In the study of grammar there were studied the divisions of the letters into vowels and consonants with the divisions of the vowels, the sounds of the letters or phonics, philology in a simple way, the parts of speech, the inflections of the parts of speech, and the like. In literature in the Greek schools, the study of Homer took the leading part as did the study of Vergil in the Latin schools, and also other authors were studied. Geometry was studied along the practical lines of mensuration and astronomy. Likewise geography and history were entered into for practical purposes. Music was taken up to aid in getting proper intonation and rhythm in oratory and for learning the religious chants. There was but little training in gymnastics, only for hygienic purposes and as an aid to military training. Dancing was not taught in the schools but in the home. This was not as with us, but more of the form of calisthenics. There was nothing such as the round dance with us, which would have been thought shockingly vulgar by the Romans. When the youth, at about sixteen years of age, assumed the toga virilis, his further education depended upon what his life's work was to be. If it was to be war, then he at once entered the army. If he was to enter public life, then he attended the rhetorical school and studied oratory and law. Also he frequented the places where he could hear the public orations and he might have attached himself to some orator or jurist. In the rhetor's school those things were studied which would help the young man in his public career. Oratory and rhetoric were the leading studies, and, as he sought, too, to gain a wide knowledge, mathematics, philosophy, law, and literature would be included in the course. The youth usually remained in these higher schools for two or three years. Then he might go on with his studies through travel and attendance at centers outside of Rome. "Youths of higher intellectual ambition did not rest satisfied with the instruction obtainable at Rome, but (at least after 80 B. C.) resorted to Athens and other philosophical and rhetorical centers. In the last decade of the Republic there were many famous schools of this higher class. In addition to Athens, the mother city, we have the great university schools of Rhodes, Apollonia, Mitylene, Alexandria, Tarsus, Pergamus, and afterwards, in imperial times, Smyrna and Ephesus. In the time of Cicero Marseilles also was already a widely known school."[198]