Although there is a great deal of information about Roman women, it is very hard to establish how women of different classes lived their lives or what their lives were actually like. Our understanding of Roman women comes mostly from wall paintings, scriptures and gravestones, but it would only have been women from middle class or wealthy backgrounds that would be able to afford such "luxuries" as these. So therefore we can only really understand the life of wealthy and middle class women.
This wall painting shows that women were able to write (and therefore must have been able to read) as she is holding a pen -a stylus- and something to write on -a wax tablet.
Even though girls of a wealthy or middle class background were able to have advantages of education, it would not be the case for girls from a poor background, as the girls would have to stay at home and helped their mothers in home. Children would have been taught in the school of the Ludi Magister; here they would have been taught to read and write. We know that girls were taught here as well as boys, by a source by Martial, he speaks about the Ludi Magister, who he says:.
"Was an object of hatred to boys and girls.".
After primary education, girls from wealthy backgrounds would have continued their education at home and learnt Greek and Latin literature, playing the lyre, dancing and singing. .
"She was fortunate in her birth, good looks, above all in her husband and children; well read in Greek Latin, she could play the lyre and dance more elegantly than a virtuous woman needs to" (Sallust in his speech against catiline).
This source shows that it was not approved of women to be educated, as the woman being spoken about was more virtuous then was required of a woman.
Roman girls did not study philosophy or public speaking, so from this I know that women did not go on to higher education at the School of the Rhetor. A males education, would focus on how to be bold and aggressive and deliver public speeches, this would be so he would gain a respectable reputationand move up the ladder of political jobs.
