From chapter 2 of Stanley Bonner’s book Education in Ancient Rome. He describes the traditional education that Cato the Elder gave his son (born 192 BC):
Thanks to Plutarch’s admirable biography of the elder Cato, we are enabled to obtain a series of most interesting glimpses into the training which that remarkable, if rather formidable, personality gave his son. First we see him hurrying away from the Senate House so as to be certain of being back at home when the child was bathed and put to bed; for only important public business would cause him to forego this pleasure. Then we see him teaching the child to read and write, despite the fact that he led an exceptionally active public life, and had in his house an accomplished slave, who could easily have performed this service for him. ‘I do not think it fitting’, Cato once remarked, ‘that my son should be rebuked or have his ears pulled by a slave, if he should be slow to learn, or that he should be beholden to a slave for so important a thing as his education’. So he takes the trouble to write out, in large and extremely legible letters, stories from the early history of Rome, so that the boy may become familiar from the onset with the ancient traditions of his country.
The scene changes, the boy is older, and we see them swimming in the Tiber on a gusty day or camping out together, whether in the heat of summer or in winter frost. This was part of Cato’s hardening process, and with it went lessons in riding, in boxing, in throwing the javelin, and in the manipulation of weapons. Then the pair are home again, and in the evening maybe, by the light of oil-lamps, they turn over together the basic documents of the Roman Law, certainly the Twelve Tables, and perhaps the recent Commentary of Aelius Sextus upon them, the father answering the boy’s questions and giving him the benefit of his own knowledge and long experience.
Cato had acquired his own legal knowledge early in life, and had placed it freely at the disposal of other farmers in his neighborhood, whom he would meet in the early morning in the market-places, to learn of their problems. He had thus won a reputation as an advocate, and the experience stood him in good stead when he entered public life in Rome. He became quite the most litigious of his contemporaries, for he brought innumerable prosecutions, right up to the end of his life, and was frequently prosecuted by his enemies in consequence. But he was the finest orator of his day, cogent in argument and trenchant and terse in style. ‘Grasp your subject, the words will follow’ (rem tene, verba sequentur) was the celebrated advice which he passed on to his son. Blunt and outspoken, he could not only impress his listeners with his pithy wisdom, but also delight them with his apt comparisons and the tang of his pungent wit.
So Marcus Cato, in true Roman fashion, sought to mould his son to his own image. Remarkably versatile himself (he even composed an encyclopedia at some later date, and addressed it to ‘son Marcus’), he was an expert guide, as farmer, soldier, lawyer, orator and statesman. But Nature does not always comply with Man’s insistent demand for a replica of himself. Marcus Cato Licinianus, though he readily faced up to the rigorous course of training imposed upon him, had not his father’s strength and stamina, and Cato was eventually compelled to relax somewhat for the boy the severity of his own mode of life. For the hardships of military campaigning he was not physically well fitted. Not that he lacked courage, for at least on one occasion, in his early twenties, he earned his father’s commendation for his bravery in the field at the battle of Pydna. But his real bent was towards the law, and here his father’s teaching fell on particularly fertile ground. Young Cato became a distinguished jurist, and author of a work in fifteen books on the rules of law, which was held in esteem long after his own day. Fate did not, however, grant him a long time, for he died at the age of forty in the year of his praetorship. His father lived on a little longer, and died at the ripe age of eighty-five. ~
The personal involvement of fathers in their son’s education was a hallmark of old-order (pre-250 BC) Romans. Originally, Roman education occurred within the family as opposed to the Greeks who favored education in the local community. However, after Hellenism spread to Rome, over time the preference for direct instruction of sons and daughters by the head of the family (paterfamilias), relatives, or close friends was often supplanted by slaves, hired tutors, and private (or, in the Empire, public) schools.
O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endures for ever….Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies…Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known.
Ps. 106:1,7-8
