Roman life in the days of Cicero | Page 3

his mother had questioned
him, and how he had devised this story to escape from her importunity.
Thereupon the Senate, judging that all boys might not have the same
constancy and wit, and that the State might suffer damage from the
revealing of things that 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,