382 education: Greece ing a horse There were also the “four exercises of weapons”: archery, use of the javelin, use of the quarter-staff, and use of the sword and the sword and buckler Then there were the “three rural sports”: hunting, fishing, and hawking Last there were the “seven domestic games”: poetry, heraldry, diplomacy and musicianship, and four board games Although the foster father oversaw this training, particular aspects were taught by skilled individuals; spiritual training, for example, was often performed by Druids Many of the skills that Celtic boys had to learn were concerned with war, and the Bronze Age in which they flourished was not only prosperous but also violent The Germanic tribes tended to prefer boys to use the bow and arrow, while the Gauls, in the region that is now France, tended to favor the javelin To encourage them in warlike pursuits, the Romans recorded that Celtic boys were, from a young age, served meat on the point of a sword Many early sporting pursuits, such as tossing the caber (a pole or tree trunk) for the Picts (in Scotland) or juggling swords, were important for developing skills useful for battle, where agility rather than armor made the difference between life and death In parts of Europe where there were no major pressures of population, skills related to hunting and trapping animals were given priority Upon being trained, the boys would be asked to prove themselves in terms of valor and skill at arms to be acknowledged publicly as achieving adulthood In parts of Europe some men, especially mercenaries, had specialized occupations The slingers from the Balearic Islands were used extensively by the Carthaginians, and Roman writers mention them in some awe and trepidation To achieve the level of skill they had, boys on these islands were trained from an early age in the use of the sling One writer notes that the boys were trained to hit bread with a stone and were not allowed to eat until they hit the target; it is also noted that boys were trained by their fathers, who gave them a sling as their first toy Similarly, the Huns trained their sons from a young age to ride horses As the Roman Empire expanded, many well-to-do families wanted their sons to be educated in the Roman style Many boys in towns and cities were taught by schoolmasters, who opened a room or more of their houses and tutored a number of students at the same time Salaries were low, but there were encouragements, such as that teachers were exempted from military service by the emperor Constantine (r 306–337 c.e.) The wealthy often used an educated slave known as a paedagogus, who would act as a tutor A significant number of these slaves, especially around the Mediterranean, were Greeks Small schools followed an unregulated Roman system of education with rote learning of grammar as well as poetry and rhetoric, or the effective use of speech and writing The system also involved learning how to read, often both Latin and Greek, depending on the town or city in which the school was located The works of Homer were regularly used to teach history, to explain problems with life and morals, and also to teach rhetoric The study of rhetoric sometimes involved repeating imaginary speeches from such historical figures as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar Children would write on slate, with many committing information to memory, reinforcing the oral tradition used by the Celts, the Dacians, and others Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain from 77 to 84 c.e., brought with him from Tarsus to Britain a Greek schoolmaster called Demetrius Other similar situations occurred Indeed, Saint Patrick spoke some Latin from a young age During the height of the Roman Empire the system of education, though it did not follow any set curriculum, was probably fairly uniform throughout the empire It was not uncommon for children of the very wealthy to go to Athens or Rhodes for the best schooling available at that time The Roman elite families certainly availed themselves of these opportunities, and it would seem likely that other rich families across the empire might have done the same Apart from some from wealthy families who would have had tutors, the Celts seem to have paid little attention to girls’ education, which would have been conducted largely at home It is also possible that the male Roman writers did not choose to record the education of Celtic girls, whose treatment may not have been much different from that of girls in villages in Italy The names of very few women survive from this period, and even for those about whom much is written, such as Boudicca, who fought the Romans in Britain in 60–61 c.e., little is known about their early life and training After the growth of the Christian church from the early fourth century, churches became places of learning, and boys (and probably a few girls) started getting their education—religious and academic—from the local priest and gradually at monasteries GREECE BY CHRISTOPHER BLACKWELL Before the fift h century b.c.e there is little evidence for formal, organized schools in the Greek world The education of aristocratic children would have been handled by their nurses when they were very young or by slaves, but schooling was probably left to informal instruction by peers and older mentors In Homer’s Iliad, we read that Achilles’ father, Peleus, retained an older man, Phoenix, as a companion and tutor for the baby Achilles Phoenix talks of teaching Achilles to eat with a spoon, and later he instructs him to play games and use weapons Young Achilles was also said to have attended a “school” run by the centaur Chiron—the mythological nature of this schoolmaster may suggest that formal education was so rare as to seem magical, the privilege only of those aristocrats descended from gods In the most ancient Greek world the aristocracy tended to assume that their superiority was inborn, a matter of blood and not of education For all Greek boys and young men in the centuries before the Classical Period (which began in the fi ft h century b.c.e), informal and formal athletic competitions would have been the center of their development These games involved