Education In Ancient Rome

With the expansion of Rome, especially when it conquered Greece, it became necessary to open new paths in the world of education.

Thus, families with means could have the following curriculum for their children: As children they could have a teacher at home (magister), who was usually a Greek slave or freedman, or go to school led by a slave (paedagogus) who later also reviewed the lessons at home.

In the first educational stage, the child learned with a teacher (magister ludi, litterator and calculator) to read, write and do math. The discipline was severe, but the children played with wooden or ivory letters and learned to read and write with them.

This school is called "game" (ludus) and the teacher was magister ludi. The school was located in a small room (tavern, pergula), in a cabin or in the garden (depending on time and possibilities).

The master had a chair (cathedra) or a stool (sella). Children sat on benches (subsellia). The working instruments were waxed boards (tabulae, cerae) on which they scratched with punches (stilus) that were pointed on the one hand and ended in a spatula with which the wax was smoothed on the other and was thus ready to write again. in it (stilum vertere).

The second stage could be private or public. The teacher was the grammaticus who taught to understand and comment on literary texts. Commenting on classical texts, children learned about everything: geography, history, physics, religion, etc. Over time, grammar would also begin to be a study of the language they spoke and this innovation would end up eliminating the primitive concept of grammatica.

The third stage prepared the Roman political future in eloquence. The teacher was the rhetor (oratory teacher). Quintilian, for example, wrote many pedagogical notes on how to train the speaker. Among the frequent exercises was fictitious trials in which some students accused and others defended.