Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
As a matter of course, the rod
played its part in instruction as well as in military discipline and
in police.(28)
28. It is at any rate a true Roman picture, which Plautus (Bacch. 431)
produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children:--
... -ubi revenisses domum,
Cincticulo praecinctus in sella apud magistrum adsideres;
Si, librum cum legeres, unam peccavisses syllabam,
Fieret corium tam maculosum, quam est nutricis pallium-.
The instruction of this epoch cannot however have
passed beyond the elementary stage: there was no material shade
of difference, in a social respect, between the educated and
the non-educated Roman.
