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LITERARY EVIDENCE FOR THE PRESENCE OF PLAY IN ANCIENT SCHOOLS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2020

Christian Laes
Christian Laes*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester (UK)
*
christian.laes@manchester.ac.uk
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Extract

This paper deals with an apparently straightforward question: the degree to which ancient educators thought it necessary to introduce a playful element into the programmes of schools, and the way in which such ideas were put into practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 801 - 814
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

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Footnotes

This publication took shape during a Visiting Professorship at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) by a grant of the Fonds National Suisse, program Scientific Exchange. I am very grateful to Véronique Dasen and the wonderful team of her ERC Advanced Grant project “Locus Ludi: The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity” for a most inspiring research environment. This paper was presented at the conferences “Jeu et apprentissage” (University of Fribourg, 26–27 October 2017) and “Play and Games in Antiquity: Definition, Transmission, Reception” (Swiss Museum of Games, La-Tour-de-Peilz, 17–19 September 2018). I thank the participants for several valuable suggestions, which induced me to rethink or nuance some of my statements. Special thanks go to the anonymous referees of CQ, who improved my text in more than one way. Many thanks also go to Mark Golden (Winnipeg University), who kindly corrected my English text. All translations are from the Loeb Classical Library, unless indicated otherwise.

References

1 As the most important general surveys or handbooks on ancient education and schools, I mention: Marrou, H.I., Histoire de l’éducation dans l'antiquité, 2 vols. (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar; Bonner, S., Education in Ancient Rome (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Morgan, T., Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; Cribiore, R., Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton and Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bloomer, M.W. (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education (Malden, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A playful attitude to adult life and culture was not unknown to the ancient writers. See Herter, H., ‘Das Leben ein Kinderspiel’, BJ 161 (1961), 73–84Google Scholar; Mitsis, P., ‘Life as play, life as a play. Montaigne and the Epicureans’, in Heyworth, S.J., Fowler, P.G., Harrison, S.J. (edd.), Classical Constructions. Papers in Memory of Don Fowler, Classicist and Epicurean (Oxford, 2007), 18–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Play and recreation in schools are treated only briefly in surveys as Becchi, E., Julia, D. (edd.), Storia dell' infanzia, vol. II. Dal Settecento a oggi (Rome, 1996)Google Scholar. Only Manson, M., Jouets de toujours (Paris, 2001)Google Scholar has paid considerable attention to subjects such as the importance of toys and play in the pedagogical projects of Comenius and John Locke (at 137–54), or to ‘puppets to learn Latin’ in the early eighteenth-century project by de Vallange (at 198–203).

3 Lucian, Ver. hist. 1 claims that students, after reading serious work, need to relax their minds, but he is obviously speaking about older students, versed in literature (τοῖς περὶ τοὺς λόγους ἐσπουδακόσιν).

4 Laes, C. and Strubbe, J., Youth in the Roman Empire. The Young and the Restless Years? (Cambridge, 2014), 86–7 and 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar have dealt with playful variations and even possible resistance by youths in controuersiae and suasoriae. See also Vesley, M.E., ‘Father-son relations in Roman declamation’, AHB 17 (2003), 159–80Google Scholar. Up to Late Antiquity and in early medieval schoolbooks, one finds attempts to enliven school practice by literary jokes. See e.g. Alberto, P. Farmhouse, ‘La scuola in versi: gli inventori degli alfabeti nella poesia scolastica della Spagna visigotica’, in Cristante, L., Mazzoli, T. (edd.), Il calamo della memoria, vol. V. Riusi di testi e mestiere letterario nella tarda antichità (Trieste, 2013), 267–84Google Scholar.

5 Joyal, M., McDougall, I., Yardley, J., Greek and Roman Education: A Sourcebook (London and New York), 179–83Google Scholar (early education with a schoolmaster away from home); 134–40 and 183–5 (notion of a public school). See also Bonner (n. 1), 115 and Cribiore (n. 1), 21–34 on education in the house of the teacher, or at least on a spot rented by him. The fact is also attested in the late antique Colloquia. See Dickey, E., The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2012–15), 2.229CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Coll. Celtis 45a: ἔχω ἐπανελθεῖν εἰς οἶκον τοῦ διδασκάλου / habeo reuerti ad domum magistri.

6 See Vössing, K., ‘Staat und Schule in der Spätantike’, AncSoc 32 (2002), 243–62Google Scholar, with implications for the whole of Graeco-Roman antiquity.

7 Sivan, H., Jewish Childhood in the Roman World (Cambridge, 2018), 211–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar stresses that in synagogue education too children were made to realize that learning involved not pleasure but pain.

8 Even renowned classicists have confessed to a slight form of amazement when it comes to this double meaning. Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 2009²), 1082–3Google Scholar mentions ‘une évolution remarquable’. For ludus, Ernout, A., Meillet, A., André, J., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris, 1979 4), 368Google Scholar point to ‘une litote ou une antiphrase comparable à celle du grec σχολή’. The double meaning seems to be quite unique for Latin and Greek. See Nuti, A., “Ludus” e “iocus”. Percorsi di lucidità nella lingua latina (Rome, 1998)Google Scholar; Nuti, A., ‘Sui termini indicanti “gioco” e “giocare” nelle lingue indoeuropee. Una panoramica’, in Lambrugo, C., Torre, C. (edd.), Il gioco e i giochi nel mondo antico. Tra cultura materiale e immateriale (Bari, 2013), 2–11Google Scholar.

9 See Wolff, C., L'éducation dans le monde romain (Paris, 2015), 196–7Google Scholar. On σχολή, see Cribiore (n. 1), 20. On ludus, see Bonner (n. 1), 57 and Corbeill, P., ‘Education in the Roman Republic: creating traditions’, in Too, Y.L. (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Leiden, 2001), 261–87, at 277CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The Etymologicum Magnum and Hesychius simply note the double meaning of non-activity and activity, and the former refers to the Attic usage: <σχολή>· οὐ μόνον τὸ μηδὲν δρᾶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ περί τι σχολάζειν (Hesychius, Lex. s.v., 3049.1 Schmidt); <σχολή>: Ἀττικοί· οὐ μόνον δὲ τὸ μηδὲν δρᾶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ περί τι σχολάζειν (Etym. Magn. 741.26 Gaisford).

11 Ps.-Asc. Div. in Caec. 199.19: omnem … scholam ludum dixere Romani, et magistri ludi dicuntur qui primas litteras docent. Grammarians: Suet. Gram. et rhet. 4.10 Kaster and Jer. In Hab. 3:14–16 line 1010. Rhetoricians: Suet. Gram. et rhet. 28.1 and 25 Kaster; Cic. Orat. 47. Note, however, that none of the Colloquia used ludus, while the word schola is currently in the texts of the colloquies. See Dickey (n. 5), 2.57.

12 Bonner (n. 1), 56 mentions how this derivation was still used by Sir Walter Scott, in the context of a schoolmaster.

13 Quint. Inst. 1.6.34 (from which Stilo's fragment stems). Another reference to Aelius Stilo in Festus, De sign. verb. 109 Lindsay.

14 Jouët-Pastré, E., Le jeu et le sérieux dans les Lois de Platon (Sankt-Augustin, 2006)Google Scholar; Russon, J., ‘Education in Plato's “Laws”’, in Recco, G.W., Sanday, E. (edd.), Plato's “Laws”: Force and Truth in Politics (Bloomington, 2013), 60–74Google Scholar; Kidd, S.E., ‘Play in Aristotle’, CPh 111 (2016), 353–71Google Scholar (at 363 on the distinctive element)—all these works include a considerable amount of earlier bibliography.

15 Golden, M., Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore, 2015 2), 54–6Google Scholar. Key texts on the functional approach are Pl. Leg. 793e–794a and Arist. Pol. 1336a29–34.

16 Pl. Leg. 643b–d, in which it is said that it is the task of ‘the educator’ to provide such ‘initial toys’. See also Ar. Nub. 878–81 on making clay houses and carving boats by a young child.

17 Spontaneous and natural character of play and dance: Leg. 653d–e, 664e–665a, 671c, 672a–d, 673c–d. Harmony: Leg. 653e–654a. Importance of rules in games: Resp. 424e–425a; Leg. 797a–798c. Discipline and rigidly enforced bodily codes: Leg. 656d–e, 791c–792b, 793e (comparison with a slave), 808d–e (beating and comparison with animals and slaves). See particularly 667d–e, where play is defined as something that ‘does not do any harm or any benefit worthy of serious consideration’.

18 Play as useful medicine: Arist. Pol. 1337b35–1338a1. Also useful for slaves: Eth. Nic. 1177a6–11. Contrast with day-workers: Pol. 1341a28–32; see Kidd (n. 14), 362–3.

19 Kidd (n. 14), 356–8 confronts the Aristotelian view as expressed in Eth. Nic. 1177b4 with the mentality of playfulness as reflected in archaic Greek poetry and in Pl. Leg. 803d–e.

20 The absence of schools was also noted by Russon (n. 14), 67–9. See recent observations by Grahn-Wilder, M., ‘Roots of character and flowers of virtues: a philosophy of childhood in Plato's Republic’, in Aasgaard, R., Horn, C., Cojocaru, O. (edd.), Childhood in History. Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (London and New York, 2018), 19–36Google Scholar and Fossheim, H.J., ‘Aristotle on children and childhood’, in Aasgaard, R., Horn, C., Cojocaru, O. (edd.), Childhood in History. Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (London and New York, 2018), 37–55Google Scholar. For a striking example of observation of the importance of play for small children, see Dasen, V., ‘Le hochet d'Archytas: un jouet pour grandir’, in Dasen, V. and Gaillard-Seux, P. (edd.), Accueil et soin de l’enfant (Antiquité, Moyen âge), ABPO 124 (2017), 89–107Google Scholar.

21 Pl. Leg. 794c mentions initial formal and separate (girl-boy) instruction from age 6 on; Leg. 809e–810a seems to refer to a school system, with a discussion of the stages of the life course (10–13 years: study of language; 13–16 years: higher education including music and gymnastics), while Arist. Pol. 1336b36–1337a7 mentions ‘primary school’ from age 7 to age 14. See Laes, C., Children in the Roman Empire. Outsiders Within (Cambridge, 2011), 85Google Scholar; Fossheim (n. 20), 51–2.

22 Pl. Resp. 536e–537a.

23 Bloomer, W.M., ‘Quintilian on the child as a learning subject’, CW 105 (2011), 109–37, at 110Google Scholar. See also id., ‘Quintilian on education’, in id. (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education (Malden, 2015), 347–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., ‘Roman conceptions of childhood. The modes of family commemoration and academic prescription’, in Aasgaard, R., Horn, C., Cojocaru, O. (edd.), Childhood in History. Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (London and New York, 2018), 57–76Google Scholar. Less sophisticated, but useful to an extent, is Nieuwenhuizen, M. van, Brand, N., Claassen, J.-M., ‘Child psychology in the ancient world: Quintilian and Augustine on Kindergarten education (Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 1.1–3, 1.11–12 and 2.1.3 and Augustine Confessiones 1)’, Akroterion 39 (1994), 12–26Google Scholar.

24 Quintilian's approach differs from another first-century treatise on education, De liberis educandis by Ps.-Plutarch. See Bloomer, W.M., ‘The technology of child production: eugenics and eulogics in the “De liberis educandis”’, Arethusa 39 (2006), 71–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Given the fact that so much ancient literature has been lost, it remains difficult to know whether Quintilian was the first to take this stance. A fragment of Varro's Logistoricus, Catus De liberis educandis, points very much in the same direction of groups of pupils: et ut in grege opilio oues minus idoneas remouere solet, quas reiculas appellant: saepe enim unus puer petulans atque impurus inquinat gregem puerorum (fr. 29 ed. Riese). Müller, R., Varro's Logistoricus über Kindererziehung (Leipzig, 1938), 52–3Google Scholar links this fragment with Quint. Inst. 1.2 on the preference for groups above private instruction.

26 Varro, Logistoricus fr. 22 Riese: remotissimum ad discendum formido ac nimius timor et omnis perturbatio animi; contra delectatio protelat ad discendum. Müller (n. 25), 58–60 understands this fragment as a rejection of corporal punishment.

27 An obvious allusion to Lucr. 4.11–13: ac ueluti pueris absinthia taetra timentes. For this popular topos, see Bloomer (n. 23 [2011]), 125 and Ronnick, M.V., ‘“Honey sweet cups” in Lucretius, Jerome and Alan of Lille: Anticlaudianus 7.442f.’, Scholia 10 (2001), 92–3Google Scholar. The roots of the proverb on the bitter root of education go back to Isocrates. See Aphth. Prog. 4 Rabe. See also Hor. Sat. 1.1.24–7: percurram: quamquam ridentem dicere uerum | quid uetat? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi | doctores, elementa uelint ut discere prima: | sed tamen amoto quaeramus seria ludo.

28 Bloomer (n. 23 [2011]), 125–6.

29 Competition is also suggested in Varro, Logistoricus fr. 23 Riese: non solum qui primus in alterutra re praestet alios, sed etiam qui secundus et tertius. Müller (n. 25), 67 refers to Quint. Inst. 1.2.23–4.

30 See also Inst. 1.2.23–4 on competition in the classroom and places in class being assigned according to the quality of rhetorical performance. The winner of the month was crowned. The use of the words praeceptor and puer again point to younger children.

31 Bloomer (n. 23 [2011]), 125–6; van Nieuwenhuizen, Brand, Claassen (n. 23), 24.

32 Bloomer (n. 23 [2011]), 126 on Inst. 1.10.39 mentioning riddles or pseudographiai popular with children (quibus pueri ludere solebamus). For pseudographiai, see Stob. Flor. 1.41 (p. 283 Wachsmuth). See also Plut. Quaest. conv. 673F, who states that children like stories better that involved riddles, and games that offer some complication or difficulty.

33 Cic. De or. 3.220 is a locus classicus on the topic. Again, music (singing and dance) as an educational tool seems to have been much valued by Varro, Logistoricus fr. 25 Riese: omnes enim qui locuntur habere debent quosdam melos, and fr. 26: melos alterum in cantibus est bipertitum, unum quod est in assa uoce, alterum quod uocant organicon. See Müller (n. 25), 43 and 55 for a connection with the teaching of music.

34 To the best of my knowledge, only August. Conf. 1.14.23 contrasted his spontaneous and playful language learning of Latin with the dull and harsh experience of learning Greek at school.

35 See Johnson, W.A., ‘Learning to read and write’, in Bloomer, W.M. (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education (Malden, 2015), 137–48, at 144–5Google Scholar.

36 Hor. Ars P. 180–2 (general ‘visual’ principle, not applied to children); Manilius 2.755–6 (showing letter forms to children). However, Quint. Inst. 1.1.24–5 makes clear that not all teachers sticked to this visual principle.

37 Pl. Prt. 326d; Quint. Inst. 1.1.27 and 10.2.2; Sen. Ep. 64.51; Columella, Rust. 10.251–2. The method also appears on wax tablets and papyri, with tracing of letters lightly sketched by teachers. See Johnson (n. 35), 137–8.

38 In the previous sentence Quintilian had approved of the drill of learning by heart all possible syllable combinations without seeing the forms of all these syllables.

39 SHA Geta 5.7–8 on banquets, in which slaves served dishes in alphabetical order.

40 Jer. Ep. 107.4. See Katz, P.B., ‘Educating Paula: a proposed curriculum for raising a 4th-century Christian infant’, in Cohen, A. and Rutter, J.B. (edd.), Constructions of Childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy (Princeton, 2007), 115–27Google Scholar.

41 Philostr. V S 558. See Pomeroy, S.B., The Murder of Regilla. A Case of Domestic Violence in Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2007), 48–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Problems in learning to read and write are also mentioned by August. Ep. 166.6.17. Here, we find no suggestion of accommodating the learning difficulty with playful means. See Laes, C., ‘Learning from silence. Disabled children in Roman antiquity’, Arctos 42 (2008), 85–122, at 111Google Scholar.

43 Johnson (n. 35), 139, referring to Ath. Deipn. 10.453c–e. See especially 453d–e.

44 Cribiore (n. 1), 165.

45 Strangely enough, the fragment is not discussed by Sidoli, N., ‘Mathematics education’, in Bloomer, W.M. (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education (Malden, 2015), 387–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Egyptian children are mentioned because of the Egyptian science and knowledge of land mensuration.

46 Cic. Leg. 2.23.59: discebamus enim pueri XII ut carmen necessarium, quas iam nemo discit.

47 August. Conf. 1.13.22: uel potius ista oderam, illa amabam. iam uero unum et unum duo, duo et duo quattuor, odiosa cantio mihi erat.

48 On the combination fabulam decantare, with reference to schools and/or schoolchildren, see Sen. Ep. 24.6; Gell. NA praef. 15 and Macrob. Sat. 5.2.6. It probably refers to monotonous reciting, which could have been enhanced by a sort of rhythm. SHA Aurel. 6.4–6 mentions children (pueri) chanting military songs and dancing because of the emperor's slaying of victims.

49 cirrati pueri (‘curly-haired boys’) are by no means a dishonourable audience of slave pages, who would have been described as pueri capillati (‘long-haired boys’). See Vössing, K., ‘Why Roman pupils lacked a long vacation’, in Laes, C. and Vuolanto, V. (edd.), Children and Every Day Life in the Roman and Late Antique World (London and New York, 2017), 155–65, especially 159Google Scholar, against the assumption of Booth, A.D., ‘Persius’ cirrati and the schooling of slaves’, Emerita 53 (1985), 309–14 (on Pers. Sat. 1.29–30)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 SHA Alb. 11.8 describes Milesian tales presumably written by the emperor Clodius Albinus as mediocriter scriptae.

51 Golden (n. 15), 54–6 mentions a cup which depicts the mimetic action of three boys playing school: one, who sits and holds a rod, is the teacher. He refers to Chaga children, who parody their (white) teacher's obsession with time by placing a large sand clock in front of their make-believe school.

52 Champlin, E., ‘The Testament of the Piglet’, Phoenix 41 (1987), 174–83, at 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar suggests that for the unknown author ‘the most likely candidate is a humbler scholar, an anonymous schoolmaster of genius’. He surely was familiar with law, Latin of the uneducated, the Christian Bible and semi-barbarous soldiery. Aubert, J.-J., ‘“Du lard ou du cochon”? The Testamentum Porcelli as a Jewish anti-Christian pamphlet’, in Aubert, J.-J. and Varhelyi, Z. (edd.), A Tall Order. Writing the Social History of the Ancient World. Essays in Honor of William V. Harris (Munich, 2005), 107–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar believes that the author was a Jew who made up an anti-Christian pamphlet.

53 van Nieuwenhuizen, Brand, Claassen (n. 23), 24 try to read this in August. Conf. 1.9.5, but such a reading cannot be justified. The history of recreation time in school is an interesting chapter which still has to be written. Manson (n. 2), 54–6 on the ‘entrée discrète’ of play and games during recreation time, as witnessed from the colloquia scholastica from the sixteenth century on.

54 E.g. Coll. Mon.-Einsid. 10h–j (bath complex, wrestling and playing ball): Dickey (n. 5), 1.174; Coll. Harl. 8a–b (play at home): Dickey (n. 5), 2.57.

55 Livy 5.27.

56 Cic. De or. 2.5.21. I owe this reference to Michiel Meeusen (King's College, London).

57 Dickey (n. 5), 1.147–8, 1.167, 1.172 on lunch scenes; 2.124, 2.161 and 2.227–30. See e.g. Coll. Harl. 8a–g: pupil at noon was not at home, teacher has heard everything from the educator/paedagogus. In two cases, the pupil explicitly mentions that he has to return to the teacher: Coll. Leid. Steph. 7b–8c (Dickey [n. 5], 2.210–13) and Coll. Celtis 45a (Dickey [n. 5], 2.227–30).

58 Dickey (n. 5), 2.148.

59 Laes (n. 21), 122–31 on the audience and the profile of the ludimagister. On teachers of sports, music, archery and javelin, and even an hoplomachus, on an inscription from Teos from 200 b.c.e., see Marrou (n. 1), 172–3, 220–1.

60 Reading in darkness with artificial light was more difficult from a practical point of view. On studying at night, see Coll. Celtis 70e–f and Dickey (n. 5), 2.248–9.

61 Neils, J. and Oakley, J.H. (edd.), Coming of Age in Ancient Greece. Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (Hanover and New Haven, 2003), 249Google Scholar on the iconographical evidence. Literary mentions of the pedagogue helping with school work in Plaut. Bacch. 422–48 (Lydus is called both paedagogus and magister); August. Serm. 62.18 (pedagogue keeps children away from playing with mud and presents them with their textbooks). See Laes (n. 21), 113–22.

62 Lib. Or. 58.9. See Laes (n. 21), 121.

63 Beck, F., Album of Greek Education: the Greeks at School and at Play (Sidney, 1975)Google Scholar lists over 600 mainly Attic vases. The chapters on education do not show any playing children (at 14–37), while the chapter on games does not have a single depiction of schools. The same counts for the rich collection by Neils and Oakley (n. 61), which also includes statuettes and other art objects. For the Roman world, the many depictions of playing children do not ever pertain to the educational context of schools. See Huskinson, J., Roman Children Sarcophagi (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Mander, J., Portraits of Children on Roman Funerary Monuments (Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar. See particularly the remarkable late antique mosaics of Antioch: fifteen individual mosaic panels depict various scenes of the school life of a boy, but no playing is involved. See Marinescu, C.A., Cox, S.E., Wachter, R., ‘Paideia's children: childhood education on a group of late antique mosaics’, in Cohen, A. and Rutter, J.B. (edd.), Constructions of Childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy (Princeton, 2007), 101–14Google Scholar.

64 Vössing (n. 49) has convincingly denied the reading of Mart. Epigr. 10.62 as reference to a prolonged summer vacation.

65 SHA Aurel. 8.4, a letter of the emperor Valerian about his son Gallienus who was by nature inclined to playful activity (ut est natura pronus ad ludicra).

66 Vössing (n. 49), 158, referring to Varro, Sat. Men. fr. 279 = 278 Cèbe (7.1220 = Marcipor fr. X): utri magis sunt pueri? hi pusilli nigri qui exspectant nundinas ut magister dimittat lusum? and August. Serm. 62.18 (to the paedagogus, there is no time for play, and study prevails).

67 Note that Augustine (see n. 47 above) seems to be somehow sensible to the reaction of the children. See also August. Conf. 1.9.15 on the opposition between play and study in childhood years. Recently, Aasgaard, R., ‘Childhood in 400 c.e. Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine on children and their formation’, in Aasgaard, R., Horn, C., Cojocaru, O. (edd.), Childhood in History. Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (London and New York, 2018), 157–73Google Scholar has suggested that Augustine was open to childhood being a period of play. Again, the negative assessment by Augustine of his own years at school is evidence to the absence of playfulness in schools (van Nieuwenhuizen, Brand, Claassen [n. 23], 24: ‘play enhances communication, provides a change of activity, counteracting the usual loss of concentration which comes after a period of extensive study. Augustine knew this, but his masters apparently did not’).

68 Suet. Ner. 22 on the young Nero: ‘Once when he was lamenting with his fellow pupils the fate of a charioteer of the “Greens”, who was dragged by his horses, and his preceptor scolded him, he told a lie and pretended that he was talking of Hector’ (transl. Rolfe). In the tenth-century Anonymi Professoris Epistulae 69, a teacher complains about his students who prefer play and amusement to lessons: ‘Children like to pay attention to games, rather than to lessons, since they take into account the relaxed and the joyful aspect of the former and the laborious of the latter’; my translation.

69 Petron. Sat. 4: nunc pueri in scholis ludunt. See Néraudau, J.-P., Être enfant à Rome (Paris, 1984), 103Google Scholar; Cotrozzi, A., ‘I capitoli della scuola nel Satyricon’, in Bellandi, F., Ferri, R. (edd.), Aspetti della scuola nel mondo Romano. Atti del Convegno (Pisa, 5–6 dicembre 2006) (Amsterdam, 2008), 29–48Google Scholar.

70 From the extensive literature, I only mention Shumka, L.J., ‘Toys and games’, in Bloomer, W.M. (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education (Malden, 2015), 452–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dolansky, F., ‘Roman girls and boys at play: realities and representations’, in Laes, C. and Vuolanto, V. (edd.), Children and Every Day Life in the Roman and Late Antique World (London and New York, 2017), 116–36Google Scholar; Dasen, V. (ed.), Veni, vidi, ludique. Le jeu de la vie (Nyon, 2014)Google Scholar; Dasen, V., Schädler, U. (edd.), Jeux et multiculturalité dans l'Antiquité. Games and Multiculturality in Antiquity (Rennes, 2018)Google Scholar.

71 Quint. Inst. 1.2.12.

72 Laes and Strubbe (n. 4), 228–32 stress the factor ‘free time’ for the study of Roman youth culture.