We must go elsewhere for what
little we know about the training of children. Let us now turn to
this for a while, remembering that it means parental example and
the discipline of the body as well as the acquisition of elementary
knowledge. Unfortunately, no book has survived from that age in which
the education of children was treated of. Varro wrote such a book,
but we know of it little more than its name, _Catus, sive de liberis
educandis_.[258] In the fourth book of his _de Republica_ Cicero seems
to have dealt with "disciplina puerilis," but from the few fragments
that survive there is little to be learnt, and we may be pretty sure
that Cicero could not write of this with much knowledge or experience.
The most famous passage is that in which he quotes Polybius as blaming
the Romans for neglecting it;[259] certainly, he adds, they never
wished that the State should regulate the education of children, or
that it should be all on one model; the Greeks took much unnecessary
trouble about it. The Greeks of his own time whom Cicero knew did not
inspire him with any exalted idea of the results of Greek education;
but we should like to know whether in this book of his work on the
State he did not express some feeling that on the children themselves,
and therefore on their training, the fortunes of the State depend.
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