country": but it is significant that
in the next two or three generations the writers of annals took to
glorifying--and falsifying--the achievements of members of their own
families, rather than those of the State as a whole. Boys learnt the
XII Tables by heart, and Cicero tells us that he did this in his own
boyhood, though the practice had since then been dropped.[269] That
ancient code of law would have acted, we may imagine, as a kind of
catechism of the rules laid down by the State for the conduct of its
citizens, and as a reminder that though the State had outgrown the
rough legal clothing of its infancy, it had from the very beginning
undertaken the duty of regulating the conduct of its citizens in their
relations with each other. Again, when a great Roman died, it is said
to have been the practice for parents to take their boys to hear the
funeral oration in praise of one who had done great service to the
State.[270]

All this was admirable, and if Rome had not become a great imperial
state, and if some super-structure of the humanities could have been
added in a natural process of development, it might have continued
for ages as an invaluable educational basis. But the conditions under
which alone it could flourish had long ceased to be. It is obvious
that it depended entirely on the presence of the parents and their
interest in the children; as regards the boys it depended chiefly on
the father. Now ever since the Roman dominion was extended beyond sea,
i.e. ever since the first two Punic wars, the father of a family must
often have been away from home for long periods; he might have to
serve in foreign wars for years together, and in numberless cases
never saw Italy again. Even if he remained in Rome, the ever
increasing business of the State would occupy him far more than
was compatible with a constant personal care for his children. The
conscientious Roman father of the last two centuries B.C. must have
felt even more keenly than English parents in India the sorrow of
parting from their children at an age when they are most in need of
parental care. We have to remember that in Cicero's day letter-writing
had only recently become possible on an extended scale through the
increasing business of the publicani in the provinces (see above, p.
74); the Roman father in Spain or Asia seldom heard of what his wife
and children were doing, and the inevitable result was that he began
to cease to care. In fact more a