ld abdicate his seat till the
fifteenth of October brought a season more convenient for study. Rome
indeed was probably deserted in the later summer and autumn by the
wealthier class, who were doubtless disposed to agree in the poet's
remark, a remark to which the idlest schoolboy will forgive its Latin
for the sake of its admirable sentiment:

"Aestate pueri si valent satis discunt." "In summer boys learn
enough, if they keep their health."

Something, perhaps, may be said of the teachers, into whose hands the
boys of Rome were committed. We have a little book, of not more than
twoscore pages in all, which gives us "lives of illustrious
schoolmasters;" and from which we may glean a few facts. The first
business of a schoolmaster was to teach grammar, and grammar Rome owed,
as she owed most of her knowledge, to a Greek, a certain Crates, who
coming as ambassador from one of the kings of Asia Minor, broke his leg
while walking in the ill-paved streets of Rome, and occupied his leisure
by giving lectures at his house. Most of the early teachers were Greeks.
Catulus bought a Greek slave for somewhat more than fifteen hundred
pounds, and giving him his freedom set him up as a schoolmaster; another
of the same nation received a salary of between three and four hundred
pounds, his patron taking and probably making a considerable profit out
of the pupils' fees. Orbilius, the man of blows, was probably of Greek
descent. He had been first a beadle, then a trumpeter, then a trooper in
his youth, and came to Rome in the year in which Cicero was consul. He
seems to have been as severe on the parents of his pupils as he was in
another way on the lads themselves, for he wrote a book in which he
exposed their meanness and ingratitude. His troubles, however, did not
prevent him living to the great age of one hundred and three. The author
of the little book about schoolmasters had seen his statue in his native
town. It was a marble figure, in a sitting posture, with two writing
desks beside it. The favorite authors of Orbilius, who was of the
old-fashioned school, were, as has been said, the early dramatists.
Caecilius, a younger man, to whom Atticus the friend and correspondent
of Cicero gave his freedom, lectured on Virgil, with whom, as he was
intimate with one of Virgil's associates, he probably had some
acquaintance. A certain Flaccus had the credit of having first invented
prizes. He used to pit lads of equal age agains