the Latin “writing-masters” (-litteratores-) there were of course, from the time when an acquaintance with Greek was indispensable for every statesman and merchant, also Greek “language-masters” (-grammatici-)(27)—­partly tutor-slaves, partly private teachers, who at their own dwelling or that of their pupil gave instructions in the reading and speaking of Greek.  As a matter of course, the rod played its part in instruction as well as in military discipline and in police.(28) The instruction of this epoch cannot however have passed beyond the elementary stage:  there was no material shade of difference, in a social respect, between the educated and the non-educated Roman.

Exact Sciences—­
Regulation of the Calendar

That the Romans at no time distinguished themselves in the mathematical and mechanical sciences is well known, and is attested, in reference to the present epoch, by almost the only fact which can be adduced under this head with certainty—­the regulation of the calendar attempted by the decemvirs.  They wished to substitute for the previous calendar based on the old and very imperfect -trieteris-(29) the contemporary Attic calendar of the -octaeteris-, which retained the lunar month of 29 1/2 days but assumed the solar year at 365 1/4 days instead of 368 3/4, and therefore, without making any alteration in the length of the common year of 354 days, intercalated, not as formerly 59 days every 4 years, but 90 days every 8 years.  With the same view the improvers of the Roman calendar intended—­while otherwise retaining the current calendar—­in the two inter-calary years of the four years’ cycle to shorten not the intercalary months, but the two Februaries by 7 days each, and consequently to fix that month in the intercalary years at 22 and 21 days respectively instead of 29 and 28.  But want of mathematical precision and theological scruples, especially in reference to the annual festival of Terminus which fell within those very days in February, disarranged the intended reform, so that the Februaries of the intercalary years came to be of 24 and 23 days, and thus the new Roman solar year in reality ran to 366 1/4 days.  Some remedy for the practical evils resulting from this was found in the practice by which, setting aside the reckoning by the months or ten months of the calendar (30) as now no longer applicable from the inequality in the length of the months, wherever more accurate specifications were required, they accustomed themselves to reckon by terms of ten months of a solar year of 365 days or by the so-called ten-month year of 304 days.  Over and above this, there came early into use in Italy, especially for agricultural purposes, the farmers’ calendar based on the Egyptian solar year of 365 1/4 days by Eudoxus (who flourished 386).

Structural and Plastic Art