Roman education was not a system. There was no state curriculum, no network of public schools funded by the central government, no standard examination or qualification. What existed instead was a market: families who could pay hired teachers, sent children to private schools, or employed educated slaves as tutors, while families who could not afford these options relied on whatever the local community provided, which was often very little. The result was predictably unequal and surprisingly effective at its stated purpose — producing an elite capable of governing an empire — while being largely irrelevant to the majority of the population who needed agricultural or craft skills that formal education did not provide.