sh. His
arithmetic will be merely such as will enable him to make up accounts.
The Roman numerals did not lend themselves easily to the method now
adopted of calculating on paper, and the Roman pupil therefore
reckoned partly with his fingers, partly by means of counters laid or
strung upon a board. At this he became remarkably proficient, and at
mental arithmetic there is reason to believe that he could beat the
modern boy hollow. Along with the reckoning he would also necessarily
learn his tables of weights and measures. "Two-and-a-half feet one
step; two steps one pace; a thousand paces one mile." So he said or
sang, and a mile--_mille_, "a thousand" paces--remains our own word to
this day, even though it has come to signify an eccentric 1760 yards.

That Roman boys bore no love to school or schoolmaster is little
wonder. Perhaps Publius may be fortunate; but if his schoolmaster is
of the ordinary type he will be an irascible loud-voiced person, who
bawls and scolds and thrashes. It will be a common thing to find, as
Seneca puts it, a man "in a violent passion teaching you that to be in
a passion is wrong." The doctrine went that "he who is not flayed is
not educated." The methods of the military centurion may have had
something to do with creating this behaviour, but there is perhaps
another excuse to be found for the Roman pedagogue. His school, if of
the inferior kind, is like any other shop, a place open to the street,
whether on the ground floor or in the balcony-like _entresol_. There
is no cloistered privacy about his instruction. To such a place at a
very early hour come the boys "creeping unwillingly." When the days
are short the school opens before daybreak, and the smoky lamps and
lanterns create an evil smell and atmosphere in the raw and chilly
morning. That is no time to be amiable towards inattention or
stupidity. There were many other circumstances to try the temper, and
the Roman temper, except among the highest classes, was, as it is,
quick and loud. No real boy who had been a Roman school but knew what
it was to have ears pinched and to take his punishment on his hands
with the cane or the tawse. Many had been "horsed," in the way
depicted in the illustration.

There is also no cause for surprise that boys often shammed illness
and did little things to their eyes so that mother or father might
keep them from their books for a while. There were of course academies
of a better class than these scho