=167. Selection of a School.=--In the good old days a father was expected not merely to give his son moral and practical lessons, but actually to be his schoolmaster--to flog reading, writing, and a little arithmetic into him; even as Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.) boasted that he did with his own son. But that stage has long passed, and the main question now for every boy or girl is, “tutors or school?” No doubt families of the highest rank find private tutors fashionable and convenient; thus such a personage as Augustus employed the skilful freedman, Verrius Flaccus, to teach his grandsons; but the advantages of contact with other children of about the same social class are clearly understood. The young Calvi, therefore, have been sent to a carefully selected school. This arrangement is exceptionally good because their father’s colleague, the ex-prætor Aponius, owns a remarkably gifted slave, one Euganor, who is allowed not merely to teach his master’s children but (by a recognized custom) to take in others; their fees going toward his _peculium_ saved up to buy his freedom. =168. Extent of Literacy in Rome. Education of Girls.=--Schools exist everywhere in Rome, and there are all sorts and conditions of schools. There is no system of public education, and probably a good many poor plebeians and slaves are barely literate enough to spell out the gladiator notices and to jot down a few accounts or memoranda; but public opinion condemns parents who deny their children at least a little schooling, and absolutely illiterate persons are rare.[102] Girls in poor families are rather less sure of instruction than boys, and in superior families they seldom pass on to the upper and the rhetoric schools; but apparently in the ordinary schools they frequently go with their brothers on terms of perfect equality. There seems to be no prudish separation of the sexes, although when the grown boys go off to learn the tricks of orators and philosophers, nobly-born girls spend the years just before their marriages under good tutors learning the poets, and being taught a graceful proficiency in harp playing and also enough of dancing to give them the erect carriage and the stately, calm movements of destined matrons. =169. Schools for the Lower Classes.=--Between the select establishment of Euganor in a side apartment of Aponius’s great mansion and the cheapest type of school along Mercury Street there is a great gulf fixed. Any kind of a shelter will do for a low-grade school, and any kind of a half-educated fellow can set up as a school teacher. [Illustration: BOY STUDYING.]