Caecilius, a younger man, to whom Atticus the friend and correspondent
of Cicero gave his freedom, lectured on Virgil, with whom, as he was
intimate with one of Virgil's associates, he probably had some
acquaintance. A certain Flaccus had the credit of having first invented
prizes. He used to pit lads of equal age against each other, supplying
not only a subject on which to write, but a prize for the victor. This
was commonly some handsome or rare old book. Augustus made him tutor to
his grandsons, giving him a salary of eight hundred pounds per annum.
Twenty years later, a fashionable schoolmaster is said to have made
between three and four thousands.

These schoolmasters were also sometimes teachers of eloquence, lecturing
to men. One Gnipho, for instance, is mentioned among them, as having
held his classes in the house of Julius Caesar (Caesar was left an
orphan at fifteen); and afterwards, when his distinguished pupil was
grown up, in his own. But Cicero, when he was praetor, and at the very
height of his fame, is said to have attended his lectures. This was the
year in which he delivered the very finest of his non-political
speeches, his defence of Cluentius. He must have been a very clever
teacher from whom so great an orator hoped to learn something.

These teachers of eloquence were what we may call the "Professors" of
Rome. A lad had commonly "finished his education" when he put on the
"man's gown;" but if he thought of political life, of becoming a
statesman, and taking office in the commonwealth, he had much yet to
learn. He had to make himself a lawyer and an orator. Law he learned by
attaching himself, by becoming the pupil, as we should say, of some
great man that was famed for his knowledge. Cicero relates to us his own
experience: "My father introduced me to the Augur Scaevola; and the
result was that, as far as possible and permissible, I never left the