ABSTRACT
Some rudimentary education is likely to have often been instilled in the household by parents, nurses, and pedagogues (slave childminders who also had the duty of ensuring that children behaved, and who might look after their charges until they had come of age: 4.1). But it is likely that most children would have learned the elements of reading, writing, and basic arithmetic under a schoolmaster (magister), probably meeting in a public place. The message was regularly reinforced by thrashings (4.2), sometimes with fennel canes or even with eel skins (4.3). Although educationalists might frown on such practices as uncivil (4.4), they appear to be the noisy accompaniment of most learning in the Roman world.
