very
completely worked out, and an excellent summary of the results will
be found in the little volume on Roman education written by the late
Professor A.S. Wilkins, just before his lamented death: but he was
describing its methods without special reference to its defects, and
it is these defects on which I wish more particularly to dwell.[248]

Let us notice, in the first place, how little is said in the
literature of the time, including biographies, of that period of life
which is now so full of interest to readers of memoirs, so full of
interest to ourselves as we look back to it in advancing years. It
may be that we now exaggerate the importance of childhood, but it is
equally certain that the Romans undervalued the importance of it. It
may be that we over-estimate the value of our public-school life, but
it is certain that the Romans had no such school life to be proud of.
Biography was at this time a favourite form of literature, and some of
the memoirs then written were available for use by later writers, such
as Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, and Plutarch; yet it is curious how
little has come down to us of the childhood or boyhood of the great
men of the time. Plutarch indeed was deeply interested in education,
including that of childhood, and we can hardly doubt that he would
have used in his Roman Lives any information that came in his way. He
does tell us something, for which we are eternally indebted to him, of
old Cato's method of educating his son,[249] and something too, in his
_Life of Aemilius Paullus_,[250] of the education of the eldest son of
that family, the great Scipio Aemilianus. But in each of these Lives
we shall find that this information is used rather to bring out the
character of the father than to illustrate the upbringing of the son;
and as a rule the Lives begin with the parentage of the hero, and then
pass on at once to his early manhood.

The Life of the younger Cato, however, is an exception to the rule,
which we must ascribe to the attraction which all historians and
philosophers felt to this singular character. Plutarch knew the naiue
and character of Cato's paedagogus, Sarpedon,[251] and tells us that
he was an obedient child, but would ask for the reason of everything,
in those questions beginning with "why" which are often embarrassing
to the teacher. Two stories in the second and third chapters of this
Life are also found in that insipid medley of fact and fable drawn
up in the