ols open to the street, and probably
Publius Silius would be taken to one where his "guardian" waits with
others in an antechamber, while he is himself being taught in a room
where the walls are pictured with historical or mythological scenes,
or with charts or maps, and where there stand busts of eminent
writers. The boys are seated on benches or forms, and the master on a
high-backed chair. When the pupil is called upon to repeat a lesson,
he stands up before the teacher; when the whole class is to deliver a
dictated passage it rises and delivers it all together, in orthodox
sing-song style.

[Illustration: FIG. 95.--HORSING A BOY. (After Saechs.)]

Somewhere towards eleven o'clock there is an interval, and the boys go
home for lunch or buy something from the seller of rissoles or
sausages in the street. In the afternoon--when the schoolmaster has
taken his own luncheon and probably his short siesta--they return to
school, putting in altogether about six hours of lessons in the day.

That boys and girls went to the same elementary schools is not
absolutely provable from any explicit statement to that effect; but
there are one or two passages in literature which point almost
certainly to that conclusion. It is at least undeniable that girls,
and even big girls, went to school, and that in those schools they
were taught by men. One schoolmaster is addressed by the poet as
"detestable to both boys and girls." We have seen that in maturity the
Roman woman lived in no sort of seclusion; and it is reasonable to
suppose that as a girl she was treated in much the same way as girls
in a mixed school of to-day. Nevertheless it is also almost certain
that such mixed schools were only those of the common people, or of
the lower middle classes: the daughters of the better-circumstanced
would be instructed at home by private tutors. There they would learn
to read and write both Greek and their native Latin, to play upon the
lyre or harp, to dance--Roman dancing being more a matter of gesture
with hands and body than of movement with the feet--and to carry
themselves with the bearing fit for a Roman lady. To teach the
household duties was the function of the mother.

At Rome, as with us, there was, first, a primary education, pure and
simple, given in the schools of those who would nowadays be registered
as teachers of primary subjects. Next there was what we should call a
secondary or high-school education, given by a "grammar