A Roman school day was believed to begin before sunrise, and lasted until late afternoon. The fixed begining of a school year was the 24th of March.

In earlier times a boy's education would take place at home, his father teaching him to read, write, and to prepare him for war. Girls on the other hand were taught by their mothers to sew, weave and spin cloth.

In music history, the Roman School was a group of composers active in Rome from the mid-16th to the mid-17th centuries; the most famous was Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

The Roman education was divided into three stages:

First: Roughly between the ages of 7-11, children learned to read and write Latin - some also learned Greek.

Second: Ages 12-15 studied language and literature either at home with a personal tutor, a gifted slave, or (for boys only) in public with a grammaticus. Under the Empire, a primary position was given to Virgil's Aeneid.

The works that were studied allowed students to practice their reading aloud and to develop their ability to comment on grammar, figures of speech, and the writer's use of mythology.

Third: Around 16, rhetoric was studied in puclic lectures. There were two main types of rhetorical exercise:

    1)Suasoriae:  Developed boy's skills in constructing arguments
    2)Contouersiae:  Devised arguments for and against the accused

At Rome from the time of Julius Caesar onwards, there were privileges for teachers who were also Roman citizens. Emperor Vespasian (Emperor from 69-79 AD) founded two chairs for the teaching of Greek and Latin rhetoric; Quintilian was the first holder of the Latin chair. Outiside Rome, teachers of grammar and rhetoric were granted exemption from civic obligation - again by Vespasian.

The spread of Roman culture in the West was made possible by the teaching of a fairly standard curriculum to the sons of the local elites.