Roman Schools
(This is the second page; click here for page one)
A fragment of Homer's Iliad on papyrus
Only the richest and smartest Roman kids went on to high school. Most towns didn't have a high school, so in order to go to high school you had to leave home and go live in a big city, without your family. You didn't live in a dormitory, the way kids at boarding school do today, but you had to find a room of your own, or maybe friends of your parents would let you stay at their house. Your parents had to pay the teacher, and also pay for your room and board. Augustine, for example, left his home town when he was fifteen to live in the big city of Carthage and go to school there.
In the high school, you learned more different kinds of subjects than in the elementary school. Many people learned to speak and read Greek in high school, practicing by memorizing hundreds of lines of Homer. The most important subject was rhetoric (REH-torr-ick), or speech-making. People also studied philosophy.
Roman elementary school
To find out more about Roman people, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Main people page
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