ABSTRACT
At the primary level of education, as we saw, pupils had made their first acquaintance with some of the Greek and Latin poets by copying out and learning by heart selected passages of limited extent. Now, with the grammaticus, they began continuous study, usually of full texts, and their lessons included not only reading aloud and memorizing, but also the detailed exposition of the master. Naturally, with this degree of thoroughness, only a limited number of texts could be covered in the available time, but later, when the boy proceeded to the rhetoric school, though he now concentrated more particularly on the prose writers, he was still expected to continue to read the poets, but without receiving more than general guidance from his teacher. There was also a difference of approach at the ‘grammar’ and at the rhetoric stage. At the former, the purpose was to read the greatest poets (or, at least, considerable portions of their work) for the inspiring and elevating effect which their subjects, their thoughts and their expression had upon the young mind. [1] At the latter, the poets, like the orators and historians, were perused with the objective of eliciting and imitating those features of style and treatment which were likely to be useful to the future orator [2] — though this did not by any means preclude continuing appreciation of poetic quality for its own sake. At each stage, both Greek and Latin poets were studied, but, although there is considerable firm evidence for the basic content for the ‘grammar’ school course in both languages, we have nothing like so detailed a picture as that given for the rhetoric stage in Quintilian's tenth book. But, for Greek authors, it may sometimes be helpful to take account of the degree of interest shown in particular writers, or works, by teachers and other educated readers elsewhere, particularly as indicated by the statistics of papyrus texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt. [3] But it is recognized that these may become subject to modification as further discoveries are made.
