§123. The Paedagogus.--The boy of good family was always attended by a trustworthy slave (_paedagogus_), who accompanied him to school, remained with him during the sessions, and saw him safely home again when school was out. If the boy had wealthy parents, he might have, besides, one or more slaves (_pedisequi_) to carry his satchel and tablets. The _paedagogus_ was usually an elderly man, selected for his good character and expected to keep the boy out of all harm, moral as well as physical. He was not a teacher, despite the meaning of the English derivative, except that after the learning of Greek became general a Greek slave was usually selected for the position in order that the boy might not forget what he had learned from his nurse (§101). The scope of his regular duties is clearly shown by the Latin words used sometimes instead of _paedagogus_: _comes_, _custos_, _monitor_, and _rector_. He was addressed by his ward as _dominus_, and seems to have had the right to compel obedience by mild punishments (Fig. 28). His duties ceased when the boy assumed the toga of manhood, but the same warm affection often continued between them as between the woman and her nurse (§101).
§124. Discipline.--The discipline seems to have been really Roman in its severity, if we may judge from the picture of a school above referred to (§120) and by the grim references to the rod and ferule in Juvenal and Martial. Horace has given to his teacher, Orbilius, a deathless fame by the adjective _plagosus_. From Nepos we learn that then as now teachers might have appealed to the natural emulation between well-bred boys, and we know that prizes, too, were offered. Perhaps we may think the ferule well deserved when we read of the schoolboy's trick immortalized by Persius. The passage (III, 44 f.) is worth quoting in full:
_Saepe oculos, memini, tangebam parvus olivo,_ _Grandia si nollem morituri verba Catonis_ _Discere et insano multum laudanda magistro!_[2]
[Footnote 2: "Often, I remember, as a small boy I used to give my eyes a touch with oil, if I did not want to learn Cato's grand dying speech, sure to be rapturously applauded by my wrong-headed master."]
§125. End of Childhood.--There was no special ceremony to mark the passing of girlhood into womanhood, but for the boy the attainment of his majority was marked by the laying aside of the crimson-bordered _toga praetexta_ and the putting on of the pure white _toga virilis_. There was no fixed year, corresponding to the twenty-first with us, in which the _puer_ became _iuvenis_; something depended upon the physical and intellectual development of the boy himself, something upon the will or caprice of his _pater familias_, more perhaps upon the time in which he lived. We may say generally, however, that the _toga virilis_ was assumed between the fourteenth and seventeenth years, the later age belonging to the earlier time when citizenship carried with it more responsibility than under the Empire and demanded a greater maturity.