broken the law?"

To make these studies more interesting to the Roman boy, his
schoolmaster called in the aid of emulation. "I feel sure," says
Quintilian, "that the practice which I remember to have been employed by
my own teachers was any thing but useless. They were accustomed to
divide the boys into classes, and they set us to speak in the order of
our powers; every one taking his turn according to his proficiency. Our
performances were duly estimated; and prodigious were the struggles
which we had for victory. To be the head of one's class was considered
the most glorious thing conceivable. But the decision was not made once
for all. The next month brought the vanquished an opportunity of
renewing the contest. He who had been victorious in the first encounter
was not led by success to relax his efforts, and a feeling of vexation
impelled the vanquished to do away with the disgrace of defeat. This
practice, I am sure, supplied a keener stimulus to learning than did all
the exhortations of our teachers, the care of our tutors, and the wishes
of our parents." Nor did the schoolmaster trust to emulation alone. The
third choice of the famous Winchester line, "Either learn, or go: there
is yet another choice--to be flogged," was liberally employed. Horace
celebrates his old schoolmaster as a "man of many blows," and another
distinguished pupil of this teacher, the Busby or Keate of antiquity,
has specified the weapons which he employed, the ferule and the thong.
The thong is the familiar "tawse" of schools north of the Border. The
ferule was a name given both to the bamboo and to the yellow cane, which
grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago and in
Southern Italy, as notably at Cannae in Apulia, where it gave a name to
the scene of the great battle. The _virga_ was also used, a rod
commonly of birch, a tree the educational use of which had been already
discovered. The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice of Eton