ABSTRACT
Many of the educated Greeks, of varying background and social status, who arrived in Rome from the mid-second century B.C. onwards must have been as surprised as was Polybius to find that there was no officially established system of education, such as existed in so many of the Greek cities. [1] They missed the highly organized communities of the Greek gymnasia, equipped either at public expense or by private benefaction with a very efficient professional staff, and crowded with boys and youths in their various age-groups, all imbued with the Greek love of physical perfection and prowess, stimulated by constant competition, and urged on to the highest endeavours by the hope of one day achieving the coveted distinction of a victory in the national games. But athleticism, though predominant, was not exclusive of other interests, for there were also in many places competitions and prizes in such subjects as reading, writing, recitation, singing and lyre-playing, and rewards for general knowledge, and good behaviour. There might also be lectures by visiting scholars, and a gymnasium-library in which to browse. [2] It was very different in Republican Rome, where the Campus Martius was the training-ground, and the exercises most favoured were those which were directly related to future military needs. But even in Greece, in the Hellenistic period, the more advanced teaching arrangements, in grammar and literature, and in rhetoric, were still largely a matter of private enterprise, and schoolmasters fixed the best fee they could get. At Rome, too, there was nothing to deter a teacher from opening his own school, if he thought he could make it pay, and this was a step which some of the better-qualified newcomers, who might have served for a time as private tutors, thought it worth their while to take.
