§ 220. In the first education of children the agency of the mother is especially influential, so that woman with the Romans took generally a more moral, a higher, and a freer position. It is worthy of remark that while, as the beautiful, she set the Greeks at variance, among the Romans, through her ethical authority, she acted as reconciler. § 221. The mother of the Roman helped to form his character; the father undertook the work of instruction. When in his fifteenth year the boy exchanged the _toga prætextata_ for the _toga virilis_, he was usually sent to some relative, or to some jurist, as his guardian, to learn thoroughly, under his guidance, of the laws and of the state; with the seventeenth began military service. All education was for a long time entirely a private affair. On account of the necessity of a mechanical unity in work which war demands, the greatest stress was laid upon obedience. In its restricted sense education comprised Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic; the last being, on account of its usefulness, more esteemed by the Romans than by the Greeks, who gave more time to Geometry. The schools, very characteristically, were called _Ludi_, because their work was, in distinction from other practice, regarded simply as a recreation, as play. ——The Roman recognized with pride this distinction between the Greek and himself; Cicero's Introduction to his Essay on Oratory expresses it. To be practical was always the effort of the reflective character of the Romans, which was always placing new ends and seeking the means for their attainment; which loved moderation, not to secure beauty thereby, but respected it as a means for a happy success (_medium tenuere beati_); which did not possess serene self-limitation, or σωφροσύνη, but calculation _quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent_; but which, in general, went far beyond the Greeks in persistency of will, in _constantia animi_. The schools were at first held publicly in shops; hence the name _trivium_. Very significant for the Roman is the predicate which he conferred upon theoretical subjects when he called them _artes bonæ_, _optimæ_, _liberales_, _ingenuæ_, &c., and brought forth the practical element in them.——