Cicero - Anthony Everitt [17]
Women were much more influential than their formal position would suggest. In the upper classes they were expected to be cultivated and could study with tutors at home; and it was possible for girls to attend primary school. Crucially, they were able to retain their own property on marriage and so did not fall completely under their husbands’ sway. In fact, men were often absent on public duties in the army or in the provinces, and wives were expected to take on the management of the family estate and financial affairs. Some of them acted as political brokers behind the scenes. Cato, who was as blunt as he was censorious, reportedly remarked, “We rule the world and our wives rule us.”
We do not know exactly where the Cicero boys spent their preschool years; presumably for most of the time they stayed in the villa outside Arpinum. But the family had a house in Rome in the respectable but not very fashionable quarter of Carinae on the Esquiline Hill, not far from the center. Marcus and Quintus may well have been taken on visits to the big city, perhaps for extended stays.
The better type of Roman house, such as the Ciceros’, had a small courtyard at the back. It was usually a garden with a colonnade running around it. This part of the building was reserved for the family and contained bedrooms, a kitchen (usually tiny), a larder and a bathhouse with a steam room. There were no nurseries or special spaces for children and, when they were not out playing in the fields of Arpinum or being shown the sights of Rome, little Marcus and Quintus must have spent a good deal of their time in the garden under the watchful eyes of slaves.
Cicero’s father had high ambitions for his two sons and made sure they were given a good schooling. Like other upper-class children, they may have been taught by a tutor at home, but what evidence we have suggests that they were sent to school. Roman education in the late Republic typically fell into three distinct phases. From seven to twelve years boys and girls could attend a ludus litterarius, where they learned reading, writing and elementary arithmetic.
Cicero’s schoolmates seem to have admired him for his academic ability. He was always in the middle of the group when out walking and was the focus of attention. Some fathers visited the school to witness the infant prodigy at work, although others were irritated by his dominance over their children. Brains are seldom liked and this popularity may have been the product of hindsight. However, it is possible that Cicero had already developed the strong sense of humor he showed as an adult. He could well have won friends through laughter rather than cleverness.
A household slave, the paedagogus, would accompany his young master (or mistress) to school and carry his satchel. Classes were often held on an open porch or shop, which was protected from the noise of traffic and the inquisitive stares of passersby by only a sheet of tent cloth stretched between pillars at the front. The pupils sat on benches and wrote on wax tablets placed on their knees, with the teacher presiding on a dais. They learned the names of letters before their shapes, singing them in order backwards and forwards; they then graduated to combinations of two or three letters and finally to syllables and words. Knowledge was acquired through imitation and repetition, as when learning fencing or some other sport. Hence the Latin word for school, ludus, also means “game.”
Classes began at dawn, without breakfast, and went on into the afternoon. There were no physical sports, although the day ended with a steam bath. Summer holidays lasted from the end of July to the middle of October, but otherwise the school year was interrupted only by public holidays.
At twelve, a boy graduated to a secondary school. The curriculum was narrowly confined to the study of grammar and literature. Both Latin and Greek were taught. In Latin the