“Vimqve omnem hvmanitatis”: the Roman pedagogical model

Abstract

To self-educate is permanently to sculpt statues of ourselves, said Plotinus. Therefore, to form, for the purposes of Greek education, was not only to form, but to transform. Educating (and ‘ducere’, to drive out, to leave out of) meant a constant come-to-be, a gradual and comprehensive unfinished human development, in which man never fails to become anything other than what it already is. The paidetic-educational concept perceives the human being as a potential art work that must be shaped. The Greek civilization had its own ethos and an ideal of human being that incumbent citizens to suit into. And this archetype represented what was most thorough in nature. Due to it, as the image and likeness of the paidetic Greek model, the humanitas romana, or romanitas, arises, now under analysis.