Corrado Barbagallo

Corrado Barbagallo (C.E.1877 – 1952), Italian historian.

First lines of The State and public education in the Roman Empire:

public education in Europe is entirely an Italian creation. The most brilliant of French philologists, Gaston Boissier has admirably illustrated, for his part, this greatest of the merits of our race in history of human civilization: «As soon as the Roman armies had penetrated unknown countries, schools were founded there; the rhetoricians arrived there in the footsteps of the victorious general, bringing civilization with them. The first concern of Agricola, as soon as he had pacified Britain, was to order that the sons of the leaders be taught the liberal arts .»

Quotes:

• Augustus continued [in public education] Caesar's concept and policy. For him, as for his great predecessor, the teachers of elementary, middle and high schools were, in the life of the state, not cumbersome quantities, but elements of strength and social well-being. (chap. 1, p. 12)
• The love and search for works of art dates back to Rome for many years, and since Caesar we have noticed what will be the characteristic of the empire: the transformation of temples from places of religion into places actually intended for the public cult of art, whose monuments could be known and admired by anyone. (chap. 1, p. 19)
• Agrippa, although Pliny calls him a man for whom the rough life was preferable to the triumphant softness of his century, he was one of the most exquisite lovers of the fine arts in the history of the civilized world. He purchased many artistic masterpieces in the East; to his aedility <ref> Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was elected aedile in 33 BCE </ ref> was responsible for the reconstruction of a large part of Rome, which he had found in bricks and left in marble. (chap. 1, p. 19)
• But the characteristic imprint that Nero's government left in the history of public education cannot be found in primary schools or in those of rhetoric or philosophy.
  The originality of his government consisted instead in the introduction of a new form of physical education in the general plan of Roman education and life, ^[sic] the decisive triumph of the cult of musical education: two facts, which reacted against traditional tendencies, underwent lively discussions and contrasts, and were all personal work of the prince. (chap. 1, pp. 61-62)
• It is perhaps very difficult to find in all of Roman history a political man who, like Hadrian, encloses in his thoughts a meaning and a concept of life, in which together, and almost organically and perfectly, the the ideal of Greek life and that of Roman life, the pagan soul and the Christian soul, the spiritual tendencies of the old age and those of the new age; a man who has equally united in himself the multiplicity of the most varied talents. (chap. 3, pp. 124-125)
• [Hadrian]] Poet and prose writer, Latinist and Greek scholar, painter and enthusiast of plastic arts, philosopher and orator, artist and scientist, mystic and realist, superstitious and sceptical, generous and implacable, man of thought and man of action, he set his foot on all fields of knowledge, welcomed and underwent all the suggestions of which the great human soul is capable, and from every discipline, from every inspiration, he struck a spark for his ingenuity, he detected a trait for his complex personality. (ch. 3, p. 125)

Bibliography:

• Corrado Barbagallo, The State and public education in the Roman Empire, Francesco Battiato editore, Catania, C.E.1911.