ABSTRACT
For the vast majority of teachers in our period, the main and often the sole source of remuneration was the fee (merces) which pupils, or more usually their parents, agreed to pay for their instruction. If, in general practice, this fee had been payable in advance, teachers would have been in a much stronger position, and parents would have had to take the risk that the standard of teaching might not come up to their expectations. So Aristotle remarked that the sophists of his day often met with subsequent recrimination because the quality of their instruction did not match their original promises, and was an inadequate return for the money paid. [1] In Roman times, however, parents were rarely prepared to take any such risk; only a much sought-after sophist or rhetorician could afford to demand an initial payment in advance, [2] and for most teachers — who were only too glad to accept all the pupils they could — the settlement of their fee was retrospective. All that was done at the outset was that the parent, when introducing his son, made an agreement (most probably merely a verbal ‘stipulation’) [3] with the teacher regarding the amount of the fee which he would pay, and the times — whether monthly or annually — at which it would become due. Very rarely was mutual confidence so great that a teacher, like Antonius Gnipho, could feel no need to stipulate a fee, and could rely on the generosity of his patrons. [4] But the system of retrospective payment, though it must often have worked satisfactorily, undoubtedly left loopholes for all kinds of knavery, and could place a teacher's livelihood in jeopardy. The easiest excuse for avoidance of payment when the time came was the allegation that the pupil had made insufficient progress, and that the teacher must therefore be to blame. [5] In that case, it might be very difficult to convince the parent that his boy was a dullard and unable to master the subject, or that the parent himself, or the pedagogue, had failed to see to it that the boy was kept to his studies. So whilst parents blamed, or professed to blame, the teachers, angry and disillusioned teachers, like Orbilius, blamed the parents. [6] On the other hand, even when parents had excellent intentions, they might sometimes find that their own economic difficulties were such that, perhaps a year after their original commitment was made, they were unable to honour their obligations. [7] It was then for the teacher to decide whether he would continue to teach the boy on trust, and this he often did. Dismissing a non-paying pupil from the school was a measure which the teacher was reluctant to adopt, for this simply meant playing into the hands of his rivals, who would be only too ready to take a chance and augment their class. [8] On the other hand, when pupils paid regularly, there was sometimes a temptation for a teacher to spin out his course with a view to ensuring the continuation of his fees — a procedure adopted by some rhetoric teachers in Quintilian's day, and much despised by him. [9] The possibility of avoidance of payment must at all times have been a source of anxiety to teachers, whom Ovid describes as ‘a tribe generally defrauded of their income’, [10] and of whom Juvenal says that many lived to regret their vain and unprofitable chair. [11]
