nly wealthy Romans could command for their sons the services
of such teachers as Diodotus; but any well-to-do-household contained a
slave who had more or less acquaintance with Greek. In Cicero's time a
century and more of conquests on the part of Rome over Greek and
Greek-speaking communities had brought into Italian families a vast
number of slaves who knew the Greek language, and something, often a
good deal, of Greek literature. One of these would probably be set apart
as the boy's attendant; from him he would learn to speak and read a
language, a knowledge of which was at least as common at Rome as is a
knowledge of French among English gentlemen.

If the Roman boy of whom we are speaking belonged to a very wealthy and
distinguished family, he would probably receive his education at home.
Commonly he would go to school. There were schools, girls' schools as
well as boys' schools, at Rome in the days of the wicked Appius
Claudius. The schoolmaster appears among the Etruscans in the story of
Camillus, when the traitor, who offers to hand over to the Roman general
the sons of the chief citizen of Falerii, is at his command scourged
back into the town by his scholars. We find him again in the same story
in the Latin town of Tusculum, where it is mentioned as one of the signs
of a time of profound peace (Camillus had hurriedly marched against the
town on a false report of its having revolted), that the hum of scholars
at their lessons was heard in the market-place. At Rome, as time went
on, and the Forum became more and more busy and noisy, the schools were
removed to more suitable localities. Their appliances for teaching were
improved and increased. Possibly maps were added, certainly reading
books. Homer was read, and, as we have seen, the old Latin play-writers,
and, afterwards, Virgil. Horace threatens the book which willfully
insists on going out into the world with this fate, that old age will
find it in a far-off suburb teaching boys their letters. Some hundred
years afterwards the prophecy was fulfilled. Juvenal tells us how the
schoolboys stood each with a lamp in one hand and a well-thumbed Horace
or sooty Virgil in the other. Quintilian, writing about the same time,
goes into detail, as becomes an old schoolmaster. "It is an admirable
practice that the boy's reading should begin with Homer and Virgil. The
tragic writers also are useful; and there is much benefit to be got from
the lyric poets also. But here y