THE _LUDI MAGISTER_. The _ludi magister_ at Rome held a position even less enviable than that held by the _grammatist_ at Athens. "The starveling Greek," who was glad to barter his knowledge for the certainty of a good dinner, was sneered at by many Roman writers. Many slaves were engaged in this type of instruction, bringing in fees for their owners. It was not regarded as of importance that the teachers of these schools be of high grade. The establishment of and attendance at these primary schools was wholly voluntary, and the children in them probably represented but a small percentage of those of school age in the total population. These schools became quite common in the Italian cities, and in time were found in the provincial cities of the Empire as well. They remained, however, entirely private-adventure undertakings, the State doing nothing toward encouraging their establishment, supervising the instruction in them, or requiring attendance at them. They were in no sense free schools, nor were the prices for instruction fixed, as in our private schools of to-day. Instead, the pupil made a present to the master, usually at some understood rate, though some masters left the size of the fee to the liberality of their pupils. [17] The pedagogue, copied from Greece, was nearly always an old or infirm slave of the family. [Illustration: FIG. 23. A ROMAN PRIMARY SCHOOL(_Ludus_) (From a fresco found at Herculaneum). This shows a school held in a portico of a house.] The schools were held anywhere--in a portico (see Figure 23), in a shed or booth in front of a house, in a store, or in a recessed corner shut in by curtains. A chair for the master, benches for the pupils, an outer room for cloaks and for the pedagogues to wait in, and a bundle of rods (_ferula_) constituted the necessary equipment. The pupils brought with them boxes containing writing-materials, book-rolls, and reckoning-stones. Schools began early in the morning, pupils in winter going with lanterns to their tasks. There was much flogging of children, and in Martial we find an angry epigram which he addressed to a schoolmaster who disturbed his sleep (R. 23 a).