ABSTRACT
Thanks to Plutarch's admirable biography of the elder Cato, we are enabled to obtain a series of most interesting glimpses into the training which that remarkable, if rather formidable, personality gave his son. [1] First, we see him hurrying away from the Senate House so as to be certain of being back at home when the child was bathed and put to bed; for only important public business would cause him to forego this pleasure. Then we see him teaching the child to read and write, despite the fact that he led an exceptionally active public life, and had in his house an accomplished slave, who could easily have performed this service for him. ‘I do not think it fitting’, Cato once remarked, ‘that my son should be rebuked or have his ears pulled by a slave, if he should be slow to learn, or that he should be beholden to a slave for so important a thing as his education’. So he takes the trouble to write out, in large and extremely legible letters, stories from the early history of Rome, so that the boy may become familiar from the outset with the ancient traditions of his country. The scene changes, the boy is older, and we see them swimming in the Tiber on a gusty day or camping out together, whether in the heat of summer or in winter frost. This was part of Cato's hardening process, and with it went lessons in riding, in boxing, in throwing the javelin, and in the manipulation of weapons. Then the pair are home again, and in the evening, maybe, by the light of oil-lamps, they turn over together the basic documents of the Roman Law, certainly the Twelve Tables, and perhaps the recent Commentary of Aelius Sextus upon them, the father answering the boy's questions and giving him the benefit of his own knowledge and long experience.
