There were special masters (_librarii_) to teach book-copying. A marble tablet found at Auch[363] bears an inscription to one Afranius Graphicus (skilled in writing), a teacher, and in particular a teacher of copying, who numbered among his accomplishments proficiency in the game of draughts, and Marquardt[364] quotes a number of instances from the _Corpus_. Very important among the various forms of writing for the fourth and fifth centuries—the age of bureaucratic officialdom—was stenography. Here, too, there were special masters (_notarii_) who at the same time practised it as their vocation. Again, the _Corpus_ has frequent references.[365] Ausonius composed a poem on his shorthand writer, whose skill was evidently great,[366] and when Sidonius made his epigram on the towel there was a scribe at hand (apparently a _notarius_) who took down his words.[367] As far as the method of reading was concerned, Quintilian’s counsel no doubt still held good. He had advised learning the sound and the form of the letters simultaneously,[368] and the use of the synthetic method, passing from the letter to the syllable, from the syllable to the word, from the word to the sentence. The last subject of the elementary school was Arithmetic, a favourite subject with the hard-headed Romans. Counting on the fingers was common in olden times, and as late as the seventh century we find Bede writing a work ‘de loquela per gestum digitorum et temporum ratione’,[369] which points to an elaborate system of computation on the fingers. There were special teachers (_calculatores_) for advanced pupils, and the instruments used were the _abacus_ or _tabula_, a board marked with lines which signified tens, hundreds, thousands, &c., according as the counters (_calculi_) were put on them. Figures were sometimes drawn on a board sprinkled with sand.