Schoolteachers in the Roman world were a well-defined professional group. They were in charge of the first stages of education. In Latin they were called grammatici and rhetores, each designating a particular stage of education. Another term, praeceptores, referred to both groups, and probably held a vocational rather than scholarly connotation.Footnote ¹ The first two terms are transliterations of Greek terms. The praeceptor, though a Latin term, followed a curriculum, which self-consciously found its origin in the Hellenized East.Footnote ² Schoolteachers flourished during the High Empire.Footnote ³ In fact, from the reign of Vespasian onwards they enjoyed immunity from liturgies. An inscription from Pergamum contains information about an edict of Vespasian that gave certain privileges to grammatici and sophists, in addition to physicians: κελεύω μήτε ἐπισταθμεύεσθαι [αὐτοὺς μήτε εἰ] φορὰς ἀπαιτεῖσθαι ἐν μηδενὶ τρόπωι (‘I order that they will be not liable to have persons quartering with them or that they will be imposed with property tax in any fashion’).Footnote ⁴ This inscription corresponds to Dig. 50.4.18.30, except for the inclusion of philosophers amongst those upon whom Vespasian bestowed privileges.Footnote ⁵ It seems that Vespasian was the first to grant immunity for the whole class of teachers. A later inscription from Ephesus, which can be dated to the reign of Trajan, documents some of the financial privileges of grammarians and sophists, alongside physicians.Footnote ⁶ Knibbe, in his edition of the reconstructed text, argued that this rescript recalls an earlier senatus consultum or an edict of the triumvirs from the years 42–39 BCE.Footnote ⁷ In addition, their popularity soon became so widespread that Antoninus Pius was forced to restrict the application of immunities for schoolteachers, by setting a quota on the number of teachers each city was allowed to award such immunity.Footnote ⁸ However, the decision as to which teacher merited immunity was left to the cities themselves. This chapter aims to clarify the motives behind this policy, from both imperial and civic perspectives.

The Roman state offered no definition of schoolteachers or a method for evaluating their merits. The Roman legislator assigned civic institutions the right to choose their own schoolteachers, according to each city’s particular requirements and needs. The choice of teachers was not merely a choice of curriculum. It was a choice of a set of skills necessary for the city’s youth.Footnote ⁹ In order to explore the involvement of provincial cities in the administration of school teaching, this chapter will look into the identity of the teachers and what this reveals about the cities’ motives in granting them such expensive privileges. The form of the chapter follows the path paved by historians of health care during the High Roman Empire who examined the modus operandi of selecting public physicians. Such an analysis entails collecting relevant evidence concerning the identity of the practitioners and the information their communities left regarding their elections. Much like schoolteachers, immunity was also bestowed upon city-elected doctors, who also bore the title ‘public’.Footnote ¹⁰ These public physicians are mentioned in more than sixty papyri and were the recipients of an even larger number of honorary monuments. However, virtually no evidence of this kind exists when it comes to grammarians.

I wish to offer an explanation for this seeming discrepancy. Initially, I will sketch the history of school teaching in the Roman world, its origin, raison d’être, and typical personnel. This inquiry will be pertinent not because it necessarily depicts provincial teachers during the High Empire but because it portrays the image of schoolteachers that the Roman jurists must have had when bestowing privileges upon them. I will then proceed to examine the legal mechanism set by Rome for administrating professional activity in the provinces and try to uncover the grid of interests that guided this policy. Next, I will assume the point of view of the cities themselves who chose which schoolteachers to look after their children and consequently to receive privileges. Finally, I will ask whether schoolteachers fit into the rubric of intellectuals or artisans.

School Teaching in the Roman World: Origin, Raison d’être, and Personnel

According to Suetonius, grammar as a discipline and as a vocation was introduced into Rome by Livius Andronicus and by Q. Ennius who were teaching both at home and in public (domi forisque). Moreover, initially the teaching of grammar was restricted to the explanation of Greek authors and to the public reading of the Latin poems they themselves composed.Footnote ¹¹ The prosopography and history of Rome’s first praeceptores suggests that the discipline of grammatica was likely to have emerged out of professional practice. Suetonius himself had noted that Lucius Aelius, Rome’s first native grammaticus, had a double cognomen. The first cognomen was Praeconius because his father was a praeco.Footnote ¹² Kaster reasonably infers that the elder Aelius must have been a praeco publicus in Rome.Footnote ¹³ This position entailed assisting a magistrate as a herald and auctioneer with responsibilities to summon the assemblies of both the senate and the people for the purpose of the sale of state property and the letting of state contracts.Footnote ¹⁴ The vocational background of Aelius, who composed speeches for the like of Quintus Metellus, Quintus Caepio, and Quintus Pompeius Rufus, is interesting. Like all apparitores, the praecones received wages (merces).Footnote ¹⁵ Hence, for the purpose of self-promotion, this vocational cognomen must have been emphasized by Aelius himself, in his practice as a teacher, if Suetonius knew about it and deemed it worthy to mention. Aelius’ other cognomen was Stilo because he was in the habit of writing beautiful orations for whoever needed one.Footnote ¹⁶ On the evidence of Cicero’s Brutus 169, 205–7, it can be inferred that Aelius was a distinguished speechwriter but was not delivering his orations himself. Other protagonists of Suetonius’ DGR all share two distinctive attributes: a humble background and an aspirational character.

In addition, the growth of the Roman economy and the development of its legal system necessitated literacy, which, in turn, required professionals who would teach it. William Harris reasonably infers from Varro’s recommendation that the overseer of slaves (who was a slave himself) should be literate and that there was a growing demand for literacy, which was accommodated by professional schooling rather than home teaching.Footnote ¹⁷ Likewise, Cicero confirms that stipulations like laws and wills were done in writing.Footnote ¹⁸ Together with loans and debts, which must have been recorded in writing, these comments of Cicero and Varro exemplify how significant literacy, and the ability to acquire it, was in managing large households and in conducting business transactions. Under such conditions ‘a pervasive system of schools is a prerequisite for mass literacy’.Footnote ¹⁹  It is quite possible that lower-class children and even slaves were taught in schools to read and write.Footnote ²⁰ While children of an upper-class background received their initial training at home or from a tutor, members of the lower classes must have attended schools, thus making teachers a necessity.Footnote ²¹ This hypothesis is further supported by the comment of Suetonius that between the first century BCE and the time of the composition of De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus there were at times more than twenty grammar schools in Rome operating simultaneously: Posthac magis ac magis et gratia et cura artis increvit, ut ne clarissimi quidem viri abstinuerint quo minus et ipsi aliquid de ea scriberent, utque temporibus quibusdam super viginti celebres scholae fuisse in urbe tradantur.Footnote ²² This claim is reaffirmed by epigraphic evidence from cities throughout Italy, which attests to the activity of schools.Footnote ²³

With the decline of the Republic and the foundation of the Principate, literacy became a necessity for the imperial government, as can be attested by the emergence of positions such as ab epistulis, and, more generally, ‘the attraction to the immediate service of the emperor of men whose qualifications were essentially intellectual, literary or scholastic’.Footnote ²⁴ These men attended to the various aspects of governing the empire, both from the Roman side and from the side of local communities.

Legal Mechanism of Administering Professional Activity in Provincial Cities during the High Empire

In sharp contrast to its Republican precedent, the Principate showed great interest in professional activity. Grammarians, alongside other professional groups, were encouraged by the Roman state to practice their trade in the cities of the Roman Empire. A series of imperial acts of legislation granted grammarians, alongside teachers of rhetoric and doctors, an exemption from tutelage, curatorship, and various other civic duties. Thus, Modestinus wrote in his treatise on exemptions from tutelage: ‘Grammarians, teachers of rhetoric and doctors who are known as general practitioners are exempt from tutelage and curatorship just as from other public duties’.Footnote ²⁵ However, we understand from the Code of Justinian (10.53.1) that exemptions to professors and physicians were applicable only to those who served the community and were chosen and nominated by its formal institutions. Even more explicitly, Emperor Gordian instructed that ‘it is not unknown that grammarians or orators who have been approved by a decree of the decurions, if they should not show themselves to be useful to students, can be rejected again by the same council’.Footnote ²⁶ Hence, the imperial government saw the raison d’être of these immunities to be practical rather than appreciation of cultural values. The practical aspect of these immunities is emphasized by the explicit exclusion of poets from its recipients.Footnote ²⁷ In fact, it was necessary soon after these immunities were initially introduced for Pius to issue an edict restricting the number of such exemptions each city could issue. According to Modestinus, the cities were not at liberty to extend this number: ‘[F]urther, there are in every city a fixed number who are exempt from public duties, the selection of which is limited by law. This appears from a letter of Antoninus Pius written to the province of Asia, but of universal application.’Footnote ²⁸ They were, however, allowed to reduce it ‘since this will result in a benefit to the public service’. This exemption from public duties could only be enjoyed by a person whom the city council chose, and as long as he was diligent in his work. By so doing, the Roman legislator circumvented any requirement for a licensing system, as the cities themselves acted as barriers against unskilled professionals and charlatans.

It is noteworthy that the Roman legislator understood grammarians and teachers of rhetoric to be a distinct group, separate from teachers of law. Hence the Roman legislator was aiming exclusively at schoolteachers. In fact, provincial law teachers were explicitly prohibited from being exempted, except for those who taught in Rome.Footnote ²⁹ The importance of school teachers to the Roman imperial government is reaffirmed by Ulpian, who emphasized that it is the governor of the province who should settle law suits concerning salaries of teachers of various descriptions, alongside physicians, but not teachers of civil law.Footnote ³⁰ The inclusion of this category of disputes under the jurisdiction of the governor confirms the significance Rome attributed to their work. Though Ulpian is silent as to how Rome perceived the value of the teachers’ work, it might be possible to infer it by noticing the other groups of professionals who were included in the same category as school teachers and had their disputes settled by the Roman governor. Alongside teachers we find masters of elementary schools who are not teachers (Ludi quoque litterarii magistris licet non sint professors), as well as archivists, shorthand writers and accountants or ledger-keepers (iam et librariis et notariis et calculatoribus sive tabulariis).Footnote ³¹ More generally, the governor should restrict his jurisdiction to professions involving writing or shorthand. Fergus Millar concluded that ‘nothing could show more clearly that the values which informed this system of exemptions were not based on practical considerations of service to the state, but on the prestige within contemporary culture of the various branches of learning’.Footnote ³² I would like to suggest an additional interpretation: that special care is given to those who train future bureaucrats, without whom the imperial government as well as local administration could not operate.

The Cities’ Point of View

It is clear from the work of Philostratus that sophists expected these privileges to be met. Thus, on his appointment as high priest, Favorinus demanded immunity from liturgies to which he was entitled as a philosopher.Footnote ³³ A more vivid portrayal is that of Aelius Aristides, who was ordered at the winter of 153 CE by the Roman governor Severus either to take students or forgo his immunities. Though Aristides succeeded in maintaining his status (and perhaps not without taking students), this demand of Severus indicates that the Roman government had practical (rather than cultural) motives when bestowing immunities from liturgies.Footnote ³⁴ Cities must have found the presence of schoolteachers to be attractive. Otherwise there would not have been a need to limit the number of exemptions the cities themselves could have willingly bestowed upon them. Furthermore, as was made explicit by the fourth-century emperor Julian, the imperial government sanctioned local administrative authorities to measure the skills of teachers and professors (magistros studiorum doctoresque) who merited immunities.Footnote ³⁵ Yet an attempted prosopography of those who practiced it is somewhat baffling. Grammatici and rhetores seldom appear in inscriptions. When they do, it is almost exclusively a funerary inscription, where the epitaphs grammaticus and rhetor allude to professional identity. Unlike their equivalent ἀρχιατρόι and δημοσίοι ἰατρόι, the grammatici and rhetores appear with no official title.Footnote ³⁶ The grammatici were not the beneficiaries of honorary monuments. For example, an inscription from the city of Rome was erected in memory of a beloved daughter by her grammaticus father.Footnote ³⁷ A similar inscription, this one from Aquitania, recorded the life of a deceased doctor of the artes grammatices, whose love for his vocation appears on his tombstone: ‘Here lies Blaesianus Biturix, a doctor of the art of language and a teacher of decorum, a constant lover of the Muses, subdued forever by the hands of sleep’.Footnote ³⁸ Similar inscriptions were found in Belgica;Footnote ³⁹ Hispania citerior;Footnote ⁴⁰ Dalmatia;Footnote ⁴¹ Baetica;Footnote ⁴² and Mauretania Caesariensis.Footnote ⁴³ It is therefore clear that this profession and this form of epitaph existed all over the Latin West (I set aside discussion of the Greek East, where a distinction has to be drawn between praeceptores and sophists, as well as other aspects of Greek culture, which existed independently of Rome). In addition to these eight there are five Latin inscriptions recording a rhetor from Rome, Hispania citerior, Venetia et Histria (Regio X), Germania inferior, and Dalmatia.Footnote ⁴⁴ These too were all funerary and privately erected.

The humble picture of the grammatici and rhetores, which emerges from the Latin inscriptions, is consistent with the one drawn by Suetonius in his history of these professions in the Roman world. According to Suetonius, teachers of rhetoric initially arrived from the Greek world and were characterized by their humble, and often foreign, origin.Footnote ⁴⁵ Furthermore, they were artisans teaching for fees.Footnote ⁴⁶ In fact, the discipline of grammatica likely emerged out of professional practice. The protagonists of Suetonius are often associated with the apparitores of the Roman magistrates in terms of skills and abilities. Scribes (scribae), messengers (viatores), lictors (lictores), and heralds (praecones) all needed an adequate level of literacy.

The Provincial Praeceptor: Between an Intellectual and an Artisan

Immunities and a widespread demand for education made school teaching a lucrative profession. In fact, Domitian had to issue a severe warning against praeceptores and physicians who trained slaves:

It is assumed that slave owners who had their slaves trained in medicine and schoolteaching did so because these professions were gainful. These schoolteachers and physicians were artisans, not intellectuals engrossed in artes liberales. However, while a prosopography of the medical profession shows that some physicians habitually were part of the educated upper tier of provincial cities, and a study of the role of physicians who were given immunities indicates that their responsibilities extended beyond offering health care into the realm of forensic medicine, a study of schoolteachers indicates no such thing.Footnote ⁴⁸ Of course, these schoolteachers must be discerned from the protagonists of Philostratus and other so-called sophists who were intellectuals of the highest repute, took part in municipal, provincial and even imperial government, and were recipients of great honours due to their benefactions to their cities. These individuals who were extensively studied were not schoolteachers.

A single papyrus recording a grammarian’s complaint and dated to the middle of the third century CE sheds light on the role of those appointed schoolteachers, on the motives of the city in appointing them, and their motives in wishing to be elected. The papyrus deals with an appeal of Lollianus, a public grammarian (δημόσιος γραμματικὀς) of Oxyrhynchus. Lollianus was appointed to this position by the city’s Boule and expected to receive the customary salary. In reality, Lollianus was rarely paid, and when he was, the wages took the form of commodities rather than money. Lollianus further complained that his duties were all-consuming, allowing him no additional work which would sustain him. It was, therefore, his request that he receive a city-owned orchard within the city walls.

While Lollianus’ title is elsewhere unattested, it could not have been unique.Footnote ⁴⁹ As Lollianus himself mentioned, this was the title of grammarians who were bestowed with immunities from the city’s Boule: οἱ θεοὶ πρόγονοι ὑμῶν κατὰ μέγεθος τῶν πόλεων καὶ ποσότητα δημοσίων γραμματι[ῶ]ν. The decree of the emperor’s deified forefathers further instructed that the cities that selected public grammarians should give them wages: προστάξαντες καὶ συντάξεις αὐτοῖς δίδοσθαι. Moreover, Lollianus explained why Vespasian set this position and why wages should be paid. The grammaticus should dedicate all his time to educating the city’s children: ἡ περὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἐπιμέλεια. According to Lollianus this salary was habitually paid (τὴν σύνταξιν τ(ὴν) εἰωθυῖαν). This demand of Lollianus, which calls to mind a similar petition of a public physician in a Roman court at Alexandria a century earlier, relies on Roman legislation concerning immunities for these professionals. A physician by the name of Psasnis requested in 141 CE that the court restore his immunities, which were currently disregarded by the city of Oxyrhynchus, although he was an acting public physician: ἰατρὸς ὑπάρχων τὴ[ν τέ]χνην τούτους αὐτοὺς οἵτινές με εἰς λειτο[υ]ρ[γ]ίαν / δεδώκασι ἐθεράπευσα (I am a physician by skill and I cured these very men who assigned me to liturgy).Footnote ⁵⁰ The ruling of the Roman court, presided over by Eudaimon, was that his immunity should be honoured, if indeed he is a public physician, which means one of those selected by the city’s boule and within the quota of permitted immune physicians by Pius’ rescript: δῖδαξον τ[ὸν στρα-] / τηγόν, εἰ ἰατρὸς εἶ δημοσ[ιε]ύων ἐπιτη[δειως] / καὶ ἕξεις τὴν ἀλειτουργησιαν (the Strategos answered, if you are a public physician you shall get immunity).Footnote ⁵¹ These petitions relied on the dual mechanism of Roman legislation and municipal administration, which means that Psasnis and Lollianus did not request that the Roman court recognize him as a public physician and a public grammarian. The status of δημόσιος was the ground of both petitions, and a proof for the common use of this title and institution.

Some Preliminary Conclusions

Schoolteachers like Lollianus were expected to educate the city’s young, an all-consuming task and humbly recompensed. The willingness of the Roman government to exempt teachers who practiced in provincial cities from munera or λειτουργία, which was reciprocated by cities themselves, requires an explanation. An appreciation of certain cultural institutions could have accounted for this act. However, the fact that other agents of this same culture, such as poets, musicians, or sculptors, were not the beneficiary of such privileges, and the complete absence of schoolteachers from all honorary monuments, work against this hypothesis. A second explanation, one which is based on interest rather than good will, might prove more convincing. Civic, municipal, and imperial government, as well as local businesses and the legal system required widespread literacy. Schoolteachers, like their counterpart physicians, offered an indispensable service to the cities. Like physicians, schoolteachers in residence were needed in the cities. Like physicians, schoolteachers gained a privileged place in their unlicensed professional community due to their election to a civic post. Like physicians, schoolteachers offered a service, which the cities recognized as indispensable. However, unlike physicians, schoolteachers remained anonymous throughout the period of the High Empire. They failed to break the glass ceiling for artisans. Unlike the sophists of either Peter Brunt’s Bubble of the Second Sophistic or those of Glen Bowersock’s Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire, Lollianus was not a scholar who also had students. He was a teacher by trade. By escaping the anonymity of his colleagues he merely emphasized the reality of his vocation: an artisan, whose inglorious skill, like that of the archivist, the shorthand writer, the accountant or the ledger-keeper, was much required throughout the cities of the High Roman Empire. Cities endowed schoolteachers with privileges because they needed to pay for their practical skills, not as a token of appreciation for the culture they represented.