Roman life in the days of Cicero | Page 5

this, "Was Crates the philosopher
right when, having met an ignorant boy, he administered a beating to
his teacher?" Many subjects of these themes have been preserved.
Hannibal was naturally one often chosen. His passage of the Alps, and
the question whether he should have advanced on the city immediately
after the battle of Cannae, were frequently discussed. Cicero mentions a
subject of the speculative kind. "It is forbidden to a stranger to mount
the wall. A. mounts the wall, but only to help the citizens in repelling
their enemies. Has A. broken the law?"
To make these studies more interesting to the Roman boy, his
schoolmaster called in the aid of emulation. "I feel sure," says
Quintilian, "that the practice which I remember to have been employed
by my own teachers was any thing but useless. They were accustomed
to divide the boys into classes, and they set us to speak in the order of
our powers; every one taking his turn according to his proficiency. Our
performances were duly estimated; and prodigious were the struggles
which we had for victory. To be the head of one's class was considered

the most glorious thing conceivable. But the decision was not made
once for all. The next month brought the vanquished an opportunity of
renewing the contest. He who had been victorious in the first encounter
was not led by success to relax his efforts, and a feeling of vexation
impelled the vanquished to do away with the disgrace of defeat. This
practice, I am sure, supplied a keener stimulus to learning than did all
the exhortations of our teachers, the care of our tutors, and the wishes
of our parents." Nor did the schoolmaster trust to emulation alone. The
third choice of the famous Winchester line, "Either learn, or go: there is
yet another choice--to be flogged," was liberally employed. Horace
celebrates his old schoolmaster as a "man of many blows," and another
distinguished pupil of this teacher, the Busby or Keate of antiquity, has
specified the weapons which he employed, the ferule and the thong.
The thong is the familiar "tawse" of schools north of the Border. The
ferule was a name given both to the bamboo and to the yellow cane,
which grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago
and in Southern Italy, as notably at Cannae in Apulia, where it gave a
name to the scene of the great battle. The virga was also used, a rod
commonly of birch, a tree the educational use of which had been
already discovered. The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice
of Eton is truly classical down to its details.
As to the advantage of the practice opinions were divided. One
enthusiastic advocate goes so far as to say that the Greek word for a
cane signifies by derivation, "the sharpener of the young" (_narthex,
nearous thegein_), but the best authorities were against it. Seneca is
indignant with the savage who will "butcher" a young learner because
he hesitates at a word--a venial fault indeed, one would think, when we
remember what must have been the aspect of a Roman book, written as
it was in capitals, almost without stops, and with little or no distinction
between the words. And Quintilian is equally decided, though he
allows that flogging was an "institution."
As to holidays the practice of the Roman schools probably resembled
that which prevails in the Scotch Universities, though with a less
magnificent length of vacation. Every one had a holiday on the "days of
Saturn" (a festival beginning on the seventeenth of December), and the

schoolboys had one of their own on the "days of Minerva," which fell
in the latter half of March; but the "long vacation" was in the summer.
Horace speaks of lads carrying their fees to school on the fifteenth of
the month for eight months in the year (if this interpretation of a
doubtful passage is correct). Perhaps as this was a country school the
holidays were made longer than usual, to let the scholars take their part
in the harvest, which as including the vintage would not be over till
somewhat late in the autumn. We find Martial, however, imploring a
schoolmaster to remember that the heat of July was not favorable to
learning, and suggesting that he should abdicate his seat till the
fifteenth of October brought a season more convenient for study. Rome
indeed was probably deserted in the later summer and autumn by the
wealthier class, who were doubtless disposed to agree in the poet's
remark, a remark to which the idlest schoolboy will forgive its Latin for
the sake of its admirable sentiment:
"Aestate pueri si valent satis discunt." "In summer boys learn enough,
if they keep their health."
Something, perhaps, may be