THE LUDUS, OR PRIMARY SCHOOL. The elementary school, known as the _ludus_, or _ludus literarum_, the teacher of which was known as a _ludi magister_, was the beginning or primary school of the scheme as finally evolved. This corresponded to the school of the Athenian _grammatist_, and like it the instruction consisted of reading, writing, and counting. These schools were open to both sexes, but were chiefly frequented by boys. They were entered at the age of seven, sometimes six, and covered the period up to twelve. Reading and writing were taught by much the same methods as in the Greek schools, and approximately the same writing materials were used. Something of the same difficulty was experienced also in mastering the reading art (R. 21). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian who lived in Rome for twenty-two years, during the first century B.C., has left us a clear description of the Roman method of teaching reading: When we learned to read was it not necessary at first to know the name of the letters, their shape, their value in syllables, their differences, then the words and their case, their quantity long or short, their accent, and the rest? Arrived at this point we began to read and write, slowly at first and syllable by syllable. Some time afterwards, the forms being sufficiently engraved on our memory, we read more cursorily, in the elementary book, then in all sorts of books, finally with incredible quickness and without making any mistake. [Illustration: FIG. 21. ROMAN WRITING-MATERIALS. Inkstand, pen, letter, box of manuscripts, wax tablets, stylus.] Writing seems rather to have followed reading, and, as in the Greek schools, the pupils copied down from dictation and made their own books (_dictata_). Literature received no such emphasis in the elementary schools of Rome as in those of the Greeks, and the _palaestra_ of the Greeks was not reproduced at Rome. Due in part to the practical character of the Roman people, to the established habit of keeping careful household accounts, to the difficulties of their system of calculation, [15] to the practice of finger reckoning, and to the vast commercial and financial interests that the Romans formed throughout the world which they conquered, arithmetic became a subject of fundamental importance in their schools, and much time was given to securing perfection in calculation and finger reckoning. [16] Hence it occupied a place of large importance in the primary school. An abacus or counting-board was used, similar to the one shown in Figure 22, and Horace mentions a bag of stones (_calculi_) as a part of a schoolboy's equipment. [Illustration: FIG. 22. A ROMAN COUNTING-BOARD. Pebbles were used, those nearest the numbered dividing partition being counted. Each pebble above when moved downward counted five of those in the same division below. The board now shows 8,760,254.]