Education in Ancient Rome - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"Roman school" redirects here. For the group of 16th–17th century Roman composers, see Roman School
Roman School
In music history, the Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produced...

.

Education in ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

influenced the development of educational systems throughout Western civilization. In the span of a few centuries, Rome went from an informal system of education in which knowledge was passed from parents to children, to a specialized, tiered system of schools inspired by Greek educational practices

Education in Ancient Greece

Education played a significant role in ancient Greek life since the founding of the poleis till the Hellenistic and Roman period. From its origins in the Homeric and the aristocratic tradition, Greek education was vastly "democratized" in the 5th century BC, influenced by the Sophists, Plato and...

. Rome's rise to the status of world power ensured the perpetuation of its methodology and curriculum throughout the provinces

Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...

it ruled.

Education in the Republic

From the founding of Rome

Founding of Rome

The founding of Rome is reported by many legends, which in recent times are beginning to be supplemented by scientific reconstructions.- Development of the city :...

, dated traditionally to 753 BC, to the middle of the 3rd century BC, there is little evidence of anything more than rudimentary education. A child's primary educators were likely to be his or her own parents. Parents taught their children the skills necessary for living in the early Republic, namely agricultural, domestic and military skills. Most important, however, were the moral and civic responsibilities that would be expected of citizens of the Republic

Roman citizenship

Citizenship in ancient Rome was a privileged political and legal status afforded to certain free-born individuals with respect to laws, property, and governance....

, the inculcation of the qualities of the vir bonus, "good man". In its earliest stages, Roman education thus not only provided the basic skills necessary for survival, but also conveyed the mos maiorum
Mos maiorum
The mos maiorum is the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms. It is the core concept of Roman traditionalism, distinguished from but in dynamic complement to written law. The mos maiorum The mos maiorum ("ancestral custom") is the unwritten code from which the...

, the traditional social code that created a coherent society.

The first schools in Rome arose by the middle of the 4th century BC, coinciding with the rise of the plebeian class to political power. These schools were called ludi (singular: ludus), the Latin word for "play," and like modern "play schools

Preschool education

Preschool education is the provision of learning to children before the commencement of statutory and obligatory education, usually between the ages of zero and three or five, depending on the jurisdiction....

" were concerned with basic socialization and rudimentary education for young children. In the second half of the 3rd century BC, an ex-slave named Spurius Carvilius

Spurius Carvilius Ruga

Spurius Carvilius Ruga was the freedman of Spurius Carvilius Maximus Ruga. He is often credited with inventing the Latin letter G. His invention would have been quickly adopted in the Roman Republic, because the letter C was, at the time, confusingly used both for the /k/ and /g/ sounds...

is credited with opening the first fee-paying ludus, thereby creating a teaching profession in ancient Rome. Organized education remained relatively rare, and there are few primary sources or accounts of the Roman educational process until the 2nd century BC.

Later Roman Education

At the height of the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

, the Roman educational system gradually found its final form. Formal schools were established, which served paying students; very little that could be described as free public education existed. Both boys and girls were educated, though not necessarily together.

Following various military conquests in the Greek East

Greek East

"Greek East" and "Latin West" are terms used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco-Roman world, specifically the eastern regions where Greek was the lingua franca, and the western parts where Latin filled this role...

, Romans adapted a number of Greek educational precepts to their own fledgling system. Roman students were taught (especially at the elementary level) in similar fashion to Greek students, sometimes by Greek slaves who had a penchant for education. But differences between the Greek and Roman systems emerge at the highest tiers of education. Roman students that wished to pursue the highest levels of education went to Greece to study philosophy, as the Roman system developed to teach speech, law and gravitas
Gravitas
Gravitas was one of the Roman virtues, along with pietas, dignitas and virtus. It may be translated variously as weight, seriousness, dignity, or importance, and connotes a certain substance or depth of personality.-See also:*Auctoritas...

.

In a system much like the one that predominates in the modern world, the Roman education system that developed arranged schools in tiers. The educator Quintilian

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...

recognized the importance of starting education as early as possible, noting that "memory … not only exists even in small children, but is specially retentive at that age". A Roman student would progress through schools just as a student today might go from primary school to secondary school, then to college, and finally university. Progression depended more on ability than age with great emphasis being placed upon a student's ingenium or inborn "gift" for learning, and a more tacit emphasis on a student's ability to afford high-level education.

We should recognize important contrasts to formal education from as we know it today. In the modern world, a student generally pursues higher levels of education to gain the skills and certifications necessary to work in a more prestigious field. In contrast, only the Roman elite would expect a complete formal education. A tradesman or farmer would expect to pick up most of his vocational skills on the job. Higher education in Rome was more of a status symbol than a practical concern.

Influences on Roman Education

Prior to the 3rd century BCE. the Roman system of education was closely bound to the Roman institution of patria potestas, according to which the father, as head of the household (paterfamilias), had, according to law, absolute right of control over his children. It was not until 272 BCE with the capture of Tarentum

Tarentum

Tarentum may refer to:* Taranto, Apulia, Italy; on the site of the ancient Roman city Tarentum; formerly the Greek colony Taras. See also: History of Taranto* Tarentum, Pennsylvania, United States** Tarentum Bridge, in the above place...

, the annexation of Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

in 241 BCE, and the period following the First Punic War

First Punic War

The First Punic War was the first of three wars fought between Ancient Carthage and the Roman Republic. For 23 years, the two powers struggled for supremacy in the western Mediterranean Sea, primarily on the Mediterranean island of Sicily and its surrounding waters but also to a lesser extent in...

that Romans were exposed to a strong influence of Greek thought and lifestyle and found leisure to study the arts.

A Greek captive from Tarentum

Taranto

Taranto is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto and is an important commercial port as well as the main Italian naval base....

named Livius Andronicus

Livius Andronicus

Lucius Livius Andronicus , not to be confused with the later historian Livy, was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family at Rome by translating Greek works into Latin, including Homer’s Odyssey. They were meant at...

was sold as a slave and employed as a tutor for his master's children. After obtaining his freedom, he continued to live in Rome and became the first schoolmaster (private tutor) to follow Greek methods of education and would translate Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

into Latin verse in Saturnian meter

Saturnian (poetry)

Saturnian meter or verse is an old Latin and Italic poetic form, of which the principles of versification have become obscure. Only 132 complete uncontroversial verses survive. 95 literary verses and partial fragments have been preserved as quotations in later grammatical writings, as well as 37...

.

As Rome grew in size and in power following the Punic Wars

Punic Wars

The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 B.C.E. to 146 B.C.E. At the time, they were probably the largest wars that had ever taken place...

, the importance of the family as the central unit within Roman society began to deteriorate. With this declined the old Roman system of education carried out by the paterfamilias. The new educational system began to center more on the one encountered by the Romans with the Hellenistic Greeks and prominent centers of learning such as Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

later on. It was becoming a literary educational system.

The situation of the Greeks was ideal for the foundation of literary education as they were the possessors of the great works of Homer

Homer

, Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

and the Lyric poets of Archaic Greece. The absence of a literary method of education from Roman life was due to the fact that Rome was bereft of any national literature. The military arts were all that Rome could afford to spend time studying. When not waging war, the Romans devoted what time remained to agriculture. The concern of Rome was that of survival, whether through defense or dominion. It was not until the appearance of Ennius

Ennius

Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...

(239-169 BCE), the father of Roman poetry, that any sort of national literature surfaced.

While the Romans adopted many aspects of Greek education, two areas in particular were viewed as trifle: music and athletics. Music to the Greeks was fundamental to their educational system and tied directly to the Greek paideia
Paideia
In ancient Greek, the word n. paedeia or paideia [ to educate + - -IA suffix1] means child-rearing, education. It was a system of instruction in Classical Athens in which students were given a well-rounded cultural education. Subjects included rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, music, philosophy,...

. Mousike encompassed all those areas supervised by the Muses, comparable to today's liberal arts. The area that many Romans considered unimportant equates to our modern definition of music. To the Greeks, the ability to play an instrument was the mark of a civilized, educated man, and through an education in all areas of mousike it was thought that the soul could become more moderate and cultivated. The Romans did not share this view but did, however, adopt one area of mousike: Greek literature.

Athletics, to the Greeks, was the means to obtaining a healthy and beautiful body, which was an end in and of itself and further promoted their love of competition. The Romans, though, did not share this stance either, believing that athletics was only the means to maintaining good soldiers.

This illustrates one of the central differences between the two cultures and their take on education: that to the Greeks beauty or an activity could be an end in itself, and the practice of that activity was beneficial accordingly. The Romans, on the other hand, were more practically minded when it came to what they taught their children. To them, it would appear, an area of study was only good so far as it served a higher purpose or end determined outside of itself.

Moral Education

At the framework of ancient Greek education was an effective system of formal education, but in contrast, the Romans lacked such a system until the 3rd century BCE. Instead, at the foundation of ancient Roman education was, above all else, the home and family, from which children derived their so-called "moral education."

Whereas Greek boys primarily received their education from the community, a Roman child's first and most important educators were almost always his or her parents. Parents taught their children the skills necessary for living in the early republic, which included agricultural, domestic and military skills as well as the moral and civil responsibilities that would be expected from them as citizens. Roman education was carried on almost exclusively in the household under the direction of the paterfamilias. From the paterfamilias, or highest ranking male of the family, one usually learned "just enough reading, writing, and 'rithmetic to enable them to understand simple business transactions and to count, weigh, and measure.

Men like Cato the Elder

Cato the Elder

Marcus Porcius Cato was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Censorius , Sapiens , Priscus , or Major, Cato the Elder, or Cato the Censor, to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger.He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some...

adhered to this Roman tradition and took their roles as teachers very seriously. Cato the Elder

Cato the Elder

not only made his children hardworking, good citizens and responsible Romans, but "he was his (son's) reading teacher, his law professor, his athletic coach. He taught his son not only to hurl a javelin, to fight in armor, and to ride a horse, but also to box, to endure both heat and cold, and to swim strongly".

Job training was also emphasized, and boys gained valuable experience through apprenticeships. Mothers, though, cannot be overlooked for their roles as moral educators and character builders of their children. Cornelia Africanus, the mother of the Gracchi

Gracchi

The Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, were Roman Plebian nobiles who both served as tribunes in 2nd century BC. They attempted to pass land reform legislation that would redistribute the major patrician landholdings among the plebeians. For this legislation and their membership in the...

, is even credited as a major cause of her sons' renowned eloquence.

Perhaps the most important role of the parents in their children's education was to instill in them a respect for tradition and a firm comprehension of pietas

Pietas

Pietas was one of the Roman virtues, along with gravitas and dignitas. It is usually translated as "duty" or "devotion."-Definition:The word pietas is originally from Latin. The first printed record of the word’s use in English is from Anselm Bayly’s The Alliance of Music, Poetry, and Oratory,...

, or devotion to duty. For a boy, this meant devotion to the state, and for a girl, devotion to her husband and family. As the Roman Republic transitioned into a more formal education beyond the 3 R's, parents began to hire teachers to do this level of advanced academic training. For this, "the Romans began to bring Greek slaves to Rome" to further enrich their children's knowledge and potential; yet, Romans still always cherished the tradition of pietas

Pietas

and the ideal of the father as his child’s teacher.

Litterator

Rome as a republic or an empire never formally instituted a state-sponsored form of elementary education. In no stage of its history did Rome ever legally require its people to be educated on any level.

It was typical for Roman children of wealthy families to receive their early education from private tutors. However, it was common for children of more humble means to be instructed in a primary school, traditionally known as a ludus litterarius. An instructor in such a school was often known as a litterator or litteratus, which was seen as a more respectable title. There was nothing stopping a litterator from setting up his own school, aside from his meager wages. There were never any established locations for a ludus litterarius. They could be found in a variety of places, anywhere from a private residence to a gymnasium, or even in the street.

Typically, elementary education in the Roman world focused on the requirements of everyday life, reading and writing. The students would progress up from reading and writing letters, to syllables, to word lists, eventually memorizing and dictating texts. The majority of the texts used in early Roman education were literature, predominantly poetry. Roman students were expected to work on their own. There was little sense of a class as a cohesive unit, exemplified by students coming and going at different times throughout the day. Young Roman students faced no formal examinations or tests. Their performance was measured through exercises that were either corrected or applauded based on performance. This created an unavoidable sense of competition amongst students.

Using a competitive educational system, Romans developed a form of social control that allowed elites to maintain class stability. This, along with the obvious monetary expenses, prevented the majority of Roman students from advancing to higher levels of education.

Grammaticus

At between nine and twelve years of age, boys from affluent families would leave their litterator behind and take up study with a grammaticus, who honed his students' writing and speaking skills, versed them in the art of poetic analysis and taught them Greek if they did not yet know it. By this point, lower class boys would already be working as apprentices, and girls—rich or poor—would be focused on making themselves attractive brides and, subsequently, capable mothers.

Daily activities included lectures by the grammaticus (enarratio), expressive reading of poetry (lectio) and the analysis of poetry (partitio). The curriculum was thoroughly bilingual, as students were expected to both read and speak in Greek as well as in Latin. Assessment of a student's performance was done on-the-spot and on-the-fly according to standards set by his particular grammaticus, as no source on Roman education ever mentions work taken away to be graded. Instead, pupils would complete an exercise, display their results and be corrected or congratulated as needed by the grammaticus, who reveled in his self-perception as a "guardian of language".

Famous grammatici include Lucius Orbilius Pupillus, who still serves as the quintessential pedagogue that isn’t afraid to flog or whip his students to drive a point home, and the freedman Marcus Verrius Flaccus, who gained imperial patronage and a widespread tutelage due to his novel practice of pitting students of similar age and ability against each other and rewarding the winner with a prize, usually an old book of some rarity.

Even at the height of his career, Verrius Flaccus

Verrius Flaccus

Marcus Verrius Flaccus was a Roman grammarian and teacher who flourished under Augustus and Tiberius.-Life:He was a freedman, and his manumitter has been identified with Verrius Flaccus, an authority on pontifical law; but for chronological reasons the name of Veranius Flaccus, a writer on augury,...

, whose prestige allowed him to charge enormous fees and be hired by Augustus

Augustus

Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...

to teach his grandsons, never had his own schoolroom. Instead, he, like many of his fellow teachers, shared space at privately financed schools, which were dependent on (usually very low) tuition fees, and rented out classroom space wherever they could find it. Other teachers sidestepped rent and lighting costs by convening their classes on pavements, colonnades or in other public spaces, where traffic noise, street crowds and bad weather were sure to pose problems.

Though both literary and documentary sources interchange the various titles for a teacher and often use the most general of terms as a catch-all, a price edict issued by Diocletian

Diocletian

Diocletian |latinized]] upon his accession to Diocletian . c. 22 December 244 – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305....

in 301 CE proves that such distinctions did in fact exist and that a litterator, grammaticus or rhetor, at least in theory, had to define himself as such. This Edict on Maximum Prices

Edict on Maximum Prices

The Edict on Maximum Prices was issued in 301 by Roman Emperor Diocletian....

fixed the salary of a grammaticus at 200 denarii per pupil per month, though the edict was unenforceable, ignored and eventually repealed.

Children continued their studies with the grammaticus until the age of fourteen or fifteen, at which point only the wealthiest and most promising students matriculated with a rhetor.

Rhetor

The rhetor was the final stage in Roman education. Very few boys went on to study rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, and early on in Roman history it may have been the only way to train as a lawyer or politician. This is where spokesman, the original translation of orator, comes from.

In early Roman times, rhetoric

Rhetoric

studies were not taught exclusively through a teacher, but were learned through a student's careful observation of his elders. The practice of rhetoric

Rhetoric

was created by the Greeks before it became an institution in Roman society, and it took a long time for it to gain acceptance in Rome.

The orator, or student of rhetoric

Rhetoric

, was important in Roman society because of the constant political strife that occurred throughout Roman history. Young men who studied under a rhetor would not only focus on public speaking. These students also learned other subjects such as geography, music, philosophy, literature, mythology and geometry. These well-rounded studies gave Roman orators a more diverse education and helped prepare them for future debates.

Unlike other forms of Roman education, there is not much evidence to show that the rhetor level was available to be pursued in organized school. Because of this lack of evidence, it is assumed that the education was done through the previously mentioned private tutors. These tutors had enormous impact on the opinions and actions of their students. In fact, their influence was so great that the Roman government expelled many rhetoricians and philosophers in 161 BCE.

There were two fields of oratory study that were available for young men. The first of these fields was the deliberative branch of study. This field was for the training of young men who would later need to urge the “advisability or inadvisability” of measures affecting the Roman Senate

Roman Senate

The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...

. The second field of study was much more lucrative and was known as judicial oratory. These orators would later enter into fields such as criminal law, which was important in gaining a public following. The support of the public was necessary for a successful political career in Rome.

Later in Roman history, the practice of declamation became focused more on style and art of delivery as opposed to training to speak on important issues in the courts. Tacitus

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...

pointed out that during his day (the second half of the 1st century CE), students had begun to lose sight of legal disputes and had started to focus more of their training on the art of storytelling.

Philosophy

A final level of education was philosophical study. The study of philosophy is distinctly Greek, but was undertaken by many Roman students. To study philosophy, a student would have to go to a center of philosophy where philosophers taught, usually abroad in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

. An understanding of a philosophical school of thought could have done much to add to Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

's vaunted knowledge of 'that which is great', but could only be pursued by the very wealthiest of Rome's elite. Romans regarded philosophical education as distinctly Greek, and instead focused their efforts on building schools of law and rhetoric.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.