of a practical kind.  Here is the sample that Horace gives of an arithmetic lesson.  “The Roman boys are taught to divide the penny by long calculations.  ’If from five ounces be subtracted one, what is the remainder?’ At once you can answer, ‘A third of a penny.’  ’Good, you will be able to take care of your money.  If an ounce be added what does it make?’ ‘The half of a penny.’”

While he was acquiring this knowledge he was also learning a language, the one language besides his own which to a Roman was worth knowing—­Greek.  Very possibly he had begun to pick it up in the nursery, where a Greek slave girl was to be found, just as the French bonne or the German nursery-governess is among our own wealthier families.  He certainly began to acquire it when he reached the age at which his regular education was commenced.  Cato the Elder, though he made it a practice to teach his own sons, had nevertheless a Greek slave who was capable of undertaking the work, and who actually did teach, to the profit of his very frugal master, the sons of other nobles.  Aemilius, the conqueror of Macedonia, who was a few years younger than Cato, had as a tutor a Greek of some distinction.  While preparing the procession of his triumph he had sent to Athens for a scene-painter, as we should call him, who might make pictures of conquered towns wherewith to illustrate his victories.  He added to the commission a stipulation that the artist should also be qualified to take the place of tutor.  By good fortune the Athenians happened to have in stock, so to speak, exactly the man he wanted, one Metrodorus.  Cicero had a Greek teacher in his own family, not for his son indeed, who was not born till later, but for his own benefit.  This was one Diodotus, a Stoic philosopher.  Cicero had been his pupil in his boyhood, and gave him a home till the day of his death, “I learned many things from him, logic especially.”  In old age he lost his sight.  “Yet,” says his pupil, “he devoted himself to study even more diligently than before; he had books read to him night and day.  These were studies which he could pursue without his eyes; but he also, and this seems almost incredible, taught geometry without them, instructing his learners whence and whither the line was to be drawn, and of what kind it was to be.”  It is interesting to know that when the old man died he left his benefactor about nine thousand pounds.

Of course only wealthy Romans could command for their sons the services of such teachers as Diodotus; but any well-to-do-household contained a slave who had more or less acquaintance with Greek.  In Cicero’s time a century and more of conquests on the part of Rome over Greek and Greek-speaking communities had brought into Italian families a vast number of slaves who knew the Greek language, and something, often a good deal, of Greek literature.  One of these would probably be set apart as the boy’s attendant; from him he would learn to speak and read a language, a knowledge of which was at least as common at Rome as is a knowledge of French among English gentlemen.