Assessment in Roman Education

Abstract

This paper examines the content and institutions of Roman education, focusing particularly on the education associated with literacy and numeracy. It seeks to show how a widely standardised and highly socially embedded web of educational practices could function, without formal examinations, by means of high levels of competition and other less formal means of assessment. It considers the role of educational competition in defining and maintaining social élites and looks at the increasingly formal assessment of teachers in the later Roman empire.