Report books

" From the small inn-keeper to the great capitalist, every
man of business needed to be perfectly at home in reckoning sums of
money. The magistrates, especially quaestors and aediles, had staffs
of clerks who must have been skilled accountants; the provincial
governors and all who were engaged in collecting the tributes of the
provinces, as well as in lending the money to enable the tax-payers to
pay (see above, 71 foll.), were constantly busy with their ledgers.
The humbler inhabitants of the Empire had long been growing familiar
with the Roman aptitude for arithmetic.[284]
Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo
Musa loqui, praeter laudem nullius avaris.
Romani pueri longis rationibus assem
discunt in partes centum diducere. "Dicat
films Albini: si de quincunce remota est
uncia, quid superat? poteras dixisse." "triens." "eu!
rem poteris servare tuam."[285]
This familiar passage may be quoted once more to illustrate the
practical nature of the Roman school teaching and the ends which it
was to serve.


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