Roman life in the days of Cicero | Page 3

had best be kept secret, made this law, that no sons of a senator should thereafter come into the House, save only this young Papirius, but that he should have the right to come so long as he should wear the praetexta."
While this general education was going on, the lad was receiving some definite teaching. He learned of course to read, to write, and to cypher. The elder Cato used to write in large characters for the benefit of his sons portions of history, probably composed by himself or by his contemporary Fabius, surnamed the "Painter" (the author of a chronicle of Italy from the landing of Aeneas down to the end of the Second Punic War). He was tempted to learn by playthings, which ingeniously combined instruction and amusement. Ivory letters--probably in earlier times a less costly material was used--were put into his hands, just as they are put into the hands of children now-a-days, that he might learn how to form words. As soon as reading was acquired, he began to learn by heart. "When we were boys," Cicero represents himself as saying to his brother Quintus, in one of his Dialogues, "we used to learn the 'Twelve Tables.'" The "Twelve Tables" were the laws which Appius of evil fame and his colleagues the decemvirs had arranged in a code. "No one," he goes on to say, "learns them now." Books had become far more common in the forty years which had passed between Cicero's boyhood and the time at which he is supposed to be speaking; and the tedious lesson of his early days had given place to something more varied and interesting.
Writing the boy learned by following with the pen (a sharp-pointed stylus of metal), forms of letters which had been engraved on tablets of wood. At first his hand was held and guided by the teacher. This was judged by the experienced to be a better plan than allowing him to shape letters for himself on the wax-covered tablet. Of course parchment and paper were far too expensive materials to be used for exercises and copies. As books were rare and costly, dictation became a matter of much importance. The boy wrote, in part at least, his own schoolbooks. Horace remembers with a shudder what he had himself written at the dictation of his schoolmaster, who was accustomed to enforce good writing and spelling with many blows. He never could reconcile himself to the early poets whose verse had furnished the matter of these lessons.
Our Roman boy must have found arithmetic a more troublesome thing than the figures now in use (for which we cannot be too thankful to the Arabs their inventors) have made it. It is difficult to imagine how any thing like a long sum in multiplication or division could have been done with the Roman numerals, so cumbrous were they. The number, for instance, which we represent by the figures 89 would require for its expression no less than nine figures, LXXXVIIII. The boy was helped by using the fingers, the left hand being used to signify numbers below a hundred, and the right numbers above it. Sometimes his teacher would have a counting-board, on which units, tens, and hundreds would be represented by variously colored balls. The sums which he did were mostly of a practical kind. Here is the sample that Horace gives of an arithmetic lesson. "The Roman boys are taught to divide the penny by long calculations. 'If from five ounces be subtracted one, what is the remainder?' At once you can answer, 'A third of a penny.' 'Good, you will be able to take care of your money. If an ounce be added what does it make?' 'The half of a penny.'"
While he was acquiring this knowledge he was also learning a language, the one language besides his own which to a Roman was worth knowing--Greek. Very possibly he had begun to pick it up in the nursery, where a Greek slave girl was to be found, just as the French bonne or the German nursery-governess is among our own wealthier families. He certainly began to acquire it when he reached the age at which his regular education was commenced. Cato the Elder, though he made it a practice to teach his own sons, had nevertheless a Greek slave who was capable of undertaking the work, and who actually did teach, to the profit of his very frugal master, the sons of other nobles. Aemilius, the conqueror of Macedonia, who was a few years younger than Cato, had as a tutor a Greek of some distinction. While preparing the procession of his triumph he had sent to Athens for a scene-painter, as we should call him, who might make pictures of conquered towns wherewith to illustrate