In the early times of Rome there were probably no public schools, education being wholly in the hands of the parents. The early years of the child were under the mother, and he received his training from her. These early years of the child could not have been passed better than under the care and training of the old Roman mother, for she was a woman of purity and dignity and industry, qualities fitted for the training of the child's younger years. As the boy grew older he would be permitted to be in the atrium of a morning when his father received his clients and so the boy would receive training in custom and law as he would hear the counsel given by his father to the clients. The boy would also gain much from the discussions of the men at the banquets and other gatherings as he would attend with his father. The child of these times did not learn through instruction so much as by informal training and in imitation of his elders. Reading and writing were taught to the boy by the father and also simple calculations, such as would be needed in everyday affairs. Ballads, national songs, and religious hymns and deeds of the men of the past were learned by the Roman boys. Physical training of the boys came mostly through games while the young men practised gymnastic exercises, but only to prepare them for military life. Such training made warriors and loyal citizens but also made these Romans selfish, overbearing, cruel, and rapacious, without lofty ideals or enthusiasm for the higher things of life. Literary education may have said to have begun at Rome during the third century before Christ. In 260 B. C., according to Plutarch, a school was opened by Spurius Carvilius at which fees were charged, the first of the kind. This man was a freedman and he had been a domestic tutor to the consul of the same name, Spurius Carvilius, who, as mentioned before, was the first man at Rome to divorce his wife. From this time education increased and there became three kinds of schools--elementary, grammar, and a higher school, the rhetor's school. The first was presided over by the litterator, or ludus magister; the second by the literatus, or, grammaticus; and the third by the rhetor. Added to these kinds of schools were those of the various philosophies, which were given to the adherents in form of lectures. The child entered the elementary school at about the seventh year of age. Near his twelfth year he went into the grammar school and at fifteen or sixteen, if he had determined on politics or law, he would enter the rhetor's school.