Athens is not the only model, however. Th e poetry of Sap-
pho (sixth century b.c.e.), from the island of Lesbos, not only
shows great literary accomplishment by the poet herself but
also suggests an intellectual community among the young
women of Sappho’s acquaintance; during the Victorian era
English scholars liked to imagine that Sappho ran a prep
school or fi nishing school for women. Th ere is little evidence
for this, but there is no denying the evidence for some formal
literary training of women at that time.
In Sparta during the Classical Period girls were educated
beside boys, with the whole program of education focusing
on the skills necessary in a military state—athletics, gymnas-
tics, and war games but also music, poetry, and dancing, all
of which were deemed necessary for young warriors as well as
for the future wives and mothers of warriors.
During the fi ft h century b.c.e. a number of professional
intellectuals came to Athens—then the cultural, economic,
and political center of the Greek world—and set themselves
up as professional teachers of rhetoric and philosophy. Th ese
men were known as sophistēs, or sophists, and they intro-
duced new ideas about the gods, human ethics, and the role
of reason in public life. Th ey oft en promised to help young
men achieve prominence in the democratic state of Athens by
teaching them to speak persuasively. As with most new intel-
lectual movements, this “sophistic revolution” was met with
some suspicion and oft en ridiculed, but it was also highly in-
fl uential. Pericles, a fi gure who dominated Athenian politics
in the middle of the fi ft h century b.c.e., was greatly infl u-
enced by the Sophists.
Th e heritage of this sophistic revolution were a number
of schools of philosophy and rhetoric—Isocrates’ school of
rhetoric, Plato’s Academy, and Aristotle’s Lyceum being the
most famous—and the lasting position of rhetoric, public
speaking, as the centerpiece of education for wealthy young
men, a movement that survived throughout the Hellenistic
Period (323–31 b.c.e.) and into the Roman Empire. Indeed,
long aft er Athens ceased to be a military or political power, it
remained an intellectual center. We have a number of letters
from the Roman statesman Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.), written to
his son whom he sent to study in Athens. Th ese letters con-
fi rm the lasting legacy of the Athenian model of education,
and they also suggest that the challenges faced by young peo-
ple going abroad for higher education, and by their parents
back at home, transcend time.
ROME
BY ROBIN BARROW
In the sixth and fi ft h centuries b.c.e. education was a fam-
ily matter. Th ere were no schools and no formal program of
study. A father had absolute legal authority over his children
and took prime responsibility for their upbringing, which
consisted mainly in developing character, particularly the
Roman virtues of dignifi ed bearing (gravitas), sense of duty
(pietas), and respect for tradition (mos maiorum). Th e mother
also played an infl uential role in the children’s early years,
and she went on to initiate her daughters into the customs,
practices, and skills associated with a conventional female
role. Th ese skills were chiefl y those suited to the running of a
household. Th e sons would conclude their education by being
apprenticed to the father’s trade or, in the case of the wealth-
ier classes, by entering military service and being inducted
into the business of political life by the father or a close family
friend.
Reading and writing played little or no part in education
at this early date, but they had become part of the education of
the families of senators and equites (“knights”) by the end of
the fourth century b.c.e. By the middle of the second century
b.c.e. Roman education was increasingly infl uenced by Greek
example. Greek tutors had been popular for some time, but
now Romans began to study Greek language and culture.
Th e orator and statesman Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.) main-
tained that Rome did not have a uniform system of educa-
tion; there was no centralized system, no compulsory formal
schooling, no common curriculum, and no state funding
(though later emperors and other wealthy individuals did
sometimes endow schools and professorships). But there were
schools by this date. Th ese were generally very small and of-
ten consisted of nothing more than a small room in a tavern
or even a spot in the open air. A fee-paying school was opened
in the second half of the third century b.c.e., but there were
a few schools of an informal nature the century before that,
where payment would have been by gift or in kind, though
the wealthy never ceased to employ tutors.
Th ere was no formal requirement of attendance and no
regularized curriculum even by the end of fi rst century b.c.e.,
but by then students did by and large follow a basic pattern of
schooling. At about the age of seven, they were taught basic
literacy and numeracy by the litterator, being escorted to and
from school by a slave. Letters were learnt by copying; once
the child could form sentences, he would copy out improv-
ing phrases and sayings, such as laborare est orare (“to work
is to pray”), intended at the same time to improve his char-
acter. Writing generally involved inscribing letters on a wax
board with a stilus (“stylus” or “nib”). Calculation was done
on the fi ngers, on an abacus, or in the head. At about the age
of 12, the boy went to the grammaticus to study literature.
Girls could receive a formal education but did not commonly
do so; it is not clear whether boys and girls were ever taught
together.
In studying literature the emphasis was on analysis
and memorization, and the presumption was that the study
would also be uplift ing and contribute to character develop-
ment. Students had to recite from chosen authors and com-
pose commentaries on them. Th e material was largely poetry
and initially Greek (for example, Homer). By the fi rst century
c.e., following the emergence of poets such as Virgil (70–19
b.c.e.) and Horace (65–8 b.c.e.), Romans were able to study
their own literature, though Greek authors never lost their
appeal.384 education: Rome