CHAPTER XII

THE ROMAN CONTRIBUTION TO THE LARGER FOLKWAYS

Education Under the Primitive Roman Folkways.-As in all primitive communities, education in early Rome was provided for in the customs, habits, and traditions of the folkways. Rome began as a small group among hostile neighboring groups. Her folkways developed out of these conditions, and her education repeated her folkways. Preservation of the group, keeping unchanged the customs, habits, and methods that had made her life successful so far, training of the youth in the preservation of the folkways, in military efficiency, and in the work by which the group lived these activities made up the life and education. Obedience, reverence, industry, frugality, seriousness, courage, and eventual gravity were virtues native to Roman soil and Roman development.

Children learned to read and write, if at all, in their own homes in the early period; and they learned the stirring military songs and ballads of common folklore. Girls learned the tasks of the housewife in their own homes; boys probably largely followed in the footsteps of their fathers as to occupations. One thing seems sure: In the early centuries, while the Roman folkways remained intact, industry and the other substantial civic virtues became organized into the character of all the children. Constantia, constant firmness; virtus, the fortitude and strength of a man; pietas, reverence for the gods and for the folkways; modestas, self-repression; and gravitas, the dignity fitting,

the man and the citizen-these were the five great virtues of manhood.

There were no schools in the modern sense of the word. About the middle of the fifth century B. C. Rome came upon what may be called the "Oriental level" of her development. The so-called "Twelve Tables" of the law were written down; the folkways became more definite and fixed. From that time on education became more institutional, with these Tables as the curriculum.1 It may be seen from these Tables that the Roman was a complex character. He enjoyed the conflicts of the courts; he lacked imagination and idealisms; he was practical, systematic; he was extremely pious, in the folkway sense; he was lofty-minded in thinking about his own community, brave in the presence of community dangers, obedient to the death when duty called, but he was at times coarse, rapacious, and cruel to his captured enemies and to those who did not belong to his own group, a virtue he shared with most primitive peoples.

Later Educational Developments. We note two main tendencies in the Roman character, viz., the tendency toward magnanimity of mind, and the tendency toward cruelty, coarseness, and rapacity. The development of Roman history helps each of these tendencies along. The coming of Greek culture tends to the development of the finer qualities, at first at least; but the rise of imperial ambitions and the growth of world-power tends to develop the other side. Let us see.

In the middle of the third century B. C. Greek influence began to be felt in Rome. Greek literature was introduced in translations and Latin literature was stimulated thereby. The Greek school soon began to take the place of the older Roman Ludus, or play-school. Greek teachers, mostly slaves, came to Rome, and the Greek language was studied.

1 For these tables see Monroe: "Source Book of the History of Education," pp. 334-45.

Rhetoricians and philosophers also came or were developed, and in such numbers as to frighten the senate. In 161 B.C. and again in 92 B.C. efforts were made to stem the tide of this Greek influence and turn back the education of the people into the old folkway currents. "Our ancestors have ordained what instruction it is fitting their children should receive and what schools they should attend. These novelties, contrary to the customs and instructions of our ancestors, we neither approve nor do they seem to us good." But the fight was a hopeless one, and though the progress of Greek culture was slow, it was sure; and in the imperial period it completely triumphed as the method of school education.

But in the meanwhile Roman energy was sweeping the neighboring nations into the protecting care of the growing empire. Roman courage, practicality, and imaginativeness made the Roman armies invincible. Rome drew on toward being the ruler of the world. Her practical courage and legal sense helped to organize discordant elements into a sort of imperial unity. Using brutality where that was needed, or practical intelligence where that was needed, she slowly conquered the world, brought to the endless ages of warfare the experience of the "Pax Romana," won a worldwide peace by "fighting for it," and "civilized" whole peoples in a day by handing down her ready-made civilization from above. When it became apparent that Roman politi-' cal machinery made such an admirable setting for the Platonic culture of the Greeks, protest against Greek culture came to an end. Greek logic furnished the intellectual weapons for the justification of these Roman methods of civilizing the world; and Roman legions were the objective embodiment of the absolute sway of Greek culture. The Roman army was an ideal representation of Plato's "military class," who were to take orders from the philosophers

1

and to keep the common masses in control. To be sure, it can scarcely be claimed that many of the Roman emperors fulfilled Plato's ideal of a philosopher, but in the empire there was a governing class which gave orders to the soldiery, and this impersonal military class, fully freed from all personal qualities, did keep the masses of men under control for the most part. This whole task of organization and administration of the empire was no small accomplishment, for the government was gradually extending its sway over wide and far-reaching areas. Within these were found many sorts of geographical condition, with many kinds of folkways, great variety of more or less localized industries and occupations, with their accompaniment of varying desires and prejudices, many languages and many religions. All of which had to be appreciated, largely coördinated, and administered from one capital under one general conception of law. It is true that this administrative conception of the law was rather Stoic than Platonic. That is to say, the Roman found his basis for the conception of a universal empire with a common law in the Stoic conception that nature, and especially human nature, embodied a "natural law of reason" which, when fully understood and applied, would give the world completely organized social order. This conception is, however, just a variant of the Platonic view; it is Platonism toned down to the needs of practical administration. At any rate, whether Platonic or Stoic, the Greeks furnish the organizing intelligence and the sense of an ideal and all-embracing moral and social order which the statesman must rule; the Romans furnish the practical mechanisms of discipline and control, and the actual working rules of the law. In these two aspects of experience, theory and practice, are laid the foundations of the Greco-Roman Empire, ruler and arbiter of the world in social custom, morality, religion, and education.

Schools of the Imperial Period. Just as back of the Greco-Roman program of conquest with its "benevolent assimilation" of alien peoples stood the Roman legions with their power to do what the governing powers determined, so back of the Greco-Roman program of civilization stood the "schoolmaster," or intellectual taskmaster. Wherever there was a school, there the arbitrary materials of Greek learning were imposed, or the no less intellectual materials of Latin culture. Of course, just as in old China, some youths learned these lessons. But the point is that education was simply conceived as a means of continuing the victorious progress of the Empire. Individuals, provinces, peoples, nations-these count for nothing as against the Empire. The Empire must prevail; and though there were periods of good-natured tolerance when it was considered that any one who was not against the Empire was for it, yet whenever occasion arose the Empire could deal harshly with its rebellious subjects and did not hesitate to destroy in order to establish control. For instance, take the destruction of the Jewish nation in 70 a.d. In the case of this nation refusal to accept some little share of Roman culture brought about the final catastrophe.

The Ludus was the lowest school, dating from pre-Hellenic times perhaps. Reading and writing were taught, and some simple arithmetic with simple counters, etc. The method of teaching was the purely memorizing sort, including the imitating of the teacher. A militaristic sort of brutality pervaded the schools, and the teachers were noted more for their ability to "discipline" than for their power to teach.

In the school of the Grammaticus foundations were laid in literature, the writings of the historians, perhaps, and some simple elements of very rudimentary science, including the little that was known of mathematics (which was very little