Old Cato believed himself to be acting like an old Roman when he looked after the washing and dressing of his baby, and guided the child with personal care as he grew up, writing books for his use in large letters with his own hand.[260] But since Cato's day the idea of the State had lost strength; and this had an unfortunate effect on education, as on married life.

The one hope of the age, the Stoic philosophy, was concerned with those who had attained to reason, i.e.
to those who had reached their fourteenth year; in the Stoic view the child was indeed potentially reasonable, and thus a subject of interest, but in the Stoic ethics education does not take a very prominent place.[261] We are driven to the conclusion that a real interest in education as distinct from the acquisition of knowledge was as much wanting at Rome in Cicero's day as it has been till lately in England; and that it was not again awakened until Christianity had made the children sacred, not only because the Master so spoke of them, but because they were inheritors of eternal life.
Yet there had once been a Roman home education admirably suited to bring up a race of hardy and dutiful men and women.

It was an education in the family virtues, thereafter to be turned to account in the service of the State.

The mother nursed her own children and tended them in their earliest years.

Then followed an education which we may call one in bodily activity, in demeanour, in religion, and in duty to the State.