[8]
As regards the boys in whose company our budding
orator is to be brought up, I would repeat what
I have said about nurses. As regards his paedagogi,1
I would urge that they should have had a thorough
education, or if they have not, that they should be
aware of the fact. There are none worse than
those, who as soon as they have progressed beyond
a knowledge of the alphabet delude themselves
into the belief that they are the possessors of real
knowledge. For they disdain to stoop to the
drudgery of teaching, and conceiving that they
have acquired a certain title to authority—a frequent
source of vanity in such persons—become imperious
or even brutal in instilling a thorough dose of their
[p. 25]
own folly.
1 There is no translation for paedagogus, the slave-tutor. “Tutor,” “guardian,” “governor,” and similar terms are all misleading. He had the general supervision of the boy, escorted him to school and elsewhere, and saw that lie did not get into mischief, but did not, as a rule, direct his studies.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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