We need not follow with any closeness the infancy of either boy or girl till the seventh year. The ancient world was very much like the modern. Suffice it to glance at them cutting their teeth on the teeth of wolves or horses, rocked in cradles decorated with gold and purple, or running about and calling their parents by the time-honoured _mamma, tata_--words, if we can call them words, which came from those small Roman mouths precisely as they have come from time immemorial from so many others. Their slave nurse, who is a Greek and talks Greek to them, tells them the old wives' tales and fables. They play with rattles, balls, and little carts, with pet birds and monkeys, and the girl with dolls of ivory or wax or of painted terra-cotta. They have swings, and ride on sticks and build houses. When bigger, the boy has his tops and hoops, with or without bells, and he plays marbles with nuts. Meanwhile attempts are made, somewhat after the kindergarten pattern, to teach them their alphabet by means of letters shaped in wood or ivory. Whether or not it is modern kindergarten method to tempt children to learn by offers of sugar-plums, that course was often adopted in the world of both Greece and Rome. On the whole the life of the child, though strictly governed, appears to have been pleasant enough until schooldays began. Though many children were taught at home by a more or less learned slave acting as private tutor, the great majority, at least of the boys, were sent to school. There was at this date no compulsory education; the state dictated nothing and provided nothing in connection with the matter; many children must have received no education at all, and many only the barest elements. Nevertheless the average parent realised the practical utility of at least reading, writing, and simple arithmetic, and schools of the elementary type sprang up according to the demand. What the higher education was like will be set forth in its place.