로마의 후마니타스와 인본주의

Abstract

Romans were attracted by the Greek culture since third century B.C.. The Greek Paideia which produced many masters of speaking was an admirable wonder to Romans. Romans were anxious to learn and imitate it. They founded many Rhetoric schools. Roman parents paid expensive fees to the Greek teachers to educate their children. But Romans were not only imitators but also innovators in education. We can verify this fact just in the term which Romans used to designate education. Calling the education Paideia, Greeks gave weight to the abilities which students were to learn. On the contrary Romans called education humanitas. This term had two meaning. One is to improve students’ abilities, the other is philanthropy which means to give concerns and favors to all mankind. The reason why Romans used the term for education is that they thought education was more to cultivate humanism than to cultivate students’ abilities. This paper tries to argue that the spread of humanism in the Roman world since the end of the Republic made it possible for Romans to make the end of Eduction as to cultivate humanism. As the Roma became an world Empire which ruled scores of nations, Romans were contacted with various cultures and peoples. They perceived peoples who were under their rule were equal with them, and tried to integrate them into Roman Empire. Furthermore the cosmopolitanism of philosophers, such as Cynics and Stoics, gained more followers. These two factors contributed to spread humanism in the Roman Empire. We can confirm that humanism was disseminated to no small degree in the Roman Empire through several facts. First the Roman Empire organized the whole empire in a coherent system of equal districts and gave all free men citizenship. And the Roman Empire levied taxes on all citizen with a uniform rate. As the policy of integration was a success, those who were conquered thought the Roman Empire as ‘the mother country of all human being’. Furthermore the Roman Empire was different from other ancient peoples. It contrived the institution to care for the social weak such as children and slaves. And it prohibited nonhuman acts such as human sacrifice and castration. So it is evident that the Roman Empire, especially the leaders, set more values to the humanism than before. This made it possible for Romans to make the end of eduction as humanism.