Roman Schools Research Articles

The social impact of distance learning in Roman schools: "Success," social innovation, teaching practices.

Faced with the national emergency linked to the spread of COVID-19 in Italy, digital technologies have made it possible to carry out the ordinary activities of the various educational agencies through the main tool of Distance Learning (DaD). The intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the guarantee of accessibility represent an enabling prerogative for current education systems, enriching training in a variety of ways and opportunities which must be accessible to all. ICTs take on a propulsive function for change in schools because they make it possible to affect the school setting, to transform the learning environment by redesigning space, reorganizing time, modifying communication and socialization processes, encouraging, in students, the development of key competencies in digital literacy and media education. Considering the context of a school transformed and renewed by the teaching and training potential of ICT, it becomes central to reconstruct the requests and needs developed by the practitioners of educational policies to cope with the reorganization of teaching methods and times at the time of DaD. Starting from these premises, the paper focuses attention on the social impact (Stern, 2016) of DaD to evaluate: the extent and intensity of the methodological-didactic innovation required of teachers for the organization and conducting remote lessons; the increase-in students-of transversal and digital literacy skills (team working, problem solving, etc.) potentially associated with the use of ICTs; the involvement and collaboration of families in the process of assessing and verifying learning. The reflection is part of a broader research project by the University of Sapienza University of Rome entitled "The social impact assessment of DaD after COVID-19"; a 3 year evaluation research addressed to a typological sample of upper secondary schools in Rome classified on the basis of the Infrastructure and Equipment indicator of the Rav and the social effect of the school (school effect) on the academic performance of students in the tests Invalsi. The evaluation aimed to identify-from the DaD experience-indications useful in re-designing the school's intervention strategy in the phases following the pandemic; for this reason it adopted an analysis perspective that valorized the positive and most successful aspects in the testimonies of the teachers and students involved in the first phase of the research (conducted in May-June 2021). Within the framework of the Positive Thinking Evaluation, the empirical evidence-collected through the administration/conduction of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, online ethnographic observation of the lessons in DaD-will allow us to reflect on some dimensions of success and of particular social innovation for the teachers' teaching practices and the students' learning processes in DaD. In the Positive Thinking Evaluation, success is a positive effect (not just a "good practice"), even an unexpected one, of an activity that has produced a positive change in the context of program implementation.

The Convict’s Gibbet and the Victor’s Car: The Triumphal Death of Marcus Atilius Regulus and the Background of Col 2:15

AbstractThis article will suggest that scholars have overlooked a model plausibly lurking in the background of Col 2:15 which parallels the triumphal death of Christ: namely, the crucifixion of Regulus. Regulus was a general who achieved a near-mythic status during the First Punic War by his sacrificial death, in which his perseverance on the gibbet was seen as even greater than riding in the victor’s car. Tertullian credited Regulus as having set the precedent for enduring the torments of the cross, while others declared him as having overcome through death not only his human foes but also Lady Fortune. Regulus’ story enjoyed so much widespread popularity it was admitted in the curriculum of Roman schools by the middle of the first century CE. Because Regulus’ epic contains low-hanging fruit, ripe for comparison with Christ’s crucifixion, Christians drew upon the story of Regulus from at least as early as Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Augustine. Nevertheless, scholars have overlooked the possible parallels with Regulus’ story and Christ’s triumphal death in Col 2:15. I will first provide a composite depiction of Regulus’ military life and sacrificial death along with its reported ramifications in order to tease out similarities and differences with Col 2:15 and finally conclude with comments concerning the significance of including the legend as additional background for the verse. In short, I will propose that reading Regulus’ story in comparison with Col 2:15 supports an anti-imperial and/or a supra-imperial reading of the letter.

Glass-blowing Production Models in Museum Expositions

Glassware in the territory of Ukraine is very old, and it reaches the limits of the 4-3rdmillennium BC, samples of glass beads from Usatovo and Yamna burials in particular. They should have been of mixed Egyptian-Mesopotamian origin and were a by-product of metallurgy (it was due to the interaction with copper that these glassware acquired the blue-greenish colour). The real glassware in Ukraine appears in Scythian-Antique times. In Middle Ages and in Modern Age it was already a professional production. Therefore, the lack of representation of glass-blowing industry in museum expositions is surprising, as well as the lack of modelling of the glass production process. Thus, the purpose of this article is to develop the foundations of relevant scientifically sound reconstructions and create options for graphic reproduction of glass-blowing workshops.To create a glass furnace model, one must first choose the age of furnace to be reconstructed and modelled (the text of the article provides several regional and chronological examples). For the most ancient periods, two main schools of glassmaking considered: Middle Eastern and Egyptian; Syrian, Roman capital and provincial Roman schools – for the Roman age. Medieval schools were: Byzantine, Western European, Old Rus, and Central Asian. The earlier was the school, the less indications of it we have.It is reasonable to make a partial section of the furnace model in order to show its internal structure. It seems necessary to make a stand representing 3-D printed copies of glassblowing tools next to the layout. Accompanying the text layout is necessary as well, which should reveal the features of the glass-blowing craft. It makes sense to place glass technology information, its technical characteristics, and features of the main schools of glassmaking for increased attractiveness. It also makes sense to display the needed ways of processing hot glass and whirling it on the glassblowing pipe on the stand.Manuscript received 12.03.2020

Global Models of Criminalistics and Forensic Science

The paper looks at the world’s systems and models of criminalistics and forensic science. Comparison of the conceptual foundations and technological subsystems of forensic knowledge of the Austro-German, Roman and Anglo-Saxon schools (the concept of «Forensic Science») reveals an important pattern in the development of criminalistics and forensic science in Russia. The indicated vectors and prospects for further evolution of national criminalistics and forensic science point to a clear trend towards differentiation of specialized knowledge by branches, objects, methods and levels of investigation. The strengths and weaknesses of the western and Russian systems of forensic knowledge are demonstrated. Conclusions and recommendations are put forward regarding the modernization of both the structure and the theoretical and methodological framework of criminalistics and forensic science in Russia.

Electrocardiographic characteristics, anthropometric features, and cardiovascular risk factors in a large cohort of adolescents.

AimsThe characteristics of electrocardiographic (ECG) patterns in the general population of adolescents are insufficiently defined. The purpose of this study is to report ECG patterns and their association with anthropometric characteristics.Methods and resultsTwenty-four thousand and sixty-two students of Roman schools, aged 12–19, were screened with ECG and physical examinations. Electrocardiographic abnormalities were classified as either minor/non-clinically relevant or major, and anthropometric measures were evaluated per age class. Obesity prevalence was 20.9%, with a higher rate in younger students (P < 0.008 for all comparisons, except for the pair 16–17 vs. 18–19 years). Stage 1 hypertension was found in 3.14% of adolescents, Stage 2 hypertension in 0.45% of adolescents, and isolated systolic hypertension in 11.7% of adolescents. Heart rate and QT interval corrected for heart rate (QTc) decreased with increasing age. The QTc was longer in females than in males over 14 years. A higher rate of incomplete right bundle branch block (RBBB) was observed in underweight students (21.58% vs. 15.10% in non-underweight students, P < 0.0001). Complete RBBB was the most common major ECG abnormality (1.6%). It was associated with height irrespective of age, sex, and body mass index (odds ratio 17.9; 95% confidence interval 5.0–64.6) and more frequent in students regularly practicing physical activity (1.80% vs. 1.02%, P = 0.0009).ConclusionHeart rate and QTc decreased with increasing age. The QTc was longer in females than in males over 14 years. RBBB was the most common major abnormality and was associated with higher stature. The prevalence of some cardiovascular risk factors in adolescents is provided.

TEACHING LANGUAGE THROUGH VIRGIL IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Romanmagistriandgrammaticitaught their students a wide range of subjects, primarily through the medium of Latin and Greek literary texts. A well-educated Roman in the Imperial era was expected to have a good knowledge of the literary language of Cicero and Virgil, as well as a competent command of Greek. By the late fourth and early fifth centuries, this knowledge had to be taught actively, as everyday Latin usage had changed during the intervening four centuries. After the reign of Theodosius the division between the Eastern and the Western Empires meant that knowledge of Greek was no longer as common as it had once been in the West. At the same time, by Late Antiquity, migration increased and foreigners as well as provincials moved within the empire, for example, in search of military promotion. There is evidence that recruitment to official or public careers was based less on birth than on education. These ambitious newcomers sent their children to Roman schools, which would facilitate their access to public office. Receipt of this education provided a means by which men from less privileged backgrounds could achieve promotion to such office and become prominent and influential individuals. At the same time a late Roman education also produced a high level of cultural homogeneity among those who had experienced it. So what might we learn about how language was taught—and what kinds of language were valued—in a late-antique Roman school? How might this contribute to our understanding of late-antique Roman elite society?

Educación y renovación pedagógica en la antigua Roma /Education and pedagogical renewal in ancient Rome

In this paper we show how were the Roman schools and the different stages of the Roman educational system, analyzing teachers, students, curriculum and methodologies. The book written by Marco Fabio Quintiliano, De Institutione Oratoria, reveals the existence of committed teachers to improve the teaching and learning process. In this sense, we can say that several of the pedagogical and curriculum proposals of ancient Rome are similar in their formative approaches with some current proposals.

Theodahad: a Platonic king at the collapse of Ostrogothic Italy

Preface Introduction: * i. Towards a biography of Theodahad* ii. Theodahad between Procopius of Caesarea and Cassiodorus Chapter One: Theodahad the man * i. Theodahad's childhood and early education* ii. Theodahad, the education of the Gothic youth and Amal family* iii. Philosophy in the education of Theodahad* iv. Theodahad's Platonism and his disinterest in war* v. Theodahad, landowner of Etruria* vi. An anxious, fearful and hesitant king Chapter Two: Theodahad the noble * i. The influence of teachers from the Roman schools on the Gothic court* ii. Theodahad and the women of the Amal family* iii. Theoderic and Theodahad: between the Roman and Gothic worlds* a. Theoderic and Roman culture* b. Theoderic and royalty* iv. Theodahad as successor of Theoderic?* v. Theodahad and Theoderic: an animosity badly hidden or deliberately flaunted? Chapter Three: Theodahad the co-regent * i. Athalarich's death and Theodahad's call to the throne* ii. The co-regency* iii. The path to legitimation* iv. A 'Gothic philosopher' is introduced to the kingdom* v. The building of consent* vi. The philosopher-king and the representation of his co-regent* vii. Theodahad, Boethius' friends, and the Anician family* a. A family drama* b. Two 'friends' of Boethius: Maximianus and Patricius* c. Maximus: a marriage to save the kingdom? Chapter Four: Theodahad the king * i. Ingratidude, conspiracy, or diplomatic incident?* ii. Theodahad, Justinian, and Theodora* iii. Theodahad and Rome* iv. Theodahad's diplomatic policy: the embassies* v. Pope Agapetus' embassy to Constantinople* vi. Theodahad's 'adventus' and sojourn in Rome* vii. Theodahad and religion* viii. Theodahad between the two Italies: the body politic dismembered* ix. Theodahad in war: diplomatic operations and attempted alliances* a. The desertion of his son-in-law* b. Military operations conducted at a distance* c. Unsuccessful attempts to form alliances* d. The end of hope and despair Chapter Five: Theodahad, the end * i. Theodahad's fall and Witiges' coup* ii. Legalize the succession or repair the damages? Witiges and Justinian* iii. The end of Rome's Liberty Epilogue Appendices: * Appendix I: Cassiodorus' travels beween Ravenna and Rome* Appendix II: 'A Roman of note among the Goths'* Appendix III: The embassies of Variae X 19-24 and XI 13: the 'status quaestionis' Bibliography

Doctors in Ancient Greek and Roman Rhetorical Education

This article collects and examines all references to doctors in rhetorical exercises used in ancient Greek and Roman schools in the Roman Empire. While doctors are sometimes portrayed positively as philanthropic, expert practitioners of their divinely sanctioned art, they are more often depicted as facing charges for poisoning their patients.

Gildas and the Schools of Cirencester

AbstractThe life of Gildas by an eleventh-century Breton monk mentions his education at ‘Iren’. Though often taken to mean ‘Ireland’, this is more probably a corruption of ‘Cerin’, the Old Welsh name of ‘Corinium’ or Cirencester. If so, it implies the survival in sixth-century Britain of traditional Roman schools.

The ruin of the Roman Empire

What really marked the end of the Roman Empire? James O'Donnell's magnificent new book takes us back to the sixth century and the last time the Empire could be regarded as a single community. Two figures dominate his narrative - Theodoric the 'barbarian', whose civilized rule in Italy with his philosopher minister Boethius might have been an inspiration, and in Constantinople Justinian, who destroyed the Empire with his rigid passion for orthodoxy and his restless inability to secure his frontiers with peace. The book closes with Pope Gregory the Great, the polished product of ancient Roman schools, presiding over a Rome in ruins.

Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Institutes: Quintilian on Honor and Expediency

This article argues that the Institutio Oratoria is Quintilian's attempt to provide an education in moral philosophy through the teaching of rhetoric as a technê. In contrast to the way Quintilian is typically portrayed, this paper presents him as a political opportunist who hoped to benefit from the Flavian emperors' distrust of philosophy by presenting a curriculum that would tame moral philosophy by teaching it in the context of rhetoric. As a demonstration of how Quintilian envisioned rhetoric's transformation of moral philosophy, the article analyzes the treatment of the relationship between the moral and the expedient in the Institutes, contrasting Quintilian's rhetorical treatment to that in philosophy, particularly in Cicero'sDe Officiis. This analysis of the Institutes has implication for our understanding of how Quintilian's appropriation of philosophy enabled rhetoric, a practical, skills-oriented discipline, to become also the means for character formation within Roman schools and beyond.

Law By Other Means

Epistolary crisis, to borrow Derrida's colorful coinage, tends to accompany the breakdown or falling away of tradition, what he terms a crisis of destination. Attention to the question of form, to the hermeneutic issue of the specifically textual form of transmission, in other words, is a response to a substantive political crisis, that of the legitimacy of the subject-matter transmitted. To the extent that the humanistic reassertion of and literature is a movement, an intervention in the practice and pedagogy of legal scholarship, its trajectory over the last ten years can be analyzed best in relation to the short-term failure and longer term prospects of radical attempts to challenge the disciplinary closure or epistemic autonomy of law. From the earliest Roman schools, and the disputes between the anomalists and the grammarians are perhaps emblematic, the radical critique of law has always been formulated as some version of the critique of law as a discrete discipline or science. The axioms of legal dogmatics, and the second order theories of the purity of legal science or the abstraction of the normative doctrine of law, have all alike been subjected to scholarly challenge as ideological glosses, reification or occlusions, of a domain of practice in which legal powers, rights and duties were unevenly distributed. The vulnerable the worker, the woman, the foreigner, the minority were in this argument recipients of a equality and a substantive disenfranchisement. It is upon some version of this explicit theme that critical theories of law have initially taken their stand and have won whatever gains and suffered whatever losses that their history foretells. What is also apparent in a more contemporary context is that from the realists to the critical legal studies network, the political successes of radical movements for legal reform have been shaped by a pragmatism that has inevitably left the form of law, the autonomy of formal existence of juridical method fundamentally untouched. Legal pedagogy the law school experience as training for hierarchy or as means of becoming gentlemen remains a profoundly isolated and isolating induction into the discretely defensive world of the profession. The social and psy-

A Twelfth-Century Treatise on ‘Dictamen’ and Metaphor

The more we learn about the quantity and diversity of the copies, commentaries, and adaptations of Ciceronian rhetoric that have survived from the medieval period, the more we are led to ask why these materials were preserved and how they were used. The question of practical utility has especially concerned those students of medieval commentaries on theDe inventioneandRhetorica ad Herenniumwho are faced with the task of explaining why these treatises continued to be copied and studied long after the demise of both the Roman law courts and the Roman schools. While the use to which thears dictaminiswas put is considerably more evident, there is still much to be learned about the circumstances in which it was taught. Since twelfth-century teachers ofdictamengenerally saw themselves as the heirs of Cicero, study of their works and the curricula in which they found their place often casts light on the status of rhetoric instruction as a whole. Nowhere is this complementarity so manifest as in central France, by the mid-twelfth century widely regarded as the foremost center for study of theauctores. During the second half of the twelfth century, even as the concise, functionalartes dictandifrom Italy were rapidly establishing themselves alongside the more traditional commentaries on the classical rhetorics, the French grammar masters were busy refining the synthesis ofars grammaticaandars rhetorica, of Horace and Cicero, preserved in Matthew of Vendôme'sArs versificatoria(ca. 1175).

Reviewing the Literature on Fernald's Technique of Remedial Reading.

BETWEEN THE TWO World ars, Grace Fernald developed a multisensory approach to teaching reading and spelling (VAKT) that united visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile elements. Subsequently, this method has been much discussed and subjected to experimentation, for many people believe VAKT to be effective with learners who have failed to progress in reading under the usual methods, while others are doubtful. This article reviews Fer nald's theories and the literature concerning her method of teaching reading to disabled learners. The distinguishing feature of Fernald's technique is tracing. Like many teaching methods, tracing has been in use repeatedly for centuries. Sand tracing was used two thousand years ago in Roman schools, and the writings of Plato, Horace, and Sene ca mention use of kinesthetic and tactile stimuli (Irvine 1970). Word blindness, an inability to read, had also been recognized be fore Fernald, but little had been accomplished to correct the problem. Often, children and adults with this handicap were thought to be mental ly retarded or stubborn and were subsequently ignored. In developing a system to aid these nonreaders, Fernald wanted to fit the learning environment to the idio syncracies of each child. Observing that sometimes children could not

The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry.

Ellenberger's book, the culmination of many years of diligent research, is sure to become the standard work in the history of dynamic psychiatry. The author covers the subject matter with great authority and scholarliness; the clarity of his style, the breadth of his view, the wealth of fascinating detail, and the judicial objectivity make this book a delight to read. The ancestry of dynamic psychiatry is traced through varieties of primitive healing. The Greek, Roman, and medieval schools of cure and the underlying similarities to modern psychotherapeutic approaches are elucidated. The extensive material on exorcism, spiritism, and hypnotism, the wealth of biographical material on Mesmer and Charcot, and the background of protodynamic psychiatries provide the reader with a new perspective on the transmission of ideas in the psychiatric field. It becomes clear that the groundwork in the field

Cicero's Attitude to the Greeks

Cicero's grandfather is credited with the observation that the better a Roman knew Greek the bigger a scoundrel he was. Nevertheless one of his sons, Lucius, belonged to a circle that knew quite a lot of Greek and another, Marcus, certainly gave his own children a Greek education. Marcus, the father of the orator, seems to have shared the prevailing view that one had either a Greek education or none at all. Indeed, in 92, when Cicero was fourteen years old, the newly established Roman schools of rhetoric were closed down by the censors Crassus and Domitius, Crassus' reason, according to Cicero, being that the Roman schools were a travesty of their Greek exemplars: ‘nam apud Graecos, cuicui modi essent, uidebam tamen esse praeter hanc exercitationem linguae doctrinam aliquam et humanitate dignam scientiam, hos uero nouos magistros nihil intellegebam posse docere, nisi ut auderent.’ Amongst these schools was that of L. Plotius Gallus, who seems before the closure to have attracted a fair number of pupils.

Further studies in the curriculum of the Roman schools of Rhetoric in the republican period

Further studies in the curriculum of the Roman schools of Rhetoric in the republican period

The Place of Polytechnics in Education 1

THOSE of you who know what you are doing here and know what is being done in other places must feel that we are at a very interesting, almost a critical, time from an educational point of view. We may be said, indeed, to be at the beginning of a new renaissance—a new birth of learning, just in the same way that our forbears, A.D. 1000 up to A.D. 1200, were in the forefront of that first renaissance. But the trouble is that the dark ages did not cease then, for we have had a dark age since, and it is to correct this second dark age that this new birth is necessary. Now what did the inhabitants of Europe do at that first renaissance? They kept on the schools which had been brought down by the different rulers, the different church authorities, from the time of the Roman Empire. The Roman schools, judging from what the Romans did from Scotland to the south end of the Red Sea, must have dealt with the science of the time, and that perhaps is the reason that the earliest universities always included “the nature of things” in their curricula. A modern public schoolmaster might not think their education complete because Latin and Greek were the modern languages then, and the students were taught no dead ones; but, be this as it may, at the renaissance they insisted upon the teaching of Latin, because then everybody who was anybody spoke Latin—it was the lingua franca of Europe—and not to speak Latin was to belong to the corps of the deaf and dumb. Secondly, they had to learn Greek, because the movers in the educational world at that time were chiefly doctors, and they had learned all they could about doctoring and surgery from bad Latin translations of bad Arabic translations of the Greek authorities, so that when the Greek manuscripts became available all the world was agog to learn Greek in order chiefly that they might learn medicine and surgery. Now, I want to point out to you that in this we had education founded absolutely and completely upon the crying needs of the time. Very good. Then if we are going to do anything like that in our new renaissance, what ought we to do if we are to follow precedent? We must arrange our education in some way in relation to the crying needs of the time. The least little dip into the history of the old universities will prick the bubble of classical education as it is presented to us to-day. Latin was not learned because it had the most magnificent grammar of known languages. Greek was not learned in consequence of the transcendental sublimity of ancient Greek civilisation. Both these things were learned because people had to learn them to get their daily bread, either as theologians or doctors or lawyers, and while they learned them the “nature of things” was not forgotten.