ning discipline rather by means of corporal punishment (to
which the Romans never seem to have objected, though Quintilian
criticises it)[275] than by moral force; a fact which is attested both
in literature and art. The responsibility again which attached to the
paedagogus for the boy's morals must have been another inducement to
the parents to renounce their proper work of supervision.[276] And
once more, the great majority of teachers were Greeks. As the boy was
born into a bilingual Graeco-Roman world, of which the Greeks were the
only cultured people, this might seem natural and inevitable; but we
know that in his heart the Roman despised the Greek. Of witnesses in
their favour we might expect Cicero to be the strongest, but Cicero
occasionally lets us know what he really thinks of their moral
character. In a remarkable passage in his speech for Flaccus, which
is fully borne out by remarks in his private letters, he says that he
grants them all manner of literary and rhetorical skill, but that
the race never understood or cared for the sacred binding force of
testimony given in a court of law.[277] Thus the Roman boy was in the
anomalous position of having to submit to chastisement from men whom
as men he despised. Assuredly we should not like our public schoolboys
to be taught or punished by men of low station or of an inferior
standard of morals It is men, not methods, that really tell in
education; the Roman schoolboy needed some one to believe in some one
to whom to be wholly loyal; the very same overpowering need which
was so obvious in the political world of Rome in the last century
B.C.[278]

Of this elementary teaching little need be said here, as it did not
bear directly on life and conduct. There is, however, one feature of
it which may claim our attention for a moment. Both in reading and
writing, and also for learning by heart, _sententiae_ [Greek: gnomai]
were used, which remind us of our copy-book maxims. Of these we have a
large collection, more than 700, selected from the mimes of Publilius
Syrus, who came to Rome from Syria as a slave in the age of which we
are writing, and after obtaining his freedom gained great reputation
as the author of many popular plays of this kind, in which he
contrived to insert these wise saws and maxims. It is not likely that
they found their way into the schools all at once, but in the early
Empire we find them already alluded to as educational material by
Seneca the