Aemilius Paullus had several teachers in his house for this purpose, under his own superintendence.[273] Cicero too, as we have seen, seems to have educated his son at home, though he himself is said to have attended a school.

But we may suppose that the ordinary boy of the upper classes went to school, under the care of a paedagogus, after the Greek fashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman of attaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him to learn to read, write, and cipher.[274] This elementary work must have been done well; we hear little or nothing of gross ignorance or neglected education.
There were, however, very serious defects in this system of elementary education.

Not only the schoolmaster himself, but the paedagogus who was responsible for the boy's conduct, was almost always either a slave or a freedman; and neither slave nor freedman could be an object of profound respect for a Roman boy.

Hence no doubt the necessity of maintaining discipline rather by means of corporal punishment (to which the Romans never seem to have objected, though Quintilian criticises it)[275] than by moral force; a fact which is attested both in literature and art.

The responsibility again which attached to the paedagogus for the boy's morals must have been another inducement to the parents to renounce their proper work of supervision.[276] And once more, the great majority of teachers were Greeks.