is truly classical down to its details.

As to the advantage of the practice opinions were divided. One
enthusiastic advocate goes so far as to say that the Greek word for a
cane signifies by derivation, "the sharpener of the young" (_narthex,
nearous thegein_), but the best authorities were against it. Seneca is
indignant with the savage who will "butcher" a young learner because he
hesitates at a word--a venial fault indeed, one would think, when we
remember what must have been the aspect of a Roman book, written as it
was in capitals, almost without stops, and with little or no distinction
between the words. And Quintilian is equally decided, though he allows
that flogging was an "institution."

As to holidays the practice of the Roman schools probably resembled that
which prevails in the Scotch Universities, though with a less
magnificent length of vacation. Every one had a holiday on the "days of
Saturn" (a festival beginning on the seventeenth of December), and the
schoolboys had one of their own on the "days of Minerva," which fell in
the latter half of March; but the "long vacation" was in the summer.
Horace speaks of lads carrying their fees to school on the fifteenth of
the month for eight months in the year (if this interpretation of a
doubtful passage is correct). Perhaps as this was a country school the
holidays were made longer than usual, to let the scholars take their
part in the harvest, which as including the vintage would not be over
till somewhat late in the autumn. We find Martial, however, imploring a
schoolmaster to remember that the heat of July was not favorable to
learning, and suggesting that he should abdicate his seat till the
fifteenth of October brought a season more convenient for study. Rome
indeed was probably deserted in the later summer and autumn by the
wealthier class, who were doubtless disposed to agree in the poet's