parents,

5. It is they that the child will hear first; it is their words that he will try to form by imitation. We are by nature most tenacious of what we have imbibed in our infant years; as the flavour, with which you scent vessels when new, remains in them; nor can the colours of wool, for which its plain whiteness has been exchanged, be effaced; and those very habits, which are of a more objectionable nature, adhere with the greater tenacity; for good ones are easily changed for the worse, but when will you change bad ones into good? Let the child not be accustomed, therefore, even while he is yet an infant, to phraseology which must be unlearned.

6. In parents I should wish that there should be as much learning as possible. Nor do I speak, indeed, merely of fathers; for we have heard that Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi (whose very learned writing in her letters has come down to posterity), contributed greatly to their eloquence; the daughter of Lælius 1 is said to have exhibited her father's elegance in her conversation; and the oration of the daughter of Quintus Hortensius,2 delivered before the Triumviri, is read not merely as an honour to her sex. 7. Nor let those parents, who have not had the fortune to get learning themselves, bestow the less care on the instruction of their children, but let them, on this very account, be more solicitous as to other particulars.

Of the boys, among whom he who is destined to this prospect is to be educated, the same may be said as concerning nurses.

pedagogues. 8. Of pædagogi this further may be said, that they should either be men of acknowledged learning, which I should wish to be the first object, or that they should be conscious of their want of learning; for none are more pernicious than those who, having gone some little beyond the first elements, clothe themselves in a mistaken persua

1 Surnamed Sapiens, was born 186 B.C. He had two daughters, one of whom was married to Caius Fannius, and the other to Mucius Scævola. Quintilian evidently refers to the latter.

2 Quintus Hortensius was a distinguished Roman orator who lived 114– 50 B.C. The reference here is to a plea made by his daughter, Hortensia, before the triumviri, Octavianus, Antony, and Lepidus, for a remission of part of the tax laid on matrons.

sion of their own knowledge; since they disdain to yield to those who are skilled in teaching, and, growing imperious, and sometimes fierce, in a certain right, as it were, of exercising their authority (with which that sort of men are generally puffed up), they teach only their own folly. 9. Nor is their misconduct less prejudicial to the manners of their pupils; for Leonidas,1 the tutor of Alexander, as is related by Diogenes2 of Babylon, tinctured him with certain bad habits, which adhered to him, from his childish education, even when he was grown up and become the greatest of kings.

10. If I seem to my reader to require a great deal, let him consider that it is an orator that is to be educated; an arduous task, even when nothing is deficient for the formation of his character; and that more and more difficult labours yet remain; for there is need of constant study, the most excellent teachers, and a variety of mental exercises. II. The best of rules, therefore, are to be laid down; and if any one shall refuse to observe them, the fault will lie, not in the method, but in the man.

If however it should not be the good fortune of children to have such nurses as I should wish, let them at least have one attentive pædagogus, not unskilled in language, who, if anything is spoken incorrectly by the nurse in the presence of his pupil, may at once correct it, and not let it settle in his mind. But let it be understood that what I prescribed at first is the right course, and this only a remedy.

Greek and

Latin.

12. I prefer that a boy should begin with the Greek Study of language, because he will acquire Latin, which is in general use, even though we tried to prevent him, and because, at the same time, he ought first to be instructed in Greck learning, from which ours is derived. 13. Yet I should not wish this rule to be so superstitiously observed that he should for a long time speak or learn only Greek, as is

1 Leonidas was kinsman of Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great. He was instructor to the latter previous to the arrival of Aristotle, and was noted for his severity.

2 A native of Seleucia, Babylon, who flourished about 240-152 B.C. None of his books are extant.

Proper age for begin ning to learn.

the custom with most people; for hence arise many faults of pronunciation, which is viciously adapted to foreign sounds, and also of language, in which when Greek idioms have become inherent by constant usage, they keep their place most pertinaciously even when we speak a different tongue. 14. The study of Latin ought therefore to follow at no long interval, and soon after to keep pace with the Greek; and thus it will happen, that, when we have begun to attend to both tongues with equal care, neither will impede the other.

15. Some have thought that boys, as long as they are under seven years of age, should not be set to learn, because that is the earliest age that can understand what is taught, and endure the labour of learning. Of which opinion a great many writers say that Hesiod1 was, at least such writers as lived before Aristophanes 2 the grammarian, for he was the first to deny that the Hupothækai,3 in which this opinion is found, was the work of that poet. 16. But other writers likewise, among whom is Eratosthenes, have given the same advice. Those, however, advise better, who, like Chrysippus 5 think that no part of a child's life should be exempt from tuition; for Chrysippus, though he has allowed three years to the nurses, yet is of opinion that the minds of children may be imbued with excellent instruction even by them. 17. And why should not that age be under the influence of learning, which is now confessedly subject to moral influences? I am not indeed ignorant that, during the whole time of which I am speaking, scarcely as much can be done as one year may afterwards accomplish, yet those who are of

1 The earliest epic poet, Homer excepted, whose writings have come down He was born at Ascra in Boeotia, about the beginning of the eighth century B.C.

to us.

2 A native of Byzantium (about) 260-183 B.C. He has come down to us as one of the ablest grammarians and critics of antiquity.

8 Hupothekai (counsel), a poem now lost, but generally ascribed to Hesiod. 4 The keeper of the Alexandrian library in the time of Ptolemy Euergetes and the author of several works, which are all lost save a few fragments. (-222 B.C.)

See note p. 451.

the opinion which I have mentioned, appear with regard to this part of life to have spared not so much the learners as the teachers. 18. What else, after they are able to speak, will children do better, for they must do something? Or why should we despise the gain, how little soever it be, previous to the age of seven years? For certainly, small as may be the proficiency which an earlier age exhibits, the child will yet learn something greater during the very year in which he would have been learning something less. 19. This advancement extended through each year, is a profit on the whole; and whatever is gained in infancy is an acquisition to youth. The same rule should be prescribed as to the following years, so that what every boy has to learn, he may not be too late in beginning to learn. Let us not then lose even the earliest period of life, and so much the less, as the elements of learning depend on the memory alone, which not only exists in children, but is at that time of life even most tenacious.

methods of

20. Yet I am not so unacquainted with differences of Proper age, as to think that we should urge those of tender years early severely, or exact a full complement of work from them; instruction for it will be necessary, above all things, to take care lest the child should conceive a dislike to the application which he cannot yet love, and continue to dread the bitterness which he has once tasted, even beyond the years of infancy. Let his instruction be an amusement to him; let him be questioned, and praised; and let him never feel pleased that he does not know a thing; and sometimes, if he is unwilling to learn, let another be taught before him, of whom he may be envious. Let him strive for victory now and then, and generally suppose that he gains it; and let his powers be called forth by rewards, such as that age prizes.

21. We are giving small instructions, while professing to educate an orator; but even studies have their infancy; and as the rearing of the very strongest bodies commenced with milk and the cradle, so he, who was to be the most eloquent of men, once uttered cries, tried to speak at first with a stuttering voice, and hesitated at the shapes of the letters. Nor, if it is impossible to learn a thing completely, is it therefore unnecessary to learn it at all. 22. If no

Of learning the

alphabet,

one blames a father, who thinks that these matters are not to be neglected in regard to his son, why should he be blamed who communicates to the public what he would practise to advantage in his own house? And this is so much the more the case, as younger minds more easily take in small things; and as bodies cannot be formed to certain flexures of the limbs unless while they are tender, so even strength itself makes our minds likewise more unyielding to most things. 23. Would Philip, king of Macedonia, have wished the first principles of learning to be communicated to his son Alexander by Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of that age, or would Aristotle have undertaken that office, if they had not both thought that the first rudiments of instruction are best treated by the most accomplished teacher, and have an influence on the whole course? 24. Let us suppose, then, that Alexander were committed to me, and laid in my lap, an infant worthy of so much solicitude (though every man thinks his own son worthy of similar solicitude), should I be ashamed, even in teaching him his very letters, to point out some compendious methods of instruction?

For that at least, which I see practised in regard to most children, by no means pleases me, namely, that they learn the names and order of the letters before they learn their shapes. 25. This method hinders their recognition of them, as, while they follow their memory that takes the lead, they do not fix their attention on the forms of the letters. This is the reason why teachers, even when they appear to have fixed them sufficiently in the minds of children, in the straight order in which they are usually first written, make them go over them again the contrary way, and confuse them by variously changing the arrangement, until their pupils know them by their shape, not by their place. It will be best for children, therefore, to be taught the appearances and names of the letters at once, as they are taught those of men. 26. But that which is hurtful with regard to letters, will be no impediment with regard to syllables. I do not disapprove, however, the practice, which is well known, of giving children, for the sake of stimulating them to learn, ivory figures of letters to play with, or whatever else can be invented, in which that infan