Were there schools in ancient Rome?

From birth, Roman children learned at home under the paterfamilias, the head of the household.

The father or sometimes the mother taught moral lessons, family customs, and basic skills.

Some early teaching came from educated slaves or freedmen, often from Greece, who worked as tutors.

Rich families usually hired a pædagogus, an older slave or freedman, to go with a boy to school and help with lessons.

Girls from wealthy families also learned at home, reading and writing with their mothers or female slaves.

A note by Quintilian says Roman boys began serious study around age seven, because memory works well at that age.

Education was never required; many children, especially from poor families, learned only practical skills.

For freeborn children from families with limited means, elementary education came from a ludus litterarius, literally “school of letters.”

At the ludus, a teacher called a litterator or magister taught boys and sometimes girls the basics.

Lessons started with the alphabet. Teachers often cut letters of the Latin alphabet into wooden tablets, and children traced them to learn the shapes.

Students used small wax tablets and a stylus to write letters, short words, and simple phrases.

They copied sentences, often choosing moral sayings so that reading practice also taught Roman values. 

After learning letters, pupils moved on to reading, writing, and basic maths on the abacus.

Children learned numbers by singing and counting pebbles called calculi, then used a Roman abacus to add and multiply.

The simple maths and literacy taught at the ludus, read, write, and arithmetic, met everyday needs. Many poor children did not go beyond this stage.

Classes were informal: boys sat on stools with tablets on their knees, speaking lessons aloud while the teacher walked among them correcting mistakes.

Around ages 10 to 12, boys mainly from richer families could move on to a grammar school led by the grammaticus.

The word grammaticus, Latin for “grammar teacher,” described a teacher who guided students through more advanced studies in Latin and Greek literature.

At this stage, pupils read poetry and history to improve their language and critical thinking.

They continued reading classics like lines from Homer, Hesiod, or Euripides, but focused on understanding grammar and style.

They taught students to restate ideas, study lines of poetry closely, and recite passages with correct pronunciation. 

The grammaticus also taught the Greek language and its literature. Greek learning was highly respected; many upper-class Romans sent their sons to study Greek so they could read important works.

By age eleven, a Roman boy in grammar school could read both Latin and Greek fluently.

Lessons in grammar school sometimes included music and basic ideas in philosophy or astronomy, not to train specialists, but to give a wider education.

Suetonius writes that teachers gave young students progymnasmata, short speaking exercises, such as making short speeches on set topics or solving moral questions.

This practice prepared boys for the next level, ensuring they could begin a rhetor’s school without starting from scratch. 

After grammar school, the final stage of Roman education was rhetoric, taught by a rhetor.

This higher schooling was meant for young men of the top social class who planned to follow public or legal careers.

Students usually started at a rhetor around age 15 and could stay until their late teens or early twenties.

The rhetor taught public speaking and advanced topics such as Roman law, politics, philosophy, geography, and deeper literature or mythology. 

Rhetoric students practised declamations: they gave speeches on made-up legal or political cases to learn how to convince judges and listeners.

Two common exercises were the suasoria, giving advice to a historical figure, and controversia, debating a legal case.

Each student stood up to speak while classmates listened and clapped. By studying rhetoric and law, these students were trained to become skilled speakers and leaders in Roman society.

Famous teachers included Cicero and Quintilian. The skills learned in a rhetoric school prepared Roman elites for work in government, administration, and public life. 

Girls had fewer chances. In theory, both sons and daughters could go to elementary school.

From the first century BCE onward, well-born girls did attend and learned to read, write, and use numbers alongside boys.

In practice, few girls went farther: by early teens most were married or learning home skills.

Wealthy girls were more likely to learn from private tutors at home. Many girls did not learn to read or got only informal instruction.

Therefore, elementary schooling for girls was possible but uncommon, and grammar or rhetoric schools were almost closed to them.

Roman society expected women to marry and raise children, so a girl’s education focused on social skills and household tasks rather than public speaking. 

Slave children learned skills their masters needed. In rare cases, if a slave was to work as a scribe, tutor, or skilled worker, he might learn reading and writing, often in Greek.

But ordinary slave children usually learned practical tasks from hands-on work, not in schools. Schools and paid teachers were mainly for free families.

Roman teachers were private professionals, not public officials. A ludi magister or litterator typically rented a room or taught under an awning in a busy street corner.

However, Plutarch and Quintilian complain that schools were too crowded and poorly supplied.

A primary teacher made very low wages (around 50 denarii per pupil per month), while grammatici and rhetors earned more. 

Learning was by memorisation and repetition. Teachers read aloud from a text, and students listened and copied.

Oral recitation was common: students memorized poetry and grammar rules and recited them until correct. The teacher then corrected mistakes on the spot.

There were no written exams; progress was judged by in-class exercises and speeches.

Discipline was strict: a teacher might use the ferula rod or verbal rebukes to keep order.

Fathers expected schools to teach discipline as well as learning, so punishment was accepted if it produced quick progress.