§119. Remarks on the Schools.--Having considered the possibilities in the way of education and training within the reach of the more favored few, we may now go back to the Elementary and Grammar Schools to get an idea of the actual school life of the ordinary Roman boy. While these were not public schools in our sense of the word, that is, while they were not supported or supervised by the state, and while attendance was not compulsory, it is nevertheless true that the elements at least of education, a knowledge of the three R's, were more generally diffused among the Romans than among any other people of the ancient world. The schools were distinctly democratic in this, that they were open to all classes, that the fees were little more than nominal, that so far as concerned discipline and the treatment of the pupils no distinction was made between the children of the humblest and of the most lordly families. [Illustration: FIGURE 26. A ROMAN SCHOOL] [Illustration: FIGURE 27: CARICATURE OF A SCHOOL] §120. The school was usually in a _pergula_, a shedlike attachment to a public building, roofed against the sun and rain, but open at the sides and furnished merely with rough benches without backs. The children were exposed, therefore, to all the distractions of the busy town life around them, and the people living near were in turn annoyed by the noisy recitations (§110) and even noisier punishments. A picture of a schoolroom from a wall painting in Herculaneum is shown in Fig. 26 and an ancient caricature, by a schoolboy probably, in Fig. 27. §121. The Teacher.--The teacher was originally a slave, perhaps usually a freedman. The position was not an honorable one, though this depended upon the character of the teacher himself, and while the pupils feared the master they seem to have had little respect for him. The pay he received was a mere pittance, varying from three dollars a year for the elementary teacher (_litterātor_, _magister litterārum_) to five or six times that sum for a _grammaticus_ (§112). In addition to the fee, the pupils were expected to bring the master from time to time little presents, a custom persisting probably from the time when these presents were his only reward (§109). The fees varied, however, with the qualifications of the master, and some whose reputations were established and whose schools were "fashionable" charged no fees at all, but left the amount to be paid (_honōrārium_) to the generosity of their patrons.