famous Romans of his day. Yet he acquired the rudiments of literature as he attended his master's boy in the school as a pedagogue.

Such schools were very common. The room was in a private house or in a shed or booth, or even in the open air. This phase of education, being non-Grecian, never received any general attention, nor such teachers often mere slaves any public esteem.

The School of the Grammaticus now became a definitely formulated educational institution with an elaborate method, a fixed curriculum, and receiving public support. Such schools were of two types; the one for the teaching of the Greek language, the other for the Latin language. Quintilian recommends the attendance at the Greek schools and the learning of the Greek language first. The Latin Grammar Schools at least were to be found in every city in the empire and remained as one of the most persistent institutions of the old pagan civilization until the overthrow of Roman culture by the barbarians. The major part of the work of these schools was, as the name indicates, the study of grammar. But grammar included more than the term signifies with us, for it related to the study both of the linguistic elements and of the

literary products of a language. They were essentially liter ary schools: a master was called a literatus as well as a grammaticus. And literature might be, certainly was in the conception of Quintilian, a broader conception than with us, for it included the work of the historians and of the scientific writers as well as of the poets. Varro (born 116 B.C.), the learned Roman of the period of Cicero, wrote on all the seven

liberal arts, i.e. grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, and on medicine and architecture besides. For the Romans, the world of learning had become quite identical in outline with that of the Greeks. It is certain that to some extent mathematics, music, and rudimentary dialectics were introduced into the grammar schools. The fact that these schools trespassed upon the grounds of the rhetorical schools has previously been noted. This combination of function continued, especially in smaller communities, late into imperial times. In all of the studies mentioned the

practical character of Roman life was never lost sight of, their use never became identical with that in the Greek schools. Gymnastic and dancing were never introduced; the former was taught only in connection with military training and the latter, if ever, in the home. To the legal tendency, the systematizing character, and the practical bent of the Roman mind, the study of grammar recommended itself, and it is in this subject that the educational activities of these schools are seen to the best advantage. The elements of Latin grammar were formulated early in the imperial period, though the particular form given to the subject in later ages was the immediate work of Donatus (fourth century) and Priscian (fifth century).

Quintilian has furnished a general account of the work of these schools at their best. The master read with the pupils a wide selection of poets and historians, of which the Latinized Homer, Vergil, and Horace were the standards. Comment was made upon both substance and literary form, and especial attention was given to oral reading, as preliminary to oratorical training. This was followed by elaborate exercises in paragraphing, composition, and verse writing. A much used form of exercise was the assignment of a theme in the form of a quotation or maxim from some writer, to be taken as the basis of an elaborate thesis or composition. This then was declaimed. According to Professor Jullien such theses followed this outline: (a) a panegyric upon the author, (b) the expansion of the thought, (c) the explanation and defense of the principle underlying the thought, (d) a comparison of the thought with similar ideas of other authors, (e) confirmatory quotations or incidents, (f) practical exhortation. Through the training in declamation afforded by these exercises the work of the grammatical school merged into that of the rhetorical school. But the main purpose of the former was different from that of the latter: in the grammatical school the object was to give a mastery of the lan

guage, a correctness of expression in reading, in writing, and in speaking, and to do this through a familiarity with the best Greek and Latin authors. Thus the literary education developed by the Greeks as the highest form of the liberal education was further developed along the definite line of a practical education for the life of affairs.

The School of the Rhetor was the culmination of this practical literary education. Similar to the schools of the sophists, or rather, of the later rhetoricians of Greece, these schools furnished a direct preparation for the life of public affairs at Rome, and consequently were patronized only by those who expected to devote their lives to a public career. During the later imperial period such a life became the distinctive characteristic of the members of the senatorial class, as that class was enlarged to include great numbers who had no other qualification save the favor of the emperor or some high official or the possession of wealth which would enable them to secure exemption from the obligations of ordinary citizenship. Hence, although all inspiration that might come to oratory from love of freedom was gone, this rhetorical education developed and expanded during these imperial centuries.

Oratory was of greater and of more lasting importance at Rome than among the Greeks. Whereas the Greeks found an outlet for their higher intellectual interests in the philosophical schools and in the new religions, the Romans found in oratory the practical application of every aspect of higher learning that appealed to them. As Cicero explains in his de Oratore, the orator must have the philosopher's knowledge both of things and of human nature, but he must also have the power to make such knowledge of practical value in influencing his fellows through speech. To the Roman, then, this power of the orator represented in general the various ways in which an educated man in modern times can make his knowledge effective in the