But we know the fate of our own copy-book maxims; we know that it is not through them that our children become good men and women, but by the example and the un-systematised precepts of parents and teachers.

No such neat [Greek gnomai] can do much good without a sanction of greater force than any that is inherent in them and such a sanction was not to be found in the ferula of the grammaticus or the paedagogus.

Once more it is men and not methods that supply the real educational force.
Probably the greatest difficulty which the Roman boy had to face in his school life was the learning of arithmetic; it was this, we may imagine, that made him think of his master, as Horace did of the worthy Orbilius,[282] as a man of blows (plagosus).

This is not the place to give an account of the methods of reckoning then used; they will be found fully explained in Marquardt's _Privatleben_, and compressed into a page by Professor Wilkins in his _Roman Education_[283].

It is enough to say that they were as indispensable as they were difficult to learn.