Cato wrote histories for his son in large letters, "so that without stirring out of the house, he might gain a knowledge of the illustrious actions of the ancient Romans, and of the customs of his country": but it is significant that in the next two or three generations the writers of annals took to glorifying--and falsifying--the achievements of members of their own families, rather than those of the State as a whole.

Boys learnt the XII Tables by heart, and Cicero tells us that he did this in his own boyhood, though the practice had since then been dropped.[269] That ancient code of law would have acted, we may imagine, as a kind of catechism of the rules laid down by the State for the conduct of its citizens, and as a reminder that though the State had outgrown the rough legal clothing of its infancy, it had from the very beginning undertaken the duty of regulating the conduct of its citizens in their relations with each other.

Again, when a great Roman died, it is said to have been the practice for parents to take their boys to hear the funeral oration in praise of one who had done great service to the State.[270] All this was admirable, and if Rome had not become a great imperial state, and if some super-structure of the humanities could have been added in a natural process of development, it might have continued for ages as an invaluable educational basis.

But the conditions under which alone it could flourish had long ceased to be.

It is obvious that it depended entirely on the presence of the parents and their interest in the children; as regards the boys it depended chiefly on the father.