olls of ivory or wax or of painted terra-cotta. They have
swings, and ride on sticks and build houses. When bigger, the boy has
his tops and hoops, with or without bells, and he plays marbles with
nuts. Meanwhile attempts are made, somewhat after the kindergarten
pattern, to teach them their alphabet by means of letters shaped in
wood or ivory. Whether or not it is modern kindergarten method to
tempt children to learn by offers of sugar-plums, that course was
often adopted in the world of both Greece and Rome.

On the whole the life of the child, though strictly governed, appears
to have been pleasant enough until schooldays began. Though many
children were taught at home by a more or less learned slave acting as
private tutor, the great majority, at least of the boys, were sent to
school. There was at this date no compulsory education; the state
dictated nothing and provided nothing in connection with the matter;
many children must have received no education at all, and many only
the barest elements. Nevertheless the average parent realised the
practical utility of at least reading, writing, and simple arithmetic,
and schools of the elementary type sprang up according to the demand.
What the higher education was like will be set forth in its place.

The ideal education, as understood in the older days of Rome, was a
training which should fit a man for his duty to the gods, the state,
and the family. It was above all things a moral and practical
training. A man has certain domestic, political, and religious
functions to perform: let him learn how best to perform these. Under
this system there was little room for accomplishments or for purely
intellectual pursuits. Little by little, however, such liberal
elements, artistic and philosophical, struggled into the sphere of
Roman education, but never to the extent or with the intellectual
effect which belonged to them in Greece. Even by A.D. 64 the education
of a Roman boy was very narrow, and, in the direction in which it
sought some liberality, it often went sadly astray. The clearest
course will be for us to take young Publius Silius through a course
typical of the time. We will assume that he does not receive all his
lessons at home, but that, through an old-fashioned preference on the
part of his father, he goes to a school, along with boys who are
mostly but not necessarily of the same social standing with himself.

We have unfortunately almost no information as to a