A day in old Rome

159. Theoretical Rights of Father over Children. The Patria Potestas.—When a child is born into a Roman home the father has complete legal rights even as in Athens to determine whether it is to live or to die.[95] If theoretically he has the terrific power as pater familias to kill his children in later life if they merely displease him, how much more can he claim the right to decide that “This boy will be one too many,” or “We can afford no more girls,” or “This child will be sickly and deformed.” If his decision is adverse, mother and nurse may beseech in vain; the babe is simply “exposed”—that is, carried by a slave to some spot by the highway and left to perish. This harsh old law is unrepealed.

Possibly such deserted children will be taken up by those whose homes are desolate and who require consolation. There is a greater and fouler chance that such babes will be carried away and reared by human harpies who raise boys and girls to sell as victims of gross wickedness among the rich, or who even mutilate the children to convert them into grotesque buffoons or pathetic beggars to wheedle the coppers from the tender-hearted. Perhaps some of those horribly deformed creatures who cry “Give! Give!” behind the litters of the senators are blood relations to the gilded lords themselves. This is physically possible, if we can believe many ugly stories.

Legal right and actual custom can often, however, stand miles asunder. No Roman gladly will see his house dying out, despite the “advantages of childlessness.” In fact to keep up the family name, resort is often had to adoption, sometimes of mature adults, to an extent quite unknown in other ages. The upper classes under the Empire are dwindling so rapidly, thanks to many causes, that rare indeed is the house where a lawful child is unwelcome; and in the lower classes fathers are fathers still. In short though the cruel old “right of exposure” exists, it is not exercised often enough to make its practice a wholesale evil, and a man of distinction who exposes a babe (unless his family is remarkably large and expensive) will fall under social ostracism; in fact the Emperor may even be advised to strike him from the list of senators or equites as “a bad citizen.”

160. Ceremonies after Birth of a Child. The Bulla.—The birth of a child in a good family is, therefore, the signal for no common rejoicing, and thanks to the favored position of Roman women, girls are not a serious discount as against boys. Then comes the grand celebration—the lustratio, the name-day for the babe.

This occurs nine days after the birth of boys and the eighth after that of girls; the idea being not to name the child prematurely lest it die in first infancy. The ceremony takes place in the atrium. The mother cannot, perhaps, be present, but there is a general gathering of the near friends, kinsmen, clients, etc., before whom the nurse solemnly presents herself and then lays her little bundle of swaddling clothes at the feet of its father. With equal solemnity the father bends and takes up the infant and with his formal “lifting up” the whole company raises a shout of joy.[96] Henceforth, the babe is of undoubted legitimacy, a member of the family, entitled to the protection alike of the family lares and of the public law, and a new citizen of the Roman state. Then the father, turning to the company, if the child is a boy, announces in clear voice his prænomen, e.g., “Let the lad be called Marcus!”

After these formalities are ended the kinsmen and also the favorite slaves rush forward and throw around the neck of the infant cords bearing little metal toys, tiny swords, axes, flowers, or even dolls, all called crepudia, from the manner in which they clank together. Most important of all, however, is the golden bulla, an elaborate locket containing charms, which the father himself hangs about the child’s neck. If the family is poor, one of painted leather may answer, but a bulla there must be. It will never be laid aside permanently until the proud day when the grown-up lad “assumes the manly toga,” or when the girl leaves her parents’ house as a bride.

161. The Roman Name: Its Intricacy.—It is no slight thing, this matter of the Roman personal names, and they are far more complicated than are the Greek. Under the Republic names were so standardized among the upper families, that those of a young nobleman were practically determined the moment he touched the cradle. How many “Appii Claudii” figure in the history of the Commonwealth! Omitting technicalities, practically every Roman citizen then had three names: his prænomen, a personal designation something like the Christian “John” or “George,” his nomen, fixed on him by his gens (special clan) such as Cornelius, Fabius, Julius, etc., and finally his cognomen, which marked the particular family of the gens to which his father belonged. Cæsar, Sulla, Cicero, Scipio, and the like were all cognomens corresponding closely to later-day surnames, and were anything but the individual property of certain famous holders of the same. Thus even a cognomen could have many bearers, and sometimes a second cognomen was added—such as Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica.

This is all very well, but how few are the options left to the parents in selecting the prænomen! There are only eighteen regular Roman prænomens, of which Marcus, Gaius, and Lucius are perhaps the most common. Certain families confine themselves to a very few prænomens. Thus no Cornelian ever names his sons anything but Gnæus, Lucius, and Publius unless the gods bless him with a fourth boy. The Domitii were nearly all either Gnæus or Lucius. Rare was the Claudian eldest son who escaped being called Appius.[97]

These cases simply register what is true in most of the old families. The rule is to name your first son always after your own father. Thus Publius Calvus’s young Titus is the grandson of a Titus and the great grandson of a Publius. His younger brother, however, was not thus named by rigid precedent. He could be named Decimus.[98]

162. Irregular and Lengthy Names under the Empire. Names of Slaves.—Things are far more irregular, however, since the Empire has brought the Roman name along with the Roman citizenship to hordes of freedmen and foreigners. They Latinize their alien names, or they take an altered form of their ex-master’s names, for example, Claudianus Licinianus; or often, being complete upstarts, swell around with absurdly long names often meaning nothing at all. This is true even of some high officers, and there is now ruling as proconsul of Africa a senator calling himself pompously Titus Cæsarinus Statius Quintius Statianus Memmius Macrinus, while that of the governor of North Britain, a certain “Pollio,” has nine names if you give him his full title.[99]

As for slaves they were ordinarily called in simpler days of the Republic merely “Marcipor,” or “Lucipor,” etc.,—“Marcus’s boy,” or “Lucius’s boy”; but such descriptions in the days of the great familiæ become impossible. Most house slaves are either named for Greek deities or heroes, or else for some Oriental potentate, precisely as “Cæsar” and “Pompey” will figure on slave plantations of another day. “Mithridates,” “Pharnaces,” “Cyrus,” and the like appear in every atrium. There are also plenty of handsome boys answering to such fine names as “Eros,” “Polydorus,” “Xenophon”; or who are named for their native country as “Syrax” for a Syrian, and “Cappadox” for a Cappadocian.

163. Names of Women. Confusion of Roman Names.—When a girl is born in an old family her chance of a distinctive name seems even less than that of her brothers. There are really no recognized prænomens for girls, and until lately there have been hardly any regular cognomens. Calvus’s daughter should have been merely called Junia for her gens: “The Junian Woman.” If it is needful, however, to separate her from her cousins, she can be called Junia Calvi—“Calvus’s Junia.” If she had a younger sister, she would be simply “Junia Prima” as against “Junia Secunda”—Junia No. 1 and Junia No. 2.

This kind of effacement is, however, becoming very displeasing to high-spirited Roman women. They are now asserting their personality by demanding special names. The result is that they are getting a kind of irregular cognomens. Calvus’s daughter is, therefore, known as Junia Gratia (from her mother), and should the house be favored with another young mistress, she will probably be Junia Calva in compliment to her father’s cognomen.

Nevertheless, with every explanation, the names alike of men and women at Rome are utterly confusing. Duplication seems incessant and anything like a complete directory of the city would apparently carry many pages of identical entries. Of course, a ready use of nicknames (constantly invented by Italian ingenuity) overcomes the actual difficulty. Among near friends or dependents it is quite proper to cry “Hail, Spurius!” or “Well said, Tiberius”; but it is an impolite familiarity to employ the prænomen except for intimates. Ordinarily the cognomen is the proper form, used, be it said, without any “Sir” or “Mister,” and in the Senate the archaic usage requires that the Conscript Fathers should be summoned by prænomen and gentile name only. “Dic, Marce Tulle,” “Speak, Marcus Tullius,” was the form by which Cicero was often called before he began his great orations.

164. Care of Parents in Educating Children.—So a Roman child receives that great thing, his name. What is the course of his life if he grows to manhood? Very much the same as in other civilized lands, where most parents are loving and where most children bring joy to the house. Boys and girls, until school age, are largely in the hands of the womenfolk. Gratia’s old nurse, brought with her to Calvus’s house, is still more of a beloved mentor and tyrant to Gratia’s children, usually bribing her charges to be good “with honey, nuts and sweet-cakes.” But as soon as boys, at least, begin to pass out of early childhood their fathers are expected to take them in hand, and even a man of high rank is criticized if he leaves his sons too much to the guidance of paid tutors and of slaves.

This paternal discipline may be harsh but it is seldom negligent. Boys are taught to go with their fathers almost everywhere; to watch and listen in silence, but to ask intelligent questions afterward. Thus young Titus is already old enough to accompany his father Calvus to the sessions of the Senate itself. On a seat reserved near the door for senators’ sons he listens through many a solemn debate. Presently the routine of business is so familiar to him, that he presumptuously thinks he can correct the consul on certain points of order. He and his companions of like rank already are playing “prætor’s court”—with one of them on the tribunal and the others (like their parents) the orators in the great basilica. As the good old customs have waned this companionship of fathers and sons has perhaps somewhat waned also—but it still remains one of the worthiest features of the Roman training.

165. Toys and Pets.—Roman children lack nothing in playthings. All but the elaborate mechanical toys of a later age are at their disposal. Little children have their rattles, balls, and carts. Small Junia plays with very life-like dolls of ivory, wax, and painted terra cotta, often fashioned by exceedingly skilful Greek craftsmen. She and her brothers rejoice in swings and hobby horses, while Titus and young Decimus also make glad in a finely painted “century” of wooden soldiers and in tops, hoops, and marbles—such as are transmitted almost unchanged across the ages, and they receive somewhat suspiciously (as soon as they are of proper age) a gift of a carefully carved set of wooden letters, a sly device for teaching the alphabet.

Much more welcome than these last are, of course, the New Year and birthday presents of tame nightingales, talking parrots, and caged blackbirds, of dogs, large and small, of that somewhat rare animal from Egypt—a delightful furry cat, and best of all—when they grow a little older—being children of a senator, each a well-broken pony—of little use in Rome, but a splendid comrade when the family goes to its villas.

As they get older still a decent allowance of pocket money is added and an earnest attempt is made to teach the children financial responsibility, to add accounts, to save their sesterces, and not to run up bills. It is not ungenteel, however, for a youth of family to be an easy spender, and Pliny the Younger has scolded a friend as outrageously severe for “thrashing his son because he was too lavish in buying horses and dogs.”

166. The Learning of Greek by Roman Children.—Even before formal schooling begins, the young Calvi, like all other Romans of the better class, have begun an important part of their education—the learning of Greek. The Athenian education was a single-language education with no studies outside those of the mother tongue.[100] The Roman education is a bi-lingual education.

Without Greek everybody confesses that a full half (probably more) of the world’s entire wit and wisdom is locked away. Without Greek not merely must a man refuse to claim the least real culture; he is handicapped in all the professions and in most forms of business. He can have no commercial dealings with the Levant. If he travels anywhere East of the Adriatic, he can hardly make himself understood outside of the governors’ prætoria and the camps. Even into the literary Latin there have crept an enormous number of Greek terms, mostly having to do with matters of learning or luxury. In short without the mastery of Greek a Roman of any ambitions is hopelessly lost.

A scholar need not, however, bother about any third language. Practically all Levantines can jabber some Greek, even though their accent be abominable, and their native tongue Syriac or Coptic. As for Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons doubtless interpreters are needful if you visit their crude villages, but all their upper classes are now busily learning Latin just as they are learning the joys of Roman baths, circus races, and cookery. With Latin and Greek you are ready to meet the world.

Greek is taught in the schools, but hardly as a painfully acquired foreign language. From infancy Titus, Decimus, and Junia have had Greek-speaking attendants, and their own parents (very fair Greek scholars) take pains to talk in good Attic part of the time while they play with them. As the children grow up about half of all the more elegant and refined conversation they must hear will be in Greek—and so through all their education. The result will be that Junia may turn out to be a learned lady like the poetess Julia Balbilla, the Empress Sabina’s friend, who has written some very fine Greek elegiacs,[101] “worthy of Sappho,” say her friends; or Titus if he dabbles in philosophy, may write a long treatise in good Attic prose as well as can his contemporary the destined emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

167. Selection of a School.—In the good old days a father was expected not merely to give his son moral and practical lessons, but actually to be his schoolmaster—to flog reading, writing, and a little arithmetic into him; even as Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.) boasted that he did with his own son. But that stage has long passed, and the main question now for every boy or girl is, “tutors or school?” No doubt families of the highest rank find private tutors fashionable and convenient; thus such a personage as Augustus employed the skilful freedman, Verrius Flaccus, to teach his grandsons; but the advantages of contact with other children of about the same social class are clearly understood. The young Calvi, therefore, have been sent to a carefully selected school. This arrangement is exceptionally good because their father’s colleague, the ex-prætor Aponius, owns a remarkably gifted slave, one Euganor, who is allowed not merely to teach his master’s children but (by a recognized custom) to take in others; their fees going toward his peculium saved up to buy his freedom.

168. Extent of Literacy in Rome. Education of Girls.—Schools exist everywhere in Rome, and there are all sorts and conditions of schools. There is no system of public education, and probably a good many poor plebeians and slaves are barely literate enough to spell out the gladiator notices and to jot down a few accounts or memoranda; but public opinion condemns parents who deny their children at least a little schooling, and absolutely illiterate persons are rare.[102]

Girls in poor families are rather less sure of instruction than boys, and in superior families they seldom pass on to the upper and the rhetoric schools; but apparently in the ordinary schools they frequently go with their brothers on terms of perfect equality. There seems to be no prudish separation of the sexes, although when the grown boys go off to learn the tricks of orators and philosophers, nobly-born girls spend the years just before their marriages under good tutors learning the poets, and being taught a graceful proficiency in harp playing and also enough of dancing to give them the erect carriage and the stately, calm movements of destined matrons.

169. Schools for the Lower Classes.—Between the select establishment of Euganor in a side apartment of Aponius’s great mansion and the cheapest type of school along Mercury Street there is a great gulf fixed. Any kind of a shelter will do for a low-grade school, and any kind of a half-educated fellow can set up as a school teacher.

Take for example poor Platorius who, having failed as an inn-keeper at Ostia, is trying to earn a living by leasing a vacant shop near the Insula Flavia. The shallow room opens directly upon the noisy street, and the passing throngs divert the children, while the clamors of the children distress all the semi-invalids in the big insula. Every thrashing by the master attracts a knot of brutal idlers just outside. Platorius’s school is of the lowest grade, but he has to make a certain pretence of learning by setting up a few chipped busts of Homer, Virgil, Horace, etc., and erecting a high seat (cathedra) for himself. His class sits before him on long backless benches. There are no desks, and every child holds his smudgy wax-covered tablets uncomfortably upon his knee, as he copies or erases with his stylus.[103]

To all the better schools the children come each accompanied by his or her “pedagogue,” much after the Greek manner; a private slave being especially assigned to each boy or girl, and obligated to lead his charge to and from school, help with the lessons, guard the child’s morals, and even assist in chastising.[104] But few of Platorius’s pupils come from parents who can afford the luxury of a pedagogue for their children. They appear by themselves so early in the morning in winter time that they have to bear smoky lanterns; the most self-sufficient of them being “the sons of centurions, with satchels and tablets hung on their left arms, and carrying every Ides (middle of the month) their fee of eight brass pieces each.” [Horace.] Each boy has devoured a crust before leaving home and the school continues without recess until noon when there is an intermission of fair length to get the prandium or at least to buy some sausages from the street dealers, and perhaps to indulge in a short siesta. After that the deafening study is resumed, and there is relief in the neighboring tenements only when the school is dismissed towards dusk.

170. Scourging, Clamors, and Other Abuses of Cheap Schools.—A school is no asset to the neighborhood. Vainly do the satiric poets implore a teacher to “be kind to his scholars” and to “lay aside his Scythian scourge with its horrible thongs” and his “terrible cane, the schoolmaster’s scepter.” Poor Platorius knows well enough that the type of parents who employ him believes the old maxim “he who is not flogged is not educated.” The Romans are a military people and the ideal of a school is always somewhat the stern discipline of the centurion with his vinestock (see p. 323). Precepts in many a classroom are enforced with curses and blows, and Seneca has declared in disgust that it is a common thing “to find a man in a violent passion teaching you that to be in a passion is wrong.”

The children, too, are often permitted to study their lessons aloud even as in the schools of the Orient. All this adds to the buzzing confusion, so that it is claimed that a school causes more noise than a blacksmith at his anvil or the amphitheater applauding a favorite gladiator.

The teaching and the flogging keep up through a long season. The school year begins on March 24th, when Platorius painfully counts the entrance fees brought by each scholar, reckoning himself lucky if he does not have to split his gains with the pedagogues who attend a favored few of the children. There is a considerable holiday in summer when it is too hot to study, and children of good family are likely to be attending their parents in the country. There is another interval of about a week at the Saturnalia and over New Year’s Day; another just before the new school year begins in March. Otherwise, except for the more important religious festivals, and the “Nones” (5th or 7th days of each month), the studying and the beating go on, with rather fewer holidays than in the twentieth century.

Platorius is near the bottom of the educational ladder. His fees are only about four sesterces (16 cents) per month per pupil, and he is none too sure of prompt payment. The miserable room costs something for rental. If his pupils fail to progress, their parents storm at him and promptly shift to another master. In short he leads a dog’s life. The green grocer and the copperpot monger who have stalls opposite the school despise him as entirely beneath them.

171. A Superior Type of School.—Quite different is the atmosphere of Euganor’s schoolroom. He is technically a slave, but a slave of very superior class. The children come to him accompanied not merely by extremely genteel pedagogues but by subordinate slaves, capsarii, who carry their books and tablets, and the establishment has a convenient ante-room, where all these gentry can foregather and match gossip, “My master says”—while their charges are being instructed.

The school itself is held in an elegant chamber adorned with fine frescos of historical events such as the campaigns of Alexander, speaking statues of great literary figures, and, conspicuous upon the wall, an elaborately painted map of the Roman Empire, “for,” affirms Euganor, “the boys should have daily before their eyes all the seas and lands, and all cities and peoples comprehended therein; for the name and position of places, the distance between them, the source and outflow of rivers, the coastline with all its seaboard, its gulfs and its straits are better taken in by the eye than by the ear.”[105] Euganor, too, has his rod and does not bear it in vain, but he never allows his discipline to degenerate into stupid cruelty. He is, in short, an extremely competent man who studies each of his charges carefully and who would prove an excellent teacher in any schoolroom in any age.

172. Methods of Teaching.—All Roman schools are small. The idea of vast “graded” establishments where year after year pupils are passed from teacher to teacher and at last “graduated” has occurred to no man. Platorius conducts his school entirely alone. Euganor has a couple of efficient monitors, but neither he nor Platorius tries to handle more than say thirty pupils. Many of Euganor’s pupils came to him while little more than babies and will only leave him when actually ready for the rhetoric schools. He is largely responsible for their entire elementary education, although many of the higher class children know the Latin and Greek alphabet and can spell a little before being put under his charge.

This is no place for a real discussion of the actual forms of education. First there comes the mere teaching of reading, writing, and simple arithmetic, with very little use of books, the master dictating sentences and correcting the tablets whereon the children write them down. Such a teacher as Platorius may have a few musty rolls of papyrus which his charges are allowed to handle gingerly, but “First Readers” as understood in later schools are unknown. Euganor is better off, and a considerable library is at his disposal, although barring a few books of fables it contains little that is directly appealing to children.

In the poorer schools the average master congratulates himself if his charges stay long enough to become fairly literate, but the better establishments, of course, accomplish far more. When a child can once read with tolerable fluency, and can write the characters on his wax tablets without wandering from the traced lines or needing too many corrections, he begins to have the great poets, especially Virgil and Horace in Latin and Homer in Greek, pounded into him. He is compelled to learn very long passages of such authors by heart,[106] and as an especially desirable exercise he is forced to translate both from Greek into Latin and also from Latin into Greek.

Since many of Euganor’s pupils will presumably become orators, they are furthermore aided to improve their diction also in every possible manner, to acquire a good stock of metaphors, and to have on hand a great supply of apt, pungent quotations. All the possible meanings in the literary texts are explained, likewise the mythological, historical, and geographical allusions, etc. The study of literature thus becomes what is really a form of a “General Information” course.

173. Training in Higher Arithmetic.—Before the children leave Euganor they are also taught the higher forms of arithmetic. Prior to the coming of Arabic numerals this is pretty serious business, yet every Roman of property must be able to keep elaborate accounts, and not be too dependent upon his stewards. Indeed, in some superior schools a special arithmetic teacher is called in; a calculator, who is entitled to demand extra large fees, although one suspects that most of his pupils are equites’ sons who will probably engage in commerce. One thing, however, Euganor does not have to bother about—physical culture. The Greeks can send their sons to the palæstra and to the harpist to learn gymnastics and music. The Romans try merely to see that their boys get exercise enough to keep them in good health, but they cannot grasp the practical value of a training that neither makes the lads better soldiers nor better men of business. Many Romans, of course, learn also about the fine arts, but never in the regular classroom.

174. The Grammarians’ High Schools.—By their early teens, however, even Euganor’s pupils begin to forsake him. They are passed on to a higher teacher, a regular “grammarian” (grammaticus), who assumes that his charges are well grounded in the fundamentals, and who endeavors to instruct them in the real niceties of Greek and Latin literature. Sometimes also there is a specialist in each of the languages.

In these high schools great stress is laid on proper pronunciation and elocution. Euclid’s theorems in geometry are studied, and a good deal of history is fluently if not very critically taught. Much of the learning is superficial, for it is a fine thing in many circles to affect to be erudite,[107] and more stress is sometimes laid on absurd problems of mythology than upon learning sober facts. Grammarians who teach the sons of the parvenu rich are liable, indeed, to be scolded if they cannot themselves explain instantly “Who was Anchises’s nurse?” But the better grammarians’ schools turn out pupils who are not perhaps men of deep learning but who have a great fund of information, who can write a clear accurate Latin (and often a Greek) style, and generally carry themselves as cultivated young gentlemen. Those, however, who aspire to pass as highly educated will inevitably go on to the still higher school of the rhetor.

175. Oratory Very Fashionable.—Oratory seems the keystone to success. True, the fall of the Republic makes it impossible to harangue the assembled Comitia in behalf of favorite candidates or proposed laws. Even in the Senate there are now grave limitations upon free eloquence. Nevertheless, the desirability of “fame” as an orator seems incalculable. To win your cause in the courts; to make a crowded hall resound with applause at your set orations seems the height of peaceful triumph. Never will another age set more store on high-soaring formal talk than this age of the Roman Empire. The actual performances of professional orators and “readers” we can glance at later, and, of course, space lacks for any presentation of the “Science of Eloquence”; but mention must be made of the rhetoric schools in which by ardent anticipation young Titus and Decimus Calvus are already winning laurels.

176. Professional Rhetoricians.—No slave or ordinary grammarian can hope to conduct a rhetoric school. The masters are either Romans of such rank that they can mingle with senators, or are distinguished Greeks fresh from the schools of Rhodes or Athens.[108] Not many years ago in Trajan’s reign, a certain Isæus came to Rome from Greece. He dazzled the noblest circles by his proficiency; his diction was the purest Attic; his sentences sparkled with epigrams. He called on his audience to name any mooted subjects it liked for discussion and to state on which side it wanted him to argue. Instantly he would rise, wrap his gown around him and “without losing a moment, begin, with everything at his finger tips no matter what subject was selected.” Presumably his thoughts and the information behind them were very superficial; no matter, the flow of his logic, learning, and language set his audience into ecstasies. Calvus only hopes he can find an equally distinguished master for his own sons.

177. Methods in Rhetoric Schools: Mock Trials.—Rhetoric schools are arranged rather as halls of audience than as ordinary classrooms. The students are expected to sit in a proper manner, “to look steadily at the speaker, not let their minds wander or to whisper to their neighbors, yawn sleepily, smile, scowl, cross their legs, or let their heads drop.” The training in its earlier stages, however, seems decidedly academic. Great models in Greek and Latin oratory are examined and discussed. Then the young advocates-to-be are put to work preparing their own orations. They are not, however, allowed to take any live and fresh topic. Instead they must seek one in distant history.

Every day the streets of Rome resound with noise from the rhetoric schools—some youth is laboriously inciting the Athenian patriots, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, to screw up their courage and to free their country by slaying the foul Hipparchus. Still more threadbare are the ceaseless orations urging Hannibal to advance (or not to advance) on Rome after his victory at Cannæ. There are a number of stock subjects of a more private kind. Mimic prosecutors work themselves into a passion against “The Ravisher,” “The Poisoner,” or “The Wicked and Thankless Husband.”

Often a couple of pupils a little more advanced can be pitted against one another in an imaginary lawsuit. Suppose a father orders a son to kill the youth’s brother, whom the father suspects of intending to turn parricide. The boy pretends to have obeyed the order, but the second lad really escapes. The father at length discovers the facts and prosecutes his first son for “The Crime of Disobedience,”[109]—what endless opportunities now for “eloquence” either proving that a parent must be obeyed at any cost, or that no one can be compelled to commit fratricide!

Again it is supposed that a young girl has been kidnapped, but rescued and her ravisher later arrested. Imagine now that the law gives her the choice—either the kidnapper must marry her and give her the status of an honorable wife or she can require that he be put to death. The rhetor will put two of his best pupils to prepare counter exhortations to the perplexed girl: “Marry the fellow to assure your social future!” or “Let justice be done—summon the executioner!” It is all very ingenious, but equally unreal, and it is often hopelessly artificial. Angrily wrote Seneca of such debates that by them “we are learning not for life but for school.”

178. Enormous Popularity of Rhetoric Studies.—-However impractical this study, the upper classes at Rome assuredly dote upon it. When each youth in turn mounts the orator’s stand in the school and begins his suasoria (set oration) or his controversia (pretended legal argument) all his fellows are duty bound to cry in Greek, “Euge!” or “Sophos!” at every booming sentiment or well-rounded climax. At least once during the oration it is good form for them to rise from their seats and join in a salvo of applause—they will all get like courtesies when their own turns come.

When the young declaimer has finished the master will arise. He will show how to gesture, making his garments fall in picturesque folds. He will take the subject just handled and repeat the argument showing how each point can be better developed; how new matter can be brought in; how allusions to the gods, the worthies of old, and perhaps to the reigning Emperor will improve the effect; how to use one’s voice at each particular turn, etc., etc. If the only object of oratory is to tickle the ear, the result is magnificent. The students dutifully applaud their master even more loudly than they do their fellows, and each goes home wondering anxiously, “When can I argue my first case before the prætor?”

179. Philosophical Studies: Delight in Moralizing.—A good many Roman nobles of intellectual type advance a step further than the rhetoric schools. They study philosophy; and even go to Athens (now a quiet, delightful university town) to listen to lectures by the alleged successors of Epicurus or of Zeno the Stoic, but to Greece one need not follow them. It is proper to say, however, that a certain dabbling in philosophy is extremely fashionable.[110] There are plenty of stories about noblemen who have treatises on philosophy read to them while they are being carried to and fro in their litters under the porticoes of their villas; or even of ladies who listen to lectures by a professional philosopher every morning while their maids are arranging their hair.

Such personages, needless to say, never improve upon the familiar guesses at the riddle of human existence; but sometimes their desire to moralize becomes worse than comical. People still repeat stories of Agrippinus, a high-born victim of Nero. When he caught a fever he immediately dictated a panygyric on the moral excellencies of fever. He was ordered into exile; he wrote a treatise on the benefits of exile. He was made a high judge; he added to the anguish of those he condemned by giving his victims long orations to prove that he passed sentence on them only for their own good!

180. Children’s Games. “Morra” and Dice.—It is a long cry from child-rearing to philosophy. One must return to the first topic enough to notice the games played by young Romans and also by their elders. Tag-games, blindman’s buff and its refinements, and like sports, can be seen in every street and dusty area in Rome. A favorite game is that of “King”; when a group of children elects a Rex who commands them to perform all sorts of fooleries. Time fails to tell of all the contests with tossing knuckle bones and at “odd and even,” guessing at concealed pebbles, shells, and nuts. The later-day Italian game of “morra” (micare digitis) in which both players hold out a hand with a certain number of fingers extended, and then each one tries to shout out the correct number of his rival’s fingers before the other can do the like by his, is a highly popular if noisy method of killing time. At the eating houses and taverns it is regularly used among friends to settle who shall pay the score.

All too early boys, and likewise girls, learn also to rattle the dice box. Some of the dice are ordinary six-sided cubes, some are oblong, with the numbers “2” and “5” omitted from the narrow ends. Almost always three dice of bone or fine wood are used; and the familiar expression “three sixes or three aces” is the same as saying “all or nothing.”

181. Board Games of Skill: “Robbers” (Latrunculi).—Altogether too much time and money are wasted at dice even by fairly grave people, while professional gamblers abound; but the Romans have two games in which men are moved on a gaming board according to rules involving very high degrees of skill. You can play Duodecim Scripta very much like later-day backgammon; fifteen white men and fifteen black men are shifted about on a board marked with twelve double lines (whence the name) according to the casts of the dice. More abstract and learned is Latrunculi (“Robbers”), a game without dice and seemingly very much like later-day checkers or chess. Some of the pieces are called “soldiers” and others “officers”—and the moves are very elaborate.[111] Of course, such games are far removed from a mere youthful sport. Consuls and Emperors delight in them, and while playing forget everything but the problem involved. Devotees cite with pride the story of Julius Kanus, one of the mad Caligula’s victims. He was in prison but was allowed to have a friend visit him, and the two were busy over “Robbers,” when a centurion came in to say he must be immediately executed. Kanus at once arose unmoved, but carefully counted the men on the board; then said to his friend, “Mind you, don’t tell a lie after I’m dead, and say that you won”; then turning to the centurion, “Please bear witness for me that I was one man ahead,”—and so did Stoicism find its way even to the gaming table!

182. Out-Door Games. Ball Games, Trigon.—Among out-of-door amusements, we find that young Romans and some of their elders enjoy fairly elaborate games of ball. There are various exercises which show that the world is on its way to handball, tennis, and even to polo, but hardly any contests foreshadow such things as baseball, foot ball, or cricket. The most common game is trigon, when three players stand at the corners of a triangle, and at least three, or even six balls, are kept flying around the circle with great rapidity; the points being made on catching and throwing with as few misses as possible. The players stand close together, and the whole sport is more a mild form of juggling than it is any real field exercise.