Education in Roman Spain

There was no compulsory state education for children in any of the western provinces of the Roman Empire. The primary sources are sparse when it comes to the education in Roman Spain, and while some scholars argue for a network of schools, others suggest that in the remoter areas of Spain sourcing Latin and Greek speaking teachers may have been difficult, and Roman education had geographical limitations.

Teachers in Roman Spain

In 197 BCE, the Roman Republic divided the peninsula into Hispania Citerior (near) and Hispania Ulterior (far). In 27 BCE, Marcus Agrippa further divided the Ulterior region into Baetica (the modern-day Andalusia area) and Lusitania (the area of western Spain & part of modern-day Portugal).

Our sources indicate that Roman educational influence in these provinces was expanding sufficiently to require the services of teachers. The homogeneity in the style and content of education in the whole of the Roman Empire was striking; the same methods were used, and the same texts were worked on everywhere. Teaching was seen as a humble position; the average teacher was a man of lower social status who worked independently and had to maintain himself in a schooling system without any support from the Roman government. He worked for a low income, with which he had to also provide a teaching space, whether it was outdoors or beneath shelters or in hired rooms.

Inscriptions provide us with the evidence of the presence of the three principal categories of Roman educators:

The magister or litterator provided an elementary Roman education for girls and boys aged 7-11 years old, which included reading, writing, mathematics, and languages.

The grammaticus worked with boys aged 11-15 years old (in accordance with the role of women in the Roman world, girls generally finished their formal education at this age), teaching subjects such as Greek and Roman literature and philosophy and developing their writing, speech, and language skills.

The rhetor trained students in subjects including public speaking, Roman law and politics; education at this level was only affordable for the upper classes, and it prepared a young boy for his future career and position in the higher echelons of Roman society.

Inscriptions confirm that in Baetica and Tarraconensis and other areas in the eastern and southern coasts of Hispania, children were learning with a grammaticus (CIL II. 5079). Roman studies for boys sometimes also continued with the rhetor.

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