There is scarcely any part of the study of Roman education in which precise information is so difficult to obtain as that which concerns the localities and premises in which teaching took place. From Hellenistic Greece there is more evidence, for archaeological excavation has not only brought to light the remains of gymnasia and palaestrae, but has secured therefrom a rich harvest of inscriptions of educational interest;[l]
though, even in Greece, we do not always know exactly in which part of the buildings lessons or lectures were held. [2] In Greece, too, we hear of teachers who had the use of temples, [3] particularly those dedicated to the Muses, and designated by the title 'Museum';[4] and, in late antiquity, an eminent public teacher of rhetoric, such as Libanius, might be provided with a lecture-room in the council-house itself. [5] But even in Greece there were very many teachers who were not officially appointed, or attached to gymnasia, and who had to find the best accommodation they could; and, though we are ill-informed as to its nature, it is unlikely that it was often in buildings designed for educational purposes. [6] This is even more true of Rome, where the State took practically no interest in financing public education until Vespasian made a start by instituting official appointments in rhetoric. [7] The teacher usually had to depend upon his fees for a livelihood;
consequently, the environment in which he worked might vary very much according to his personal circumstances, and the amount he could manage to pay for a hired room. At the very lowest level, he might not be able to afford rented accommodation at all, and might have to teach when and where he could in the open air; and this was also true of Greece. If he had suitable living-accommodation, the teacher might use it for the purposes of his school, either permanently, or at least as a first step. The disadvantage of this arrangement was that it usually imposed too much restriction on the size of the class, and teachers for whom it was imperative to expand their school had to look round for premises which they might hire. From the point of view of attracting public interest and becoming known, the best proposition was to secure accommodation in or near the Forum, or one of the fora, where people most congregated; but this brought the teacher, who was often
lamentably impecunious, into competition with the shop-keepers and the business community, and he might be driven to look for less expensive, and therefore inferior, premises. It was only if he was fortunate enough to secure a public appointment that he could expect to be provided by others with accommodation worthy of his work. Thus the teaching scene at Rome, as elsewhere, was one of very considerable variety; but, even though the evidence is limited, it may be possible to clarify, to some degree, the different settings in which the teacher held his class.
To begin at the most humble level, it is perhaps insufficiently realized that the Mediterranean climate permitted a much wider use of open-air teaching than is possible in more northerly latitudes. Not that such teaching was in any way organized — it had a certain primitive simplicity about it, and all that the teacher needed was a seat, or bench, a few children and a book. As he was not elevated in a schoolmaster's chair (cathedra), he was known to the Greeks as a 'ground-teacher' (chamaididaskalos). In late glossaries, this term is equated with ludi magister,[8] and it is thus evident that his teaching was confined to an elementary stage. Since so many Roman children were taught to read and write at home, either by their parents or by their 'pedagogue', and many others went to organized primary schools, his pupils would be drawn from the poorest classes, and his recompense would be meagre indeed.
But he needed to make some sort of a living, and could not, therefore, afford to select a secluded spot; rather, he had to set up 'school' where he could be seen to be teaching, in the hope of attracting more pupils. Thus he became a familiar sight in the city streets, despite the crowds and the noise; for, as Dio Chrysostom tells us, 'the teachers of letters sit in the streets with their pupils, and nothing prevents the pursuit of teaching and learning, even in so dense a throng'. [9] The extent to which such teaching was possible, however, must have depended on the width of the streets, which at Rome were often notoriously narrow. [10] But it was possible for the teacher to take up his position in the space, or 'square', where three or four streets met, that is, at a trivium or quadrivium, and this must have happened commonly in many parts of the Mediterranean world. The story was often told how the exiled tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius, was reduced to the lowliest of occupations, that of a primary teacher, at Corinth, and Justinus says that 'he taught at the meeting of the ways' (docebat in trivio).[11] Quintilian, too, at Rome, speaks disparagingly of what he calls trivialis scientia, that is knowledge acquired, as we might say, 'at the street-corner', and equates it with the ludus litterarius. [12] There is an interesting allusion to this kind of teaching-scene in the last poem of Horace's first book of Epistles, [13]
Here he addresses his book, as it is about to be published, as though it were a home-born slave (verna), handsome and smart, but anxious to escape from his master and exploit his charms in the wider world.
The problem of accommodation
Horace, half-jesting, half-serious, forecasts a chequered career for him, and prophesies that in the end, in faltering old age, he will be reduced to providing elementary lessons (that is, first steps in reading) for boys extremis in vicis. This phrase, as the scholiast Porphyrio and some of the early editors saw, was intended to mean 'at the ends of the streets', that is, at the trivium or quadrivium, and recalls a scene which Horace himself must often have witnessed in his walks in Rome. [14] Evidently, he regards it as a dismal fate for his book, to be put, when old and worn, to such a use, and the trivium was, indeed, a far from salubrious setting.
It was a place of noise and bustle, where friends met and gossiped, and rowdies argued and exchanged abuse; it was frequented by quacks peddling their wares, parasites angling for an invitation, vagabonds, fortune-tellers, and itinerant musicians. [15] Here the child bent his head over his book, and the street-teacher patiently guided him, only too pleased when, as the morning sun grew warmer, a few casual strollers stopped to take an interest, and asked him who wrote the book which was being read.
Sometimes, too, the teacher would collect his little troop in one of the public arcades (porticus), which abounded in the city. Here (Fig. 11) we may actually see the scene as it was, depicted in one of the wall-paintings of Pompeii.[16] This formed part of a series which illustrated life in the forum there, and shows a boy who had misbehaved being hoisted by two of his schoolfellows for a thrashing; also in the picture are three other children, sitting demurely on a bench, their reading-books on their knees, and behind them are shown the columns which formed part of the forum-colonnade. Further in the background are passers-by, two of whom have stopped to see what the children are reading, and peer around a column, looking down over their books. The portion of the Forum here represented is thought to have been near the temple of Apollo, [17] and this would accord with other evidence of teaching activities (though not necessarily in the open air) in the vicinity of temples. At Athens, the primary school at which Atrometus, the father of Aeschines, either taught or was employed, was near a shrine, [18] and, at Rome, the 'grammarian' Lenaeus had a school near the temple of Tellus.[19] In another Pompeian wall-painting of the same series (which includes pictures of the most varied activities of the Forum — the citizens who stroll about, or stop to read an advertisement, the vendors of shoes, or cloth, or food, the artist who sits making a sketch, and so on) the street-teacher may again be seen, seated on a bench in front of a column, his book open on his knees, whilst a young boy gazes up with an inquiring look. [20] Such, at Rome too, was education at its lowliest level, simple and natural, merely a tiny facet of everyday life amid the pride and splendour of the imperial city.
Even elementary teachers, however, though they ranked lowest in the
Fig.11 School scene in the Forum at Pompeii: a thrashing in the catomus ('over the shoulders') position.
academic hierarchy, must usually have aspired to something better than street-teaching, and looked for more regular accommodation. So, too, did the 'grammarians' and rhetoricians, but in this group there were also those who did not need, or did not desire, to look for hired premises, but preferred to gather their pupils in their own homes. Antonius Gnipho taught both 'grammar' and rhetoric in his own house, [21] and, just as Aelius Stilo was visited by a small and select group of students (which included Cicero and Varro),[22] so his spiritual descendant, Valerius Probus, conducted an informal seminar in the afternoons, reclining comfortably, like some old-style Oxbridge don, as he discoursed. [23]
Few 'grammarians' were fortunate enough to possess a private villa, like Valerius Cato, but such villas must quite often have provided pleasant and tranquil surroundings for those engaged as private tutors to the sons and daughters of wealthy families. It was in the atrium of a villa on the Palatine that Verrius Flaccus, when officially appointed as tutor to Augustus' grandchildren, conducted his class, but, although he was permitted to bring with him his existing pupils, he was not allowed to augment their number. [24] Furthermore, the architects who designed Roman villas did not fail to provide for their clients' enjoyment of studious pursuits and leisured conversation. For this purpose, the villa was often equipped, already in Cicero's day,[25] with an exedra, or 'sitting-out place', usually a rectangular room which was entered from the peristyle, and gave a view across the garden-court. It served the same purpose as a spacious modern garden-chalet, but it was a much more
119 solid and permanent structure, and, as we know from examples at Pompeii, its walls were often luxuriously decorated and its floor artistically designed in mosaic. [26] Interesting evidence of its occasional use as a schoolroom has been recovered from Pompeii, where among the comments scribbled on the walls and columns of the exedra of the villa of Albucius Celsus (better known as the 'House of the Silver Wedding'), occurs the ominous warning: 'If Cicero pains you, you'll take a beating'! [27]
Most teachers at Rome, however, did not enjoy so pleasant a retreat, but had to descend to the arena of public teaching amid the crowds and clatter of the city. How they sought to establish themselves is best seen from two examples of late antiquity, which must have had many parallels in previous centuries. The first is St Augustine, who tells us that when he first arrived in Rome to teach rhetoric, he began by gathering together in his home those acquaintances who might help to recommend him and make his presence as a teacher known. [28] The other is Libanius, who, in A.D. 354, returned to his native Antioch from Constantinople, where he had held an official position, but, finding himself now without a corresponding post, became, for a time, an independent teacher. He had then fifteen pupils, most of whom he had brought with him, and these he taught in his own house. He was, however, extremely despondent, until an old man advised him that he would never make headway unless he set up school in some more public place. He saw the wisdom of this, and took over premises from a shopkeeper on the fringe of the forum; 'the position', he says in his autobiography, 'did me some good, for the number of my pupils was more than doubled'. [29] Let us, therefore, turn from his experience to the scene at Rome, and see what there is likely to have been there in the way of rented accommodation.
It is generally considered that Roman teachers would, likewise, normally rent a shop and convert it to school use. [30] This was doubtless sometimes done, but the evidence is hardly sufficient to permit one to generalize. For instance, Livy, in his account of the rape of Verginia, is in agreement with Dionysius that the early elementary schools were at that time in the Forum, [31] and he is commonly thought to have added the information that they were 'in shops' (in tabernis); but in fact modern editors prefer the alternative reading in tabernaculis, 'in booths'. It would seem much more likely (if schools did, in fact, exist so early) that such make-shift structures, covered merely with tent-cloth, which were used long afterwards by hucksters in the Agora at Athens, and elsewhere, [32] were the original school accommodation, than that any of the very limited number of shops in the Roman Forum at that time[33]
should have been given over to educational purposes. Then again, the existence of a school, in imperial times, in a shop in Caesar's Forum has been deduced from graffiti found on the outside wall of the Basilica of
the Bankers and on the nearby pilasters.[34] Certainly, these scribblings contain the opening line of the Aeneid, and the first two words of the second book, and even the Mantua me genuit of Virgil's epitaph; but these represent only a fraction of the extremely miscellaneous material there inscribed, and we cannot be certain that it is the work of schoolboys. [35] A more significant indication may be derived from the excavation of a house at Pompeii (the 'House of Potitus'), the front portion of which was used as a shop, whilst an interior balcony immediately behind and above accommodated, it is claimed, at one time, a small school. This is deduced partly from a section of the surrounding frieze, which represented philosophers in discussion (perhaps the 'Garden of Epicurus'), and partly from graffiti which read 'Take a beating' (vapula) and 'I've taken three beatings' (III vapulo).[36] It may be of interest to bring this into relationship with rather similar premises, closely connected with shops, which we think were adapted to teaching purposes at Rome.
It is recorded by Suetonius that the grammarian Crassicius, before his published work brought him fame and many pupils of noble birth, gave his lessons in a pergula.[37] This was evidently not an isolated instance, for in the third century it was claimed that Julius Saturninus, the rival-emperor to Probus, must have been a good orator because he had studied rhetoric in Africa and 'had attended the pergulae of the masters at Rome'.[38] This clearly suggests that such premises were then commonly used for educational purposes. But what exactly in this connection (which has, of course, nothing to do with the pergula of viticulture) did the word mean? Being derived from pergere, 'to go forward', it was certainly an extension to a building — but what kind of extension? Writers on Roman education have long thought of it as a shop with an extended front, which encroached upon the street. [39] They thus relate it to the kind of open-air teaching which we have discussed, and sometimes claim that the pergula was curtained off from the street for privacy. [40] Now it is
certainly true that shopkeepers in Rome — such as wine-sellers, pastry-cooks, barbers — did often extend their activities forwards into the streets, rather in the way that some greengrocers do today. As a result, the congestion in narrow streets became a nuisance, and in A.D.
92 Domitian prohibited the practice by law. [41] But, whether or not such make-shift extensions were ever given the name of pergulae, there are two reasons for reconsidering this explanation. In the first place, the pergula, in some contexts, was demonstrably not on the ground floor at all. Suetonius says that when Octavian and Agrippa went to consult an astrologer at Apollonia, they ascended to his pergula. [42] In other references, especially in connection with the studios or display rooms of painters, the location is not described specifically, [43] but one legal enactment provides for a claim of damages if a picture, or painted shield,
The problem of accommodation
should have 'fallen out' (excidisse) from the pergula on to the head of an unfortunate passer-by; this at least suggests a higher level. [44] Secondly, the pergula, though often mentioned in connection with shops, must have been quite distinct from a shop, [45] since it could be rented, either separately, or with the shop itself. In the great tenement-blocks (insulae), the ground floor was often occupied by shops, and advertisements relating to such premises at Pompeii read: SHOPS: PERGULAE:
APARTMENTS; and: SHOPS, TOGETHER WITH THEIR PERGULAE. [46] It has been suggested therefore that, in such cases, the pergula was the room, or loft, immediately above the shop, where the shopkeeper and his family often lived; indications of such rooms are identifiable in the insulae, and above the shops which formed the front of the House of the Faun at Pompeii. [47] This interpretation seems to point in the right direction, but, if true, the usage can only be a development of the original meaning, for the etymology of the word clearly suggests an extension beyond the original building line. [48] A late glossary[49] gives as the Greek equivalent of pergula both probole, 'a forward extension', and hyperoon, 'an upper room', and these two interpretations may, in fact, be reconciled. Tenement blocks in the wider streets were often fronted with arcades; it was therefore quite practicable to extend the room above the shop fowards over the arcade, and this is probably what a pergula strictly meant. [50] But such loggias could also be constructed in much more distinguished settings than those of the insulae, and may at one time have adorned the Forum itself.
There is a story told by the elder Pliny[51] that, during the second Punic War, a certain Fulvius, one of the bankers in the Forum, committed the indiscretion of looking forth from his pergula, wearing a chaplet of roses on his head in broad daylight (evidently after an all-night carousal) and that this so outraged the Roman sense of wartime decorum that he was tried, convicted and jailed for the rest of the war! Pliny's use of the expression 'looked forth' (prospexisse) rather suggests that his loggia was higher than ground level, and it was, in fact, pretty certainly
There is a story told by the elder Pliny[51] that, during the second Punic War, a certain Fulvius, one of the bankers in the Forum, committed the indiscretion of looking forth from his pergula, wearing a chaplet of roses on his head in broad daylight (evidently after an all-night carousal) and that this so outraged the Roman sense of wartime decorum that he was tried, convicted and jailed for the rest of the war! Pliny's use of the expression 'looked forth' (prospexisse) rather suggests that his loggia was higher than ground level, and it was, in fact, pretty certainly