ABSTRACT
The story of Roman education up to the early part of the first century bc can be characterized as one culture’s uneasy responses to the increasing influence of another. In that period the ideal education for a Roman child was seen to be solely in the hands of the child’s family and friends. The image of a student who attends elementary school to learn how to read and write from an elementary teacher, then proceeds to the secondary level for advanced literary and grammatical study with the grammaticus, is so familiar from our own experience that it has been assumed to be the standard path that Roman children followed. Several observations about Greek and Roman education in the late Republic and the Empire need to be made. On the island of Corcyra, some time probably in the first century AD, a Greek inscription on stone was dedicated to the memory of the grammatikos Mnaseas, who taught astronomy, geometry and literature.
