of Antony only fourteen. In
former times it seems probable that the boy remained "praetextatus"
till he was seventeen, the age at which he was legally capable of
military service, and that he went straight from the home to the
levy;[292] in case of severe military pressure, or if he wished it
himself, he might begin his first military exercises and even his
active service, in the praetexta. But as in so many other ways, so
here the life of the city brought about a change; in a city boys are
apt to develop more rapidly in intelligence if not in body, and as the
toga virilis was the mark of legal qualification as a man, they might
be of more use to the family in the absence of the father if invested
with it somewhat earlier than had been the primitive custom. But there
was no hard and fast rule; boys develop with much variation both
mentally and physically, and, like the Eton collar of our own
schoolboys, the toga of childhood might be retained or dropped
entirely at the discretion of the parents.

There is, however, a great difference in the two cases in regard
to the assumption of the manly dress. With us it does not mean
independence; as a rule the boy remains at school for a year or two at
least under strict discipline. At Rome it meant, on the contrary, that
he was "of age," and in the eye of the law a man, capable of looking
after his own education and of holding property. This was a survival
from the time when at the age of puberty the boy, as among all
primitive peoples, was solemnly received into the body of citizens and
warriors; and the solemnity of the Roman ceremony fully attests this.
After a sacrifice in the house, and the dedication of his boyish toga
and bulla to the Lar familiaris, he was invested with the plain toga
of manhood (libera, pura), and conducted by his father or guardian,
accompanied (in characteristic Roman fashion, see below, p. 271)
by friends and relations, to the Forum, and probably also to the
tabularium under the Capitol, where his name was entered in the list
of full citizens.[293]

With the new arrangement, under which boys might become legally men
at an earlier age than in the old days, it is obvious that there must
often have been an interval before they were physically or mentally
qualified for a profession. As the sole civil profession to which boys
of high family would aspire was that of the bar, a father would send
his son during that interval to a distinguished advocate to