Roman school

“ Having borrowed—conquered one might almost say—Greek religion, philosophy, literature, and learning, the Romans naturally borrowed also the school system that had been evolved to impart this culture. Never before or since has any people adapted so completely to their own needs the system of educational training evolved by another. To the Greek basis some distinctively Roman elements were added to adapt it better to the peculiar needs of their own people, while on the other hand many of the finer Greek characteristics were omitted entirely. ”

“ Gave a talk upon my Roman experiences before the New England Woman’s Club. I sounded a blast for the American School for Classical Study in Rome and for Richard Norton, who made it the vital place it now is. The school was dead-alive till he took it, breathed upon it and made it alive with his life. A greater transformation I never saw, nor a more striking illustration of how a man can work his vitality into a stodgy institution like yeast into heavy dough, and see it rise, almost overnight. ”

“ Rome, in the very agonies of political dissolution, possessed all the then known arts, a splendid literature, and a school of philosophy whose ethical code was more lofty, if less human, than that of the new system which was struggling to replace the old. That the inconceivably atrocious gladiatorial games should have developed into such huge proportions in conjunction with the sublime moral teachings of Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and a score of others, is the despair of students of Roman history. ”

“ But we may suppose that the ordinary boy of the upper classes went to school, under the care of a paedagogus, after the Greek fashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman of attaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him to learn to read, write, and cipher. ”

“ For 600 years after the building of the city, those circumstances did not arise in that capital which called forth and promoted philosophy in Greece. The ancient Romans were warriors and agriculturists. Their education was regulated with a view to an active life, and rearing citizens and heroes, not philosophers. The Campus Martius was their school; the tent their Lyceum, and the traditions of their ancestors, and religious rites, their science,—they were taught to act, to believe, and to obey, not to reason or discuss. ”

“ The boy who is destined to greatness has now outgrown the nursery, and the great question arises, Is he to be sent to school? With the Romans as with us this difficulty admitted of two solutions. The lad might be educated at home under tutors, or he might be sent to learn the world at a public school. ”

“ The Greeks were the one people who could undertake what we call the higher education, and they were now beginning to swarm in Rome. Some Greek teachers were free men, but the greater number were slaves captured in the wars; and thus the first requisite in a school-master, that he should be looked up to and willingly obeyed, was too often absent in this new education. It is men, not methods, that really tell in education. In his heart, as we know from many striking passages in Roman literature, the grown-up Roman despised the Greek, and we may be sure that the Roman boy did too. ”

“ Rome realized the importance of exercising control over schools, and of fostering their increase, and she developed this policy in spite of the stern anti-Roman position eventually exhibited by William I. We must note here two canons on the question of education which, though promulgated at national synods sitting at Westminster, really emanated from Rome. Canon XVII. of 1138 A. D. ordained that schoolmasters should not, under penalty of ecclesiastical punishment, 'hire out' their schools. This canon made for efficiency. The man who took the fees must teach the school. ”

“ In the emphasis they placed on moral worth, education of the body as well as the mind, and moderation in all things, they were much ahead of us. Their schools became a type for the cities of the entire Mediterranean world, being found from the Black Sea south to the Persian Gulf and westward to Spain. When Rome became a world empire the Greek school system was adopted, and in modified form became dominant in Rome and throughout the provinces, while the universities of the Greek cities for long furnished the highest form of education for ambitious Roman youths. ”

“ The characteristic feature in the Roman School has been said to consist in a strict imitation of the works of the ancients, not only in sublimity, but also in elegance and selection; and to this we shall add other peculiarities, which will be noticed in their proper place. Thus, from its propriety, or from tacit convention, the appellation of the Roman School has been generally adopted; and, as it certainly serves to distinguish one of the leading styles of Italian art, it becomes necessary to employ it, in order to make ourselves clearly understood. ”

“ The same school might doubtless employ a special arithmetic master, and also a teacher of music, but mainly the business of such an establishment was theoretically to prepare the boy for a proper and effective use of language, whether for social or for public purposes. In the Rome of the republic a man of affairs or ambitions required above all things to be an accomplished speaker, and this tradition had not weakened under the empire. Moreover, for the training of the intellectual faculties as such, the Romans had no better resource than grammatical and literary study. ”

“ With us it does not mean independence; as a rule the boy remains at school for a year or two at least under strict discipline. At Rome it meant, on the contrary, that he was "of age," and in the eye of the law a man, capable of looking after his own education and of holding property. This was a survival from the time when at the age of puberty the boy, as among all primitive peoples, was solemnly received into the body of citizens and warriors; and the solemnity of the Roman ceremony fully attests this. ”

“ The greatest men of Rome, when far advanced in age and dignity, did not disdain to frequent his school. Many of his precepts, indeed, extended to rhetoric and declamation, the arts, of all others, in which the Romans were most anxious to be initiated. These were now taught in the schools of almost all grammarians, of whom there were, at one time, upwards of twenty in Rome. For a long while, only the Greek poets were publicly explained, but at length the Latin poets were likewise commented on and illustrated. ”

“ But the fact that his labours were undertaken at a period of literary decay, when the inconceivable disorders of the time seemed to present an insuperable obstacle to the pursuit of learning, increases our admiration of the energy and zeal displayed by the old Roman, which enabled him in spite of every discouragement to create a school of sacred and profane learning, where strangers were encouraged to seek that hospitality the exercise of which was regarded as one of the most sacred duties of the brethren. ”

“ The good sense of an illiterate soldier founded a useful and liberal institution for the education of youth, and the support of declining science. 61 It was his intention, that the arts of rhetoric and grammar should be taught in the Greek and Latin languages, in the metropolis of every province; and as the size and dignity of the school was usually proportioned to the importance of the city, the academies of Rome and Constantinople claimed a just and singular preëminence. ”

“ In the year 92 Crassus attempted with his colleague Domitius by censorial pronouncement to discourage the growth of Latin schools of rhetoric. It is difficult to take seriously the recent hypothesis that this was an aristocratic attack upon democratic schools. Cicero’s interpretation that the new Latin school was objectionable because it trained speakers without the cultural education in literature, philosophy, and history, which Greek rhetoricians usually required, seems adequate. Our own insistence that law schools require a college degree for entrance would then be analogous. ”

“ We must not regard these philosophical schools as higher schools in the modern sense; though each school had a head who had the management in his own hands, and at his death appointed a successor, yet there was no question of an organised scheme of studies or of instruction regularly occupying certain hours of the day, or, indeed, of any of the conditions which could be compared with our modern universities, at any rate not before the period of the Roman Empire. ”

“ It follows from all this that students who have had even the most elementary course in Roman history have already some knowledge of Private Antiquities, and that those who have not studied the history of Rome at all will find very helpful the reading of even the briefest of our school histories. ”

“ Down to the end of the sixth century remains of the old Roman municipal schools continued to exist, wherein Christian students disdained not “to hold the harp with Orpheus, or the rule with Archimedes; to perceive with Pythagoras, to explain with Plato, to imply with Aristotle, to rage with Demosthenes, or to persuade with Tully” [71] —in other words, they followed the ordinary course of studies provided in the Roman schools. ”

“ Grammar was next essayed; and a course in rhetoric and oratory completed the Roman boy’s education. Many continued their studies at Athens, Rhodes, or Alexandria.
The teachers often provincials or freedmen. In the golden age, Greek tutors very generally the companions and flatterers of the wealthy Romans. During the reign of Augustus, great schools at Cordova and Marseilles rivalled the academy of Flaccus at Rome, the favorite of the emperor, who paid Flaccus a salary of $3,600, and offered special inducements in the way of prizes to such as would join his school. ”

“ Reading, writing, and arithmetic together with music, dancing, and drill were the staple subjects of the elementary school. “Rhetoric,” which meant the study of literature on the technical side, as well as the practice of declamations, was the main occupation in the high schools and the universities. But philosophy, moral and physical, was also carefully studied. University professors often rose to real affluence.
Plate LXXXIII. HADRIAN’S VILLA, TIVOLI
In the polite world of Rome, literature was extremely fashionable. ”

“ As long as Rome was in its full strength, education was wholly of a practical nature, its aim being to prepare its young that in manhood they might be of most service to the state. It was more of the Spartan idea than the Athenian, but unlike Sparta the Roman state did not undertake the education of the young but left that wholly to the home, and it was not till the time of the empire that education was taken up by the state, for before that time the state did not even assist in education, let alone control it. ”

“ In 27 B.C., Rome ceased to be a Republic and became an Empire, and under the Emperors the professors of the new learning were encouraged and protected, higher schools were established in the provinces, literature and philosophy were opened as possible careers, and the Greek language, literature, and learning were spread, under Roman imperial protection, to every corner of the then civilized world. This victory of Hellenic thought and learning at Rome, viewed in the light of the future history of the civilization of the world, was an event of large importance. ”

“ Shows, theatres, and late banquets are specially mentioned as snares and delusions in the path of youth. Any one who behaves in unseemly fashion is to be publicly whipped and shipped home to his province. So far did the coercive Roman [242] spirit in education go. For the Romans always looked on education as a discipline which must serve some external end, and not (like the Greeks) as a development of the human spirit valuable for its own sake. ”

“ Long before the fall of the republic Rome had become the seat of all the world’s learning. In robbing conquered countries she not only took their gold and silver, a share of their people for slaves, and their works of art, but their libraries, their philosophy, and their literature. But neither the Greek nor the Roman philosophy contributed in the least to a solution of the pressing social problems of the time. The wise men of Rome were powerless to help either themselves or their fellow-men, because their philosophy was false. ”

“ Thus when Rome conquered Greece, Greek education had lost that reality which is drawn from intimate relation to civic life, and the fashionable individualistic schools of philosophy could do nothing to replace the loss. It was, then, an Old Roman education. education which had largely lost its life-springs that was transferred to Rome. In the earlier centuries of the republic, Roman education was given entirely in family and public life. ”

“ Nevertheless the average parent realised the practical utility of at least reading, writing, and simple arithmetic, and schools of the elementary type sprang up according to the demand. What the higher education was like will be set forth in its place.
The ideal education, as understood in the older days of Rome, was a training which should fit a man for his duty to the gods, the state, and the family. It was above all things a moral and practical training. A man has certain domestic, political, and religious functions to perform: let him learn how best to perform these. ”