Our Roman boy must have found arithmetic a more troublesome thing than the figures now in use (for which we cannot be too thankful to the Arabs their inventors) have made it. It is difficult to imagine how any thing like a long sum in multiplication or division could have been done with the Roman numerals, so cumbrous were they. The number, for instance, which we represent by the figures 89 would require for its expression no less than _nine_ figures, LXXXVIIII. The boy was helped by using the fingers, the left hand being used to signify numbers below a hundred, and the right numbers above it. Sometimes his teacher would have a counting-board, on which units, tens, and hundreds would be represented by variously colored balls. The sums which he did were mostly of a practical kind. Here is the sample that Horace gives of an arithmetic lesson. "The Roman boys are taught to divide the penny by long calculations. 'If from five ounces be subtracted one, what is the remainder?' At once you can answer, 'A third of a penny.' 'Good, you will be able to take care of your money. If an ounce be added what does it make?' 'The half of a penny.'" While he was acquiring this knowledge he was also learning a language, the one language besides his own which to a Roman was worth knowing--Greek. Very possibly he had begun to pick it up in the nursery, where a Greek slave girl was to be found, just as the French _bonne_ or the German nursery-governess is among our own wealthier families. He certainly began to acquire it when he reached the age at which his regular education was commenced. Cato the Elder, though he made it a practice to teach his own sons, had nevertheless a Greek slave who was capable of undertaking the work, and who actually did teach, to the profit of his very frugal master, the sons of other nobles. Aemilius, the conqueror of Macedonia, who was a few years younger than Cato, had as a tutor a Greek of some distinction. While preparing the procession of his triumph he had sent to Athens for a scene-painter, as we should call him, who might make pictures of conquered towns wherewith to illustrate his victories. He added to the commission a stipulation that the artist should also be qualified to take the place of tutor. By good fortune the Athenians happened to have in stock, so to speak, exactly the man he wanted, one Metrodorus. Cicero had a Greek teacher in his own family, not for his son indeed, who was not born till later, but for his own benefit. This was one Diodotus, a Stoic philosopher. Cicero had been his pupil in his boyhood, and gave him a home till the day of his death, "I learned many things from him, logic especially." In old age he lost his sight. "Yet," says his pupil, "he devoted himself to study even more diligently than before; he had books read to him night and day. These were studies which he could pursue without his eyes; but he also, and this seems almost incredible, taught geometry without them, instructing