Did you mean Roman public education only taught basic literacy? For aristocrats, pupils were taught Greek and Greek literature early on since later republic era

Did you mean Roman public education only taught basic literacy? For aristocrats, pupils were taught Greek and Greek literature early on since later republic era. Julia Caesar's mother went so far as to have a Greek slave accompanying Caesar from early childhood so he grew up bilingual. Marcus Aurelius was as comfortable in Greek as he was in Latin. His extensive training rhetorics is obvious from his writing. He wrote "Meditations" in Greek, because that was the language of philosophy.