Roman education
The term Roman education encompasses the entirety of the Roman forms of education and upbringing as well as its institutions.
Ancient Roman education
The Romans initially earned their livelihood mainly from agriculture and animal husbandry, as a result they got by without a school and education took place in the family. When the children were young, they learned the customs, manners and norms of society under the care of their mother. Girls, even as they got older, stayed with their mothers and did domestic chores like spinning wool. The upbringing of the sons was passed on to their father when they were around 7 years old, who taught them practical things that were important for farmers.
Education was reserved for children whose wealthy parents, patrons or masters were willing to pay school fees and forego the child's labor.
In addition to sports and fighting, reading and writing were also taught. From around 510 BC. A political apprenticeship year, the tirocinium fori , became common for the sons of richer families , in which they were introduced to Roman law, governance and rhetoric by a friend of the family or by the father himself . In addition, they did military service early on so that they would obey and learn to command themselves and to lead through submission. Upbringing served not only to impart knowledge, but also to impart ethical values such as obedience, modesty, constancy, discipline, bravery and virtue (virtus), with the example of ancestors and elders playing a greater role. Science education, on the other hand, was in the background. At about 16 years of age, the youngster put on the toga virilis ( toga of the man), which was celebrated with a solemn ceremony, and entered himself into the citizens' list , which ended his upbringing in the family.
Greek influenced upbringing
During the second century BC BC, after the Punic Wars , Rome rose to become a world and trading power. The Romans came into contact with Greek culture and took over large parts of its culture. As a result, the Roman school system aligned itself with the Greek one, which led to resistance in the conservative circles. Therefore, their children should also receive an education that was given to them by Greek tutors who had come to Rome as slaves or newcomers. Some also founded public schools, whereby public does not mean state, but that every man capable of teaching could found a school and every child with wealthy parents could attend it. A building on the forum served as the teaching building . Because the children grew up bilingual thanks to Greek slaves, they didn't just learn Greek at school. Like the Greek school, the Roman school was divided into three parts:
- Ludus litterarius (primary / elementary school)
- Grammaticus (grammar / literature school)
- (Rhetoric school)
Ludus litterarius
The school was attended mainly by boys and some girls between the ages of 7 and 11. The magister ludi taught her to read and write, the calculator the basics of arithmetic. Since the teachers were often slaves or freedmen , they enjoyed little reputation and earned little, which is why they often had to get a sideline. The type of teaching was not very child-friendly and very theoretical. Overall, the children had to be passive, learning by imitation was a top priority. Corporal punishment was common, using a knuckle or stick. So “holding out your hand for the whip” was a phrase for “going to school”. First letters were taught, then syllables, and later whole words. Depending on what they were learning, they were called abecedarii , syllabirii or nominarii . In order to promote memory, students also learned by heart texts that often had moral content. Classes began at sunrise in summer and at night in winter and lasted until late afternoon, interrupted by a short lunch break. There was no school from the end of July to mid-October. A slave, the paedagogus , accompanied the student home after class to protect him from the dangers of the street. He also had to help raise him and learn with him. With elementary school, the education of children from poorer classes usually ended.
Grammaticus
Between the ages of 12 and 16, upper-class boys attended grammar school. The teacher, grammaticus , received a slightly higher income than the magister ludi , but like him did not enjoy a great reputation. Mostly they were Greeks, as they knew the Greek language and script well. The language of instruction was initially Greek because there was hardly any higher Latin literature. At the time of Augustus , however, Latin prevailed. The young people occupied themselves with Greek works such as the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer , and later with works by Latin authors such as Ennius , Cicero , Virgil and Horace . Associated with this were explanations of style and grammar.
Work on the text took place in four stages:
- emendatio = text criticism: Since you wrote in scriptio continua , i.e. with no gaps between the words, you had to edit the text before reading it.
- praelectio = reading aloud
- enarratio = explain, structured according to form and content
- crisis = judgment
The moral evaluation is in the foreground. Poetics, literary history, mythology, philosophy, history, geography and other subjects were also taught. However, these were only treated as part of the reading. The basic building blocks of rhetoric were also partially taught, although the rhetoric was only taught and discussed in detail in the rhetoric school. The goal was a comprehensive general education, whereby this did not include the natural science subjects. In essays, the students worked independently for the first time. For example, they wrote short texts, had to retell as verbatim as possible or discussed sayings of famous personalities.
Rhetoric school
Young men between the ages of 16 and 20 attended the rhetoric school. They belonged to the Roman upper class, as this institution cost a lot of school fees. For the profession, rhetoric played an immensely important role in the political as well as in the legal and military career, here too most of it was taken over by the Greeks. A rhetorician taught the students rhetoric, philosophy, and law. The teacher enjoyed a higher reputation than other schools and received a moderate salary; if it was a famous politician or personality, this increased considerably.
Sub-areas of the lesson were:
- Introduction to the theory
- Study of role models
- Preparatory exercises
- Declamations
The stages in preparing a speech were:
- inventio = material discovery
- dispositio = structure
- elocutio = formulation
- memoria = memorization
- actio = holding the speech
The tasks assigned to the students were, for example, to give a speech for or against a defendant. These were often constructed cases, such as the following: According to a law, a raped woman has to choose between the death penalty for her rapist or marrying him without a dowry. A man violates two women that same night. One demands death, the other wants to marry him.
Others
There was never compulsory schooling in Rome, instead attending school was always voluntary. Education was heavily dependent on parental income, as state schools were only founded in the imperial era, which were then also used for propaganda purposes. After the rhetoric school there was often a stay in Greece, mostly in Athens. In contrast to the Greek school system, art, music and school sports were not of great importance; instead, children primarily had to be able to read and write.