1. This has been provoked by Harris, W. V., Ancient Literacy (Harvard, 1989)Google Scholar. For a variety of responses see Humphrey, J. H. (ed.), Literacy in the Roman World (Ann Arbor, 1991)Google Scholar.

2. See for example the defence of the Sandinista regime of Nicaragua and the condemnation of its predecessor in terms of their literacy programmes, Nicaragua: Development under Fire (Oxfam America, 1984)Google Scholar.

3. Cicero, , De Rep. 4.3Google Scholar. Unfortunately the passage is fragmentary so we do not possess Cicero's defence of this point of view.

4. Gellius, Aulus, N.A. 19.9.2Google Scholar: ‘Antonius Julianus rhetor docendis publice iuvenibus magister.’

5. Pliny, , Ep. 4.13Google Scholar. However it might be argued that it is not clear whether ‘public’ here is being used in the sense of ‘state-financed’. Although ‘publicus’ normally means ‘of the state’, the details of Pliny's letter could suggest that the concept of ‘public’ education under discussion here is rather different If his own scheme is the same as those where teachers are hired ‘publice’ there seems to be no implication that state monies were involved. Instead there is a simple arrangement whereby various parents clubbed together to share the costs of hiring a teacher, in this case with additional help from a euergetes, Pliny. If this is the case, Julianus may have been a ‘private’-sector teacher in modern terms, or to use the term in its British sense a ‘public school’ teacher.

6. For the duties of a grammalicus see Cicero, , De oratore 1.187Google Scholar; Seneca, , Ep. 88.3Google Scholar; Quintilian, Inst. Or. 1.4,1.8–9.

7. The stone was originally recorded by Govantes, A. C., Diccionario Geografico-Historico de Espana por la Real Academia de la Historia. Section II comprende la Rioja o toda la Provincia de Logrono y algunos pueblos de la de Burgos (1846), p. 225Google Scholar. For various interpretations of Govantes's transcription see CIL 2.2892, ILER 5714, Elorza, J. C. et al. , Inscriptions romanas en La Rioja (1980), n°. 48Google Scholar, Ruiz, U. Espinosa, Epigrafia romana de la Rioja (1986), n°. 25Google Scholar.

8. For Vespasian's grant see Pliny, , N.H. 3.30Google Scholar. The town's enrolment in the Quirine tribe supports such a supposition, though Ruiz, U. Espinosa and Rodriguez, A. Perez, ‘Tritium Magallum, de ciudad peregrina a municipio romano’, A.e.A. 55 (1982), 65–87Google Scholar, would prefer a Claudian grant without insisting upon it. Such a grant cannot be ruled out, but it must be said that there is no positive evidence in its favour. Despite a surprising number of comments to the contrary, nothing can be deduced from the town's description as a res publica, save that it was an independent judicial entity.

9. Crespo, L Sagredo-Santos, ‘La Esenañza en la Hispania romana’, Hispania Antigua 5 (1975), 121–34Google Scholar.

10. Juvenal, , Satires 15.111–12Google Scholar.

11. Plutarch, , Sertorius 14Google Scholar.

12. Griffin, M., Seneca, a philosopher in politics (Oxford, 1976), p. 32Google Scholar.

13. Suetonius, , Vespasian 18Google Scholar.

14. FIRA 1.73 – McCrum, M. and Woodhead, A. G., Documents of the Flavian Emperors (1961), n°. 458Google Scholar. For a senatusconsultum giving tax exemptions to teachers at Ephesus from the triumviral period see IGSK xvii.4101. It has been argued that this provision was empire-wide, Bringmann, K. ‘Edikt der Triumviren oder Senatsbeschluss? Zu einem Neufund aus Ephesos’, Epigraphical Anatolica 2 (1983), 47–76Google Scholar.

15. Lex lmitana ch. 95.

16. At least in the form we have it now which is a redraft of a Caesarian document.

17. For the Lex Vipasca, see Domergue, C., La mine antique d'Aljustrel (Portugal) et les tables de bronze de Vipasca (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar.

18. See Healy, J. F., Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman World (London, 1978), pp. 133–8Google Scholar.

19. See n. 14 above. The provision may have been made necessary to avoid the argument that as the area came under direct imperial administration provisions made elsewhere would be invalid here.

20. S.H.A., Antoninus Pius 11.

21. Digest (Ulpian) 50.9.4.2. Honoré believes the work cited here, De officiis curatoris rei publicae, was composed in A.D. 215: Honoré, A., Ulpian (Oxford, 1975), pp. 177–9Google Scholar.

22. P. Oxy. 3366.

23. Ch. 79.

24. Pliny, , Ep. 4.13Google Scholar: ‘ne hoc munus meum (i.e. the sponsoring of the schoolmaster) quandoque ambitu corrumperetur, ut accidere multis in locis video in quibus praeceptores publice conducuntur.’

25. Gellius, Aulus, N.A. 16.6Google Scholar. Gellius calls the man quispiam linguae Latinae litterator. He is said to have been ‘a Brundisinis accersitus’ and then ‘experiundum sese vulgo dabat’.

26. Bonner, S. F., Education in Ancient Rome (London, 1977), ch. 12Google Scholar.

27. See the provisions of Cod.Iust. 10.52.3 (poets), 10.52.4 (mathematicians).

28. Digest (Modestinus) 27.1.6.7 and Cod.Iust. 10.42.6.

29. Cod.Iust. 10.54.7, ‘Magistros studiorum doctoresque excellere oportet moribus primum, deinde facundia…quisquis docere vult non repente nee temere prosiliat ad hoc munus sed iudicio ordinis probatus decretum curialium mereatur, optimorum conspirante consensu’; cf. Cod Theod. 13.3.6. Such privileges could also be revoked; see Cod.Iust. 10.52.2: ‘Grammaticos seu oratores decreto ordinis probatus si non se utiles studentibus praebent denuo ab eodem ordine reprobari posse incognitum non est.’

30. Pliny, , Ep. 3.3Google Scholar. See Juvenal, , Satires 10.224, 295 f.Google Scholar, for dark hints as to why this was necessary.

31. Digest 27.1.6.2 (Modestinus) – three grades of town are listed: the largest are allowed 10 doctors, 5 ‘sophists’, and 5 ‘grammarians’, the smallest 5 doctors, 3 ‘sophists’, and 3 ‘grammarians’. Modestinus himself is not sure what the criterion for the sizes of towns is, but plausibly suggests that the largest are provincial capitals, the intermediate judicial conventus capitals, and the smallest all other towns. Much modern literature, including Bonner, op. cit., p. 158, takes the view that these exemptions only applied to state-appointed teachers. There is no evidence that this was the case. It is easy to see how a private teacher with the right connections would have been able to acquire the necessary vote of approbation from the ordo.

32. Digest 27.1.6.9 (Modestinus).

33. Digest 27.1.6.10 (Paulus), τοὐς μ⋯ντοι ἄγαν ⋯πιστ⋯μονας Cf. Cod.Theod. 10.52.8, where this group is described as ‘a probatissimis approbati’, but there is no explanation of how this is to be achieved.

34. CIL 2.354.

35. Wiegels, R., Die Ttibusinschriften des römischen Hispanien (Berlin, 1985), pp. 75–6Google Scholar.

36. CIL 2.112.

37. See the discussion in d'Encarnaco, J., Inscriçoes romanas do Conventus Pacensis (Coimbra, 1984), n°. 382Google Scholar.

38. Suetonius, , De Gramm. 23Google Scholar.

39. Athenaeus 15.666a, εἰ μ⋯ ἰατρο⋯ ἦσαν, οὐδ⋯ν ἄν ἦν τ⋯ν γραμματικ⋯ν μωρ⋯τερον.

40. Digest (Ulpian) 50.9.4.2: ‘ob liberalem artem… ob medicinam ob has enim artes causas licet constitui salarium.’

41. Epistles, 1.19,1.20.

42. Juvenal, , Satires 7.240–1Google Scholar with the discussion by Bonner, , op. cit., pp. 151ffGoogle Scholar.

43. E.E. VII pp. 388ff.

44. Seneca, , Ep. 80.7Google Scholar.

45. Ch. 62.

46. Juvenal, , Satires 7.228–9Google Scholar: ‘Rara tamen merces, quae cognitione tribuni non egeat’

47. See StAugustine, , Confessions 5.12Google Scholar.

48. Espinosa, U., ‘Das gehalteines Grammaticus im Westlichen Teil des römischen Reiches’, ZPE 68 (1987), 241–6Google Scholar.

49. See Speidel, M. S., ‘Roman Army Pay Scales’, JRS 82 (1992), 87–106Google Scholar.

50. See Gomez, T. Garabito, Los alfares romanos riojanos (Madrid, 1978)Google Scholar, Juan, M. E. Solovera San, Estudios sobre la historia economica de la Rioja romana (Logrono, 1987)Google Scholar. For a brief account in English, see Keay, S., Roman Spain (London, 1988), pp. 107fGoogle Scholar.

51. CIL 2.4227, dated to A.D. 161 by Alföldy, G., Die römischen Inschriften von Tarraco (Berlin, 1975), n°. 291Google Scholar.

52. He is described as ‘decuriali adlecto Italicam’. For an alternative view see Gage, J., ‘Italica Adlectio’, REA 71 (1969), 65–84Google Scholar.

53. Lloris, F. Beltran, Epigrafia Latina de Saguntumy su Territorium (Valencia, 1980), n°. 282/Lam. LXXVI pp. 229–30Google Scholar.

54. This is certainly found in both Tarragona, and Sagunto, , Lloris, M. Beltran, Ceramica romana (Zaragoza, 1978) map 8, p. 111Google Scholar.

55. Petronius, , Satyricon 46Google Scholar.

56. Horace, , Serm. 1.6.72–5Google Scholar.

57. See for example Martial, 5.56,9.73.

58. See Bonner, , op. cit., ch. 10, ‘The Problem of Accommodation’, esp. p. 117Google Scholar.

59. Bonner, , ‘The Street Teacher: an educational scene in Horace’, AJP 93 (1972), 509–28Google Scholar.

60. Suetonius, , De Gramm. 7 on Antonius GriphoGoogle Scholar.

61. See Jackson, R., Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire (London, 1988), p. 65Google Scholar. Our only evidence that this occasionally happened is Pliny, , N.H. 29.6.12–13Google Scholar.

62. Pliny, , Ep. 1.8Google Scholar.

63. See also Quintilian, , Inst. 1.1.8Google Scholar.

64. Gemma Ecclesiastica 35.

65. For Cicero, , De Off. 1.151Google Scholar, teaching was a semi-respectable profession, but one best avoided by the homo liberalis.