In this volume Robin Barrow traces ancient education from the time of Homeric poems to the age of St. Augustine. Without minimising differences between educational practice of particular periods or places, the author stresses similarities and common origins and relates ancient ideas on education tour own. He uses the evidence of a wide range of ancient authors who are extensively quoted.

Modern western education finds its origins in the practices, systems and schools of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It is in the field of education, in fact, that classical antiquity has exerted one of its clearest influences on the modern world. Yet the story of Greek and Roman education, extending from the eighth century B.C. into the Middle Ages, is familiar in its details only to relatively few specialists. Containing nearly 300 translated texts and documents, Greek and Roman Education: A Sourcebook is the first book to provide readers with a large, diverse and representative sample of the primary evidence for ancient Greek and Roman education. A special feature of this Sourcebook is the inclusion not only of the fundamental texts for the study of the subject, but also unfamiliar sources that are of great interest but are not easily accessible, including inscriptions on stone and Greek papyri from Egypt. Introductions to each chapter and to each selection provide the guidance which readers need to set the historical periods, themes and topics into meaningful contexts. Fully illustrated and including extensive suggestions for further reading, together with an index of passages explored, students will have no further need for any other sourcebook on Greek and Roman education.

This volume examines the idea of ancient education in a series of essays which span the archaic period to late antiquity. It calls into question the idea that education in antiquity is a disinterested process, arguing that teaching and learning were activities that occurred in the context of society. Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity brings together the scholarship of fourteen classicists who from their distinctive perspectives pluralize our understanding of what it meant to teach and learn in antiquity. These scholars together show that ancient education was a process of socialization that occurred through a variety of discourses and activities including poetry, rhetoric, law, philosophy, art and religion.

This book is at once a thorough study of the educational system for the Greeks of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and a window to the vast panorama of educational practices in the Greco-Roman world. It describes how people learned, taught, and practiced literate skills, how schools functioned, and what the curriculum comprised. Raffaella Cribiore draws on over 400 papyri, ostraca (sherds of pottery or slices of limestone), and tablets that feature everything from exercises involving letters of the alphabet through rhetorical compositions that represented the work of advanced students. The exceptional wealth of surviving source material renders Egypt an ideal space of reference. The book makes excursions beyond Egypt as well, particularly in the Greek East, by examining the letters of the Antiochene Libanius that are concerned with education. The first part explores the conditions for teaching and learning, and the roles of teachers, parents, and students in education; the second vividly describes the progression from elementary to advanced education. Cribiore examines not only school exercises but also books and commentaries employed in education--an uncharted area of research. This allows the most comprehensive evaluation thus far of the three main stages of a liberal education, from the elementary teacher to the grammarian to the rhetorician. Also addressed, in unprecedented detail, are female education and the role of families in education. Gymnastics of the Mind will be an indispensable resource to students and scholars of the ancient world and of the history of education.

This 1905 book was intended to provide an introduction to the history of the ancient Roman system of education. It begins from a purely national stage, considering the basis of education in the early Roman Republic, before tracing the historical influence of the flood of Greek culture which poured into Rome.

Provides lessons and activities on the history, literature, music, geography, and art of the ancient Romans and Greeks.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.