Even Greek painters and sculptors were found in his train and completed the aesthetic training of his children. That the time was past when men could in this field preserve a merely repellent attitude as regarded Hellenism, had been felt even by Cato; the better classes had probably now a presentiment that the noble substance of Roman character was less endangered by Hellenism as a whole, than by Hellenism mutilated and misshapen: the mass of the upper society of Rome and Italy went along with the new mode. There had been for long no want of Greek schoolmasters in Rome; now they arrived in troops--and as teachers not merely of the language but of literature and culture in general--at the newly-opened lucrative market for the sale of their wisdom. Greek tutors and teachers of philosophy, who, even if they were not slaves, were as a rule accounted as servants,(17) were now permanent inmates in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there is a statement that 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds) were paid for a Greek literary slave of the first rank. As early as 593 there existed in the capital a number of special establishments for the practice of Greek declamation. Several distinguished names already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius has been already mentioned;(18) the esteemed grammarian Crates of Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal rival of Aristarchus, found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems. It is true that this new mode of juvenile instruction, revolutionary and anti-national as it was, encountered partially the resistance of the government; but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities in 593 fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained (chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief magistrates) like all similar commands without any result worth mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there were still doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with his views, but there was no further action. The higher instruction in Greek and in the sciences of Greek culture remained thenceforth recognized as an essential part of Italian training.
Latin Instruction Public Readings Of Classical Works
But by its side there sprang up also a higher Latin instruction. We have shown in the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken by the Latin Odyssey as a sort of improved primer, and the Roman boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-tongue by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original: how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus, Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children properly so called, but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with the Greek. These were the first steps towards a higher Latin instruction, but they did not as yet form such an instruction itself. Instruction in a language cannot go beyond the elementary stage, so long as it lacks a literature. It was not until there were not merely Latin schoolbooks but a Latin literature, and this literature already somewhat rounded-off in the works of the classics of the sixth century, that the mother-tongue and the native literature truly entered into the circle of the elements of higher culture; and the emancipation from the Greek schoolmasters was now not slow to follow. Stirred up by the Homeric prelections of Crates, cultivated Romans began to read the recitative works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius, the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems of Lucilius first to a select circle, and then in public on set days and in presence of a great concourse, and occasionally also to treat them critically after the precedent of the Homeric grammarians. These literary prelections, which cultivated -dilettanti- (-litterati-) held gratuitously, were not formally a part of juvenile instruction, but were yet an essential means of introducing the youth to the understanding and the discussion of the classic Latin literature.
Rhetorical Exercises
The formation of Latin oratory took place in a similar way. The Roman youth of rank, who were even at an early age incited to come forward in public with panegyrics and forensic speeches, can never have lacked exercises in oratory; but it was only at this epoch, and in consequence of the new exclusive culture, that there arose a rhetoric properly so called. Marcus Lepidus Porcina (consul in 617) is mentioned as the first Roman advocate who technically handled the language and subject-matter; the two famous advocates of the Marian age, the masculine and vigorous Marcus Antonius (611- 667) and the polished and chaste orator Lucius Crassus (614-663) were already complete rhetoricians. The exercises of the young men in speaking increased naturally in extent and importance, but still remained, just like the exercises in Latin literature, essentially limited to the personal attendance of the beginner on the master of the art so as to be trained by his example and his instructions.
Formal instruction both in Latin literature and in Latin rhetoric was given first about 650 by Lucius Aelius Praeconinus of Lanuvium, called the "penman" (-Stilo-), a distinguished Roman knight of strict conservative views, who read Plautus and similar works with a select circle of younger men--including Varro and Cicero--and sometimes also went over outlines of speeches with the authors, or put similar outlines into the hands of his friends. This was instruction, but Stilo was not a professional schoolmaster; he taught literature and rhetoric, just as jurisprudence was taught at Rome, in the character of a senior friend of aspiring young men, not of a man hired and holding himself at every one's command.
Course Of Literature And Rhetoric
But about his time began also the scholastic higher instruction in Latin, separated as well from elementary Latin as from Greek instruction, and imparted in special establishments by paid masters, ordinarily manumitted slaves.