In conjunction with a long-running research project at the University of Groningen on cultural change, this volume forms the proceedings of an international conference held at the university in 2001.

This volume provides a unique overview of the complete histories of Latin and Greek as second languages.

During the Roman empire Greek speakers learned Latin using textbooks that still offer special advantages: authentic and enjoyable vignettes about the ancient world, easy Latin composed by Romans, insight into ancient learning practices. This book makes the ancient Latin-learning materials available to modern students for the first time.

Education in the Graeco-Roman world was a hallmark of the polis. Yet the complex ways in which pedagogical theory and practice intersected with their local environments has not been much explored in recent scholarship. Learning Cities in Late Antiquity suggests a new explanatory model that helps to understand better how conditions in the cities shaped learning and teaching, and how, in turn, education had an impact on its urban context. Drawing inspiration from the modern idea of ‘learning cities’, the chapters explore the interplay of teachers, learners, political leaders, communities and institutions in the Mediterranean polis, with a focus on the well-documented city of Gaza in the sixth century CE. They demonstrate in detail that formal and informal teaching, as well as educational thinking, not only responded to specifically local needs, but also exerted considerable influence on local society. With its interdisciplinary and comparatist approach, the volume aims to contextualise ancient education, in order to stimulate further research on ancient learning cities. It also highlights the benefits of historical research to theory and practice in modern education.

This volume provides a unique overview of the broad historical, geographical and social range of Latin and Greek as second languages. It elucidates the techniques of Latin and Greek instruction across time and place, and the contrasting socio-political circumstances that contributed to and resulted from this remarkably enduring field of study. Providing a counterweight to previous studies that have focused only on the experience of elite learners, the chapters explore dialogues between center and periphery, between pedagogical conservatism and societal change, between government and the governed. In addition, a number of chapters address the experience of female learners, who have often been excluded from or marginalized by earlier scholarship.

Investigates the participation of black Africans, usually referred to as "Ethiopians," by the Greek and Romans, in classical civilization, concluding that they were accepted by pagans and Christians without prejudice.

Redefines the role assigned education in the history of monasticism, by re-situating monasticism in the history of education.