Roman Education Flashcards
What did early education focus on?
Proper speech (i.e. everyone surrounding the boy had to speak properly - nurses, parents, paedagogi, and even the slave boys in the house he would converse with) - Institutio oratoria as evidence
What evidence is relevant for early education?
Quintilian’s “Institutio Oratoria”: 12 volumes of educational influence of young boys of elite background
What evidence of proper speech is there and who is mentioned?
Quintilian “Institutio Oratoria,” Plutarch “The Education of Children,” and Cicero “Brutus” speaks of Laelia’s elegant speech that Cicero writes to have a “strong tincture of her father’s elegance (Gaius)”
Where were motor and social skills acquired?
At home, with toys
What was the first element of education?
Learning the alphabet (prima elementa) and children were often given cookies or cake as reward or incentive to study the alphabet
When and where did formal education begin?
- Usually age 7, but mostly based in skill level
- Public schools or with private tutors
- School lessons could be held indoors or outdoors
What else does Quintilian write of? (hint: education style)
- At home is preferable because more can be taken with the nutrices and paedagogi, making sure they are of sound mind and influence
- Young boys seen as malleable at a young age
What evidence is there of high-status girls in school?
Martial’s epigrams detailing a keen distaste for the schoolmaster (ludi magister) from both girls and boys alike
How would students learn basic reading and writing?
- Memorizing the shape of letters and combining them into syllables
- Copying lists, maxims, and sayings to learn the fundamentals of penmanship
- Reading simple sections of texts (e.g. Homer and Vergil)
- Also copied verse, (evidence of tablet with Virgil’s “Aeneid” and papyrological evidence of pupil in Egypt rewriting one line four times)
What literary evidence is there of learning to read?
- Pliny the Younger’s letters, writing of a book being read aloud and whenever a pupil read a word incorrectly, the teacher would make him reread it
What was the second stage of education?
Grammaticē: taught by grammatici and focused on developing reading, writing, and speaking skills
What was the grammatici teaching style?
- Literature, especially poetry and pupils would learn both greek and latin
- First two chapters of Homer’s Iliad were popular teaching material for beginners
What does Quintilian write of poetry in the second stage?
- Poetry wasn’t simply about speaking correctly or interpretation, but much of poetry offered philosophical value and would teach the boys how to act
What was the final stage of education?
- Rhetoric (starting in early to mid-teens under instruction of rhetores)
What was learned in the final stage?
- Developed styles and skill of argumentation
