Epaphroditus chapter one

I was born in Greece, though I have no memory of my homeland. I once toured Greece with Nero, but was as much a foreigner as he. My mother came to Rome with her master, a doctor of note who soon built up a list of clients within the court of Tiberius. I have no knowledge of my father, either left behind in Greece or dead when I was still an infant. My mother herself passed away before I was mature enough to question his absence.

My earliest memory is of my schoolmaster. I am sure I had many happy years before I met with this scoundrel, but his memory blots them from my mind. Slaves do not necessarily have to attend school, but most masters see it as a benefit and mine was no exception. He took no personal interest in his household, merely signing me up with a public teacher for the usual pittance; so that, had it not been for my mother, I could have skipped school altogether and grown up in blissful ignorance.

Ah, but my mother! Such a woman! ‘An educated slave is a valuable slave,’ she used to tell me, ‘while a stable boy or kitchen cleaner is easily replaced.’ If a master paid a large sum for his slave, she would argue, then he would be more inclined to hang on to such a purchase for as long as possible. Long enough, she insisted, for the slave to prove so invaluable he would earn his freedom - or, at least, enough to buy it. Her arguments in favour of my education were many and varied - and much necessary, for I loathed school.

‘Go on, grow up a kitchen boy or a cattle-hand!’ she would shout, whenever she caught me feeding my tablet of Greek verbs to the obliging pet lizard belonging to Tiberius, ‘and when you are too old to work or break an arm and look for time off, you’ll find yourself in the slave market without a reserve! And who will buy you then, I ask? A gladiator trainer looking for more bait, that’s who! You’ll be thrown in with the wild dogs for a spot of afternoon sport in the amphitheatre - and all for want of a few Greek verbs which I could recite like that! And me no more than a scullery maid!’ But a Greek one, of course.

She used this argument so frequently that now I wonder if such a fate became of my father? Certainly, she had a very good point, although I didn’t appreciate it at the time. If you will permit me to digress for a brief moment, I must tell you while it is fresh in my mind that her words once inspired an edict of the Emperor Claudius. He ruled that any sick or infirm slaves abandoned by their master should be granted freedom. By that time I was a freedman, so the fears instilled in me by her warnings were groundless. But I rested less fitfully at night, knowing I had in some small way helped those less fortunate in their masters.

As to my schoolmaster, he was as villainous as all are wont to be. In later years I have seen a more liberal approach to education, thanks to the gods, but in my youth it was still very much a case of ‘spare the rod, spoil the child.’ And, being so reluctant a student, the rod could be spared very little against my knuckles, my back, by backside and even the back of my head. In fairness to Antiochus - for that was the name of my tormentor - he had a thankless task. The annual wage of a teacher is no more than the cost of a good pair of boots, so they have to supplement their incomes elsewhere. They are often tired and irritable, therefore, and the activities of a large collection of children - of varying ages and both sexes - is enough to send any man reaching for a sharp stick. Antiochus, alas, was wont to reach for his more frequently than most.

Since coming to the Palace, I have found that wealthy children escape the outdoor classrooms of their poorer cousins. That you are willing to throw away your coins on an old manuscript suggests to me that you are of the former category and know only a comfortable classroom in a room in your own house. Those who share their single-room dwelling with several other families are obviously not afforded such luxury. Like me, they know the miseries of outdoor education.

Each teacher would secure a spot under the awning of a shop, to afford his class some shelter from rain or sun. Nevertheless, it was bitterly cold in winter and stiflingly hot in summer. I cannot remember anything comfortable between those two degrees. There being very many classes and all too few awnings, competition for space was fierce. I can remember settling in one street where every shop-front played host to a class; and less fortunate classes spilled out onto the street, without benefit of awnings. The noise, as you are aware, was tremendous. No one can walk through Rome to this day without complaining of it. But at least you can walk hurriedly by. We had to sit amid the cacophony from dawn until noon, without break. Dawn till noon, seven days a week, with no respite save the annual eight-day break for the Festival of Minerva in March and the summer holidays.

And such noise! Antiochus shouting to be heard above the teachers either side; who, in turn, shouted all the louder to be heard by their own charges. We would naturally engage in our own conversations, conducted at equally high volumes, and would therefore incur even louder wrath for our lack of attention. There is a point where the human voice cannot strain any further; it is at this point that the stick takes over. With upwards of ten children to keep in check, Antiochus found it impossible to correct the miscreant, let alone pinpoint exactly who that might be. And so he let fly with his stick with alarming indiscrimination. But at least there was no real malice in him. I have heard shocking tales of truly evil abuse that do not bear repeating in polite company. Though I loathed Antiochus then, today I must admit to being grateful for my fortune in teachers.

Of course, it wasn’t only the noise of our class and those around us that so offended our ears. The shopkeepers themselves would sing out heartily of their day’s great bargain; the shoppers would haggle heatedly to obtain an even greater one. Pedestrians trudged endlessly by; horses clattered and whinnied; my head aches now with just the memory of it all. Little wonder that these earliest recollections are with me still.

It is only recently, in an edict by Domitian, that shopkeepers have been forbidden from allowing their wares to spill out into the street. Back then, we sat among the various pots and barrels of our host, and those pedestrians who could find no way through the maze of children and goods were forced out into the very road itself, earning abuse from the horsemen and litter-bearers forced to take sudden evasive action. We were slow to learn our letters and our numbers, but, my!, how we could curse!

All children learn their letters at home and can recite the alphabet long before meeting their first teacher. Yet still the teachers persist in the tedious exercise of reciting letters. Antiochus was no exception. I would have been a more willing student had I not found the experience so utterly boring. A year passed in the learning of the alphabet and the recognition of words and the structure of sentences before we were allowed to pick up a reed pen and attempt to form the letters ourselves. Even then, we were not taught as you might be now, with simple curves and shapes to follow until we had mastered the use of the pen. Oh no! We had to begin with the very letters themselves – full sentences, in fact - Antiochus standing over us and physically guiding our hand himself. How often he clutched my fingers and forced me to trace the outline of a letter placed before me. How I ever grew to love writing is a mystery to me.

Latin was the first language, of course, and I had to be taught Greek just like everyone else. Antiochus believed me to be at a cultural advantage and was particularly hard on me. If the rod taught me anything at all, it was to be cunning and deceitful and to contrive ways of avoiding it at all costs. ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’ I think should be an instruction not a warning.

Mathematics was another torture. We progressed from our fingers to the abacus and spent unbroken hours counting to hundreds and adding to thousands. Oh, the monotony! But why complain of monotony in that subject alone? Not for us the teaching of philosophy or grammar or rhetoric. That was for better souls than us, who sat before private tutors in their own home. Our limited education was restricted to reading, writing and arithmetic, and we had our entire childhood in which to master these three simple disciplines. Hour after hour, day after day, always the same.

‘I would rather be a farm-hand!’ I told my mother rather foolishly at regular intervals. Her response was to beat me about the room and remind me of the fate of such miserable low-lifes. But she was, on the whole, far more gentle than the brute Antiochus.