[287] Homer, Hesiod, and
Menander were the favourite authors studied; only later on, after the
full bloom of the Augustan literature, did Latin poets, especially
Virgil and Horace, take a place of almost equal importance. The study
of the Greek poets was apparently a thorough one. It included the
teaching of language, grammar, metre, style, and subject matter, and
was aided by reading aloud, which was reckoned of great importance,
and learning by heart, on the part of the pupils. In the discussion
of the subject matter any amount of comment was freely allowed to
the master, who indeed was expected to have at his fingers' ends
explanations of all sorts of allusions, and thus to enable the boys to
pick up a great deal of odd knowledge and a certain amount of history,
mixed up of course with a large percentage of valueless mythology.
"In grammaticis," says Cicero, "poetarum pertractatio, historiarum
cognitio, verborum interpretatio, pronuntiandi quidam sonus."[288] The
method, if such it can be called, was not at all unlike that pursued
in our own public schools, Eton, for example, before new methods and
subjects came in.
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