[274] This elementary work must
have been done well; we hear little or nothing of gross ignorance or
neglected education.
There were, however, very serious defects in this system of elementary
education. Not only the schoolmaster himself, but the paedagogus who
was responsible for the boy's conduct, was almost always either a
slave or a freedman; and neither slave nor freedman could be an object
of profound respect for a Roman boy. Hence no doubt the necessity of
maintaining discipline rather by means of corporal punishment (to
which the Romans never seem to have objected, though Quintilian
criticises it)[275] than by moral force; a fact which is attested both
in literature and art. The responsibility again which attached to the
paedagogus for the boy's morals must have been another inducement to
the parents to renounce their proper work of supervision.[276] And
once more, the great majority of teachers were Greeks. As the boy was
born into a bilingual Graeco-Roman world, of which the Greeks were the
only cultured people, this might seem natural and inevitable; but we
know that in his heart the Roman despised the Greek.
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