Education

Rome and other cities of the Roman Empire possessed an educational system that was mainly derived from the Greek cities of the Hellenistic age. Schools were private institutions for the children of parents who could afford the probably modest tuition fees. The “primary school” for children of about seven to twelve was often run by a freedman; the school itself was often part of a public space that was temporarily partitioned off, for instance, by curtains hung between the columns of a stoa or basilica. Reading, writing, and counting were the subjects taught. The pupils wrote with a sharp pencil or stilus on wax tablets; since books were expensive, much had to be learned by heart. We do not know how many children in the cities on average attended such classes, and so we do not know what percentage of the city population was able to read and write and thus how widespread literacy was (among the mass of the population in the countryside, in any case, it must have been very much lower than in the cities).

“Secondary education” was in the Roman world the domain of the grammaticus, also often a freedman but with a somewhat higher status than the schoolmaster. He was supposed to teach Latin and Greek grammar, which in practice meant reading the famous classical authors with some explanations regarding mythological and historical persons or episodes. This sort of general education by the grammaticus in the west was given in the same corners of public spaces as the “primary schools,” in the Greek cities often a part of the gumnasion was marked out for it. Girls could attend these schools as well as boys, at least in the west, but their participation in public education at the secondary level must have been very small, if it existed at all. The daughters of the elite, however, regularly received all sorts of private lessons at home, as did upper-class boys. In Roman society, the “secondary” education was practically limited to the teachings of the grammaticus, but in the Greek cities the old traditions of education in music and gymnastics lived on. There, traditionally, a certain degree of supervision by the city government was normal, and the gumnasiarchos who supervised the gumnasia was an important official. Thus, the gumnasia in the Greek cities were not only places for bodily exercises but also for literary education.

In the gumnasia as well as in the theaters, for a substantial fee, itinerant literati or rhetors (professional orators) sometimes performed, declaiming their show speeches for the educated and snobbish part of the city population. That high esteem for rhetoric was typical of the education and of the literature of the empire. Words should have their maximum effect, to be achieved by various means: not only by rhetorical tricks and techniques and stylistic artifices, but also by a show of learning and speaking a “pure” language. In Greek, the latter meant the language of the great authors in the Attic dialect of the 5th and 4th centuries BC; in Latin, it was the language of Cicero and the poets of the age of Augustus. Their language had become the norm; theirs was the “classical” Greek and Latin taught by the grammaticus and imitated by the rhetor. Meanwhile, the language in everyday use had distanced itself more and more from these norms. As a result, rhetoric,

Figure 42 A wooden tablet from the Roman fort at Vindolanda, containing an army strength report (2nd c. BC). This is one of the so-called Tabulae Vindolandenses: hundreds of very thin slices of wood, written on with ink, that were found on the rubbish dump of the Roman fort of Vindolanda, just behind Hadrian’s Wall. These texts give a unique insight into the life of a Roman army camp in the 2nd century, and also underscore the important part that writing seems to have played in that life. The camp was administered in writing down to the smallest detail, such as individual soldiers asking for a day’s leave, but there is also private correspondence of many different kinds. Even the lower ranks appear to have been able to read, and probably to write. We cannot conclude from this that Roman Britain was a literate society: the army was in many respects a world apart. But still, it changes our view of ancient literacy. The text partially illustrated here is a strength report: “May the 18th, total number in the First Cohors of the Tungri, commanded by the prefect lulius Verecundus: 752, of whom 6 centuriones. Absent: body guards of the governor 46; in Coria 337, including two centuriones; in Londinium 1 centurio; [illegible passage]. Total absent: 456, including 5 centuriones. Present: 296, including one centurio. Of these ill: 15; injured: 6; down with an inflammation of the eyes: 10, in total 31. Fit for active service: 265, among whom 1 centurio.” Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Literature in general—for most authors on a variety of subjects tried to write in a “classical” mode—and already the teaching of the grammaticus were something strange to the world in which the mass of the population lived and spoke. The literary culture of the empire thus mirrored the gulf in society between the elite and the masses: the latter did not participate in the learned and dignified, artificial, and often not a little sterile “letters” that for the educated elite constituted higher culture.

Finally, “higher education” in organized form hardly existed. In the Latin-speaking parts of the empire, in Rome and a few other cities and provincial capitals such as Carthage, it was limited to the activities of some professors teaching Latin and Greek rhetoric or literature. Any education in philosophy and the sciences took place only in small circles coming together in the house of some scholar or in that of his wealthy patron. In that way, some “schools” could for a while exist, but they were all short-lived. Next to this form of higher education, in the Greek east there were still a few centers of learning where scholars could be active on a more or less permanent basis. Athens still had its Platonic Academy, where the writings of the master were studied besides astronomy and mathematics, but literary subjects were neglected. In Alexandria, where the Musaeum had been a center of learning under the Ptolemies, during the empire the scientific activities were continued on a reduced scale: mathematics, astronomy, and geography were the fields in which scholars there worked in the tradition of Aristotle and the Peripatetic school. The diffusion of all sorts of pseudo-science such as astrology and alchemy was marked, which in a mix with religion and magic exerted wide influence. Also new was the fact that the Christian community in Alexandria took over some parts of the scholarly tradition. Since about 200 AD, Alexandria became a center of theological learning that not only inspired theological speculation but also more practical expertise in the fields of textual criticism and chronological studies. Later in the 3rd century, Caesarea in Palestine and Antioch in Syria became centers of Christian learning as well. Then, not long before 300 AD, another type of higher education made its appearance in the east in the form of the law school, where jurists and prospective officials in the service of the emperor could be educated. The most important was established in Berytus (Beirut), and later another one would flourish in Constantinople.