Private schools in Rome about 450 B.C.; Virginia insulted by Appius Claudius, while on her way to school. The youth instructed at these institutions in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and required to memorize the laws of the Twelve Tables. Grammar was next essayed; and a course in rhetoric and oratory completed the Roman boy’s education. Many continued their studies at Athens, Rhodes, or Alexandria. The teachers often provincials or freedmen. In the golden age, Greek tutors very generally the companions and flatterers of the wealthy Romans. During the reign of Augustus, great schools at Cordova and Marseilles rivalled the academy of Flaccus at Rome, the favorite of the emperor, who paid Flaccus a salary of $3,600, and offered special inducements in the way of prizes to such as would join his school. Under Vespasian the first Roman college, the Athenæum, was established; botany, zoölogy, and mineralogy, now became favorite studies. Rome had its booksellers in the golden age, to supply the demand for standard authors and school manuals. Books multiplied rapidly by transcription, and were cheap in proportion. At the beginning of the first century B.C., many private libraries in Rome; every noble took pride in his collection of manuscripts. First public library founded by Asinius Pollio, whose example was followed by others. (_Consult Gove’s “Companion to School Classics.”_) Earliest known attempts at journalism, 59 B.C. The _Acta_ of the senate and of the people, the first publications. The latter, a daily (_diurna_, whence _journal_), had an extensive circulation throughout the Roman territories. Stenography practised at this time by the Romans, and subsequently taught in their schools. A freedman of Cicero said to have invented the system of short-hand. Sympathetic ink in use for writing love-letters and secret correspondence. For this purpose Ovid recommends milk, which may be made visible by dusting powdered charcoal on the letters. To keep mice from gnawing their papyrus and parchment rolls, some Roman writers mixed wormwood with their inks. CHAPTER IV. _AGE OF DECLINE._ =Silver Age of Roman Letters.=—With the death of Augustus and the accession of his step-son Tiberius, despotism in its worst form was established at Rome, and, as in Greece, a decline of letters immediately followed. Symptoms of literary decay had already shown themselves in the reign of the first emperor, although he took care to conceal his assumption of absolute power under the mask of republican forms, and was known to all as a patron of learning. Tiberius, on the contrary, openly declared himself the enemy of freedom, both political and intellectual; and when, in 37 A.D., his attendants, no longer able to endure his rule of blood, smothered the monster with pillows, Latin literature was at its lowest ebb.