The Role of Education in the Latinization of the Roman West

Abstract

Abstract In the western regions conquered by Rome, members of the elite ensured that their children learned Latin through careful education given either at home, or by a grammarian and then a rhetorician. The question of the role of education in the Latinization of the West is much more uncertain when it comes to the rest of the population. It seems that education played a less important role for lower-status groups than for the elite. Epigraphic sources indicate that a certain number of them could read and/or write more or less well in Latin, though this does not necessarily mean that their everyday language was Latin. They could acquire this Latin literacy at school, or at home, or, more or less formally, ‘on the job’, as needed. Education at school could have promoted the Latinization of provincial students, but its effect may have been limited, since these children mostly learned only the rudiments. Our evidence is patchy, but it seems likely that access to, and levels of, education among provincials differed across the provinces.