CHILDREN AND SCHOOLING
=159. Theoretical Rights of Father over Children. The _Patria
Potestas_.=--When a child is born into a Roman home the father
has complete legal rights even as in Athens to determine whether it
is to live or to die.[95] If theoretically he has the terrific power
as _pater familias_ to kill his children in later life if they
merely displease him, how much more can he claim the right to decide
that “This boy will be one too many,” or “We can afford no more
girls,” or “This child will be sickly and deformed.” If his decision
is adverse, mother and nurse may beseech in vain; the babe is simply
“exposed”--that is, carried by a slave to some spot by the highway and
left to perish. This harsh old law is unrepealed.
Possibly such deserted children will be taken up by those whose homes
are desolate and who require consolation. There is a greater and
fouler chance that such babes will be carried away and reared by human
harpies who raise boys and girls to sell as victims of gross wickedness
among the rich, or who even mutilate the children to convert them into
grotesque buffoons or pathetic beggars to wheedle the coppers from
the tender-hearted. Perhaps some of those horribly deformed creatures
who cry “Give! Give!” behind the litters of the senators are blood
relations to the gilded lords themselves. This is physically possible,
if we can believe many ugly stories.
Legal right and actual custom can often, however, stand miles asunder.
No Roman gladly will see his house dying out, despite the “advantages
of childlessness.” In fact to keep up the family name, resort is
often had to _adoption_, sometimes of mature adults, to an extent
quite unknown in other ages. The upper classes under the Empire are
dwindling so rapidly, thanks to many causes, that rare indeed is the
house where a lawful child is unwelcome; and in the lower classes
fathers are fathers still. In short though the cruel old “right of
exposure” exists, it is not exercised often enough to make its practice
a wholesale evil, and a man of distinction who exposes a babe (unless
his family is remarkably large and expensive) will fall under social
ostracism; in fact the Emperor may even be advised to strike him from
the list of senators or equites as “a bad citizen.”
=160. Ceremonies after Birth of a Child. The _Bulla_.=--The birth
of a child in a good family is, therefore, the signal for no common
rejoicing, and thanks to the favored position of Roman women, girls
are not a serious discount as against boys. Then comes the grand
celebration--the _lustratio_, the name-day for the babe.
This occurs nine days after the birth of boys and the eighth after that
of girls; the idea being not to name the child prematurely lest it die
in first infancy. The ceremony takes place in the atrium. The mother
cannot, perhaps, be present, but there is a general gathering of the
near friends, kinsmen, clients, etc., before whom the nurse solemnly
presents herself and then lays her little bundle of swaddling clothes
at the feet of its father. With equal solemnity the father bends and
takes up the infant and with his formal “lifting up” the whole company
raises a shout of joy.[96] Henceforth, the babe is of undoubted
legitimacy, a member of the family, entitled to the protection alike of
the family lares and of the public law, and a new citizen of the Roman
state. Then the father, turning to the company, if the child is a boy,
announces in clear voice his prænomen, _e.g._, “Let the lad be called
Marcus!”
After these formalities are ended the kinsmen and also the favorite
slaves rush forward and throw around the neck of the infant cords
bearing little metal toys, tiny swords, axes, flowers, or even dolls,
all called _crepudia_, from the manner in which they clank together.
Most important of all, however, is the golden _bulla_, an elaborate
locket containing charms, which the father himself hangs about the
child’s neck. If the family is poor, one of painted leather may answer,
but a bulla there must be. It will never be laid aside permanently
until the proud day when the grown-up lad “assumes the manly toga,” or
when the girl leaves her parents’ house as a bride.
=161. The Roman Name: Its Intricacy.=--It is no slight thing, this
matter of the Roman personal names, and they are far more complicated
than are the Greek. Under the Republic names were so standardized among
the upper families, that those of a young nobleman were practically
determined the moment he touched the cradle. How many “Appii Claudii”
figure in the history of the Commonwealth! Omitting technicalities,
practically every Roman citizen then had three names: his _prænomen_,
a personal designation something like the Christian “John” or
“George,” his _nomen_, fixed on him by his _gens_ (special clan)
such as Cornelius, Fabius, Julius, etc., and finally his _cognomen_,
which marked the particular family of the gens to which his father
belonged. Cæsar, Sulla, Cicero, Scipio, and the like were all cognomens
corresponding closely to later-day surnames, and were anything but the
individual property of certain famous holders of the same. Thus even a
cognomen could have many bearers, and sometimes a second cognomen was
added--such as Publius Cornelius Scipio _Nasica_.
This is all very well, but how few are the options left to the parents
in selecting the prænomen! There are only eighteen regular Roman
prænomens, of which Marcus, Gaius, and Lucius are perhaps the most
common. Certain families confine themselves to a very few prænomens.
Thus no Cornelian ever names his sons anything but Gnæus, Lucius, and
Publius unless the gods bless him with a fourth boy. The Domitii were
nearly all either Gnæus or Lucius. Rare was the Claudian eldest son who
escaped being called Appius.[97]
These cases simply register what is true in most of the old families.
The rule is to name your first son always after your own father. Thus
Publius Calvus’s young Titus is the grandson of a Titus and the great
grandson of a Publius. His younger brother, however, was not thus named
by rigid precedent. He could be named Decimus.[98]
=162. Irregular and Lengthy Names under the Empire. Names of
Slaves.=--Things are far more irregular, however, since the Empire
has brought the Roman name along with the Roman citizenship to hordes
of freedmen and foreigners. They Latinize their alien names, or
they take an altered form of their ex-master’s names, for example,
Claudianus Licinianus; or often, being complete upstarts, swell around
with absurdly long names often meaning nothing at all. This is true
even of some high officers, and there is now ruling as proconsul of
Africa a senator calling himself pompously Titus Cæsarinus Statius
Quintius Statianus Memmius Macrinus, while that of the governor of
North Britain, a certain “Pollio,” has _nine_ names if you give
him his full title.[99]
As for slaves they were ordinarily called in simpler days of the
Republic merely “Marcipor,” or “Lucipor,” etc.,--“Marcus’s boy,” or
“Lucius’s boy”; but such descriptions in the days of the great familiæ
become impossible. Most house slaves are either named for Greek
deities or heroes, or else for some Oriental potentate, precisely as
“Cæsar” and “Pompey” will figure on slave plantations of another day.
“Mithridates,” “Pharnaces,” “Cyrus,” and the like appear in every
atrium. There are also plenty of handsome boys answering to such
fine names as “Eros,” “Polydorus,” “Xenophon”; or who are named for
their native country as “Syrax” for a Syrian, and “Cappadox” for a
Cappadocian.
=163. Names of Women. Confusion of Roman Names.=--When a girl is born
in an old family her chance of a distinctive name seems even less than
that of her brothers. There are really no recognized prænomens for
girls, and until lately there have been hardly any regular cognomens.
Calvus’s daughter should have been merely called Junia for her gens:
“The Junian Woman.” If it is needful, however, to separate her from
her cousins, she can be called _Junia Calvi_--“Calvus’s Junia.” If she
had a younger sister, she would be simply “_Junia Prima_” as against
“_Junia Secunda_”--Junia No. 1 and Junia No. 2.
This kind of effacement is, however, becoming very displeasing to
high-spirited Roman women. They are now asserting their personality
by demanding special names. The result is that they are getting a
kind of irregular cognomens. Calvus’s daughter is, therefore, known
as Junia _Gratia_ (from her mother), and should the house be favored
with another young mistress, she will probably be Junia _Calva_ in
compliment to her father’s cognomen.
Nevertheless, with every explanation, the names alike of men and women
at Rome are utterly confusing. Duplication seems incessant and anything
like a complete directory of the city would apparently carry many pages
of identical entries. Of course, a ready use of nicknames (constantly
invented by Italian ingenuity) overcomes the actual difficulty. Among
near friends or dependents it is quite proper to cry “Hail, Spurius!”
or “Well said, Tiberius”; but it is an impolite familiarity to employ
the prænomen except for intimates. Ordinarily the cognomen is the
proper form, used, be it said, without any “Sir” or “Mister,” and
in the Senate the archaic usage requires that the Conscript Fathers
should be summoned by prænomen and gentile name only. “_Dic, Marce
Tulle_,” “Speak, Marcus Tullius,” was the form by which Cicero was
often called before he began his great orations.
=164. Care of Parents in Educating Children.=--So a Roman child
receives that great thing, his name. What is the course of his life if
he grows to manhood? Very much the same as in other civilized lands,
where most parents are loving and where most children bring joy to
the house. Boys and girls, until school age, are largely in the hands
of the womenfolk. Gratia’s old nurse, brought with her to Calvus’s
house, is still more of a beloved mentor and tyrant to Gratia’s
children, usually bribing her charges to be good “with honey, nuts and
sweet-cakes.” But as soon as boys, at least, begin to pass out of early
childhood their fathers are expected to take them in hand, and even a
man of high rank is criticized if he leaves his sons too much to the
guidance of paid tutors and of slaves.
This paternal discipline may be harsh but it is seldom negligent. Boys
are taught to go with their fathers almost everywhere; to watch and
listen in silence, but to ask intelligent questions afterward. Thus
young Titus is already old enough to accompany his father Calvus to
the sessions of the Senate itself. On a seat reserved near the door
for senators’ sons he listens through many a solemn debate. Presently
the routine of business is so familiar to him, that he presumptuously
thinks he can correct the consul on certain points of order. He and
his companions of like rank already are playing “prætor’s court”--with
one of them on the tribunal and the others (like their parents) the
orators in the great basilica. As the good old customs have waned this
companionship of fathers and sons has perhaps somewhat waned also--but
it still remains one of the worthiest features of the Roman training.
=165. Toys and Pets.=--Roman children lack nothing in playthings.
All but the elaborate mechanical toys of a later age are at their
disposal. Little children have their rattles, balls, and carts. Small
Junia plays with very life-like dolls of ivory, wax, and painted terra
cotta, often fashioned by exceedingly skilful Greek craftsmen. She and
her brothers rejoice in swings and hobby horses, while Titus and young
Decimus also make glad in a finely painted “century” of wooden soldiers
and in tops, hoops, and marbles--such as are transmitted almost
unchanged across the ages, and they receive somewhat suspiciously (as
soon as they are of proper age) a gift of a carefully carved set of
wooden letters, a sly device for teaching the alphabet.
Much more welcome than these last are, of course, the New Year and
birthday presents of tame nightingales, talking parrots, and caged
blackbirds, of dogs, large and small, of that somewhat rare animal from
Egypt--a delightful furry cat, and best of all--when they grow a little
older--being children of a senator, each a well-broken pony--of little
use in Rome, but a splendid comrade when the family goes to its villas.
As they get older still a decent allowance of pocket money is added
and an earnest attempt is made to teach the children financial
responsibility, to add accounts, to save their sesterces, and not to
run up bills. It is not ungenteel, however, for a youth of family to
be an easy spender, and Pliny the Younger has scolded a friend as
outrageously severe for “thrashing his son because he was too lavish in
buying horses and dogs.”
=166. The Learning of Greek by Roman Children.=--Even before formal
schooling begins, the young Calvi, like all other Romans of the better
class, have begun an important part of their education--the learning of
Greek. The Athenian education was a single-language education with no
studies outside those of the mother tongue.[100] The Roman education is
a bi-lingual education.
Without Greek everybody confesses that a full half (probably more)
of the world’s entire wit and wisdom is locked away. Without Greek
not merely must a man refuse to claim the least real culture; he is
handicapped in all the professions and in most forms of business. He
can have no commercial dealings with the Levant. If he travels anywhere
East of the Adriatic, he can hardly make himself understood outside of
the governors’ prætoria and the camps. Even into the literary Latin
there have crept an enormous number of Greek terms, mostly having to
do with matters of learning or luxury. In short without the mastery of
Greek a Roman of any ambitions is hopelessly lost.
A scholar need not, however, bother about any third language.
Practically all Levantines can jabber _some_ Greek, even though
their accent be abominable, and their native tongue Syriac or Coptic.
As for Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons doubtless interpreters are needful
if you visit their crude villages, but all their upper classes are
now busily learning Latin just as they are learning the joys of Roman
baths, circus races, and cookery. With Latin and Greek you are ready to
meet the world.
Greek is taught in the schools, but hardly as a painfully acquired
foreign language. From infancy Titus, Decimus, and Junia have had
Greek-speaking attendants, and their own parents (very fair Greek
scholars) take pains to talk in good Attic part of the time while they
play with them. As the children grow up about half of all the more
elegant and refined conversation they must hear will be in Greek--and
so through all their education. The result will be that Junia may turn
out to be a learned lady like the poetess Julia Balbilla, the Empress
Sabina’s friend, who has written some very fine Greek elegiacs,[101]
“worthy of Sappho,” say her friends; or Titus if he dabbles in
philosophy, may write a long treatise in good Attic prose as well as
can his contemporary the destined emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
=167. Selection of a School.=--In the good old days a father was
expected not merely to give his son moral and practical lessons, but
actually to be his schoolmaster--to flog reading, writing, and a little
arithmetic into him; even as Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.) boasted
that he did with his own son. But that stage has long passed, and the
main question now for every boy or girl is, “tutors or school?” No
doubt families of the highest rank find private tutors fashionable and
convenient; thus such a personage as Augustus employed the skilful
freedman, Verrius Flaccus, to teach his grandsons; but the advantages
of contact with other children of about the same social class are
clearly understood. The young Calvi, therefore, have been sent to
a carefully selected school. This arrangement is exceptionally good
because their father’s colleague, the ex-prætor Aponius, owns a
remarkably gifted slave, one Euganor, who is allowed not merely to
teach his master’s children but (by a recognized custom) to take in
others; their fees going toward his _peculium_ saved up to buy his
freedom.
=168. Extent of Literacy in Rome. Education of Girls.=--Schools
exist everywhere in Rome, and there are all sorts and conditions of
schools. There is no system of public education, and probably a good
many poor plebeians and slaves are barely literate enough to spell out
the gladiator notices and to jot down a few accounts or memoranda; but
public opinion condemns parents who deny their children at least a
little schooling, and absolutely illiterate persons are rare.[102]
Girls in poor families are rather less sure of instruction than
boys, and in superior families they seldom pass on to the upper and
the rhetoric schools; but apparently in the ordinary schools they
frequently go with their brothers on terms of perfect equality. There
seems to be no prudish separation of the sexes, although when the grown
boys go off to learn the tricks of orators and philosophers, nobly-born
girls spend the years just before their marriages under good tutors
learning the poets, and being taught a graceful proficiency in harp
playing and also enough of dancing to give them the erect carriage and
the stately, calm movements of destined matrons.
=169. Schools for the Lower Classes.=--Between the select establishment
of Euganor in a side apartment of Aponius’s great mansion and the
cheapest type of school along Mercury Street there is a great gulf
fixed. Any kind of a shelter will do for a low-grade school, and any
kind of a half-educated fellow can set up as a school teacher.
[Illustration: BOY STUDYING.]
Take for example poor Platorius who, having failed as an inn-keeper
at Ostia, is trying to earn a living by leasing a vacant shop near
the Insula Flavia. The shallow room opens directly upon the noisy
street, and the passing throngs divert the children, while the clamors
of the children distress all the semi-invalids in the big insula.
Every thrashing by the master attracts a knot of brutal idlers just
outside. Platorius’s school is of the lowest grade, but he has to make
a certain pretence of learning by setting up a few chipped busts of
Homer, Virgil, Horace, etc., and erecting a high seat (_cathedra_)
for himself. His class sits before him on long backless benches.
There are no desks, and every child holds his smudgy wax-covered
tablets uncomfortably upon his knee, as he copies or erases with his
stylus.[103]
To all the better schools the children come each accompanied by his or
her “pedagogue,” much after the Greek manner; a private slave being
especially assigned to each boy or girl, and obligated to lead his
charge to and from school, help with the lessons, guard the child’s
morals, and even assist in chastising.[104] But few of Platorius’s
pupils come from parents who can afford the luxury of a pedagogue
for their children. They appear by themselves so early in the morning
in winter time that they have to bear smoky lanterns; the most
self-sufficient of them being “the sons of centurions, with satchels
and tablets hung on their left arms, and carrying every Ides (middle
of the month) their fee of eight brass pieces each.” [Horace.] Each
boy has devoured a crust before leaving home and the school continues
without recess until noon when there is an intermission of fair length
to get the prandium or at least to buy some sausages from the street
dealers, and perhaps to indulge in a short siesta. After that the
deafening study is resumed, and there is relief in the neighboring
tenements only when the school is dismissed towards dusk.
=170. Scourging, Clamors, and Other Abuses of Cheap Schools.=--A
school is no asset to the neighborhood. Vainly do the satiric poets
implore a teacher to “be kind to his scholars” and to “lay aside his
Scythian scourge with its horrible thongs” and his “terrible cane, the
schoolmaster’s scepter.” Poor Platorius knows well enough that the type
of parents who employ him believes the old maxim “he who is not flogged
is not educated.” The Romans are a military people and the ideal of a
school is always somewhat the stern discipline of the centurion with
his vinestock (see p. 323). Precepts in many a classroom are enforced
with curses and blows, and Seneca has declared in disgust that it is a
common thing “to find a man in a violent passion teaching you that to
be in a passion is wrong.”
The children, too, are often permitted to study their lessons aloud
even as in the schools of the Orient. All this adds to the buzzing
confusion, so that it is claimed that a school causes more noise than
a blacksmith at his anvil or the amphitheater applauding a favorite
gladiator.
The teaching and the flogging keep up through a long season. The
school year begins on March 24th, when Platorius painfully counts the
entrance fees brought by each scholar, reckoning himself lucky if he
does not have to split his gains with the pedagogues who attend a
favored few of the children. There is a considerable holiday in summer
when it is too hot to study, and children of good family are likely to
be attending their parents in the country. There is another interval of
about a week at the Saturnalia and over New Year’s Day; another just
before the new school year begins in March. Otherwise, except for the
more important religious festivals, and the “Nones” (5th or 7th days
of each month), the studying and the beating go on, with rather fewer
holidays than in the twentieth century.
[Illustration: SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.]
Platorius is near the bottom of the educational ladder. His fees are
only about four sesterces (16 cents) per month per pupil, and he is
none too sure of prompt payment. The miserable room costs something
for rental. If his pupils fail to progress, their parents storm at him
and promptly shift to another master. In short he leads a dog’s life.
The green grocer and the copperpot monger who have stalls opposite the
school despise him as entirely beneath them.
=171. A Superior Type of School.=--Quite different is the atmosphere of
Euganor’s schoolroom. He is technically a slave, but a slave of very
superior class. The children come to him accompanied not merely by
extremely genteel pedagogues but by subordinate slaves, _capsarii_, who
carry their books and tablets, and the establishment has a convenient
ante-room, where all these gentry can foregather and match gossip, “My
master says”--while their charges are being instructed.
The school itself is held in an elegant chamber adorned with fine
frescos of historical events such as the campaigns of Alexander,
speaking statues of great literary figures, and, conspicuous upon the
wall, an elaborately painted map of the Roman Empire, “for,” affirms
Euganor, “the boys should have daily before their eyes all the seas
and lands, and all cities and peoples comprehended therein; for the
name and position of places, the distance between them, the source
and outflow of rivers, the coastline with all its seaboard, its gulfs
and its straits are better taken in by the eye than by the ear.”[105]
Euganor, too, has his rod and does not bear it in vain, but he never
allows his discipline to degenerate into stupid cruelty. He is, in
short, an extremely competent man who studies each of his charges
carefully and who would prove an excellent teacher in any schoolroom in
any age.
=172. Methods of Teaching.=--All Roman schools are small. The idea
of vast “graded” establishments where year after year pupils are passed
from teacher to teacher and at last “graduated” has occurred to no man.
Platorius conducts his school entirely alone. Euganor has a couple of
efficient monitors, but neither he nor Platorius tries to handle more
than say thirty pupils. Many of Euganor’s pupils came to him while
little more than babies and will only leave him when actually ready
for the rhetoric schools. He is largely responsible for their entire
elementary education, although many of the higher class children know
the Latin and Greek alphabet and can spell a little before being put
under his charge.
This is no place for a real discussion of the actual forms of
education. First there comes the mere teaching of reading, writing, and
simple arithmetic, with very little use of books, the master dictating
sentences and correcting the tablets whereon the children write them
down. Such a teacher as Platorius may have a few musty rolls of papyrus
which his charges are allowed to handle gingerly, but “First Readers”
as understood in later schools are unknown. Euganor is better off, and
a considerable library is at his disposal, although barring a few books
of fables it contains little that is directly appealing to children.
In the poorer schools the average master congratulates himself if his
charges stay long enough to become fairly literate, but the better
establishments, of course, accomplish far more. When a child can once
read with tolerable fluency, and can write the characters on his wax
tablets without wandering from the traced lines or needing too many
corrections, he begins to have the great poets, especially Virgil and
Horace in Latin and Homer in Greek, pounded into him. He is compelled
to learn very long passages of such authors by heart,[106] and as an
especially desirable exercise he is forced to translate both from Greek
into Latin and also from Latin into Greek.
Since many of Euganor’s pupils will presumably become orators, they
are furthermore aided to improve their diction also in every possible
manner, to acquire a good stock of metaphors, and to have on hand a
great supply of apt, pungent quotations. All the possible meanings
in the literary texts are explained, likewise the mythological,
historical, and geographical allusions, etc. The study of literature
thus becomes what is really a form of a “General Information” course.
=173. Training in Higher Arithmetic.=--Before the children leave
Euganor they are also taught the higher forms of arithmetic. Prior
to the coming of Arabic numerals this is pretty serious business,
yet every Roman of property must be able to keep elaborate accounts,
and not be too dependent upon his stewards. Indeed, in some superior
schools a special arithmetic teacher is called in; a _calculator_,
who is entitled to demand extra large fees, although one suspects
that most of his pupils are equites’ sons who will probably engage
in commerce. One thing, however, Euganor does not have to bother
about--physical culture. The Greeks can send their sons to the
_palæstra_ and to the harpist to learn gymnastics and music. The
Romans try merely to see that their boys get exercise enough to keep
them in good health, but they cannot grasp the practical value of a
training that neither makes the lads better soldiers nor better men of
business. Many Romans, of course, learn also about the fine arts, but
never in the regular classroom.
=174. The Grammarians’ High Schools.=--By their early teens, however,
even Euganor’s pupils begin to forsake him. They are passed on to a
higher teacher, a regular “grammarian” (_grammaticus_), who assumes
that his charges are well grounded in the fundamentals, and who
endeavors to instruct them in the real niceties of Greek and Latin
literature. Sometimes also there is a specialist in each of the
languages.
In these high schools great stress is laid on proper pronunciation
and elocution. Euclid’s theorems in geometry are studied, and a good
deal of history is fluently if not very critically taught. Much of
the learning is superficial, for it is a fine thing in many circles
to _affect_ to be erudite,[107] and more stress is sometimes laid
on absurd problems of mythology than upon learning sober facts.
Grammarians who teach the sons of the parvenu rich are liable, indeed,
to be scolded if they cannot themselves explain instantly “Who was
Anchises’s nurse?” But the better grammarians’ schools turn out pupils
who are not perhaps men of deep learning but who have a great fund of
information, who can write a clear accurate Latin (and often a Greek)
style, and generally carry themselves as cultivated young gentlemen.
Those, however, who aspire to pass as highly educated will inevitably
go on to the still higher school of the _rhetor_.
[Illustration: GRAMMARIAN INSTRUCTING TWO UPPER
PUPILS: an attendant (_capsarius_) standing at one
side.]
=175. Oratory Very Fashionable.=--Oratory seems the keystone to
success. True, the fall of the Republic makes it impossible to harangue
the assembled Comitia in behalf of favorite candidates or proposed
laws. Even in the Senate there are now grave limitations upon free
eloquence. Nevertheless, the desirability of “fame” as an orator seems
incalculable. To win your cause in the courts; to make a crowded hall
resound with applause at your set orations seems the height of peaceful
triumph. Never will another age set more store on high-soaring formal
_talk_ than this age of the Roman Empire. The actual performances
of professional orators and “readers” we can glance at later, and, of
course, space lacks for any presentation of the “Science of Eloquence”;
but mention must be made of the rhetoric schools in which by ardent
anticipation young Titus and Decimus Calvus are already winning laurels.
=176. Professional Rhetoricians.=--No slave or ordinary grammarian
can hope to conduct a rhetoric school. The masters are either Romans
of such rank that they can mingle with senators, or are distinguished
Greeks fresh from the schools of Rhodes or Athens.[108] Not many years
ago in Trajan’s reign, a certain Isæus came to Rome from Greece. He
dazzled the noblest circles by his proficiency; his diction was the
purest Attic; his sentences sparkled with epigrams. He called on his
audience to name any mooted subjects it liked for discussion and to
state on which side it wanted him to argue. Instantly he would rise,
wrap his gown around him and “without losing a moment, begin, with
everything at his finger tips no matter what subject was selected.”
Presumably his thoughts and the information behind them were very
superficial; no matter, the flow of his logic, learning, and language
set his audience into ecstasies. Calvus only hopes he can find an
equally distinguished master for his own sons.
=177. Methods in Rhetoric Schools: Mock Trials.=--Rhetoric schools are
arranged rather as halls of audience than as ordinary classrooms. The
students are expected to sit in a proper manner, “to look steadily
at the speaker, not let their minds wander or to whisper to their
neighbors, yawn sleepily, smile, scowl, cross their legs, or let
their heads drop.” The training in its earlier stages, however, seems
decidedly academic. Great models in Greek and Latin oratory are
examined and discussed. Then the young advocates-to-be are put to work
preparing their own orations. They are not, however, allowed to take
any live and fresh topic. Instead they must seek one in distant history.
Every day the streets of Rome resound with noise from the rhetoric
schools--some youth is laboriously inciting the Athenian patriots,
Harmodius and Aristogeiton, to screw up their courage and to free their
country by slaying the foul Hipparchus. Still more threadbare are the
ceaseless orations urging Hannibal to advance (or not to advance) on
Rome after his victory at Cannæ. There are a number of stock subjects
of a more private kind. Mimic prosecutors work themselves into a
passion against “The Ravisher,” “The Poisoner,” or “The Wicked and
Thankless Husband.”
Often a couple of pupils a little more advanced can be pitted against
one another in an imaginary lawsuit. Suppose a father orders a son to
kill the youth’s brother, whom the father suspects of intending to
turn parricide. The boy pretends to have obeyed the order, but the
second lad really escapes. The father at length discovers the facts and
prosecutes his first son for “The Crime of Disobedience,”[109]--what
endless opportunities now for “eloquence” either proving that a parent
must be obeyed at any cost, or that no one can be compelled to commit
fratricide!
Again it is supposed that a young girl has been kidnapped, but rescued
and her ravisher later arrested. Imagine now that the law gives her the
choice--either the kidnapper must marry her and give her the status
of an honorable wife or she can require that he be put to death. The
rhetor will put two of his best pupils to prepare counter exhortations
to the perplexed girl: “Marry the fellow to assure your social future!”
or “Let justice be done--summon the executioner!” It is all very
ingenious, but equally unreal, and it is often hopelessly artificial.
Angrily wrote Seneca of such debates that by them “we are learning not
for life but for school.”
=178. Enormous Popularity of Rhetoric Studies.=---However impractical
this study, the upper classes at Rome assuredly dote upon it. When
each youth in turn mounts the orator’s stand in the school and begins
his _suasoria_ (set oration) or his _controversia_ (pretended legal
argument) all his fellows are duty bound to cry in Greek, “_Euge!_”
or “_Sophos!_” at every booming sentiment or well-rounded climax. At
least once during the oration it is good form for them to rise from
their seats and join in a salvo of applause--they will all get like
courtesies when their own turns come.
When the young declaimer has finished the master will arise. He will
show how to gesture, making his garments fall in picturesque folds.
He will take the subject just handled and repeat the argument showing
how each point can be better developed; how new matter can be brought
in; how allusions to the gods, the worthies of old, and perhaps to
the reigning Emperor will improve the effect; how to use one’s voice
at each particular turn, etc., etc. If the only object of oratory is
to tickle the ear, the result is magnificent. The students dutifully
applaud their master even more loudly than they do their fellows, and
each goes home wondering anxiously, “When can I argue my first case
before the prætor?”
=179. Philosophical Studies: Delight in Moralizing.=--A good many
Roman nobles of intellectual type advance a step further than the
rhetoric schools. They study philosophy; and even go to Athens (now a
quiet, delightful university town) to listen to lectures by the alleged
successors of Epicurus or of Zeno the Stoic, but to Greece one need not
follow them. It is proper to say, however, that a certain dabbling in
philosophy is extremely fashionable.[110] There are plenty of stories
about noblemen who have treatises on philosophy read to them while
they are being carried to and fro in their litters under the porticoes
of their villas; or even of ladies who listen to lectures by a
professional philosopher every morning while their maids are arranging
their hair.
Such personages, needless to say, never improve upon the familiar
guesses at the riddle of human existence; but sometimes their desire
to moralize becomes worse than comical. People still repeat stories
of Agrippinus, a high-born victim of Nero. When he caught a fever he
immediately dictated a panygyric on the moral excellencies of fever. He
was ordered into exile; he wrote a treatise on the benefits of exile.
He was made a high judge; he added to the anguish of those he condemned
by giving his victims long orations to prove that he passed sentence on
them only for their own good!
=180. Children’s Games. “Morra” and Dice.=--It is a long cry from
child-rearing to philosophy. One must return to the first topic enough
to notice the games played by young Romans and also by their elders.
Tag-games, blindman’s buff and its refinements, and like sports, can be
seen in every street and dusty area in Rome. A favorite game is that
of “King”; when a group of children elects a _Rex_ who commands
them to perform all sorts of fooleries. Time fails to tell of all the
contests with tossing knuckle bones and at “odd and even,” guessing
at concealed pebbles, shells, and nuts. The later-day Italian game of
“morra” (_micare digitis_) in which both players hold out a hand
with a certain number of fingers extended, and then each one tries to
shout out the correct number of his rival’s fingers before the other
can do the like by his, is a highly popular if noisy method of killing
time. At the eating houses and taverns it is regularly used among
friends to settle who shall pay the score.
All too early boys, and likewise girls, learn also to rattle the dice
box. Some of the dice are ordinary six-sided cubes, some are oblong,
with the numbers “2” and “5” omitted from the narrow ends. Almost
always three dice of bone or fine wood are used; and the familiar
expression “three sixes or three aces” is the same as saying “all or
nothing.”
=181. Board Games of Skill: “Robbers” (Latrunculi).=--Altogether
too much time and money are wasted at dice even by fairly grave people,
while professional gamblers abound; but the Romans have two games in
which men are moved on a gaming board according to rules involving
very high degrees of skill. You can play _Duodecim Scripta_ very
much like later-day backgammon; fifteen white men and fifteen black
men are shifted about on a board marked with twelve double lines
(whence the name) according to the casts of the dice. More abstract
and learned is _Latrunculi_ (“Robbers”), a game without dice and
seemingly very much like later-day checkers or chess. Some of the
pieces are called “soldiers” and others “officers”--and the moves
are very elaborate.[111] Of course, such games are far removed from a
mere youthful sport. Consuls and Emperors delight in them, and while
playing forget everything but the problem involved. Devotees cite with
pride the story of Julius Kanus, one of the mad Caligula’s victims.
He was in prison but was allowed to have a friend visit him, and the
two were busy over “Robbers,” when a centurion came in to say he must
be immediately executed. Kanus at once arose unmoved, but carefully
counted the men on the board; then said to his friend, “Mind you, don’t
tell a lie after I’m dead, and say that you won”; then turning to the
centurion, “Please bear witness for me that I was one man ahead,”--and
so did Stoicism find its way even to the gaming table!
=182. Out-Door Games. Ball Games, _Trigon_.=--Among out-of-door
amusements, we find that young Romans and some of their elders enjoy
fairly elaborate games of ball. There are various exercises which show
that the world is on its way to handball, tennis, and even to polo, but
hardly any contests foreshadow such things as baseball, foot ball, or
cricket. The most common game is _trigon_, when three players stand at
the corners of a triangle, and at least three, or even six balls, are
kept flying around the circle with great rapidity; the points being
made on catching and throwing with as few misses as possible. The
players stand close together, and the whole sport is more a mild form
of juggling than it is any real field exercise.