Back to school with the Romans

Reconstruction cameo
This site first came to Time Team's attention as a result of contact made by the local school. So as a reconstruction cameo for the programme, the Team called in John Davis, an experimental archaeologist and re-enactor from the Legio Secunda Augusta living history society, who reconstruct Roman life.

Unfortunately, as sometimes happens on Time Team digs, the reconstruction got squeezed out of the finished programme because of shortage of time. John Davis's role was that of a Roman schoolteacher.

What was school like?

So what was school really like for Roman children?
'We actually know very little about what life was like in a Roman school,' says John. 'The essential problem, as with so much of Roman life, is that Roman authors liked to write about stirring aristocratic and literary subjects, not the minutiae of ordinary people's existence. Most of our evidence comes from what philosophers wrote about the education system or depictions like wall paintings and sculptures.'

School kit
John brought with him a range of items and reconstructed artefacts from numeral charts and wax tablets to bronze styluses and even a pocket abacus.

'Everything we brought along is a replica from something that has been discovered in the archaeological record. What we want to do is to show the range of items that school children would have used or been educated with,' says John.

Who went to school?
So who would have gone to school? Was it anything like today where children of a certain age have to go to school by law?

'Schooling in Roman times was a much less formal affair,' explains John. 'This is an age when people tended to automatically go into the sort of work their fathers did. There were no national institutions and schooling was much more like an aristocratic hobby than anything else.

'Schools came about when wealthy men in a town decided they should have something set up to educate their children. Otherwise tuition was more likely carried out in the home by a tutor or educated slave. There was no limit on who could be educated, you just had to be able to pay the tutor. However, it was usually boys who were educated as girls tended to be groomed for domestic duties or prepared for marriage.'

What subjects?
Children would have been taught a range of subjects in school that would have prepared them for later life.

'Roman education was much more old fashioned in our terms,' says John. 'The three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) were the order of the day. There was a lot of rote learning and table remembering. It was really geared up to the practicalities of being able to conduct business or contribute to your father's business, whatever that may be.

'There was also a leaning towards literary education – what we would call the classics. There were basically two prongs to Roman education: general learning so that you could do a job and then philosophy.'

Changes over time

Was schooling always like this for Roman children?
'We do see a number of changes,' explains John, 'In the east, the great civilisations of antiquity, like Babylon, Greece and Egypt, all had great traditions of teaching, and these traditions were continued when Christianity became the official religion of the empire in the fourth century. All of a sudden we see the Church creating special roles for administrators within the system and it becomes possible for many young people to gain an education through the Church.'

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