Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire

Education in Gaul during the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ has curiously escaped the makers of books. Yet it has more than one claim to notice. It was an age, like our own, of transition, and we see education passing through the last stage of official paganism in the Western Empire, and entering into the Christian era. Movements and counter-movements (which have a considerable measure of modern interest) pass before our eyes. For behind the shifting scenes of Roman and Barbarian, Pagan and Christian, there is a continuity which reaches to the present day. That continuity is the immense fabric of Roman Education which passed through the Church into the Middle Ages, and shaped the thought and culture of modern nations.

Gaul raises the problem of complex nationality. The old Celtic population, overlaid with Roman civilization, penetrated by Germanic tribes—Goths, Franks, Burgundians—is about to enter on a new period of history, and the blending of these elements has an influence on education which is interesting. Nations, when they become great, are prone to emphasize the purity of their race and language. They exclude foreign words and customs whenever they can, they raise the boast of a pure and unique culture. It is an empty boast. Thousands of ‘foreign’ elements have mingled to make them what they are, and unconsciously they daily absorb fresh elements that are ‘foreign’. But so far do they forget this, that sometimes pride, and the ignorance that is born of exclusiveness, lead them to impose their culture on others by force. Complex nationality, while it is in the making, means friction; but once that stage is passed the result is almost always a richer and better culture. So it was with Gaul. Her position as leader of the Roman Empire in education was undoubtedly due largely to her complexity.

At the same time, there is the problem of recognition. The[viii] elements of the complex whole cannot be kept from discord unless there is recognition of their individuality. Not till then will they make their positive contribution to enrich the State. How far the Romans recognized the individuality of those whom they governed, and with what results, is a question of interest for modern political thought. And the effect of such recognition (or the lack thereof) on the school curriculum, for example, in the teaching of history, is a pertinent problem for those who live in countries where there is a dual nationality.

It has been borne in upon us that the teaching of history is all-important. Everybody is seeking to find the ultimate causes of the war, and one of the most far-reaching answers that can be given is that history has been wrongly taught. The fireworks of history have been displayed to us, but the permanent forces behind events, the thought and psychology of nations, the human interest of character, in fine, all that truly makes for understanding and progress has been neglected. It was neglected in the Roman Empire, and it is instructive to note the results.

To a South African the situation in Gaul at this time is particularly illuminating. After all the troubles (still fresh in our memory) attaching to the solution of the language question, it is almost startling to note a similar situation in Roman Gaul. There the question of teaching Greek and Latin was not so acute as in South Africa, for Greek was dying out, and had no racial background, but the effects of a wrong handling of ‘the second language’ are as unmistakable and instructive. It is not time or place or circumstance that matters in educational method so much as psychology—a study that is only beginning to come into its heritage—and the psychology of the child is the same yesterday as to-day.

To us the language question in Gaul is interesting from another point of view too. The Romans did the world a great service by keeping their language uniform. This they did chiefly by means of their law, which was understood throughout the Roman world, and by means of their professors, who, like the Panegyrists in Gaul during the fourth century A.D., handed down a language which remained for centuries very similar to that of Cicero.[ix] But a time came when this attempt failed. When Christian teaching became strong and widespread, it was found that to the bulk of the people the polished rhetoric of the schools had become strange. In order to touch the understanding of their flock, the bishops were constrained (with sore travail, for at heart they were proud of their pagan education) to discard the style of speech in which they had been trained, and to come closer to the idiom of the masses. So in South Africa it has been officially recognized that the language of Holland has become strange to the school-child, and that in order to reach his intelligence we must use the offspring of Holland Dutch, Afrikaans—moulded, since 1652, to a vastly different climate, scenery, and national character. How this attempt is to be made, and what its danger is in the direction of formlessness—these are questions for which something may be gleaned from a consideration of the Latin of the Fathers. Art is needed and scientific interest. For lack of these the vivid language of Tertullian and the early Fathers degenerated later into formlessness. And our problem to-day is to watch over the form that is taking shape, make clear its scientific basis, and beautify it by spreading an interest in Art.

Finally, the Gauls witnessed the breaking up of governments and its consequent disorders. They were faced, as we are, by the problem of ‘Bolshevism’, though in their case it merely took the shape of the marauding Vargi and the Bagaudae. The influence of a disordered society on education was felt then as now. With us there are some who, like Avitus of Vienne, in malis ferventibus, despair of any end to the troubles which throng around them, while the wiser sort will rather urge with the author of the De Providentia Dei that, despite disappointments,

This study has been based, as far as possible, directly on original authorities, who have been neglected largely because they fall in a period which the pedant has called ‘unclassical’ and which is yet not definitely ‘modern’. I have found many statements in modern books relating to this period which need[x] modification or correcting, and I feel sure that this essay has merely touched a field that deserves more attention than it has hitherto received.

Among those to whom my gratitude is due, I wish to mention particularly my tutor, Professor E. W. Watson of Christ Church, Professor J. A. Smith of Magdalen, Professor Percy Gardner, who read the archaeological part, Professor Gilbert Murray, whose suggestions were helpful and inspiring, and the examiners of this essay when it was put forward as a thesis at Oxford. Professor Haverfield and Mr. R. L. Poole, through whose influence it was accepted for publication. Since then the material has been considerably revised and amplified. For help in the dreary work of reading the proofs, I must record my thanks to my old and trusted guide, Professor William Ritchie, of the University of Cape Town, and to my wife. And there is one whose memory I must always cherish, in this as in other spheres, with the deepest affection and gratitude—my former tutor, the late Mr. H. J. Cunningham of Worcester. His encouragement and counsel were invaluable, and his readiness to assist one of the pleasantest memories of my work.

I wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the Rhodes Trustees in allowing me to use part of my scholarship to defray the expenses of publication; and I must not fail also to put on record the financial assistance given me by the Government Research Grant Board of the Union of South Africa. Such assistance is not inappropriate for a book that deals so largely with State support of education, and it is the more pleasing in view of the growing interest of the Government in research.

Finally, I must mention the uniform courtesy and attention that I have received from the Clarendon Press authorities. To Mr. C. E. Freeman I owe a particular debt of gratitude for many interesting suggestions.

1. The Limits of the Period

In considering the extent of the last phase of Gallo-Roman education one is met by the obvious difficulty of limits. For the main traditions of the Roman schools were formed before Julius Caesar, and go on through the Middle Ages up to the present day.

It is difficult to find a starting-point. The fifth century, the transition period between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ history,[1] forms a general terminus, but it is not so easy to find a particular one. To say that the year 476 was the end of things Roman in Gaul is to be guilty of a generalization which many scholars have attacked.[2] This year, ‘so dear to the compiler and the crammer’, is not of any special moment for Gaul. If we must fix a boundary, it seems better to connect it with the Franks. It is often nationality which produces great changes in civilization. It was the coming of the Romans which shaped the education of Gaul, and it was the coming of the Franks which most modified that shape and gave rise to the French nation. The defeat of the Franks by Julian in 358 meant the continuation of Roman culture in Gaul. He came as the saviour of a despairing Gaul.[3] The Salian Franks were allowed to settle in Toxandria in the North as members of the Empire, to which, for a long time, they remained loyal. It is true that Arbogast the Frank[2] set up the usurper Eugenius in 392. On the other hand, one of Gratian’s wisest and most faithful adherents was the Frankish Merobaudes,[4] and when the great invasions of 406 and the following years began the Franks allied themselves with Stilicho and defeated the Vandals. Even as late as 451 we find that only a part of the Franks join Attila in his invasion of Gaul, in spite of the growing weakness of the Empire which had left Gaul exposed to the barbarians in 406.

Such was the effect of Julian’s victory, though as a military achievement it was not very remarkable. Not merely was it of political importance, but its significance for education was enormous. Mamertinus expresses[5] the gratitude of a provincial for the order which Julian restored. ‘Shall I’, says he, ‘tell the tale of the Gallic provinces, now rewon by thy valour, of the rout of barbarism, as though it were some new and unheard of thing? Such exploits as the voice of fame has so lavishly bruited abroad....’

Julian has been constant in his care for Gaul, and on the list of his good deeds the orator would record his diligence:

‘Ita illi anni spatia divisa sunt ut aut barbaros domitet aut civibus iura restituat, perpetuum professus aut contra hostem aut contra vitia certamen.’ A great cause of joy is the repulse of barbaria. Julian has spared no trouble ‘to restore peace to the loyal provinces and to banish, at the same time, all barbaric elements’.[6] He attended to right living and to justice, ‘emendatio morum iudiciorumque correctio....’[7] Most important of all, studies have revived under his fostering care, and the orator becomes eloquent with an enthusiasm which is not entirely exaggerated.

‘Thou, O mightiest of emperors, thou, I proclaim, hast rekindled the dead fires of literature; thou hast not only freed philosophy from prosecution, suspected as she was until recently, but hast clothed her in purple and bound on her head gold and gems, and seated her on a regal throne.’[8]

If the subjugation of the Franks thus supplies a sort of starting-point, their rise under Chlodowig gives us a terminus. The Roman connexion with Gaul officially ceased when Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476, and Gaul was no longer Roman when Euric captured Arles and Marseilles in 480. But the culmination of Germanic influence in Gaul was the coming of the Franks in 486, when Chlodowig drove Syagrius, ‘the last of the Romans’,[9] from his kingdom of Soissons and moved southward. The Roman schools, which had flourished under Theodoric of Toulouse, disappeared when the Franks came.[10] Not that the Franks swamped the Gallo-Romans or proved the predominant element. Their invasion was in some ways like the Norman invasion of England:[11] the conqueror was captured by the conquered, and Gallo-Roman influence, especially in education, prevailed. Yet the fact remains that the Frankish invasion brought factors to bear on Gaul which modified its national life and coloured its civilization more deeply than had previously been the case, and that it represents the high-water mark of the Germanic tide which had been steadily rising during the two previous centuries.

2. Greek Influence

Nothing struck the imagination of ancient writers on early Gallic culture more than the part played by Massilia. Daughter of the Greeks, and friend of the Romans long before Gaul became part of the Empire, she stood forth as a light of civilization in the midst of barbaric darkness. With such a tradition and such a friendship it is no wonder that we find so much said in her praise.

Ammianus,[12] following the Greek Timagenes, gives the traditional account of the coming of the Phocaeans to Massilia in the sixth century B.C. Whether they really fled from the persecution of the Persian Harpalus—a motive unknown to Herodotus—or whether, as Athenaeus quoting Aristotle says, their object was merely trade,[13] need not be discussed here. Nor need we go into the confusion in ancient writers between Phocaea and Phocis[14] in regard to the origin of Massilia; the point is that it was of Greek origin, as all the authorities agree.[15] From Greece culture came to Gaul, and once more (as Norden remarks in another connexion) ‘it is the East that gives and the West that receives’.

The coins of Massilia bear testimony to her influence on Gaul. The early specimens of her drachms, bearing the head of Artemis with sprigs of olive in her hair, show a high artistic development. Their beauty diminishes as time goes on, partly because of the large numbers in which they were produced, since for a long time they were the chief currency for Southern Gaul as far as Lyons and for the whole valley of the Po. So frequently were they copied by the Celtic tribes that the imitations are far commoner than the originals.[16]

It is probable, moreover, that Massilia’s artistic contribution[5] did not stop here. We possess a torso in sixth-century style of Aphrodite with a dove on her right hand, which Prof. Percy Gardner believes to be the work of Phocaean Greeks at Massilia. Sculpture of this kind must have been a new ray of light for the civilization (or the lack thereof) in Celtic Gaul.

Her friendship with Rome is well attested. Cicero mentions[17] the support given to Rome by the Massilians at the time of the Gallic campaigns. When Fonteius, who had been governor of Gallia Narbonensis, was impeached for extortion, Massilia came up in his defence. Strabo regards the connexion as a well-known fact.[18] Ammianus, too, knew of this traditional friendship: ‘Massilia ... cuius societate et viribus in discriminibus arduis fultam aliquotiens legimus Romam.’[19]

It is well known that at the time of the second Punic war Massilia gave faithful and effective support to her ally.[20] Yet such was the independence of Massilia’s Greek spirit, that when Caesar, in the Civil war,[21] sent Domitius to take her, she alone of all the Gallic cities refused him admittance. Her citizens replied with a dignity and a self-consciousness that argue a high level of development, that they were indeed allies of the Roman people, but that they would not and could not decide between the two parties: if they were approached in a friendly spirit they would listen to both sides; if in a hostile way they would listen to neither. Caesar’s siege of the town was at first unsuccessful, and he had to depart leaving the operations in the hands of others. When, at length, Massilia capitulated, he deprived her of her material resources, but (as was fitting) left her liberty unviolated.[22]

But the connexion with Rome was not political only. It is probable that the Massilians traded with Italy in early times[23] and that their city, once the rival of Carthage,[24] grew to renewed importance as a commercial centre for Rome after the Punic wars. The Massilians were early Rome’s agents for the products of Gaul.[25] In order to make bronze to send to Rome they obtained tin from Cornwall[26] to blend with their own copper. Theophrastus[27] speaks of their export to Rome of precious stones, and the Romans knew the value of their corn trade.[28] ‘Frumenti praecipue ac pabuli ferax (Gallia).’[29]

Yet the chief connexion with Rome, the bond most frequently mentioned by Roman writers, was along the line of Massilia’s culture. Cicero speaks with enthusiasm[30] of the city which possessed a statue of Minerva, and it is well known that the Romans regularly sent their sons there,[31] rather than to Athens,[32] to study Greek. The young Agricola looked on it as his Alma Mater.[33] The climate was milder and healthier than that of Athens and its morals had a better reputation. Plautus uses the phrase ‘mores Massilienses’ in the sense of irreproachable character.[34] Valerius Maximus speaks of the city as ‘severitatis[7] custos acerrima’. They prohibited pantomimes on moral grounds;[35] sumptuary laws limited personal expense; and women were not allowed to drink wine.[36] Such was the moral austerity (at any rate in early times[37]) of the Massilians, and this reputation no doubt enhanced its popularity—with parents at any rate—as an educational centre.

Massilia stood for a very long time far above any other Gallic city in culture. The Rhodians in Livy[38] are made to say that the Massilians would long ago have been barbarized by the uncivilized tribes around (tot indomitae circumfusae gentes) had it not been for their sheltered situation; and Pomponius Mela[39] speaks of Massilia as ‘olim inter asperas posita’, and remarks that the Massilians nevertheless retained their individuality after the civilization of the rest. They had their own constitution, and it was prominent enough for Aristotle to notice.[40]

Many writers tell us how the Massilians spread their Greek civilization among the Gauls.[41] Strabo speaks of Massilia as the School of Gaul, which so hellenized the barbarians that they drew up their contracts in Greek.[42] So Ammianus[43] says that after the foundation of Massilia ‘men gradually became civilized in these parts, and the pursuit of praiseworthy branches of knowledge, begun by the bards and the Celtic philosophers (euhages and drasidae), grew and prospered’. The bards sang in heroic verse, to the accompaniment of tuneful music, the deeds of the valiant. The euhages were natural philosophers who investigated the secrets of the physical world, ‘scrutantes seriem et sublimia naturae pandere conabantur’. And, according to Pythagoras, the drasidae, who were of loftier spirit and lived in exclusive clubs and colleges, investigated and pronounced on occult metaphysical[8] questions. So effectively did Greek influence spread, ‘ut non Graecia in Galliam emigrasse, sed Gallia in Graeciam translata videretur’.[44]

To a certain extent Massilia must have been influenced by her surroundings. ‘Massilia’, says the consul in Livy,[45] ‘inter Gallos sita traxit aliquantum ab accolis animorum’. Her inhabitants must have learned much of the physical features and culture of the land from the barbarians. But the overwhelming strength of influence was on their side. The fact that they were not swamped is in itself a striking testimony. It meant that they possessed a culture which was destined not only to hold its own, but to win increasingly as time went on. It was owing to them that the Gauls appointed professors and doctors,[46] and many of their teachers are mentioned in ancient literature. Telon and Gyareus are called by Lucan[47] ‘gemini fratres, fecundae gloria matris’, and together with Lydanus, Pytheas, Eratosthenes, Eudimenes, are famous for mathematics and astronomy[48] in the early days of Massilia. Seneca mentions a rhetorician Moschus, who had been found guilty of poisoning and taught at Massilia,[49] and notices also Agroitas as a rhetorician of distinction.[50] Natural philosophy was not neglected. Plutarch[51] mentions Euthymenes of Massilia, whose opinion he quotes on the overflowing of the Nile, and refers to the famous Pytheas on the causes of the tides. Of the eight recensions of Homer, which were known before Zenodotus, one was the famous διόρθωσις Μασσαλιωτική[52] to which Wolf assigns an honourable place.[53]

As for their proficiency in languages, it is well known that they were called trilingues,[54] speaking Greek and Latin and[9] Celtic. The Greek of Massilia left its mark on the French language after a lapse of many centuries, especially on the proper names of Aquitaine,[55] and Christian times afford many instances in literature and inscriptions of this influence. To name two only, the Acta Martyrum were written in Greek, the language of Irenaeus (second century), by the order of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons,[56] and as late as the sixth century Caesarius[57] could make the people of his congregation at Arles sing in Greek. As late as the Middle Ages the territory around Massilia was called Graecia, and its sea Mare Graecum.[58]

Such was the great part played by Massilia. Tradition tells how the leaders of the Phocaeans, Protis and Simos, when they landed in Gaul, went to the local King Nannus for help. They were invited to attend a ceremony at which the daughter of the king extended a cup of water to the suitor whom she favoured. She bestowed the token on Protis, who thus married a daughter of the soil on which he was to establish Massilia.[59] So Massilia ruled the household of Gaul and set in order its culture. In imperial times there was a decline,[60] and the Massilians found their pre-eminence shaken and their trade ruined by the colony which Caesar sent to Arles (destined to develop into a commercial centre) under Tiberius, father of the Emperor.[61] Under Marcus Aurelius they had to give up their ancient constitution and fall into line with the other imperial cities.[62] But their work was accomplished. They kept the torch of civilization burning until they could pass it on to Romanized Gaul. Even then they retained their culture, and retained it longer than the other towns. The capture of Massilia in 477 by the Goths[10] completed the separation of Gaul from Rome and prepared the way for the Gallo-Frankish state.

As she had given the impetus to letters, so, in later times, she proved their salvation. At the time of the great invasions at the beginning of the fifth century, and at its end when the Visigoths were encroaching more and more, Massilia was a refuge for Christian monks to whose labours literature owes so much. The Monastery of St. Victor ranked with Lérins as a centre of Christian education, and many famous men found a refuge there during the menace of troublous times. Victorinus, Prosper of Aquitaine, Gennadius, Musaeus, Salvian, were among those who sought its peace.[63]

Justinus tells of the Celtic chief Catumandus who was chosen by the neighbouring tribes to lead an army against the prosperous Massilia. Being terrified, however, by the figure of a fierce-looking woman whom he saw in a dream, he made peace with the Massilians and begged to be allowed to enter their city and worship their gods. In the portico of the temple he saw the statue of Minerva and exclaimed that that was the figure of his dream.[64]

Thus it was that the goddess of culture saved Massilia, and through Massilia, Gaul.

3. Celtic Influence

Bouquet[65] refers to a legendary account given by one Pezronius to explain the rise of culture among the Gauls. On the death of Pluto, Jupiter gave to Mercury the Empire of the West and he, by his wit and eloquence, civilized the people. ‘Populorum sibi subditorum ferocitatem emollivit, leges statuit, artes adinvenit, commercia inter Occidentales populos instituit’. For this service the Celts of Gaul were so thankful that for two thousand years they worshipped Mercury with the greatest veneration.

This story is a fable and an afterthought, but it is significant of the sort of culture that later people conceived of as having[11] existed among the ancient Gauls. Long before the days of Roman rule the elder Cato had testified to the trend of their genius in the well-known words: ‘Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissima persequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui’,[66] and it is quite certain that Mercury (and before the Romans his Celtic counterpart) was actually and almost universally worshipped in Gaul. ‘Galli’, says Caesar,[67] ‘Deum maxime Mercurium colunt’, a statement which is abundantly supported by the inscriptions. An inscription at Chalon-sur-Saône shows the figure of Mercury with his three favourite animals, a cock, a tortoise, a goat, and the words ‘Deo Mercurio Augu ... Sacro’,[68] while at Lyons there were three altars with the words ‘Mercurio Augusto et Maiae Augustae’. An inscription of Poitiers, which is as late as the third century, is dedicated to ‘the god Mercurius’.[69] Even in the barbarous North there is a large number of inscriptions referring to Mercury, especially around Trèves.[70] The worship of Minerva, too, is established by many inscriptions, e.g. the twenty on bowls and cups found at Andecavi in Lugdunensis.[71]

Thus the Gauls singled out for special worship the subtlest and cleverest of the gods,[72] and the fact may be connected with their undoubted culture in early times. Out of the darkness in which pre-Roman Gaul is shrouded we gather hints here and there concerning the first known teachers of the Gallic Celts, the Druids. One or two points may be noticed.

The warlike nature of the Celts is a subject of frequent comment. Aristotle refers to it,[73] and Aelian says Ἀνθρώπων ἐγὼ ἀκούω φιλοκινδυνοτάτους εἶναι τοὺς Κέλτους.[74] Pausanias considered them very barbarous. Their equipment for war, in which they were supposed to excel, was primitive: they had no defensive armour except shields. Of scientific warfare they knew nothing, and when they charged it was without order, like a troop of wild animals.[75] In these accounts a margin must be left for prejudice and lack of understanding on the part of the narrator. For we hear a good deal about education from various sources. Three classes of skilled men were held in particular honour among the Celts:[76] the βάρδοι, who chanted hymns in honour of the valiant; τῶν μὲν ᾀσμάτων ὑποθέσεις ποιοῦνται τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τοὺς ἀποθανόντας ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ καλῶς:[77] the Οὐάτεις (Vates), who performed sacrifice and studied natural science; and the Δρυΐδαι, who studied science and ethics and theology. The bards also were the representatives of that eloquent temperament which is associated with Gaul from the earliest times, and which enabled subsequent Gallic writers and orators to assimilate classical rhetoric. They sing public panegyrics (μετ’ ᾠδῆς ἐπαίνους λέγοντες) and are taken with the army to eulogize the heroes of war.[78] They are called ποιηταὶ μελῶν by Diodorus,[79] who is constrained to remark οὕτω καὶπαρὰ τοῖς ἀγριωτάτοις βαρβάροις ὁ θυμὸς εἴκει τῇ σοφίᾳ καὶ ὁ Ἄρης αἰδεῖται τὰς Μούσας, a somewhat unusual admission, for a Greek, of culture among ‘barbarians’. It must be clearly understood, however, that they had not elaborated a system of rhetoric or studied scientifically the art of speaking. All we can say is that they had a kind of imagination and a quick enthusiasm which gave them a rough natural oratory, and made them apt students of the rhetoric which the Greeks and Romans brought. The richness and pomposity of subsequent Gallic orators was due rather to the advent of the rhetorical system[13] and, perhaps, to the influence of Roman character, than to native Celtic qualities. Caesar does not mention the Bardi and the Vates, but only the Druids, who belonged to the upper classes, and were held in high honour as the teachers and priests of the nation. ‘They administer divine rites, attend to public and private sacrifice, and expound theology: to them a large number of youths resort for training, and great is the honour in which they are held.’[80] It is said that there were girls’ schools kept by the wives of the Druids,[81] a statement which seems to be supported by the frequent mention of female Druids, Drysidae, in later times. Their learning was thought to be derived from Britain, whither students went from Gaul.[82] Freedom from military service and public duties was granted them—a curious anticipation of the concessions granted to teachers in imperial times. Hence there were many candidates for the office, and large numbers were sent by their parents to undergo the training which sometimes lasted twenty years.[83] The students learnt by heart a great many verses, which were not written down, for this they did not consider right (fas), though for secular purposes they used Greek letters. Examples of this writing have been preserved.[84] The Druids taught the doctrine of immortality and the transmigration of souls.[85] Astronomy, physical science, and theology also formed part of their training.[86] Science was still studied by the Druids in Cicero’s time. ‘In Gaul too’ (he says), ‘there are Druids (and I had personal acquaintance with one of them, the Aeduan Divitiacus) who professed a knowledge of natural science, which the Greeks call φυσιολογία.’[87]

This education, however, was purely one of class and profession. ‘Docent multa nobilissimos gentis’, says Mela.[88] Lucan apostrophizes the Druids, as those who alone had the privilege[14] of knowing or not knowing the gods, dwelling in the sequestered glades of deep forests.[89]

Knowledge, thus monopolized, must have grown unhealthy, and we hear of the riddling speech and obscure phrases with which the Druids worked on the superstitions of the people.[90] Monnard observes that the darkness of this Celtic philosophy was dispelled by the light of Massilia.[91]

Yet the Celts had made their contribution. For we must remember that in the centuries just preceding the Christian era it was the Celts who gave the lead to the Teutonic peoples in culture. Towards the end of the fifth century B.C. Celtic civilization flourished exceedingly. The ‘La Tène Civilization’—as the archaeologists call it—shows artistic products of fine taste and technical perfection. The centre of this civilization was perhaps in Southern France, whence it spread throughout Europe along the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, until it was succeeded by Graeco-Roman culture. And it was only between 100-70 B.C. that the Celts were expelled from lower Germany.[92]

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it took so long for the Druids to disappear from the scene, representing as they did so ancient a culture. We should expect the warders of a national religion and tradition to be conservative, and we find that they even played a political part. In the confusion of the year A.D. 70, when the Capitol was burnt down, they circulated a rumour among the Celts that the event portended the passing of the power from the Romans to the Gauls,[93] seeing that the Capitol had once proved to be the only obstacle to Brennus’s victorious march. It was natural, then, that the Roman imperial policy should aim at the removal of an element which fostered the national sentiment.[94] Augustus later followed this tendency[15] when he forbade the Druid’s worship to Roman citizens in Gaul, and Claudius (we are told by Suetonius) abolished once for all their monstrous practices.[95] So Aurelius Victor[96] attributes the complete suppression of the Druids to Claudius. Accordingly, when we find Pliny[97] saying that it was Tiberius who suppressed the Druids, there is a suspicion that he is guilty of a confusion: Claudius’s first name having been Tiberius.

It is clear that definite attempts were made to wipe out Druidism and the Celtic element. But they showed a remarkable tenacity in spite of laws and edicts. The elder Pliny refers to them as surviving in his time,[98] and Flavius Vopiscus (third century) tells of certain ‘wise women’ who called themselves Dryades (mulier dryas, drysada) and were, by a strange irony, consulted (if we may believe the fanciful Scriptores Historiae Augustae), even by persons in high imperial authority. Aurelianus was said to have consulted them about the future of his imperial office,[99] and a Druid prophesied the throne to Diocletian ‘cum aprum occideris’.[100] The prophetic influence seems in these later times to have passed from the men to the women, who become recognized semi-officially, and form, on a small scale, a sort of Delphic oracle.

Nothing is more difficult than to make a people forget its language, as Fauriel[101] has remarked, especially a people that largely lives on the land. This dictum, which history has so often illustrated, is instanced also by the tenacity of Celtic in Gaul. It penetrates right into the fourth and fifth centuries, and, since language and education hang so closely together, it is worth while to look into the evidence. More than 10,000 inscriptions have been found in Gaul, and of these a large number relate to the lower classes. Yet we find that scarcely[16] twenty are in Celtic, and these probably are not later than the first century A.D.[102] This does not mean that Celtic died out then; it was never much of a written language, for the Druids had a distinct prejudice against writing, and recorded only secular matters.[103]

Strabo[104] says that the people in Narbonne began to accept Latin only in the reign of Tiberius, and it is in Narbonne that the most and best Latin inscriptions are found. Irenaeus, writing from Lyons in the second century, begs to be excused from rhetorical polish, seeing that he lives among the Celts—περὶ βάρβαρον διάλεκτον τὸ πλεῖστον ἀσχολουμενων (ἡμῶν).[105] In the following century we find Alexander Severus, in preparing his last expedition, being met by a female Druid who prophesied his death in Celtic (Gallico sermone)[106]—though the reference may have been inserted merely to adorn a tale, and Gallicus sermo may stand for Gallic Latin. At any rate, Celtic was not entirely forgotten in Ausonius’s day (fourth century), who refers to Patera, rhetor at Bordeaux, as ‘stirpe Druidarum satus’, while Phoebicius similarly is ‘stirpe satus Druidum’,[107] and is, moreover, the ‘temple-warder of Belenus’,[108] the Celtic Apollo, just as the race of Patera comes ‘Beleni ... e templo’. In satirizing the pedantic trifling of the grammarian, Ausonius gives ‘al’ and ‘tau’ as Celtic letters.[109] Even Sidonius in the fifth century has to notice it, in spite of his Roman disdain. It was owing to the zeal of Ecdicius, he says,[110] that the nobility of Gaul became cultured—‘sermonis Celtici squamam depositura’, a statement which shows that the old language was still to be reckoned with. It is rather an irony of fate that the style of Sidonius—the one point on which he prided himself—undoubtedly owes its exotic[17] character in order, rhythm, and vocabulary[111] to Celtic and Gothic influence. His elaborate scorn for what is foreign recoils on his own head.

One final instance of the survival of Celtic must be mentioned for the controversy which it has evoked. Jerome says that the Galatians in his day had practically the same native language as the Treveri.[112] Was this language Celtic? Freeman[113] thinks that Jerome’s word may be doubted, as he was not a philologist. This would seem to rule out all the witnesses, for philology is an entirely modern development; and it would hardly have been indispensable for forming so simple a judgement. Jerome, moreover, is a considerable authority, the most learned of the Fathers. Lavisse[114] has recently accepted his statement. He mentions the objection of Perrot,[115] who maintains that Celtic had long vanished from Asia Minor, and of Fustel de Coulanges,[116] who says that the language of the Treveri was German, and answers: (1) that Celtic survived in the speech if not in the documents of Asia Minor, and (2) that Coulanges is wrong; the names of the Treveri are Celtic. This being granted, it would seem that Celtic survived well into the fifth century, and this conclusion appears to be reinforced in extent and significance by Freeman’s statement that there was a survival of the Celtic language and sentiment in Brittany during the fifth century.[117] But this statement is misleading. It is generally admitted that Gallic had entirely gone out of use in Armorica, when the fugitives from Great Britain settled in the country and introduced their insular speech from the fifth century onwards. And Breton is more closely allied to Welsh and Old Cornish than to[18] Gallic. On the whole we must say that the evidence of modern philology points to a less considerable influence of the Celtic element than we should expect. Celtic was overshadowed by German, and especially, of course, Latin. Hitherto modern philology has found traces of Celtic loan-words in the following spheres: agriculture, carriage-building, the names of animals, trees, and plants, the parts of the body, items of clothing, weapons, and geographical terms.[118] The inscriptions in Gaul show words like cantalon,[119] a kind of building, and cantuna (canteen) which the philologists pronounce to be of Celtic origin.[120] We must conclude, therefore, that while sporadic traces of Celtic are undoubtedly found in the fifth century (as in the case of the Treviri, who in their secluded valley would naturally retain the ancient language longer than the people around them), the language had, in the main, disappeared by that time.

All this shows us that in dealing with education in Gaul we cannot attempt a thorough and systematic study. Romanization lies over the country and its institutions like a veil. Roman authors give us scattered pictures of what went on beneath that veil, but they give it from the Roman point of view. Roman rule was so mighty, and its methods so far-reaching, that everything is reduced to Roman form. The ruler did not see the native genius or native ways, or if he saw them did not understand or sympathize. It was his task to rule, and he knew, in general, only one method: the rule of force—‘parcere subiectis et debellare superbos’—though diplomacy plays a large part in the later Empire. Moreover, the mass of the people were too uneducated to give expression to their individuality, or did not know Latin sufficiently well to do so. All our evidence comes from Greek or Roman pens. As soon as the Empire is withdrawn from Gaul natural differences find expression and[19] variety of individuality is at once displayed. Jung[121] notices that the inscriptions of Arles and Trèves are an illustration of this. While the Empire is there we catch only dim glimpses of the sort of education that (fraught with the traditions of a mighty past) may have lingered on among the mass of the people even as late as the fourth century. When we deal with the schools of Gaul, therefore, it must be with those of the Gallo-Romans who were more Roman than Gallic. But there is another element which operated, as it were, under the surface of Romanization in Gaul.

4. Germanic Influence

In trying to form an idea, of the influence of the Germanic races on the culture of Gaul during the later Empire, we must again be satisfied with only a few stray references in the contemporary authorities. Philologists think that as early as the first century A.D. the German races must have influenced the Romans. They establish indisputable cases, but it is admitted that the whole question is difficult and complicated in the extreme.[122]

The question of German influence may be looked at from two opposite points of view—from the constructive and the destructive. The latter is by far the more prominent and will be dealt with at a later stage. The former is far the more difficult, and nothing is attempted here except to set down in bare outline one or two of its aspects. It would be far easier to describe the influence of Roman civilization on the barbarians.

Yet there is something to be said. If the Roman generals prescribed a Roman form of government for the barbarians, as Corbulo did for the Frisians in A.D. 47, German fashions intruded into the Roman world and the Roman ladies wore barbarian costume and coiffure.[123] On the Rhine frontier these barbarians developed to such an extent and so many towns sprang up—Cologne the prosperous, Bonn, Coblentz, Strassburg—which grew[20] out of the Roman camps but drew their life from the neighbouring tribes, that the law forbade the selling of certain commodities to barbarians.[124] On the other hand, the Empire needed them as cultivators and soldiers, and the Panegyrici Latini show us that it was part of the imperial policy to make them settle in the provinces.[125] Social history shows that the Germanic peoples stood on a fairly high level of culture even in the first centuries of our era. They possessed a traditional religious cult which promoted the noblest virtues—conjugal love, friendship, hospitality—a body of legends about gods and heroes, an ancestral poetry, in which clan and family feeling plays a large part.[126] In these respects they were capable of influencing the Romans, who admired their courage and feared their strength.

Besides the casual intermingling of people for various reasons, there were three main sources of intercourse: the army, the administration, and trade. The first need not be dwelt on, nor the well-known question be raised how far the German element in it was responsible for the fall of the Empire. Of the second we may mention as an instance Pliny’s picture of Trajan dispensing justice in Germany—sometimes without an interpreter—while the influence of the trade in furs, wine, and fish in introducing Germanic words into Latin has been amply established.[127]

Turning to Gaul in particular, we find many avenues of Germanic influence; for, besides the big invasions of the third and fifth centuries, we find the Goths officially settled in Aquitaine in A.D. 419, and the Burgundians about the same time, in the north and north-eastern parts. It is not surprising, therefore, to catch from Ausonius glimpses of fairly familiar[21] intercourse between German and Gallo-Roman in the fourth century. His enthusiastic praise of Bissula, the Suebian maid who was captured beyond the Rhine[128]—‘Barbara, sed quae Latias vincis alumna pupas’—is an indication of this. Now there is a law of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, given in A.D. 370, forbidding all intermarriage. ‘Nulli provincialium’, it says, ‘cuiuscumque ordinis aut loci fuerit, cum barbara sit uxore coniugium: nec ulli gentilium (foreigners, i.e. not Roman) provincialis foemina copuletur. Quod si quae inter provinciales atque Gentiles adfinitates ex huiusmodi nuptiis exstiterint, quod in his suspectum vel noxium detegitur, capitaliter expietur.’[129] This law, however, as Lavisse remarks,[130] does not seem to have had much effect. Such laws very rarely have. We may assume, therefore, that there was considerable intercourse even before the Visigoths were settled in Aquitaine.

Not only had points of contact been multiplied, but the standard of civilization among the invaders had risen. Orosius notes that the Burgundians were mild and modest enough to treat their Gallic subjects as brothers,[131] and their laws dating from the sixth century show a considerable culture. Roman civilization and Christian morality had raised them to this level, but they still had their own contribution to make. For they still had their own national character and traditions and language, and these produced blends and combinations in the already richly blended Aquitaine which have played their part in the shaping of the whole. Such influences cannot be reduced to specific items, but it is plain that they were there. They left their mark (all the more effectively because the Goths welcomed Roman culture with open arms) on the character of the people, on their literature, and on their language.[132] Even in Cicero’s day Gallic Latin had a distinctive flavour. To Brutus he says that when he comes to Gaul he will hear words not used at Rome, though the differences[22] are not fundamental.[133] By the time of Sidonius Germanic influences have accentuated these differences. To such an extent, says this lover of Rome to his friends, had the host of idle and careless people increased, that they would soon have to weep for the extinction of the Latin language, were it not for the tiny band of scholars who might save the purity of the Roman tongue from the rust of undignified barbarisms.[134] To Arbogast Sidonius declares[135] that Latin has perished from Belgium and the Rhine; and though this may be a rhetorical preparation for the antithesis ‘in te resedit’, we cannot fail to hear in it and in the phrase ‘our vanishing culture’ the tramp of the approaching barbarians.

The contribution of Germanic to the peculiar character of Gallic Latin is traced by modern philology to the following spheres: proper nouns, weapons and military terms, administration and jurisdiction, animals and plants, terms of domestic economy, and, what is more, certain abstract names (affre, hâte, guise, orgueil, &c.), and a good number of adjectives and verbs.[136]

Looking at this Germanic influence from the point of view of French, the decadence of Gallic in the fifth century and the preponderance of Germanic, to omit Latin for the moment, are accomplished facts. But from the point of view of the fourth and fifth centuries, what we find is that philologists have never clearly distinguished between those Germanic words which came[23] in after the third-century invasions and those which were imported in the fifth century. The fact that most of the Germanic words recognized in French are Frankish seems to point to the conclusion that the most important German influence came with Chlodowig—i.e. after our period. Here, then, is a point which we would recommend for philological research: an estimation of the relative importance of Germanic influence in Gaul, after the third-century invasions and after those of the fifth.

Sidonius has given us a few glimpses of Gothic life in Gaul towards the end of the fifth century. Theodoric, whose ‘civilitas’ he commends,[137] does not load his table with tasteless profusion: ‘maximum tunc pondus in verbis est’. And it is to his credit that in his case, ‘cibi arte, non pretio placent’.[138] A wise balance is kept: ‘videas ibi elegantiam Graecam, abundantiam Gallicanam, celeritatem Italam.’ He does not go in for those cheap amusements which were all too common as meal-time entertainments: there is no hydraulic organ, no choir, no flute, or lyre or performing girl.[139] If we take this with Salvian’s panegyrics on the morals of the Goths, it may not perhaps be unjustifiable to conclude that the Gothic element gave some stability to the moral education of Southern Gaul.

Intellectually, too, they stood high. It is not without significance that Arbogast (391-2) made his nominee for the Empire a former teacher of rhetoric. Seronatus speaks of ‘literature among the Goths’,[140] and Sidonius praises Arbogast, who, though ‘potor Mosellae’ is famous for his Roman eloquence and commits no barbarism, in spite of living among barbarians.[141] The greater part of the nobility understood Latin well, though Gothic was probably spoken in ordinary intercourse. The lower classes among the Goths understood Latin very imperfectly. At the collapse of the conspiracy vaguely mentioned by Sidonius[142] an interpreter is used. The persons concerned were clearly Goths. And Ennodius speaks of an interpreter at an interview between Euric and Epiphanius, when the latter made a speech in Latin.[143] But Latin was preponderant. It was the language of[24] diplomacy[144] and legislation; it was the language of a mighty civilization, and of Placidia, the wife of Ataulf. Theodoric II was trained by Avitus in Latin literature, and Euric encourages the teaching of classical literature. Lampridius sang in praise of the Gothic kings at Bordeaux, and Leo, Euric’s minister, was famous as a rhetorician. In fact, the Visigothic court became the last refuge of Roman letters.[145] Nor did the activity of the Goths end with literature. In 484, feeling the complexity and difficulty of the Theodosian code, they called a conference of lawyers and ecclesiastics who produced an abridged form, with interpretations, which was destined[146] to replace the older code throughout the country occupied by the Goths. That there were schools of jurisprudence in this part, notably at Arles, we gather from Sidonius.[147] Fauriel thinks this revised form, published A.D. 506, bore traces of the Germanic spirit and tradition, and was, in comparison with the Roman code, ‘plus concise et mieux rédigée’.

There is no doubt that a large number of people in Gaul welcomed the government of the Goths, whose influence was thereby extended to the classes whose interest did not reach to books and codes. For the poor, crushed by the cast-iron imperial system, looked to the Goths as their deliverers, and the middle classes, oppressed with taxation, welcomed any change, while many eagerly sought the service of the Gothic government.[148] ‘Sed Gothicam fateor pacem me esse secutum’, says Paulinus of Pella,[149] who, though a nobleman, preferred Gothic rule, because he felt how uncertain imperial protection was becoming. He also mentions the ‘summa humanitas’ which the Goths showed in shielding the people on whom they were billeted.[150] Generally[25] speaking, he was satisfied with Gothic rule: it was quite profitable, in spite of his many and great sufferings.[151]

Under these circumstances it was easy to forget Rome. ‘Rome était si loin de Bordeaux’, remarks Rocafort.[152] And so Gallo-Romans very often came to treat their Gothic neighbours on terms of friendliness and equality.

But among the upper classes of the Gallo-Romans generally Roman pride was still very strong. They held high offices at the court of the barbarians, for whom they cherished a secret contempt, or else retired to their great châteaux[153] (ruins of which are still to be seen[154]) and bewailed to one another the encroachment of the Goths, who retained, to a large extent, their lawless and roving instinct. There is a feeling that literature and religion (in both of which we see, though in different degrees, the growth of a ceremonious externalism) are the only things left. Sidonius asks Basilius to see to it that the bishops obtain the right of ordination in those parts which the Goths have taken, so that there may be, at any rate, a religious if not a political bond.[155] And both in religion and literature they despised the Goths. For the Goths were Arians, and their jargon was barbarous. The well-known epigram of the Latin Anthology[156] expresses the attitude of mind:

How can one write poetry, exclaims Sidonius, among people who put rancid oil on their hair? ‘The Muse of the six-foot metre has scorned her task, since the appearance of patrons seven feet high.’[157] And to Philagrius he confesses: ‘barbaros vitas quia mali putentur: ego etiamsi boni’.[158]

How sensitive men of Sidonius’s class were to the charge of barbarism we may see from Avitus’s letter to Viventiolus.[159] Rumour whispers that in one of his sermons he has slipped into a ‘barbarism’, and his friends are openly criticizing. ‘I confess’, says the bishop with wounded pride, ‘that such a thing may have happened to me. Any learning I may have had in more youthful years is now the spoil of age, “omnia fert aetas”’—a Virgilian quotation to indicate that, in spite of his profession to his friend, his ‘studia litterarum’ still remain to mark his culture. The barbarism at issue is the quantity of the middle syllable of ‘potitur’, to which he devotes most of the letter.

Thus to the nobleman of the fifth century, even if he was a churchman and might, therefore, be expected to take the wider Christian view, culture meant something essentially Roman. By the side of this Roman culture Germanic influence must seem small, and yet, when we remember the attitude of men like Paulinus of Pella to the Goths, and allow a margin for Sidonius’s prejudice, it cannot seem unimportant in the civilization of Gaul.

5. Romanization of Gaul

Having glanced at the negative side of Gallic Romanization, it is important to look a little closer at the positive side, in order to form an idea of the extent of Gallo-Roman education.

How mighty the Roman impress was is seen in the many Roman roads, the amphitheatres, the inscriptions where Gauls very often appear as priests of Rome and Augustus, in the famous altar at Lyons, mentioned by Juvenal,[160] on which the sixty peoples of Gallia Comata inscribed their names after the pacification of the country by Drusus in 12 B.C., and which[27] formed the common sanctuary for the province, and was the scene of regular rhetorical contests in Latin and in Greek.[161] And the speech of Claudius to the Senate[162] shows how eager the emperors were to speed on the rapidly advancing Romanization of Gaul.

Traditionally, Aquitaine was the first to be Romanized. Ammianus remarks that the shores of the Aquitanians were easily accessible to merchants, and that their characters were soon degraded to effeminacy, so that they easily passed under Roman domination.[163] But Lyons was the real centre of systematic Romanization. Thence Latin spread widely among the Gauls, who have left us no record of their Gallic Latin.[164] By the fifth century the victory of Latin was complete. It was the language of civilization, of government, of society. Slaves brought from all parts of the world made a common language between master and servant a necessity. Soldiers settled in Gaul spread its influence. Finally, it was the official language of the Church and (a fact which was most important for its propagation) of the School.[165]

It is a tribute to the thoroughness of Caesar’s work that when Classicus rebelled in A.D. 70[166] his associates were two Julii, one of whom tried to pass himself off as a descendant of the Dictator, while the other assumed the insignia of the Roman Emperor. So mighty was the Roman name that even its enemies in attacking it desired a part of its glory. ‘Between Classicus and the first Buonaparte’, says Freeman,[167] ‘no man again dreamed of an Empire of the Gauls.’ And Strabo had some justification when he spoke of the Gauls as δεδουλωμένοι καὶ ζῶντες κατὰ τὰ προστάγματα τῶν ἑλόντων αὐτοὺς Ῥωμαίων.[168]

Not that the feeling against Rome entirely disappeared. The[28] Gauls objected to the luxury of the Roman emperors,[169] and we have such incidents as the Treveri shutting their gates to Decentius, brother of Magnentius.[170] Lampridius speaks of ‘Gallicanae mentes ... durae ac pertorridae, et saepe imperatoribus graves’.[171] Zosimus tells us that after the fall of the usurper Constantine[172] in A.D. 411 the whole of the Armorican land cast out its Roman rulers. But in the main the Roman machine worked efficiently enough by keeping the border tribes busy with feuds among themselves, and the mass of the people with oppressive exactions. There are many references to the loyalty of Gaul, from the exulting cry of Cicero in the Philippics[173] to the enthusiasm of Rutilius Namatianus. Pliny[174] calls Narbonensis ‘Italia verius quam provincia’. Claudian represents the whole of Gaul as fighting for Stilicho,[175] Gaul which supplies the Empire with soldiers.[176] Before him the panegyrists of the emperors—the majority of whom were Gauls—had been loud in their testimonies of Gaul’s loyalty. The orator of Autun[177] boasts (A.D. 311) that his city, rejoicing then in the imperial title of ‘Flavia Aeduorum’, had been the only one to join the Romans of its own free will—though Caesar records the subjugation of the Aedui in much the same way as that of the other tribes. Of purer fidelity than Massilia or Saguntum, the Aedui are ‘ingenua et simplici caritate fratres populi Romani’. The hollowness of the speaker’s rhetoric deceives no one; but it shows that there was at least a large part of Gaul which considered such speeches ‘the correct thing’, and that confidence in Rome’s destiny was widely felt: the fate-appointed eternal[29] city, whose menacing enemies had all been rooted out.[178] Much more genuine is Rutilius. He feels that Gaul is his native country,[179] but the enthusiasm he shows for Rome is more than the mere official utterance of a Praefect of the City. There is real inspiration in his lines, in spite of Gibbon’s opinion that he was only an ‘ingenious traveller’.[180]

Even if conquered peoples chafe under the yoke of Rome at first, Rutilius is confident that it is all for their good:

The great achievement of the Empire is that it made a city of the world: ‘urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat’. Rome, he maintains, is greater than her deeds: ‘Quod regnas minus est quam quod regnare mereris’. And as her buildings dazzle his sight, he exclaims in admiration:

The whole of Gaul was not equally loyal. While the South remained predominantly Roman to the end, the North, ‘audax Germania’, Claudian calls it,[183] was less friendly, and its hostility increased as time went on.

The Aeduan panegyrist, who implores help for the future from the Emperor Constantine, while he thanks him for the benefits of the past, shows the bearing of physical features upon this difference between North and South.[184] In contrast with the cultivated fields of the South, its ‘viae faciles’, its ‘navigera flumina’, we find in Belgica ‘vasta omnia, inculta squalentia, multa tenebrosa, etiam militaris vias ita confragosas et alternis[30] montibus arduas atque praecipites, ut vix semiplena carpenta, interdum vacua, transmittant’. The roads are very bad (regionum nostrarum aditum atque aspectum tam foedum tamque asperum), and even an ardent panegyrist must admit that loyalty is damped, when, in addition to an exiguous harvest, you must experience difficulties of transport. It is remarkable how important a part the road plays in the Roman Empire, one way or another. Here, barbarism on the one hand and bad roads on the other proved a formidable combination against civilization. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that as we go north traces of Gallo-Roman schools become fewer, inscriptions bearing on education almost non-existent, and Greek almost unknown.

But the testimony of literature to the Romanization of Gaul is far less eloquent than that of the extant remains. The modern traveller in Provence might well be tempted to exclaim with Pliny ‘Italia verius quam provincia’. The theatres and amphitheatres at Fréjus and Arles, the arch and theatre at Orange, the temple of Augustus and Livia at Vienne, and above all the Maison Carrée, the Porta Augusta and the Thermae at Nîmes, and the neighbouring Pont du Gard, challenge comparison with the great buildings of Italy and even of Rome herself. And these are but the most notable examples of evidence which may be found in less degree in almost every village of Provence.

Outside the ‘old province’, though the evidence is naturally less impressive in bulk and less widely spread in area, yet the walls and gates of Autun, the amphitheatre at Paris, the Porte de Mars at Reims, the arch at Langres, the Porte Noire and amphitheatre at Besançon, and the theatre at remote Lillebonne, tell the tale of Roman influence on the Tres Galliae; and to these must be added the great buildings of Trèves which, as an imperial capital, occupies a place apart.

And what is writ large on these great monuments is written no less unmistakably in the contents of the French museums. That of the world-famous statues of Venus three come from Narbonensis is significant of the taste of Gallic connoisseurs. These great masterpieces were of course imported, but the discoveries at Martres Tolosanes attest the existence of local schools of[31] sculpture.[185] Even if the reliefs of Gallic tombstones in the north and centre diverge somewhat sharply from the Roman convention in preferring the naturalistic to the allegorical in their choice of subject, yet the form is predominantly classical. And the readiness of Gaul to learn the industrial arts of Italy is strikingly proved by its pottery. The manufacture of the red ‘Arretine’ ware or ‘terra sigillata’ was already flourishing among the Ruteni in the first century A.D., and met with such success that it was actually exported to Italy, and finally displaced the home product.[186] In this useful if humble art, Gaul, like Greece, took captive her captor.

The causes of this all but complete Romanization are not far to seek. The sword of Caesar was mighty and its argument efficient. Part of this argument the Romans always retained, but as time went on they mingled diplomacy with their militarism. The altar at Lyons had its persuasive side, though the spirit that moved the orator’s tongue was no doubt quickened by the scourge and the river in the background. Yet imperial policy is as clearly seen here as in the utterances of the panegyrists, who are regularly employed to publish the prince’s praises. Caracalla’s extension of the citizenship to provincials is part of the same policy (A.D. 212).

Not to exterminate the barbarian tribes, but to bring them within the Empire as cultivators and soldiers, was the aim of the later emperors[187]—an aim which they sometimes followed with ruthless cruelty.[188] Of Constantine the panegyrist says that he entirely cleared Batavia of the Franks who had occupied it, and made them live among Romans, so that they might lose not only their arms but also their savage temper.[189] He brought the[32] barbarous Franks from their original homes in the distant North to till the soil and to fill the armies of the Roman Empire.[190]

Moreover, as Glover[191] remarks, the schoolmaster of the West was the ally of the Empire. The elaborate system of imperial protection in the schools had in view the important object of Romanizing the growing generation. Besides, by increasing lines of communication, by rendering news and books accessible, by making intercourse secure, the emperors helped forward Roman influence. The security which the provincial felt in the protection of the Eternal City was one of the strongest pillars of loyalty. The effect of Alaric’s success upon minds like those of Jerome and Augustine, critical as they were of Pagan Rome, is some measure of the confidence which people felt in her power. Yet even after Rome had deserted the Gauls in the great invasions of the fifth century, we have the picture of Sidonius’s passionate ardour for the Roman name and his bitter grief when he ceased to be a Roman citizen in 475.

‘Birth in the Gallic provinces during the fourth century brought with it no sense of provincial inferiority. Society was thoroughly Roman, and education and literature more vigorous, so far as we can judge, than in any other part of the West.’[192] While we agree with this in the main, it may be questioned whether the Roman did not sometimes tend to look on the Gaul as a mere provincial. In the first century we find Pliny saying that he is pleased to hear that his books are being sold at Lyons, where he evidently does not expect so civilized a thing as a book-shop.[193] Symmachus, in the fourth century, writes[194] to a friend in Gaul ‘rusticari te asseris ... non hoc litterae tuae sapiunt’, and adds sarcastically ‘nisi forte Gallia tua dedux Heliconis’. And Cassiodorus (sixth century) implies that there were some who thought that Latin literature should be confined to Rome. ‘You have found Roman eloquence’ he writes to a friend, ‘not in its native place, and you have learned oratory from your Cicero in the country of the Celts. What are we to think of those who maintain that Latin must be learnt at Rome[33] and Rome only? Liguria too sends forth her Ciceros.’[195] A protest of this kind as late as the sixth century suggests that the idea of provincialism was pretty strong. One of the panegyrists,[196] a Gaul[197] of uncertain name,[198] illustrates this same tendency. And though his words are probably as insincere as his praise of the Emperor, yet they imply a tradition which he found it expedient to recognize.

‘Full well I know how much we provincials lack of Roman intelligence. For, indeed, to speak correctly and eloquently is the Roman’s birthright ... our speech must ever flow from their fountain.’[199]

6. Roman Education in Gaul before the Fourth Century A.D.

The extent of Romanization in Gaul gives us a general idea of the influence of Roman civilization in that country; for wherever the Roman went he spread his culture. It remains to investigate very briefly the traces of actual schools and teachers in the times that lead up to the fourth and fifth centuries.

As early as the first century B.C. we hear of Gaul in connexion[34] with education. ‘In provincias quoque’, says Suetonius, ‘Grammatica penetraverat, ac nonnulli de notissimis doctoribus peregre docuerunt, maxime in Gallia Togata.’[200] Tacitus made all the speakers in his dialogue on Famous Orators Gauls,[201] except Vipstanus Messalla, and Suetonius tells of many Gallic teachers: Marcus Antonius Gnipho, who taught in the house of Julius Caesar and is said to have had Cicero among his pupils;[202] Valerius Cato (first century B.C.), a Gallic freedman, known as ‘the Latin siren’, who wrote a book called Indignatio, and taught many youths of high rank, being especially famous as a teacher of poetry;[203] and Claudius Quirinalis of Arles,[204] who taught with great success in the first century A.D.

Schools were widely spread. ‘Il n’y a pas lieu de douter’, says Bouquet,[205] ‘qu’il n’y eût dès lors (first century A.D.) autant d’écoles publiques qu’il y avait de villes principales.’ Narbonne, stirred by the culture of the neighbouring Massilia,[206] Arles, Vienne, Toulouse, Autun, Lyons, the scene of Caligula’s famous rhetorical contests and the imperial seat before Trèves and Arles, Trèves, Nîmes, Bordeaux, and a large number of other towns, ‘cultivated learning and produced great men’. Jullian thinks that Bourges was probably a scholastic centre of some importance.[207] Claudius, the Emperor, remarked: ‘insignes viros e Gallia Narbonensi transivisse’.[208] Tradition says that Toulouse was called Palladia on account of its love of letters,[209] and Martial[35] rejoices that his poems are so widely read at Vienne.[210] It may not be mere rhetoric when Tacitus says that Roman education came to Britain from Gaul, and that Agricola, in his attempt to Romanize the Britanni, took a particular interest in their education.[211] ‘Iam vero principum filios liberalibus artibus erudire, et ingenia Britannorum studiis Gallorum anteferre,[212] ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent.’ Thus the educational influence of Gaul was early great.

During the second century education continued to flourish. Lucian[213] introduces a Gaul οὐκ ἀπαίδευτος τὰ ἡμέτερα ... ἀκριβῶς Ἑλλάδα φωνὴν ἀφιείς, φιλόσοφος, ὡς οἶμαι, τὰ ἐπιχώρια, who discourses in learned fashion on the question whether Mercury or Hercules should be the patron god of the art of speaking. It was the time of the wandering rhetor—‘die zweite Sophistik’—and Greek flourished under the patronage of the philhellenic Hadrian. Aulus Gellius has left us a picture of the pupils escorting the sophist from place to place. ‘Nos ergo familiares eius circumfusi undique eum prosequebamur domum’;[214] and in the case of Favorinus at Rome they went about with him ‘spellbound, as it were, by his eloquence’.[215] Intercourse was quite free and easy and not always serious: ‘in litteris amoenioribus et in voluptatibus pudicis honestisque agitabamus.’[216] These literary clubs set the fashion for the rhetorical schools and perpetuated the distinctive methods of the Greek- and Latin-speaking sophist-rhetorician—‘rhetoricus sophista, utriusque linguae callens’.[217]

Almost all records of the Gallic rhetors during this interesting period have been lost. The letters of Valerius Paulinus, of[36] Geminus, of Trebonius Rufinus to the younger Pliny, the orations of the lawyers, the books of the famous philosopher Favorinus, the poems of Sentius Augurinus, have all perished. Only the work of L. Annaeus Florus has come down to us.[218] Yet the general trend of education may be discerned. If one great feature of this century was the wandering sophist, another was the power of the Christian religion, whose influence went forth from Lyons in particular, where Irenaeus was predominant. ‘Christi religio novam admovit oratorum ingenio facem.’[219] This influence has been exaggerated, especially by eighteenth-century writers. One of them lays stress on the revival of the finer accomplishments as a result of this influence, and on the dignity and polish of language in which the Christian writers agreed with the ancients.[220] This is manifestly an overstatement: the Church on the whole had neither the time nor the inclination to pay much attention to ‘elegantiora studia’; its attention was directed to the search for truth and it is hence that its real inspiration to education came.

We find imperial interest in education during this period beginning to take a more definite form. Antoninus Pius gives teachers’ salaries and honours,[221] and fixes the number of rhetors in each town. No doubt the influence of M. Cornelius Fronto, the famous tutor of Marcus Aurelius, the model of succeeding generations of orators, told in this direction. In a fragment of this teacher we have a reference which seems to point to schools in the North during the second century. He speaks of Reims (Durocortorum) as ‘illae vestrae Athenae’[222], and it would not be surprising if the imperial policy had selected this important frontier town as a centre of Romanization, just as it afterwards patronized Trèves for the same purpose.

In the third century a large number of churches sprang up, whose educational value among the people must have been important.[223] Pagan letters, on the other hand, had been showing signs of decline since the end of the second century. Under Caracalla, who in his hatred for literature put to death many men of education,[224] culture sank still lower. It is true that Alexander Severus was a patron of literature[225] and founded schools[226] and fixed salaries, but the general trend of education was one of decline. Barbarian invasions and civil unrest increased this tendency.[227] And so Gaul was disorganized, and amid her disorder education grew feeble. But when in 292 Gaul passed under the government of Constantius Chlorus, interest in culture revived and grew strong. Constantius fixed his abode at Trèves and actively set himself to aid the cause of education. The school of Massilia was declining, but, on the whole, Gallic education grew and gained individuality. Eumenius has told us at length how much the Gallic youth owed to his interest and protection (incredibilem erga iuventutem Galliarum suarum sollicitudinem atque indulgentiam), and how thankful he is to the Emperor who transferred him ‘from the secrets of the imperial chambers (he had been Magister Memoriae) to the private shrines of the Muses’.[228]

Autun is mentioned by Tacitus[229] as a centre of education in the time of Tiberius: ‘nobilissimam Galliarum subolem, liberalibus studiis ibi operatam’. It flourished until the last quarter of the third century, when it was destroyed by the plundering Bagaudae.[230][38] Eumenius pleads earnestly with the Emperor for the restoration of the famous Maeniana,[231] ‘vetustissima post Massiliam bonarum artium sedes,’[232] the university of the North even, perhaps, in pre-Roman[233] days, just as Massilia was of the South—the Latin university of Gaul as Massilia was the Greek. Of all the Gallic towns, except Lyons, Autun was the soonest Romanized, though no Roman colony had been sent there.[234] It had the Aeduan tradition of voluntary friendship with Rome. Its Gallic nobles had renounced Celtic connexions in favour of Roman civilization. There was a current legend that Autun had been founded by Hercules; like the Romans, the Aeduans wanted to establish an ancestry for themselves which did not smack of barbarism. If Lyons in these days was the political centre, the intellectual centre was certainly Autun.[235]

A. THE GENERAL PROSPERITY OF THE SCHOOLS IN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES

‘Gaul’, says Norden in his monumental work,[236] ‘was destined to be, in a higher measure than the actual mother-country, Italy, the support of the ancient culture during the time of the Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages. Flooded with barbarians, sown with cloisters, she held aloft the banner of the traditional education to the glory of herself and the service of mankind.’

This is true more particularly of the fourth and fifth centuries. For the impulse given to education at the end of the third century continued to gather momentum during the fourth. It was a time of peace and quiet in contrast to the preceding and the succeeding centuries.[237] For more than a hundred years Aquitaine enjoyed respite from barbarian invasions. We catch a note of this restfulness in the pages of Ausonius. ‘I kept clear of party-strife and conspiracies: unmarred by them was the sincerity of my friendships’, is the happy testimony which he puts into his father’s mouth,[238] and the phrase ‘otium magis foventes quam studentes gloriae’[239] reflects the placid life of a Bordeaux professor. Gaul had been reorganized by Maximian[40] and Constantine, and this period of peace gave splendid opportunities for the development of the imperial policy and the latinization of Gaul. The Emperors consistently supported the schools and encouraged literature, which gained such strength that it overcame even the barbarians. The Visigoths accepted its influence and attended its schools. Jullian goes so far as to say that it was only in the fourth century that the victory of Latin letters in Gaul was complete.[240]

Mamertinus, in his Gratiarum Actio to Julian, contrasts his own time (A.D. 362) with that of the Republic, of which he says ‘nullum iam erat bonarum artium studium’. Military labours and the study of law were despised, in spite of the fact that there were men like Manlius and Scaevola. Moreover, ‘the study of oratory was despised by the big men of the time as being too laborious and unpractical a matter’.[241] But now, under Julian, all this is different and the age of gold has returned.

The orator is working up to a rhetorical climax, and the first part of his picture is consequently grossly warped and exaggerated. But the central fact of the advancement of studies is clear and incontestable. Were it not true the rhetorician would not have dared to use such language to a man like Julian.

Moreover, it was the age of the ‘ecclesia triumphans’, and this meant fresh ideals and the access of energy (not always wisely spent) that comes from such inspiration. In the fourth century, and more particularly in the fifth, there was an intellectual activity in theological and philosophical subjects which produced a new interest in education and built up the rampart that saved culture from entire barbarization during the darkness of the succeeding centuries. The Church, while it rejoiced in the overthrow of paganism, and with its enmity to paganism often joined a hostility to pagan letters, was nevertheless the instrument of saving the literature and the culture which it opposed. And so, when we hear Jerome’s exultant cry at the triumph of Christianity, we hear also the victory shout of Roman civilization.

‘All the Roman temples’, says Jerome, ‘are covered with soot and cobwebs. They who once were the gods of nations are left in desolation with the owls and night-birds on the house-tops.... Now has even the Egyptian Serapis become Christian ... from India and Persia and Ethiopia we daily receive multitudes of monks; the Armenian has laid aside his quivers, the Huns learn the Psalms, the cold of Scythia is warm with the glow of our Faith.’[242] The Roman nobles, who set the fashion in education, were coming over to the Church in great numbers. ‘Gracchus, an urban prefect, whose name boasts his patrician rank, has received baptism.’[243] Paulinus of Nola, Honoratus of Lérins, Salvian, Eucherius, Sidonius, all leaders of Christianity, were all of noble rank. Even Ausonius professed[244] to be a Christian.

In these circumstances it is not surprising to find many indications of flourishing studies in Gaul during this period. Roman Gaul, enriched by its background of Greek, of Celtic, of Germanic influence, became at length greater than Rome itself. Eumenius is ready to spend his salary on the rebuilding of the Maeniana at Autun.[245] In Ausonius’s family there is much interest in education. His father gives the impression of having been a cultured physician,[246] and his grandfather, Arborius, was a student of astrology.

His aunt Aemilia lived a single life devoted to the study of[42] medicine.[248] Herculanus, his nephew, was a teacher at Bordeaux, though he wandered from the straight path,[249] while the fame of his uncle Arborius, the rhetorician, reached as far as Constantinople.[250] In 398 Claudian could use doctus as a conventional epithet of the citizens of Gaul.[251] It had long been the custom of the Romans to employ Gallic teachers, and it is a striking testimony to the pre-eminence of the schools of Gaul that Symmachus, the crusty old patrician, conservative of the pagan conservatives, should desire to have a Gallic tutor for his son at Rome.[252] He is not ashamed to confess his debt to Gaul. ‘I must confess that I miss the fountain of Gallic eloquence. All my skill (and I know its limitations) I owe to Gaul.’[253] If Rome had retained her former importance as an educational centre, if there had been the least chance of backing her against Gaul, this ardent lover of the Eternal City would certainly have done so. But Gaul at this time was rather like Scotland from Hume to Scott: a junior partner, but with a literary culture of her own that imparted to her a superior excellence.

Turning to Christian writers, we find the same testimony to the prosperity of Gallic studies. Now this prosperity had two aspects. There was the height to which men like Paulinus and Sidonius rose in the attainment of knowledge, and there was the width to which the interest in reading the pamphlets of the Church Fathers extended. But that there was a great and increasing interest in education cannot be denied. Neither conservative haughtiness towards the provinces (as far as it survived) nor the hatred of religious zeal could ignore the fact. More than once Jerome in his Chronicle uses the word florentissime in this connexion,[254] and to Rusticus he writes that he has heard of his education at Rome, ‘post studia Galliarum quae vel[43] florentissima sunt’.[255] Paulinus of Pella and his namesake of Nola, whom Ausonius taught, together with men like Prosper of Aquitaine,[256] leaders in the Christian world, all owed their early training to the flourishing pagan schools of Gaul.

Among the nobility letters were highly prized. Sidonius reminds Syagrius of his descent from a poet to whom letters would certainly have given statues.[257] He admires the learning of the praefectorian Paul, the subtleties he propounds, his elaborate figures, the polish of his verses, the cunning of his fingers.[258] In him he sees ‘studiorum omnium culmen’. At a dinner given on the occasion of the games, the Emperor Severus engaged in a literary conversation with an ex-consul.[259] Even Seronatus aspires to literary culture and talks about ‘Literature among the Goths’.[260] In fact, owing largely to the zeal of Ecdicius, the nobility was now becoming familiar with oratorical and poetical style.[261] Thus, in spite of the invasions, the schools of the fifth century prosper and cultivate all the branches of learning prescribed by the rhetorical tradition.[262]

Three tendencies have been distinguished among the Christian schools of this period[263]: that of Sidonius which is ‘essentially heathen with a veneer of churchmanship’; that of men like Paulinus of Nola, who ‘jealously guards his pupils from contamination by the Gentile classics’; and that of ‘the wiser and more catholic teachers’ such as Hilary of Poitiers and Sulpicius Severus (in his Chronicon), who are liberal enough to imitate and benefit by the older pagan literature.[264]

All these sides of Christian education show an activity which corresponds to that of the pagan schools and outlives it. Sidonius’s letters present an interest in literature which is very often shallow, but never slack. He is continually sending round specimens of his literary efforts to his friends, and is assiduous in writing polished epitaphs[265] or inscriptions that will live on the plate if not in the memory of men.[266] There is one thing that his friends must never neglect, the reading of many books: ‘opus est ut sine dissimulatione lectites, sine fine lecturias’.[267]

Even among the stricter Christians there was generally an interest in learning outside theology. ‘In the East and in the West’, says Montalembert,[268] ‘literary culture, without being by right inseparably attached to the religious profession, became in fact a constant habit and a special distinction of the greater number of monasteries.’ In every monastery there was established, as time went on, a library, a studio for copying manuscripts and a school. The monasteries, in fact, became schools where science and profane learning were taught, as well as theology, and where Latin was studied at the same time with Hebrew and Greek.[269] This teaching was sometimes primitive and defective, and the picture is not so glowing as Montalembert suggests; but there were, at any rate, the beginnings of better things, the interest in education, and the means of protecting a valuable culture. The letters of Jerome to the Gallic women who ask him questions about the scriptures,[270] and his letters to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula,[271] are indications of a similar activity, no less than Caesarius’s exhortations to reading and study,[272] the Christian pamphlets on difficult points[45] which passed from hand to hand,[273] and Eucherius’s list of answers to the questions of his son Salonius.[274] The pedagogic significance of such works of exposition is apparent.[275]

The tendencies to exclude and to imitate pagan literature sometimes merge into each other in the same writer. It was difficult for the Christian teachers to make up their minds definitely about pagan literature, placed as they were, in a time of extreme partisanship, between the attractiveness of pagan letters and the repulsiveness of pagan faith and practice. But if we are to distinguish a class of moderate men and take Sulpicius Severus as a type (though outside the Chronicon his opposition to pagan literature is aggressively stated[276]) we may maintain that the middle party, too, was interested in culture and not cooled in its ardour by the moderation it displayed. Sulpicius makes Postumianus describe how widely the Life of Martin was read. Taken from Gaul to Rome, it travelled thence to Carthage, Alexandria, Nitria, the Thebaid, Memphis. Even in the middle of the African desert an old man was found reading it.[277] The Church, therefore, had its share in Gaul’s widespread interest in education during this time.[278]

The evidence of the inscriptions is disappointing. With such a general interest in culture we should have expected more frequent references to teachers and their activities. As it is, we find only a few inscriptions, and those in Southern Gaul, that bear on the subject. There is the epitaph of a grammarian at Vienne,[279] and the lament of a woman for her foster-son, whom she had educated, in the same town.[280]

At Lyons there has been discovered a reference to the martyrium, the famous Church or Church-school dedicated to Irenaeus. ‘In hoc tomolo requiiscit bone (= bonae) memoriae Domenicus (= Dominicus) innocens qui vixsit in pace annus (= annos) quinqui (= quinque) et in martirio (= martyrio) annus septe(m) obiit quinto decemo Kalendas Mar. indic(tio) decema.’[281] Dominicus studied here for seven years. Boissieu suggests that he may have been one of the ‘caterva scholasticorum’ at the feast of St. Just described by Sidonius.[282]

If Gaul as a whole was so famous for education, it is worth while inquiring which the particular centres of Gallic culture were.

It is evident that Aquitaine was the most distinguished of the provinces. We have seen that Jerome expressly mentions its teachers;[283] and Sulpicius Severus makes the Gaul in his Dialogues apologize for the rusticity which Aquitanians must needs find in his speech.[284] Aquitaine was the focus of Roman culture, the marrow of Gaul, as Salvian calls it.[285] Symmachus mentions a certain Dusarius, a professor of medicine in Aquitaine,[286] and many of Ausonius’s professors taught there: Staphylius at Auch,[287] Tetradius in Angoulême,[288] Anastasius[289] and Rufus[290] at Poitiers, and Arborius at Toulouse, on the border.[291] But the most famous city of Aquitaine, the intellectual capital of Gaul during the fourth century, was Bordeaux. There had been a gradual evolution[47] of schools to the West.[292] Massilia, with the schools of the South-East, which were largely dependent on her influence, was declining, and her power passed to the West, and, in a lesser degree, to the North. Bordeaux had been a great commercial centre[293] in the three previous centuries. It was the point at which goods were transhipped for the river traffic to the Mediterranean.[294] It had a flourishing trade with Spain and Britain, and many visitors came from Germany and the East. This traffic brought riches and the bustle of commerce. Buildings and monuments sprang up. But there comes a change. Towards the middle of the third century, when the emperors were weak and military discipline slack, the Barbarians renewed their attacks. For some twenty years Gaul defended herself; but the imperial protection grew feebler, and in 273 she was abandoned to the invaders. They arrived in Aquitaine in 276 or 277, and Bordeaux shared in the general devastation. The ruin was terrible; though not described by the historians, its traces remain to the present day. ‘L’œuvre de trois siècles disparut en quelques jours.’[295]

From the ruins a new Bordeaux rose. Her previous activities were suspended; her commerce failed. The desire for money was changed into a desire for knowledge, and there was no loss of intensity. Jullian[296] remarks on the frequency of such a transformation among the great cities of history. Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, Athens, Massilia passed through similar changes. The school was the last phase of their life. And so Bordeaux from being an ‘emporium’ became an ‘auditorium’.

There is no doubt that the school of Bordeaux (about which we naturally know more than about all the rest together) became famous in the fourth century, but when exactly it was founded we cannot tell. There must have been many elementary schools previously, though no trace is left. Funeral monuments show children carrying the rolls of the grammarian’s school; but they may be representations of slave-teachers attached to the household.[48] Probably the school of Bordeaux was founded by Maximian and Constantius at the beginning of the fourth century. For then, particularly, after the failure of imperial protection, it was a necessary part of imperial policy to revive the confidence and goodwill of the Gauls. It may be noted, too, that the professors whom Ausonius commemorates had mostly died during his lifetime; which seems to show that the professorial régime at Bordeaux belonged to the fourth century;[297] for Ausonius in the Preface and the Epilogue to his Commemoratio certainly gives the impression that he is going through the whole list of the ‘professores Burdigalenses’ as a duty (officium[298]) which is inspired by ‘carae relligio patriae’.[299] Thus it was that Aquitaine became ‘le dernier refuge des lettres antiques’.[300]

If Bordeaux was the intellectual, Trèves (and afterwards, Arles) was the political capital of Gaul during this period; and the presence of the emperors in those cities naturally fostered education, for education (as has been pointed out) was part of the imperial programme. As the fourth century went on Trèves eclipsed Autun ‘sedem illam liberalium artium’,[301] which had flourished exceedingly under Eumenius at the beginning of the century, but seems to have declined after his death. The imperial decrees were particularly partial to Trèves. It is as though the emperors felt the need of an intellectual as well as a military outpost on the German frontier. But in spite of every favour and facility, in spite of a brilliant court and fine buildings, this object was never accomplished. Owing to its mixed and fluctuating population and its position on the border, it remained a predominantly military town.[302] Nevertheless its schools were famous, and Ausonius associates it with Roman rhetoric:

It is curious to find that at the beginning of our period, in which we have tried to demonstrate the supremacy of the Gallic schools, there was a tradition that the Gauls were dull and slow of understanding, and that this opinion persists in the writings of Jerome.

The case of the ‘advocatus diaboli’ may be briefly put. Julian, in his satire on the citizens of Antioch, constantly speaks of the boorishness of the Gauls, whom he calls[304] Κελτοί or Γαλάται. To Alypius, the brother of Caesarius, he writes of the barbarous Muse of Gaul (ταῦτά σοι Γαλλικὴ καὶ βάρβαρος Μοῦσα προσπαίζει), and in the Misopogon the Celts (and he is thinking of the Gauls among whom he had lived) are classed with Syrians, Arabs, Thracians, Paeonians, and Mysians—a stock which is utterly lacking in culture—ἄγροικον, αὐστηρόν, ἀδέξιον ... ἂ δὴ πάντα ἐστὶ δείγματα δεινῆς ἀγροικίας.[305] Referring to his residence among the barbarous Celts like a hunter surrounded by wild beasts,[306] he says he is ἀγριώτρος than Cato in proportion as the Celts are more uncivilized than the Romans; and the Antiochean is represented as flinging the taunt into Julian’s face: ταῦτα ἐνόμισας Θρᾳξὶ νομοθετεῖν ... ἤ τοῖς ἀναισθήτοις Γαλάταις.[307]

Now all these references are sarcastic: ‘the boorish Gauls could put up with my eccentricities, but Antioch, forsooth, was too polished and cultured to tolerate them!’ The satire does not deny the barbarism of the Gauls; it merely establishes the vanity of the Antiocheans. But the passages quoted show the ἄγροίκοι is accepted as the current estimation of the Gauls; and even if Julian did not really believe it, obviously there was a body of opinion which did. Nor is it mere ἀγροικία, lack of culture, which may be due to lack of opportunity, that is imputed to them: it is also ἀναισθησία, dullness, with which they are charged. This part of the tradition finds support elsewhere. Martial had called Bordeaux ‘crassa’,[308] and Gallic credulity was[50] proverbial.[309] Jerome says in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians[310] that it was no wonder they were so stupid, seeing that their ancestors, the Gauls, had that reputation—‘cum et Hilarius Latinae eloquentiae Rhodanus, Gallus ipse et Pictavis genitus, in Hymnorum carmine Gallos indociles vocet’. The et is significant, and also seems to imply a tradition to the effect that the Gauls were stupid. It is interesting to find that a French scholar and patriot, who has studied the schools of Gaul with care, is inclined to accept Martial’s judgement for the smaller towns.[311]

In estimating the worth of this opinion, we must first of all discount a good deal of what Julian says. His mind was saturated with Hellenic philosophy and Hellas was the passion of his life. Hence he naturally despised Roman culture, and still more the Gauls whom the Romans contemned. The Greek idea of βάρβαροι would be strong in a mind like Julian’s. He did not mingle with the provincials; by the liberality of Eusebia, he says,[312] he was constantly surrounded by Greek books, so that Gaul and Germany became for him a Μουσεῖον Ἑλληνικόν. He would therefore be distinctly prejudiced, and incapable of appreciating the qualities or the culture of the Gallic mind.

Moreover, there is another and an opposite tradition. Caesar distinctly testifies to their exceptional cleverness: ‘est summae genus sollertiae atque ad omnia imitanda atque efficienda, quae a quoque traduntur, aptissimum’,[313] and Diodorus is as clear: ταῖς δὲ διανοίαις ὀξεῖς καὶ πρὸς μάθησιν οὐκ ἀφυεῖς.[314] Clement of Alexandria, in his attempt to show that the Greeks by no means had the monopoly of philosophy, even went so far as to say, with manifest exaggeration, that the Gauls preceded and instructed the Greeks in philosophy,[315] and Claudian, disagreeing[51] at any rate with the charge of dullness, in so far as slowness of spirit is suggested, applied to Gaul the adjective animosa.[316]

Caesar tells us that the Gallic liveliness of spirit manifested itself in a curiosity about distant lands, an eagerness to learn from travellers, whom they detained, even against their will, plying them with many questions on every subject. In the towns a crowd would gather around some newly arrived merchant and compel him to describe the countries of his travel and their affairs.[317]

This is the kind of curiosity that makes for knowledge and science, and it is hard to reconcile with the characteristics of dullness and stupidity. The width and general soundness of Caesar’s observation gives to his testimony a value which the other statements lack, for they are mostly founded on hearsay or particular cases. With regard to Hilary’s statement, Jung points out that the Pictavi seem from Ausonius to have been very backward in letters. Eight epigrams are directed against Rufus, rhetor at Poitiers, jibing at his lack of culture,[318] while another Pictavian teacher, Anastasius, was not much of a success.[319] ‘Can we wonder’, he concludes, ‘that Hilary calls the Gauls unteachable in the singing of hymns, when he himself was born at Poitiers?’[320]

But a tradition applied to a whole nation, and dating from the early days of the Empire, cannot be explained by a few particular cases. The motives that prompted particular writers to accept the tradition may be particular, but its origin must be sought in some more general principle. It was an attitude of mind, an habitual way of looking at things that was responsible. It was the ingrained pagan idea of ‘barbari’ (increased, perhaps, in the case of the Gauls by their reputation for warlike impetuosity),[321] the idea which Christian writers like Paul and Clement of Alexandria set themselves to combat, the idea of a chosen people[52] and a chosen culture. It was a habit of mind which did not imply enmity or hatred: sometimes it did not even imply contempt. It was just the tradition of superiority (largely true), grown customary in the minds of a ruling people whose customs and language other nations accepted. But just because it had an element of truth in it, there was a danger of its being made universal, a chance that it might blind the ruler to the individuality of the subject and preclude a sympathetic study of the provincial. It is this attitude, and its attendant misunderstanding, together with the general impression which the large number of country people would make on the dweller in the metropolis, that are responsible for such judgements as Martial’s crassa. But there can be no doubt that during our period this surprising opinion must have been less commonly held and less generally applied, in view of Gaul’s growing importance as a teacher of the Empire.

B. INSIDE THE SCHOOL

(i) The Substance and Methods of Primary Education

The tradition of the Roman schools was so old, and had been so whole-heartedly accepted by the Gauls, that we find only scattered references to the actual details of instruction, and those of a superficial, allusive kind. For even when we have a man like Ausonius who deals directly with education, the assumption always is that the reader is thoroughly familiar with the practical facts of the schools, and the aim is generally to impress by style or rhetorical device, and never to give a serious exposition. We must be content, therefore, to fill in the account with the known facts of Roman education.

We have no lively picture of the Gallic boy going to school, such as Lucian gives us in the case of Greece. But in our period we possess something similar in the orations of Libanius, the sophist of Antioch. He describes how the boy began his day’s work at Antioch in the fourth century. Having rubbed the sleep from his eyes (ἀφυπνίσας) the paedagogus wakes the boy and leads him to his studies (ὑπάγει τῷ λύχνῳ). A great deal depends on these paedagogi, and respect is due to them[53] (οὕς αἰδεῖσθαι νόμος ἦν). They are next to the teachers in honour (ἐν τιμαῖς οὗτοι μετὰ τοὺς διδασκάλους), and in some ways their work is more important; for, whereas the teacher sees the pupil only during school-hours, the paedagogue is always with him, protecting him from evil influences (φρουροὶ τῆς ἀνθούσης ἡλικίας ... ἀπελαύοντες τοὺς κακῶς ἐρῶντας), sharing his labours and taking the father’s place when the latter has to be away on business for the whole day. He repeats the boy’s lessons with him, shouts at him, shows him the rod, shakes the strap, and reminds him by his efforts of the lesson which the master has taught him (reading ληφθέν). When his charge is ill, he acts as nurse (μικρὸν γὰρ ἐἰπεῖν τροφούς), sits by the bedside and supplies his wants. The grief of the paedagogi at the death of their charges is described, and we hear of memorials erected by them in honour of their wards.[322]

How far exactly all this applied to the Western Empire in general, and to Gaul in particular, it is impossible to say. But the general similarity of educational methods throughout the Empire makes a supposition that something of the kind was found in Gaul in our period almost certain. Much less vivid and intimate is the picture in Ausonius’s epistle to his grandson, for it is almost entirely concerned with stereotyped things—like discipline and school-subjects. Sidonius gives an epitome of a typical education, in the schools of the Gallic aristocrats. He marks the literary and poetic home-atmosphere of the cultured noble. Writing to Constantius he says with rhetorical and unintentionally humorous exaggeration: ‘And you the Muses took squealing from your mother and dipped into the glassy waters of Hippocrene. There, beneath the babbling stream, you then drank liberally letters—not water.’[323] Then came the actual school: ‘all the training of the grammarian, and all the instructions[54] of the rhetorician.’ The crown of imperial service was set upon this training: ‘the court of the prince brought the young man into prominence.’[324] And, finally, fame was sought in military duties. Comfort and the charm of delicate and varied delights smiled upon the boy. Sidonius is enthusiastic about the stories at the dinner-table, the lampoons and the gaiety of this social atmosphere, the mingled wit and serious talk[325] which filled the home, and he rejoices in the games with which it abounded—ball, and hoop and rattling dice:

The home influence of the Gallic nobleman in creating a literary interest in his son was probably considerable, in view of the general honour in which letters were held. Sidonius taught his son comic metres from Terence and Menander, and apparently the resulting enjoyment was mutual.[327] When Paulinus of Pella expresses his debt to his parents for their skill and zeal in educating him, his references are touched with genuine emotion.[328]

The constant discussion of literary topics such as we find in Ausonius and Sidonius must have made the homes of their class as much of a ludus litterarum as the schoolroom, just as among the Christians of lower social standing the lively interest in theological discussion must have given an impetus in many cases to the thought of the child. Heredity, too, must have played a part. Families in which the rhetorical education had[55] become traditional produced children whose minds were naturally inclined to take an interest in study.

For the sons, therefore, of these noblemen (and in dealing with the Gallic schools it is with the nobility, chiefly, that we have to do) home circumstances were an incentive to the activities of the school. But what, precisely, were these activities? Paulinus of Pella gives a general description.[330] From his earliest years (ipsius alphabeti inter prope prima elementa[331]) he was taught the meaning and the value of culture, the ten special marks which distinguish the uneducated, and all the faults of unsocial or uncultured boorishness (vitia ἀκοινονόητα).[332] He was trained in the classic education of Rome (Roma ... servata vetustas) and found pleasure in it as an old man, though his age witnessed its decline.[333] He went to school (the school of Bordeaux made famous by Ausonius) in his sixth year, and was made to read ‘dogmata Socratus (Σωκράτους) et bellica plasmata Homeri’ together with the wanderings of Ulysses. Then he passed on to Vergil, which he found difficult because he had been accustomed to speak his native Greek to the servants of the house.

It was just about the age at which he should have passed on to the rhetorical school, but a fever laid him low, and left him so weak that the doctor ordered a complete rest.

Such is the general impression that the primary education of the day made on an ordinary boy; and we may verify his account by comparing with it the statement of a teacher. After[56] the foundation subjects of the elementary school comes the faculty of ‘Grammar’. ‘Grammatikê’ is the art which deals with ‘grammata’ or letters. These mankind invented, ‘trying to escape from his mortality’, and seeking to get beyond the tyranny of the passing present. ‘Instead of being content with his spoken words, ἔπεα πτερόεντα, which fly as a bird flies and are past, he struck out the plan of making marks on wood or stone or bone or leather or some other material, significant marks, which should somehow last on charged with meaning, in place of the word that had perished.’[337] The injunction of Ausonius to his grandson[338] ‘perlege quodcumque est memorabile’ is the motto of this faculty. Almost any subject could fall under it, but the chief emphasis was laid on the poets and on the orators. Ausonius recommends starting with Homer[339] and Menander,[340] with Horace, Vergil, and Terence to follow.[341] A study of the kind of authors read in the schools shows that the poets were more frequently used than the prose writers. Mythology, accordingly, loomed so large that Tertullian made its excessive study one of the chief charges against the pagan schools.[342] Vergil is the influence which permeates the style of everybody, the mainstay of the grammarian, the genius of the schoolroom. Commentators have exhausted themselves in piling up the Vergilian references in Ausonius, Paulinus of Pella,[343] Sidonius, Macrobius, and in every writer of note during this time, pagan as well as Christian. Indeed, it would not be unfair to say that Vergil, with Homer and Varro, ruled the school. Sidonius refers particularly to Terence,[344] whom he loves to quote,[57] while Horace,[345] Plautus,[346] Menander,[347] and a host of others are mentioned as familiar friends.

The poets, then, in a broad sense, form one big division of ‘Grammar’: Ausonius further recommends History, ‘res et tempora Romae’.[348] He evidently considered these two divisions important, for at the end of the Commemoratio Professorum[349] he again mentions ‘historia’ and ‘poeticus stilus’ at the head of a list of subjects in which the teachers of Bordeaux attained renown. It seems strange, at first sight, that the orators are not mentioned[350] in Ausonius’s scheme. But Ausonius meant them to be included under ‘historia’ (how could they read the Catilinarian conspiracy without Cicero?), and it is apparent from the frequent and familiar references to Cicero in Sidonius and Ausonius (not to mention Jerome), and the direct imitation of him in the Panegyrists, that ‘Tully’ as well as Demosthenes was extensively studied. Philosophy came in as a make-weight in the midst of this literary atmosphere.[351]

Thus the concurrence of a master and a pupil of Bordeaux gives us an idea of the general scope of primary education. When we try to look a little closer, we find it difficult to get a detailed view. In elementary education especially there is a general reticence, an assumption that the things that existed before continued to exist, and who is ignorant of the order which the Roman tradition prescribes? In this order the school of the litterator or elementary master came first, then the school of the grammaticus, and, finally, that of the rhetor.[352]

Quintilian was the last great Roman writer on pedagogy, and his influence may be traced on pagan and Christian masters alike. He was regarded as the model of school-eloquence.[58] Ausonius addresses the most famous of the Bordeaux professors, Minervius, as

and he speaks of the distinguished sons of Gaul as having been students under Quintilian’s system of education:

Even Jerome said that he owed part of his education to Quintilian,[355] and the affected Ennodius thought so much of him that he called him ‘eloquentissimum virum’, and thought that though against lesser men one might argue a fictitious case, it was still a question whether it was right to do so against Quintilian.[356] As an authority on style he was evidently much respected. Sidonius means to pay the very highest compliment when he says of the rhetor Severianus:

and Jerome tells us that Hilary of Poitiers imitated the style and the number of Quintilian’s twelve books.[358]

This being the position of Quintilian in the educational world of Gaul, we are not surprised to find traces of his influence everywhere. According to his precept,[359] the master still held the hand of the little one as he traced the letters on wax,[360] and afterwards on papyrus or parchment.[361] The children still went to school, no doubt, as Horace tells, carrying their tablets in their satchels (loculi, capsae), which were borne, in the case of wealthy parents, by a capsarius.[362]

There were special masters (librarii) to teach book-copying.[59] A marble tablet found at Auch[363] bears an inscription to one Afranius Graphicus (skilled in writing), a teacher, and in particular a teacher of copying, who numbered among his accomplishments proficiency in the game of draughts, and Marquardt[364] quotes a number of instances from the Corpus. Very important among the various forms of writing for the fourth and fifth centuries—the age of bureaucratic officialdom—was stenography. Here, too, there were special masters (notarii) who at the same time practised it as their vocation. Again, the Corpus has frequent references.[365] Ausonius composed a poem on his shorthand writer, whose skill was evidently great,[366] and when Sidonius made his epigram on the towel there was a scribe at hand (apparently a notarius) who took down his words.[367] As far as the method of reading was concerned, Quintilian’s counsel no doubt still held good. He had advised learning the sound and the form of the letters simultaneously,[368] and the use of the synthetic method, passing from the letter to the syllable, from the syllable to the word, from the word to the sentence.

The last subject of the elementary school was Arithmetic, a favourite subject with the hard-headed Romans. Counting on the fingers was common in olden times, and as late as the seventh century we find Bede writing a work ‘de loquela per gestum digitorum et temporum ratione’,[369] which points to an[60] elaborate system of computation on the fingers. There were special teachers (calculatores) for advanced pupils, and the instruments used were the abacus or tabula, a board marked with lines which signified tens, hundreds, thousands, &c., according as the counters (calculi) were put on them. Figures were sometimes drawn on a board sprinkled with sand.

When the boy had got beyond this elementary training, he entered upon the studies of the grammaticus. Now the school-training as a whole after the fourth century is said to have been based on the seven liberal arts of Martianus Capella, described in his marriage of Mercury and Philologia. This work had for its foundation Varro’s ‘IX libri disciplinarum’, and had an influence which went down through the Middle Ages. But in the department of the grammarian there were no neatly divided compartments for Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music, each with its special master. Grammarians specialized in one branch or another (as Victorius at Bordeaux in antiquarian research[370]), and the edicts of the emperors speak of special masters in shorthand, book-copying, arithmetic, architecture.[371] But there is no ground for thinking that these were to be found in the ordinary school: it is much more likely that they existed to train slaves or specialists for particular posts in the imperial offices. It is hardly conceivable that Ausonius should have dealt with some thirty Bordeaux teachers (of whom several were grammarians) without indicating such a division, had it existed.

The actual method of conducting the lesson is indicated by Eumenius. ‘Ibi’ (in the new schools of Autun) ‘adulescentes optimi discant, nobis quasi sollemne carmen praefantibus.’[372] The[61] teacher would select a passage and read it out slowly to his pupils with proper attention to punctuation, pronunciation, expression, and metre.[373] Clearness and effectiveness of intonation were specially practised with a view to the later rhetorical declamations. But the reason for the universal stress on elocution in antiquity went deeper than the exigencies of practical life. The written words had a soul which the grammaticus by reading strove to revive. ‘The office of the art “Grammatikê” is so to deal with the Grammata as to recover from them all that can be recovered of that which they have saved from oblivion, to reinstate as far as possible the spoken word in its first impressiveness and musicalness.’[374] Such, as Professor Murray points out, is the doctrine of the official teachers. Dionysius Thrax (who was the first to write a τέχνη γραμματική), in enumerating the six parts of Grammatikê, mentions as the most essential reading aloud κατὰ προσῳδίαν, ‘with just the accent, the cadences, the expression, with which the words were originally spoken, before they were turned from λόγοι to γράμματα, from winged words to permanent letters’.[375] Ausonius makes a special point of it to his grandson:

The reading was followed by the exposition (enarratio), grammatical, historical, philosophical, scientific, artistic, or literary. The master would tell his class the substance of the passage, and[62] require them to turn verse into prose.[377] Books were not always forthcoming, and then dictation (practised also for its own sake) would be resorted to. At this time it was, perhaps, less common than in Horace’s day[378] owing to the multiplication of books. Learning by heart and writing exercises (sententiae, chriae) such as were practised in the rhetor’s school were among the obvious methods employed.

Philology, of course, was in its infancy. It was based on Varro who had propounded such theories as ‘testamentum a testatione mentis’, ‘lucus a non lucendo’. There were two tendencies: that of the Romanists, who wished to derive everything from the Italian languages, and that of the Hellenists, who sought to prove that the origin of all words was Greek. There were also the ‘Anomalists’, who believed in the principle of change, and, like Horace, referred everything to custom, the controller and corrupter of words, and the ‘Analogists’, who believed in the principle of immobility, and proposed to subjugate custom to a fixed law of reason which operated by analogy.[379] How much in the dark even the best and soberest of grammarians were on the subject may be judged from Servius’s commentary on Vergil: on Georg. i. 17 ‘Maenala, mons Arcadiae, dictus ἀπὸ τῶν μήλων, id est ab ovibus’; on Georg. i. 57 ‘Sabaei populi ... dicti Sabaei ἀπὸ τοῦ σέβεσθαι’; on Aen. i. 17 ‘“thensa”[380] autem cum aspiratione scribitur ἀπὸ τοῦ θείου’.

Literary criticism, the κρίσις ποιημάτων of Dionysius Thrax,[381] also played a part. The discussions in Macrobius represent an advanced stage of the sort of thing which was begun in the schools. Servius[382] discusses whether Vergil wrote ‘Scopulo infixit’ or ‘Scopulo inflixit’, and in Aulus Gellius we have questions raised as to Vergil’s use of tris and tres, and Cicero’s use of peccatu and peccato, fretu and freto.[383] Again, Servius considers Probus’s doubts as to Vergil’s invocation to Jove as ‘hominum[63] rerumque aeterna potestas’.[384] But, on the whole, such a critical attitude is rare. The commentator, and therefore the grammarian, is chiefly concerned with a mass of rather simple and diffuse exposition. The references are mainly to Lucretius, Horace, Pliny, Terence, Hesiod, and, most of all, to Homer. Grammatical notes, especially figures of speech, and geographical references are frequent and ample. Historical allusions, on the other hand, are rather slight. The critical faculty, then, was not very much alive. Indeed, one would hardly expect it to be from the general tone of the age, and from Servius’s own statement of the teacher’s duty. ‘In exponendis auctoribus haec consideranda sunt: poetae vita, titulus operis, qualitas carminis, scribentis intentio, numerus librorum, ordo librorum, explanatio.’[385] The grammarian thus moves on a fairly low plane. To him, ‘intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari, et Augustum laudare a parentibus’. The higher thought, the fundamental inspiration of the poem, ‘tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem’, is omitted altogether.

Of the text-books used, by far the most famous[386] was that of Donatus, who taught Jerome about the middle of the fourth century.[387] He was the model of succeeding writers and his name became a synonym for grammar. His work consisted of (1) an ars minor for the elementary school, containing the parts of speech; (2) an ars maior, divided into three parts (a) ‘de voce, de littera, de syllaba, de pedibus, de tonis, de posituris’ (punctuation); (b) another treatment of the parts of speech; (c) ‘de barbarismo, de solecismo, de ceteris vitiis, de metaplasmo (grammatical irregularity), de schematibus (figures of speech), de tropis’.[388] We hear of a ‘Donatus provincialis’[389] which was used in Gaul, and it may well be that Jerome’s influence in the provinces served to spread the popularity of Donatus, especially when supported by the Roman tradition, though his work must have obtained a footing in the schools even on its own merits.

Agroecius (fifth century), whose ‘disciplina’ is praised by Sidonius,[390] wrote a book on orthography,[391] which was intended to supplement a work on the same subject by Flavius Caper. And we hear of Dositheus’s Chrestomathia or collection of passages from literature, intended for Greek students and written in both languages,[392] as a common text-book of the later Empire. Jerome mentions Sinnius Capito as an authority on antiquities who was still read in his day,[393] and therefore, considering the universality of the rhetorical tradition, probably used in the schools of Gaul. Some of his fragments may be taken as typical of the scope and character of the grammarian’s teaching. ‘Docet (Sin. Capit.) “pluria” Latinum esse, “plura” barbarum. Pluria sive plura absolutum esse et simplex, non comparativum.’[394] A solecism is defined as ‘impar atque inconveniens compositura partium orationis’. He does not neglect derivation: ‘pacem a pactione condicionum putat dictam Sinnius Capito’,[395] and in his philology a place is given to phonetics. ‘De syllabis, “f” praeponitur liquidis, nulla alia de semivocalibus; nam praeponitur liquidis duabus sola “f”; praeponitur “l” litterae, si dicas Flavius ... est libellus de syllabis, legite illum ... Sinni est liber Capitonis.’[396]

Grammar, in the narrow sense, was naturally part of the grammarian’s work. ‘Nec coniunctionem grammatici fere dicunt esse disiunctivam, ut “nec legit nec scribit”, cum si diligentius inspiciatur, ut fecit Sinnius Capito, intelligi possit eam positam esse ab antiquis pro non ut et in XII est....’[397] His remarks[65] on the verse of Lucilius,[398] ‘nequam aurum est’, &c., are an example of the ordinary exposition so plentifully illustrated in Servius, handed down from one generation of grammatici to another. His opinion is quoted also on historical questions: ‘Sardi venales (alius alio nequ)ior. Sinnius Capito ait Ti. Gracchum consulem, collegam P. Valeri Faltonis, Sardiniam Corsicamque subegisse, nec praedae quicquam aliud quam mancipia captum....’[399] Constitutional history interests him: ‘Tertia haec est interrogandi species, ut Sinnio Capitoni videtur, pertinens ad officium et consuetudinem senatoriam; quando enim aliquis sententiam loco suo iam dixerat, et alius postea interrogatus quaedam videbatur ita locutus....’[400]

Nor did he omit antiquarian tradition: ‘Sexagenarios (de ponte olim deiciebant): exploratissimum illud est causae quo tempore primum per pontem coeperunt comitiis suffragium ferre, iuniores conclamaverunt ut de ponte deicerentur sexagenarii qui iam nullo publico munere fungerentur ...’,[401] and he is invoked as an authority on traditional law: ‘Sinnius Capito ait cum civis necaretur, institutum fuisse ut Semoniae res sacra fieret vervece bidente....’[402] Such were the shapers of the material taught in the schools. They epitomized the learning Varro had left, and boiled down the Vergilian commentaries of Servius, Macrobius, and Fulgentius. And if we do not know their number and their works too precisely, we may be fairly sure of the trend of their teaching. We may therefore leave them, adding just a word about dictionaries. M. Verrius Flaccus, the head of the court library under Augustus, had written a work De Verborum Significatu in alphabetical order. Each letter took up several volumes. And in the middle of the second century, Pompeius Festus made an extract of this in twenty volumes, of which only a small part has been preserved, the original being wholly lost.[403] Verrius’s work was a standard one, as is shown by the frequent references to it in the grammarians.[404] It was frequently amplified[66] and revised. ‘Scribonius Aphrodisius’, Suetonius tells us,[405] ‘was a teacher and a contemporary of Verrius, whose books on orthography he edited, criticizing his scholarship and his character.’ But it remained the foundation, and modifications of it must have been used by the teachers of the Gallic schools.

Two of the subjects over which the grammarian paused in his exposition may be noticed. Blümner remarks[406] that geography was not a school subject, and Bernhardy draws attention to the traditional weakness of the Romans in it.[407] Yet considerable and increasing attention must have been given to it with the extending operations of the Roman army and the growth of commerce with distant lands. Maps were in use even in early times. Varro[408] mentions a ‘picta Italia’ in the temple of Tellus, and Propertius testifies that he was compelled to learn by heart the countries of the world painted on the map.[409] The elder Pliny[410] mentions Pytheas, the famous Gaul, who lived probably at the time of Alexander the Great, and was a writer on geography, ‘praesertim Geographiae notitia illustris, commendatus ... ab omnibus gentibus’.[411] Aethicus Hister tells us in his Cosmographia of a measurement of the Roman world which was ordered by Julius Caesar and carried out by the ablest men of the day, and there were writers on geography like Poseidonius and Mela.[412] In our period we find the subject being used as part of the imperial policy. ‘Moreover’, says Eumenius, ‘let the young see in the porticoes of the new schools all countries and all seas and whatever of cities or races or tribes the invincible princes either restore or overcome by their valour or bind down by the fear they inspire.’[413][67] And again, since children learn better by eye than by ear,[414] ‘the situation, the extent and the distances of all places have been marked and the names given, the source and the mouth of every river, the bend of the coast-lines, the curves of the sea where it flows round the land or breaks into it.’[415] In Ausonius we are struck with the accuracy and extent of the author’s geographical knowledge, due, no doubt, to the fact that he had to practise it in his school. He refers directly to maps in the Gratiarum Actio.[416] He wants to put in a compact form all the emperor’s praises, as the geographers do with the earth (qui terrarum orbem unius tabulae ambitu circumscribunt). Such a ‘tabula’ Millin reports at Autun, on the site of the Maeniana, containing the outline of Italy with the boundaries of Gaul and towns like Bononia, Forum Gallorum, Mutina.[417]

Astronomy, in an elementary way, was quite popular among the ‘savants’ of Gaul. Ausonius’s grandfather, Arborius, dabbled in it,[418] and Sidonius mentions it frequently. It was one of the accomplishments of Claudianus Mamertus that he could wield the horoscope with Euphrates and explore the stars with Atlas.[419] When Sidonius describes Lampridius’s superstition in consulting astrologers (for superstition was intimately connected with the few scientific facts of the subject which had been ascertained), he mentions technical terms such as ‘climactericos’, ‘thema’, ‘diastemata zodiaca’, which indicate an organized body of astrological tradition, of which Julianus Vertacus and Fullonius Saturninus were the founders, according to Sidonius (matheseos peritissimos conditores).[420] He writes to his friend Leontius[421] of one[68] Phoebus, the head of whose college can surpass in argument not only musicians, but also masters of geometry, arithmetic, and astrology. For no one knew more accurately than he the astrological significance of stars and planets in their varying positions. These references give us some idea of the extent of astronomical knowledge, which cannot have included much more than elementary facts about the zodiac, the solstices, the equinoxes, and the revolution of the planets. The more strictly astrological developments were, no doubt, confined to such as cared to make a hobby of them, but some knowledge of the stars was imparted in the schoolroom and considered necessary to the pupil for the understanding of poetry,[422] as it was for practical purposes, by no less an authority than Quintilian. For time was largely computed by direct reference to the sun and the stars.

(ii) The Substance and Methods of Secondary Education

From the grammarian the boy passed into the hands of the rhetor and studied ‘Rhetoric’. We must be careful in our interpretation of this term. Just as ‘Grammatikê’ covered a large number of subjects, so ‘Rhetorikê’ was not confined to the theory of speaking. ‘On apprenait des rhéteurs l’art de bien parler et de bien écrire, non pas seulement sur la littérature ou la poésie, mais aussi sur l’histoire, la morale, la science même.’[423] The characteristic thing about the rhetor’s school was discussion and declamation, and the end in view was oratory or oratorical composition; the characteristic thing about the grammarian’s school was exposition and interpretation, and the immediate end in view was encyclopedic knowledge. But the subjects treated in either case were very much the same; only, the emphasis was shifted. The grammarian used his knowledge to expand the text, the rhetor his imagination. The grammarian’s method was prosaic, the rhetor strove to be poetic.[424]

The rhetor chose some subject from imagination or from literature (from the books which the grammarian had been reading with his class) for his pupils to exercise their ingenuity upon. Three stages may be distinguished[425] in the schools of the later Empire. First, the Vergilian stage (locus Vergilianus), at which the students paraphrased some speech in the Aeneid. The point was to portray as closely as possible the emotions of the original speaker. ‘Proponebatur mihi negotium animae meae’ (says Augustine) ‘ut dicerem verba Iunonis irascentis et dolentis quod non posset Italia Teucrorum avertere regem.’[426] Next there came the Dictiones Ethicae—soliloquies which persons in history or mythology would have made on certain occasions: e.g. Juno’s words when she saw Antaeus matched with Hercules, or Thetis before the body of Achilles. Ennodius gives several examples of this type: ‘Verba Didonis cum abeuntem videret Aeneam,[427] Verba Menelai cum Troiam videret inustam,’[428] and so forth. Thirdly, there were the Controversiae, nearer to the oratory of public life, on some more general subject, e.g. against an ambassador who betrays his country, against one who refuses to support an aged father, against a tyrant who has honoured a parricide with a statue, ‘in eum qui in lupanari statuam Minervae locavit.’[429]

The influence of Vergil did not decline with the entry into the rhetor’s school. The rhetors of Ausonius’s day could hardly write a page without a Vergilian reminiscence. And Servius[430] tells us of the rhetors Titianus and Calvus that they chose all their subjects from Vergil, adapting them for rhetorical exercises. They gave as examples of the controversia the speeches of Venus[70] and Juno in Aeneid x. 17 and x. 63. When Venus says to Juno: ‘A cause of peril hast thou been to these whom Fate has granted the land of Italy,’ she is using the ‘status absolutivus’. Juno, in her reply, uses the ‘status relativus’.

This passage gives a single instance of that intricate system of technical terminology which the study of rhetoric had elaborated. But in our period there is no writer who explains that system in any way. It had become traditional, covering a large space of time; it had become almost universal, covering a large part of the Roman Empire. The text-books we hear of belong to a previous time: Cicero’s Rhetorica, the anonymous Rhetoricorum ad Herennium libri quattuor, and Quintilian. The work of C. Chirius Fortunatianus,[431] it is true, dates from the fifth century, and that of Sulpicius Victor[432] from the fourth. But Fortunatianus drew mainly from Quintilian and Cicero, and Sulpicius Victor, in the fragments of his book that survive, professes his dependence on the traditional statement of the subject. ‘I have set in order’, he says, ‘the general rhetorical principles that have come down to us, and have been taught me by my masters. Yet I have reserved the right to pass over points as I thought fit, adhering in the main to the traditional substance and order, and inserting from other authors a number of points which I considered necessary.’[433] In fact, all the fourth- and fifth-century writers on rhetoric (in that age of summaries) are merely compilers or epitomizers. Solid and persistent is the body of tradition which runs through the centuries. The precepts and examples[434] which we find in Seneca, the rhetorician, are almost identical with those of Ennodius at the end of the fifth century; and Quintilian is found again in Hilary of Poitiers.

In these circumstances it need not distress us that there is no[71] contemporary account of the activities of the rhetor’s school. We do not even possess the title of a declamation at Bordeaux, and the very silence is significant: the rhetorical system was too widespread and too well known to need special mention or explanation. Not only the Latin rhetoricians were bound together by this common tradition: the Greek of the East shared in it as well. Libanius is on familiar terms with Symmachus,[435] who loved pagan oratory next to pagan religion, and mentions the books of Favorinus who was a native of Arles, and lived in the time of Hadrian.[436] One of the Theodori to whom Libanius wrote, was, according to Ammianus, a Gaul,[437] and so was Rufinus, the ‘Praefectus praetorio’, of whose praises the letters are full. Intercourse between East and West was free and frequent. But the most convincing proof of the unity of the tradition is found in a comparison of the Greek rhetoricians with men like Quintilian or Seneca: there is hardly any difference of importance.[438] But the Rhetores Graeci give us a much more detailed and lively picture of means and methods than any other body of evidence.

In imparting his facts the grammarian had to work up to that educational consummation represented by the rhetorical school. ‘Ratio dicendi’ is quite distinctly laid down by Quintilian as one of his duties.[439] In giving his exercises, therefore, he would endeavour to give such information on technical and traditional points as would prepare the pupil for his course of study in the senior school. Sometimes the pupil went for further preparation to a special master.[440] Sometimes a whole course—the famous ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία—in which special stress was laid on music and geometry[441]—was put in between the grammarian’s and the rhetor’s schools. How far these practices were customary[72] in Gaul we have no means of ascertaining; but it is certain that there must have been exercises preparatory to the rhetorical training, and it is these which are recorded by the Greek rhetoricians, and which give us a unique insight into the methods of that training. Προγυμνάσματα they are called by the rhetors, and defined by one of them as ἂ πρὸ τῆς ὑποθέσεως (i.e. before declaiming from a given subject) ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι εἰδέναι τε καὶ ἐπιεικῶς ἐγγυμνάζεσθαι.[442]

Aphthonius was a sophist of Antioch, a pupil of the great Libanius, and flourished during the second half of the fourth century. He is mentioned by Libanius[443] as a teacher of boys. Of his many works we possess only the Progymnasmata and the Fables. Closely associated with his name are those of Theon and Hermogenes. Hoppichler has demonstrated[444] how similar their works are. Theon is clearly the oldest,[445] and Aphthonius is younger than Hermogenes.[446] From a scholiast who says that after Aphthonius had published his work, that of Hermogenes came to be looked on as ἀσαφῆ πως καὶ δύσληπτα, it is equally clear that Aphthonius was the most recent of these writers. That he was also the best and most enduring is shown by the many commentaries and scholia on his work (which is often verbally quoted by later rhetoricians like Nicolaus), and by the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries his book was still used in schools and universities. Indeed, the form of school exercise which he suggests persists up to the present day.[447]

Aphthonius, then, may be taken as the best representative of the rhetorical school at Antioch.

His first chapter[448] deals with fables. They are widely and frequently used by teachers to point a lesson (ἐκ παραινέσεως),[73] e.g. the story of the ants and the cicadas. He proceeds to expound the treatment of the subject, and deals first with narration (διήγημα), of which there are three kinds: (1) poetic (δραματικόν), which has to do with fictitious subjects; (2) historic, which has to do with the past; and (3) civil, dealing with controversial cases. In every narration, again, there are six elements: agent, act, time, place, manner, cause; and the four virtues of narration are: clearness, brevity, probability (πιθανότης), and purity of language (ἑλληνισμός). The example given, telling why the rose is red, has at least the virtues of brevity and clearness. It may be noticed that Quintilian assigns narrationes poeticas to the grammarian and narrationes historicas to the rhetor.[449]

Of the collection of fables made by Aphthonius some were apparently written by himself. These are rather less pointed than those of Aesop, and more directly applied to school conditions. Such is the story of the goose and the swan.

‘A rich man kept a goose and a swan, but not for the same purpose: for the former he kept for his table, and the latter for the sake of its singing. When the time came for the goose to be killed (which was his proper end), the man, not being able to distinguish the one from the other in the darkness of night, took the swan instead of the goose: but by singing the swan showed his nature, whereupon by the sweetness of his song he escaped death.’

The general moral is that music provides respite from death, and the particular application, that boys should love eloquence. Similarly, in the story of the provident ant it is pointed out that laziness in youth means distress in old age (οὕτως νεότης πονεῖν οὐκ ἐθέλονσα, παρὰ τὸ γῆρας κακοπραγεῖ).

Some very familiar fables are included in Aphthonius’s collection: the crow and the cheese, the ass and the lion’s skin, the sick lion, &c. These were taken over from Aesop and are found, polished and versified, in Avienus.

Aphthonius next defines the Chreia as a pointed saying, applied to some person or thing. It is so called because it is[74] ‘useful’ for moral and intellectual lessons. There are three general classes: (1) the Word-Chreia, found only in speech; (2) the Act-Chreia (e.g. Pythagoras, on being asked how long a man’s life was, answered by appearing for a short time and then disappearing. A scholiast adds the example of Tarquin and the poppies); (3) the Mixed Chreia. The divisions of every Chreia are: (1) praise, (2) paraphrase, (3) cause, (4) the contrary (i.e. the pupil states what would happen if the opposite were true), (5) simile (the same sort of thing in other spheres), (6) example (instances of the same thing in recorded history—generally in the poets), (7) testimony of the ancients (appeal to similar teaching in older writers like Hesiod), (8) short epilogue (a summary of the argument). Then follows an example of the Word-Chreia, illustrating all the divisions. The saying of Isocrates that the roots of education are bitter, but its fruits sweet, is worked up into a little essay. The mediaeval scholiasts go copiously into all the minor points raised by the various Chreiae, and give biblical examples from Genesis and Ecclesiastes in which Juvenal, Hesiod, and Menander curiously intermingle.

Next comes Sententia (γνώμη), an aphoristic saying of a hortatory or enunciatory kind. Unlike the Chreia, it is found only in speech. Examples are:

There are three kinds: hortatory (προτρεπτικόν), dehortatory (ἀποτρεπτικόν), enunciatory (ἀποφαντικόν). Further divisions are: simple and composite, or probable, true, and hyperbolical. All of these are amply illustrated. The same divisions hold as for the Chreia, and they are exemplified by developing the protreptic gnomê that death is better than poverty:

There follows a chapter on Refutation (ἀνασκευή). The first step is to attack your opponent (τὴν τῶν φησάντων διαβολήν),[75] the next, to give a statement of his case (πράγματος ἔκθεσιν), the third, to refute this statement under the following heads: (1) Obscurity, (2) Incredibility, (3) Impossibility, (4) Illogicality, (5) Impropriety, (6) Inexpediency. Take, for example, the statements of the poets about Daphne. In his διαβολή the student says that it is needless to convict the poets of folly: they stand discredited by what they say about the gods. He then briefly narrates the story of Phoebus and Daphne, and is ready for the refutation. Under the heads of Obscurity and Improbability, the difficulties of Daphne’s birth from Ladon and Terra are discussed in a forced and perverse way. ‘If a human being is born from a river, why not a river from a human being?’ ‘What name are we going to give to a union of a river and Earth? In the case of men it is called “marriage”, but Earth is not a human being’, &c.

Under the head of the Impossible, he contends: ‘But granted that Daphne was the daughter of Terra and Ladon—who brought her up? That’s a poser! If you say her father, well, human beings just don’t live in rivers: he would unwittingly have drowned her. If you say her mother, it means that she lived under the earth: therefore, her charms would be hidden, and she would have no admirers.’

There is also the head of Impropriety. Granted even that she could have been brought up, it is absurd to attribute love to a god: ἔρως τῶν ὄντων τὸ χαλεπώτατον (a moral note for the boy’s benefit). It is wrong to connect such terrible things (τὰ δεινότατα) with the gods.

Illogicality. How could a girl beat Phoebus in the race? Men are better than women, and a fortiori gods must surpass them. Why did her mother help her? Surely she could not have feared a ‘mésalliance’! Either, therefore, she was not her mother, or else she was a bad mother.

Inexpediency. There is no point in Earth taking away her daughter and offending Phoebus, and then giving him the laurel with which he crowns his tripods. Nature has separated the human and the divine: it’s no good having a god matched with a mortal maid.

Peroration. All poets are fools; avoid them. But we must[76] stop talking about poets, lest like them we talk nonsense (πέρας ἔστω τῶν ποιητῶν, μὴ κατὰ ποιητὰς δόξω φθέγγεσθαι).

Confirmation (κατασκευή) is the next subject. The method is to praise the man who makes the statement which is to be confirmed, to state the case to be established, and to ‘confirm’ it under the following heads: (the opposites of those mentioned under Refutation) the manifest, the probable, the possible, the logical, the proper, the expedient. Taking the same thesis, the credibility of Daphne’s story, he attempts to prove, with considerable ingenuity, the opposite conclusion: ἐπὶ τούτοις θαυμάζω τοὺς ποιητὰς καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὸ μέτρον (the poem) τιμῶ.

Again, there is the locus communis (κοινὸς τόπος), a speech which emphasizes the good or evil in a person or thing, and which is so generalized that it can be applied to all persons or things of that class or in those circumstances. Thus a locus communis about traitors would fit all who do treacherous deeds. It has the following divisions:

(1) By the contrary (ἐκ τοῦ ἐναντίου). (2) Exposition of the subject. (3) Comparison—which shows the person denounced to be worse than others, or the person praised, better. (4) Opinion (γνώμη)—denouncing or praising the intention of the agent. (5) Digression—conjecturally (στοχαστικῶς)—reviling the past life of the man. (6) Exclusion of pity. (7) Finally, the following heads: the legitimate, the just, the expedient, the possible, the honourable, and the conclusion from the results obtained. A conclusion on the well-worn subject of tyrants is, that after all a democratic jury is all that is needed to destroy their power.

The subject of Praise (ἐγκώμιον) is next treated. Praise is of persons or of things, and a list of praiseworthy subjects is given. It may be applied to one of these subjects as a group, e.g. the Athenians, or individually, e.g. one particular Athenian. The divisions given for the praise of a person are:

(3) Education of subject: training, art and laws of his environment and education.

These heads are illustrated in panegyrics on Thucydides, and on an abstract thing like wisdom, where the divisions are naturally modified and curtailed.

Corresponding to the chapter on Praise is that on Censure or Vituperation (ψόγος), which starts with a bad quality and expands it. It does not raise moral issues or propose penalties (differing herein from a locus communis), but merely attacks (μόνην ἔχειν διαβολήν). An example, with the same divisions as in the previous chapter, is given of a vituperation of Philip of Macedon. Here, as in the case of praise, there is a mass of illustrations by the mediaeval scholiasts.

Comparison (σύγκρισις) of persons or things admits of ψόγος or ἐγκώμιον or both. Large wholes should not be compared, but rather similar parts, e.g. one head with another. The divisions, which are the same as in the previous chapters, are illustrated by a comparison of Hector and Achilles, to the advantage, naturally, of the latter.

The characterization of a person, by putting a speech into his mouth (ἠθοποιία), was another department of exercise. It is defined as μίμησις ἤθους ὑποκειμένου προσώπου. Three types are given, not very clearly distinguished from one another:

Εἰδωλοποιία—when a well-known character no longer living is made to speak, as in the Δῆμοι of Eupolis. (Apparently only local or political people are meant.)

Ἠθοποιία proper—when the person is known from literature, and words are put into his mouth to illustrate his character.

Emotional (παθητικαί), e.g. the words Hecuba would have uttered on the fall of Troy.

‘Ethical’ (ἠθικαί), e.g. what a man who had never seen the sea would say on beholding the Mediterranean.

Mixed, e.g. what Achilles would have said over the body of Patroclus. The style is to be clear, and the sentences short, ‘flowery’ (ἀνθηρῷ),[450] antithetical, without adornment or involved figures. An example of Emotional Ethopoeia, illustrating the divisions past, present, and future, is given by a speech put into Niobe’s mouth on the death of her children.

Next comes Description (ἔκφρασις) of persons or things. Descriptive extracts from Homer and Thucydides are given, with the general counsel that the describer must adapt himself to his subject in every way. Only two classes are suggested: simple (descriptions of actions) and complex (descriptions of action and place). The citadel of Alexandria is the stock example.

By ‘Thesis’ Aphthonius means the study of a question in the course of a speech. There are two kinds: (1) ‘civil’, e.g. must one marry? and (2) contemplative, e.g. are there more worlds than one? The divisions are: ἔφοδος or prooemium, and the heads: the legitimate, the just, the expedient, the possible. The example given (εἰ γαμητέον) is interspersed with the objector’s remarks (ἀντιθέσεις) and the replies of the speaker (λύσεις).

Some grammarians consider the method of supporting or opposing a law (συνηγορία and κατηγορία) a subject for a school exercise. After the prooemium comes a consideration of objections (τὸ ἐναντίον) and the treatment of the subject takes the same form as in the preceding chapter. Again we have the alternation of ἀντιθέσεις and λύσεις.

Such is the course of exercises by which the adolescent boy was prepared for the speeches of the rhetor’s school, and of public life; and from them we gather a fairly definite impression of the main activities that succeeded those of the grammarian.

These activities were eked out by several ‘senior’ studies, which must be briefly considered. It has been disputed that there were any subjects in the rhetor’s school at all except[79] rhetoric.[451] Now it is true that Gratian’s famous decree about teachers in 376 does not specially mention philosophers, and that there is very little official recognition of them, though we are told that Antoninus Pius gave salaries to rhetors and to philosophers ‘per omnes provincias’.[452] But whether in our period philosophy was an organized subject or not, there can be no doubt that it had its place in the schools.

In the grammarian’s school it was touched on in a superficial way: Paulinus of Pella talks of learning ‘dogmata Socratus’ at the tender age of five.[453] But there could have been no serious appreciation of the content of philosophy before the pupil had reached the rhetor’s school. Ausonius mentions ‘dogma Platonicum[454]’ as one of the avenues by which a Bordeaux professor reached renown, and Nepotianus[455] is ‘disputator ad Cleanthen Stoicum’. That there was some sort of philosophic discussion we gather from the Eclogues, though, no doubt, it was mainly rhetorical. Speaking of the ΝΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΟΥ ΠΥΘΑΓΟΡΙΚΟΝ Ausonius says that these two words (Yes and No) form the basis of philosophic discussion. ‘Starting from them, the school also, in harmony with its gentle training, gently debates philosophic questions, and with them as a basis the whole tribe of logicians holds debate’.[456]

It is clear from Sidonius that the subject was popular among the ‘litterati’ of fifth-century Gaul. Logic is often mentioned,[457] and the description of the ‘septem sapientes’ shows a comprehensive knowledge of the history of philosophy.[458] Eusebius,[459] a professor of philosophy at Lyons, gathered around him a number of students who were eager to discuss problems. The Categories of Aristotle are especially mentioned as subjects of study. The[80] philosopher was the president of the company, holding a sort of ‘seminar’, in which he appointed a spokesman and discussed points with each in turn. He was very learned, and ‘was as pleased as could be when some very obscure and involved problems happened to arise, so that he could scatter abroad the treasures of his learning’.[460] Plato dominated contemporary thought. There was a Platonic club, ‘collegium conplatonicorum’.[461] Faustus (Sidonius tells him) has married a fair woman and borne her off with strong passion, and her name is Philosophia. She has abjured worldly wisdom and belongs to the Church of Christ, but none the less, also, to the Academy of Plato.[462] ‘On voit que les Gallo-Romains du cinquième siècle,’ says Fauriel, ‘cultivaient avec ardeur une certaine philosophie qu’ils prenaient pour celle de Platon.’[463]

There was a tendency to give a wide and vague meaning to the word ‘philosophy’. For its proper study, knowledge of the sciences was postulated. Music and astrology are spoken of by Sidonius as ‘consequentia membra philosophiae’.[464] So in the fourth century philosophy ‘was regarded as incomplete unless it included some knowledge of natural phenomena to be used for purposes of analogy’.[465] Hilary of Poitiers, for example, in the De Trinitate and the Commentaries, refers to facts of animal birth, life and death; to medicine and surgery; to the natural history of trees and animals; and we know of a lost work of his against the physician Dioscorus which may have been a refutation of materialistic arguments.[466]

When we attempt to look at the purely pagan side of philosophy[81] in this period, the impression made by the scanty data is not one of greatness. Agricola, indeed, in a previous century, could say of his Gallic studies ‘se prima in iuventa studium philosophiae acrius, ultra quam concessum Romano ac senatori, hausisse’,[467] but he had been at Massilia, which was different from the rest by reason of its Greek spirit. And his very words indicate the general Roman attitude to philosophy, the inflexibility of a positive and practical mind which resulted in a superficial conception of the subject. To a certain extent it seems reasonable to say that the provinces accepted this attitude as part of the Roman tradition. The Gaul of the fourth century certainly seems to have done so. For Ausonius, though he makes a fine show of technical terms and learned allusions, is far from suggesting any depth of thought. We instinctively agree with a commentator[468] who regards him as ‘tritis et vulgivagis sententiis ex usu scholastico ditatus’. His philosophical verses[469] in the Eclogues are translations and only the first part strikes a deeper moral note; the rest, like the ΝΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΟΥ ΠΥΘΑΓΟΡΙΚΟΝ, is all more or less trifling. It is significant that he calls himself a Christian, yet he gives no sign of Christian thought, and shrugs his shoulders about the question of immortality. Again and again he dismisses the matter with a query.[470] Even Sidonius, who is a semi-Christian and touched to some extent by the impetus which Christianity was at that time giving to thought, is diffident about independent thinking and fearful lest the Roman tradition[471] should be impaired, especially by a provincial. He uses the technical terms which Cicero had introduced from the Greek.[472]

Jung thinks that the comparative neglect of philosophy was[82] part of a definite imperial policy, which remembered the fact that the stirring teaching of the Druids (actuosa doctrina), regarding the immortality of the soul, urged the Gauls to warfare and made them reckless in rebellion.[473] But this appears to be founded rather on the fancifulness of an exaggerated nationalism than on a general consideration of existing conditions. For slackness of thought and lack of thinkers was a common characteristic of the time, and it had its roots in the general paralysis produced by the imperial system and the rhetorical form of education (factors which will be more fully considered at a later stage), rather than in a measure aimed at philosophy for so special and so antiquated a reason.

The contention that there were none except teachers of Rhetoric in the secondary schools of Gaul, seems to rest on better evidence in the case of Law. In spite of Juvenal’s well-known allusion to Gaul as a school of forensic eloquence[474] and his contention: ‘Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos’, and Lucian’s reference[475] to the famous lawyers of Massilia, Menecrates, Charmolus, and Zenothemis, Ausonius mentions no professors of law, though there are those among the Bordeaux teachers whom ‘forum ... fecit nobiles’.[476] The studious Victorius investigates ‘ius pontificum’, the resolutions of the people and the Senate, and the codes of Draco and Solon, but only as the grammarian would and from the antiquarian point of view. It is worm-eaten and ancient manuscripts that he studies rather than more obvious and accessible works.[477]

In the fifth century there are indications of considerable interest. And this is what we should expect. For the publication of the Theodosian Code in 438 made the study of law more accessible, and tended to eliminate the superstitious and the sacramental element in it. So Fauriel says that jurisprudence attracted more men of distinction then than in previous centuries.[478][83] Sidonius mentions particularly the learned Leo of Narbonne who was more learned in the Twelve Tables than Appius Claudius himself,[479] and he calls Marcellinus ‘skilled in laws’.[480]

Arles, the seat of the prefect of the Gauls and of the emperor, naturally became a centre for the study of Roman law. It was there that Petronius[481] practised his profession.

It appears, however, that while the Gauls were famed for legal knowledge and ability, Rome was still regarded as the school of jurisprudence. It is not mere rhetoric when Symmachus calls Rome ‘Latiaris facundiae domicilium’,[482] and Sidonius ‘Domicilium legum’.[483] Rutilius extols Rome with unaffected enthusiasm for her law: ‘Thou hast also embraced the world with thy law-bringing triumphs and makest all to live by a common bond.’[484]

The belief in Rome’s eternal sway[485] is for him connected chiefly with her law. ‘Stretch forth thy laws that are destined to live into the Roman ages, and do thou alone unafraid regard the distaff of the Fates,’[486] and poetic vision is aided by the lawyer’s foresight.[487] He tells of a Gaul, Palladius, who went to study law at Rome:

And we are told that St. Germanus who, according to the life[84] claimed to be by his pupil Constantius, was born at Auxerre towards the end of the fourth century, had a similar training. To set the crown upon his literary education in Gaul he went to study law at Rome.[489] Rome, in fact, maintained her supremacy in this branch longer than in any other, and her professors attracted students from all parts of the Empire.[490]

The connexion between jurisprudence and imperial matters is clear. For a study of Rome’s great contribution to the world could not but stimulate admiration for the imperial city. By examining the law, the provincial realized more clearly the advantage of the pax Romana. One of the panegyrists[491] declared to Maximian in 293 ‘iustitia cognitione iuris addiscitur’,[492] and it is clear that his appreciation of the moral benefits of Roman order is more than mere rhetoric. Perhaps Rome’s rulers perceived this, and made it their policy (as Jung[493] suggests) to attract students of law to Rome, that they might see things from Rome’s point of view, and facilitate the government of the provinces by applying the law according to the Roman tradition. For as the Empire had grown and its administration increased, there had arisen a need for officials who would carry out the law with ability and uniformity; and complete uniformity could only be attained by a knowledge of law seen as the Roman saw it.[494]

Justinian, in the preface to the Digest which he addresses to the teachers of law in the Empire, reviews the study of jurisprudence in the past. It was hopelessly deficient. Only six books were studied and those intricate, confused, and partly obsolete (iura utilia in se perraro habentes). Among the six books[85] were the Institutes of Gaius, but they were not consecutively studied, many parts being omitted as superfluous. The teaching, in fact, was entirely haphazard; Gaius was given to the first-year students, ‘passim et quasi per saturam collectum et utile cum inutilibus mixtum’. Only in their second year did they learn the first part of the Institutes, and it was an unheard of thing to go into details. They also learnt certain ‘tituli’, and more of these in their third year, when they were initiated into the ‘responsa’ of the great Papinianus (ad sublimissimum Papinianum eiusque responsa iter eis aperiebatur). But here, too, their training was imperfect, as they only read eight books. The students read the ‘Pauliana responsa’ for themselves in a slipshod fashion (per imperfectum, et iam quodammodo male consuetum inconsequentiae cursum). This was the end of their theoretical training throughout ancient times. Justinian is resolved that there shall be an improvement and proceeds to outline a scheme by which the youth of the future may be better instructed. This syllabus, however, lies beyond the limits of our period.

The emperor is at pains to kindle enthusiasm for jurisprudence. He exhorts the students to exert all diligence, so that on the completion of their studies the glorious hope of governing the Empire may be theirs.[495] For, as Gibbon remarks, ‘all the civil magistrates were drawn from the profession of the law.’[496] Antecessores[497] or lecturing lawyers were appointed throughout the Empire, and the places where they taught were called ‘stationes’.[498] The course, at any rate in the time of Justinian, lasted five years[86] (Constitution, ‘Omnem Reipublicae’, § 5). Learned lawyers like Antistius Labeo under Augustus lectured for six months and devoted six months to writing.[499] When the students dispersed themselves through the provinces there was no lack of opportunity to practise their profession. The court of the Praetorian prefect of the East alone required the services of one hundred and fifty advocates,[500] and the rewards so liberally promised by Justinian for the ‘laudabile vitaeque hominum necessarium advocationis officium’[501] must have created a vast interest in the study of law.

Whether it was the fault of the teachers or of the pupils or of the social conditions, it is clear that lawyers had a bad name in the fourth as well as in the fifth century. The vivid and caustic description of Ammianus is well known.[502] He is suspicious of legal cunning and has the soldier’s impatience of rhetoric. We must therefore allow something for his prejudices. But his analysis cannot be wholly false. We may discount his language when he describes the profession as consisting of ‘violenta et rapacissima genera hominum’, but when he enumerates these classes and gives each its special characteristics, we feel that he may exaggerate but that he does not invent. The first class consists of mischief-makers and robbers, ‘odia struentes infesta’. Their oratory is empty and artificial: ‘eloquentiam inanis quaedam imitatur fluentia loquendi’. The second class consists of fraudulent people who make a superstition and a mystery of the law, increasing its entanglements, ‘velut fata natalicia praemonstrantes’, in order to enhance their own importance. Thirdly, there are the unscrupulous advocates who are always ready to sacrifice truth to money or fame. Finally, we have ‘a shameless race, perverse and ignorant—men who, having run away from school too young, scurry about in the nooks and corners of various states’.[503] Cicero is the ideal—‘excellentissimus omnium Cicero’—and Ammianus regards the practice of his day as erring from the good of the past.

Confirmation of the point in this criticism which most nearly[87] touches education comes from an unexpected source. Sidonius, the rhetorical, the obscure, the vendor of subtle argument, associates ‘obscurity’ with the lawyers as a special characteristic.[504] Nor does he seem to think them particularly helpful. He sends a man, who has a case about a will, to Bishop Leontius, and begs him to see that justice is done, using his episcopal authority, if the lawyers will not help the client.[505]

Finally, there is medicine. When Denk maintains[506] that there was no faculty of medicine in the provinces, he cannot mean to exclude medical study as a subject of secondary education. There was probably no separate school of medicine,[507] but Ausonius definitely mentions the ‘medica ars’ as one of the Bordeaux professors’ titles to fame.[508] In former days Massilia had given to Gaul the medical tradition of the Greeks, just as Greece had given it to Rome. A certain Crinas, who lived in the reign of Nero, is said (though apparently only by Bulaeus) to have been the first to advance the study of medicine at Massilia, and we gather from Pliny that he introduced astrology into his medicine and gained an immense name and fortune.[509] Galen twice mentions Claudius Abascantus[510] of Lyons, who probably flourished under Augustus, as a doctor of prominence, and Eutropius of Bordeaux appears among the writers on medicine in the fourth century.[511] Julius Ausonius, the father of the poet, was[88] the court physician of Valentinian I. At the beginning of the fifth century we find Marcellus Empiricus[512] of Bordeaux composing a book of prescriptions, ‘compositiones medicamentorum’. He gives many Celtic plant-names, Druidical beliefs, and a large number of ἅπαξ εἰρημένα and provincialisms.[513] As in the case of astrology, superstition plays a large part: certain herbs are to be picked with the left hand, or while muttering some magic formula like ‘rica, rica, soro’.[514] It is partly for this reason that Ausonius refers to the ‘libros medicinae’ as books closed to the vulgar, and that his eccentric aunt took up the study of medicine.[515] There seems to have been no organized system of medical study, and we do not even possess any details of the procedure in a particular case. It seems reasonable to suppose that the practical part of the profession was acquired by apprenticeship, while the rhetor confronted the student with such parts of the medical theory as could be found in the writings of Galen (who was the central authority) and his successors.

The frequent grouping of the doctors with the teachers in the Theodosian Code suggests that the public State-paid physicians taught as well as practised their art. Reinach[516] warns against certainty on this point, but it is at least probable. The wording of Constantine’s law[517] of September 27, 333, confirms the supposition. Doctors and teachers are proclaimed exempt from military service and public burdens so that they may have leisure to train others in their art—‘quo facilius studiis liberalibus et memoratis artibus multos instituant’. Of the original five classes of archiatri paid by the State—those of the court, those belonging to the municipalities, the heads of the medicine guilds, those in charge of the public gymnasia, and those who attended the Vestals—it[89] was probably the second, the municipal doctors, who were the teachers of their profession.

If this is so, it proves that Rome was not the only place where doctors could be trained, as Denk seems to think.[518] Indeed, the provinces were more interested in medicine than Rome herself. Pliny[519] said in a broad and general way that for six hundred years Rome had got on without doctors, and it is well known that the Roman doctors made no important contribution to the science. Egyptians, Greeks, Gauls—these were the physicians of Rome. Pliny writes to Trajan asking him to give the citizenship to a doctor from whom he had derived benefit: ‘est enim peregrinae condicionis, manumissus a peregrina’.[520] The doctor who attends Hadrian on his death-bed is a foreigner.[521] Ammianus describes the growing fame of the Alexandrian school of medicine during the fourth century, as such, that a man, even if his actual work turned out badly, need only say that he had been trained at Alexandria in order to gain commendation.[522]

Then, as now, it was a lucrative profession, according to the proverb ‘Galenus dat opes’;[523] nor did the benefit to the sick always correspond to the doctor’s gain.[524]

A word may perhaps be added on the agrimensores, who represent the department of science among the Romans that was most scientifically employed, though all their mathematics came from Hiero of Alexandria.[525] Their work was partly military (the marking out of camps and locating of positions for the army) and partly civil (the surveying of colonies and provinces for revenue purposes). In cases of ‘controversia de loco’, the[90] Theodosian Code appoints them judges.[526] At first they were free to practise where and when they could, but in our period they were attached to guilds, and stood under a ‘primicerius mensorum’.[527] This organization of the ‘agrimensores’ implies a certain amount of training and a professional test of proficiency.[528]

Their connexion with Gaul is not very clearly attested, but can hardly be doubted. Frontinus in his De Controversiis Agrorum, speaking of the well-known question as to the ownership of the old bed of a river which has flowed out of its course into another man’s land, says ‘Hae quaestiones maxime in Gallia togata moventur’.[529] Again, in speaking of certain technical surveyor’s terms, he says ‘Hae vocabula in lege quae est in agro Uritano, in Gallia ... adhuc permanere dicuntur’,[530] which shows that surveying had long been connected with Cisalpine Gaul. In view of the laws of the Theodosian Code of our period about surveyors, it seems possible that in Transalpine Gaul there may have been schools for the training of agrimensores.

A question that comes into one’s mind on reading Ausonius is whether, in the methods of the Gallic master, mnemonics did not play an important part.

We find in the Eclogues verses which, on the face of them, suggest special composition for school use. The ‘Monosticha de Mensibus’[531] inevitably remind one of school rhymes:

So the verses giving the number of days in each month[532] (‘Thirty days hath September’), or the days on which the Nones and the Ides fall in the various months,[533] or the intervals between[91] the Ides of the one month and the Kalends of the next,[534] or the order of the seasons,[535] or the names and places of the Greek games,[536] or the labours of Hercules,[537] all suggest a similar purpose.

Again, in his metrical summary of the Caesars of Suetonius, written for his son, we find ‘monosticha de ordine imperatorum’,[538] ‘de aetate imperii eorum monosticha’,[539] ‘de obitu singulorum monosticha’,[540] all of which look very much like mnemonics.

First of all, their style is such as is suitable to school children—simple, clear, and terse, and the absence of rhetoric and affectation is not less striking than the dullness of the lines.

Secondly, it was a tradition handed down by the last great writer on education, that the memory should be trained by various devices. And the fourth century was prone to be tradition-bound.

Cicero says that Simonides of Ceos was the founder of the ‘ars memoriae’,[541] i.e. the ‘techne’, the system for developing the memory, a statement which Quintilian repeats before expounding his views on the subject. This he does with care, feeling the importance of memory—as ‘thesaurus eloquentiae’.[542] Only the man who remembers well, he says, in effect (and his words have a modern ring), can ever hope to become an orator.[543] There was always a tendency among the Romans towards encyclopaedic learning, which was the main feature of the grammarian’s school. We notice it also in the ostentatious lists of authors given by Sidonius.[544]

Nor can we wonder at this. The whole educational system was calculated to produce a good memory. The grammarian’s school supplied facts which had to be remembered in declamations, and the rhetor introduced a host of technicalities which had also to be kept in memory. The declaimer had to fit into his speech as many quotations as he could possibly remember,[545] and in[92] Ausonius’s letter to his grandson the ‘good boy’ is the one with the long memory.[546]

Bearing this in mind, Quintilian recommended that boys should learn as much as possible by heart, going over the same ground again and again (quasi eundem cibum remandendi, sc. opus). They must, therefore, begin with the poets, before going on to prose which is harder to remember.[547] Memory is a matter of pigeon-holes. What is to be remembered must be imagined in certain places, so that the order of the places will recall the order of the things to be remembered. We shall then use the ‘places’ instead of tablets, and the images associated with them as letters (ut locis pro cera, simulacris pro litteris uteremur).[548] To cultivate the memory various tricks may be tried. We learn a large subject by remembering parts of it in order; or we may take a sign to stand for the thing to be remembered, e.g. an anchor for ‘sailing’, or a weapon for ‘campaign’. Like Cicero, he lays stress on ‘loca’, imagined or actual, and on ‘simulacra vel imagines’. In the case of a long speech it is best to divide it into parts which should not be too small. Division is important. ‘Qui recte diviserit, nunquam poterit in rerum ordine errare.’ He also recommends marking a difficult passage (aliquas apponere notas).[549]

Thirdly, we may note the fruits of this training, as far as memory is concerned. Ausonius, by writing the Cento Nuptialis, proved only one good thing: that he knew the whole of Vergil by heart. Minervius[550] was noted for his memory. Ausonius spends ten lines in describing it, and clearly indicates how highly it was prized. Nepotianus, too, is specially commended for possessing this gift.[551]

In view of all this, we may not unfairly conclude that mnemonics played a considerable part in the schools of Gaul. In the history of the human race, as in that of the individual,[552][93] the memorizing stage comes before the development of thought. And the less advanced systems of education all over the world are characterized by their almost exclusive emphasis on learning things by heart.

(iii) Control and Arrangement of the School

(a) Discipline in primary and secondary schools.

The rhetorical tradition brought with it certain traditional methods, and one of them was the excessive use of corporal punishment. In the East, Libanius testifies to the frequent employment of this method. We have seen that the paedagogus appealed as a matter of course to the ‘argumentum ad baculum’; we find in Libanius that the rhetor, the university teacher, did likewise.

The general prospect of a schoolday may be described in terms of the rod: ἔσονται δ’ ἐνεργοὶ μὲν ἱμάντες, ἐνεργοὶ δὲ ῥάβδοι. He has a feeling that it is the only method of curing idleness. Writing to a father whose son has complained to him about a beating he had received, Libanius maintains that it is absolutely necessary to treat slothfulness in that way.[553]

In the West we have the pathetic reminiscences of Augustine.[554] No trouble was taken to explain to him the use or object of lessons; all he knew was that if he did not learn he was beaten. His prayer was to escape the rod, and very earnestly he prayed (rogabam Te parvus non parvo affectu), for his blows were to him ‘magnum tunc et grave malum’. He speaks bitterly of the lack of sympathy, which his sensitive nature felt more than the rest. He is galled by the unfairness of a system which punished faults in boys that were excused in men. ‘Maiorum nugae negotia vocabantur, puerorum autem talia cum sint, puniuntur a maioribus.’ No proper balance was kept between lessons and play.

On the other hand, he confesses that he was often disobedient through love of play, and admits ‘non enim discerem, nisi cogerer’.[555] Moreover, when he puts his punishments in the same category as ‘temptationes martyrum’, we are inclined to think him a sentimental prig. But there can be no doubt about the excessive severity which was prevalent, and the fact that it impressed Augustine’s mind to such an extent[556] is a measure of its wrongness. The worst feature of the system was not so much the general acquiescence in force as a scholastic panacea, but in the rigidity which made no distinctions or allowances.

Gaul was no exception to the general tradition. We find in Ausonius a fine gentleness of spirit and an elaborate courtesy; he shows an almost un-Roman sympathy with Bissula, the barbarian maid, and is fond of animals,[557] yet he is by no means thoroughly converted from the old Roman harshness. The gladiatorial games went on, and were significant of a prevalent disregard for human life and personality. The old spirit flashes forth under the veneer of culture; as when Ausonius surprises us by saying blandly to his secretary, who had been branded for running away: ‘on your branded face then, Pergamus, you have borne the marks; letters which your hand neglected are inflicted on your forehead.’[558]

When he writes a letter of exhortation to his grandson we feel that though there is something of the Greek spirit of pleasure in education, and though he says[559] that the Muses, too, must play,

yet there is an acquiescence in an almost savage system of[95] control. Surliness and brutality on the part of the master is accepted as one of the ills that flesh is heir to. It was not always so, he says:

Chiron used to guide his pupils with gentle words (though Juvenal represents Achilles as trembling before the rod).[562] But that state of things belongs to a mythological age. The only thing to do in the circumstances is to remember Vergil’s dictum: ‘Degeneres animos timor arguit’, and face the master as a brave warrior would his enemy.[563]

He pictures to his grandson the cane, the birch, the strap, and the excited bustle of the school-benches (a confession that even the most rigorous system of force could not keep perfect order). These instruments are ‘the pomp of the place’ and the elements in its scene of fear. But the great consolation is that both his father and his mother went through the same storm of blows in their childhood—an indication that the girls were not more spared than the boys.[564]

The same assumption that flogging is the inevitable counterpart of teaching is found in Sidonius.[565] ‘Ferulae lectionis Maronianae’ becomes a synonym for education at a grammar school, and the phrase ‘manum ferulae subducere’, in the sense of attending school, goes down through the Middle Ages into modern times. Even at the universities corporal punishment was the usual thing. Eusebius, professor of philosophy at Lyons, moulds his pupils ‘castigatoria severitate’.[566]

There are signs that the finer spirits, in theory at any rate, felt that there was something wrong with all this external[96] rigour. Partly, no doubt, they followed the lead of Quintilian, and partly, perhaps, there was a slow evolution past the stage of mere militarism. Libanius boasts ἑτέρους δὲ ἴσμεν μυρίας ῥάβδους ἀνηλωκότας,[567] but he had no need to; and experience has taught him that the desired end is not always reached in this way. ‘Now I avoided correction by means of blows, for I saw that this method often had the opposite of the intended effect.’ We gather that the applause, which was usual in the rhetor’s school,[568] often degenerated into rowdiness.[569] Yet we find that the relation between master and pupil was often very hearty. Gregory of Nazianzus tells of the farewell speeches, the laments, the tears, which used to mark the day of parting.[570]

The opposition to the regular tradition is not so clearly formulated in the West, but we find indications of a better ideal. In the letter to his grandson, Ausonius does not praise existing conditions, but rather accepts them as a necessary evil. Indeed, he describes his own teaching in words which are so contrasted with his picture of the ordinary school as to imply a direct criticism.

Paulinus of Pella has pleasant memories of his schooldays.[572] The affection with which he writes to his teacher Ausonius[573] proves that the professor’s statements about the mildness of his régime were not unfounded. He had referred to his work with Paulinus as that of a yoke-mate, and his pupil replies:

Similarly, Sidonius speaks of his master Hoënius in a way[97] which implies at least some degree of familiarity,[575] while his general recollections of his schooldays seem to have been distinctly pleasing.[576]

(b) Play.

The Romans were not much interested in psychology, or in the full development of personality. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that practically all the child-games we know of in the ancient world are Greek;[577] nor can we wonder that the Gallo-Romans have left us no description of the sort of things the child mind does, the way in which its personality develops, when freed from the guidance of what is called education.

The subtler African mind of Augustine, however, has left us some record of such games; and they are all so human and lifelike that they may very well have been common not only to his country, but also to his age.

He mentions ‘nuts’, handball, and bird-catching (nucibus et pilulis et passeribus).[578] Games of ball were, of course, common to the children of all countries. We find Paulinus of Pella at the age of fifteen wishing for a golden ball just arrived from Rome,[579] and Augustine describes how desperately keen he was on beating a chum in the contest of the ball.[580] As for the sparrows, ‘to capture a bird’, says Bertrand in his Life of St. Augustine,[581] ‘that winged, light and brilliant thing, is what all children long to do in every country on earth’. The same author describes the game of nuts as it is played in modern Africa. ‘A step of a staircase is used as a table by the players, or the pavement of a courtyard. Three shells are laid on the stone and a dried pea. Then, with rapid, baffling movements, hands, brown and alert, fly from one shell to another, shuffle them, mix them up, juggle the dried pea sometimes under this shell, sometimes under that, and the point is to guess which shell the pea has got under. By means of certain astute methods an artful player can make the[98] pea stick to his fingers, or to the inside of the shell, and the opponent loses every time....’

It may be, too, that there were battles in which they took sides as Carthaginians and Romans or Greeks and Trojans.[582] Augustine loved to listen to fairy tales and was passionately fond of watching plays and performances (curiositate magis magisque per oculos emicante in spectacula, ludos maiorum).[583] The spirit of adventure sometimes led him (as it has led children of all ages) to break the laws of property, as the incident of the pear-tree shows.[584]

Of the organized sport of youth and manhood we derive considerable information from Sidonius, who frequently mentions indoor games such as the duodecim scripta, a sort of backgammon,[585] fritilli[586] and pyrgus[587] (in which dice [tesserae] were used), as well as outdoor games. Paulinus of Pella tells us how he was taken ill with fever at the age of fifteen, and his parents, thinking his health more important than ‘doctae instructio linguae’, followed the doctor’s advice and removed him from his school at Bordeaux. Among the pleasures that were planned to speed his recovery was hunting, which his father resumed for his son’s sake.[588] The equipment of a well-to-do Gallic huntsman is described. The young Paulinus wishes for a fine horse with extravagant saddle and bridle adornments (faleris ornatior), a tall groom, a swift hound, and a smart hawk. Fine clothes and scent from Arabia are also objects of his desire.

The main details of the chase may easily be filled in from Sidonius. From the description of Theodoric’s hunting skill, we gather that spears were used as well as bows,[589] and that the unsportsmanlike Roman habit of driving the game into nets was practised in fifth-century Gaul.[590] The hawk was regarded as an indispensable item.[591] There is river and lake fishing,[592] either with[99] nets or with lines laid before nightfall,[593] and we hear of boat-racing[594] on lakes.

The game of ball, which is so frequently mentioned in Sidonius, was undoubtedly the most popular outdoor game. It was played by two persons,[595] or four,[596] or more than four,[597] and we gather that there was a good deal of running about. That is practically all we know of its rules, so that it is, strictly speaking, an assumption to call it ‘tennis’.[598] There were professional ball-throwers or jugglers, and there is an epitaph, found at Narbonne, to one Capito, a ‘pilarius’.[599]

The games of the circus were still popular. Majorian held them at Arles,[600] and they are frequently mentioned in inscriptions, as in the one at Arles in which some thousands of sesterces are given ‘from the interest on which athletic or circus games are to be given yearly’.[601] At St. Pierre (Narbonne) a well-preserved inscription was found to a man who had been ‘flamen’ of Augustus and curator of the gladiatorial games, and had been honoured ‘for his exceptional munificence in providing games’.[602] A Massilian inscription mentions ‘agonothet(ae) agoni(s)‘,[603] and it is not impossible that the tradition of public games in Gaul received an initial impetus from the Greek city of the south.

Against these athletic displays there seems to have been a good deal of feeling. Pliny tells us that they were abolished at Vienne by Trebonius Rufus, whose judgement, when appealed against, was upheld by Junius Mauricus, who added ‘Vellem etiam Romae tolli posset’. The reason given was a moral one. ‘Mores Viennensium infecerat, ut noster (agon) hic (Romae) omnium’, says Pliny,[604] voicing the traditional Roman opinion on the subject. For Ennius had maintained: ‘Flagiti principium[100] est nudare inter civis corpora’;[605] and Cicero had followed up the objection with ridicule: ‘Iuventutis vero exercitatio quam absurda in gymnasiis’.[606] Seneca[607] excludes gymnastics from his liberal studies, the main reason being ‘that they do not make for virtue’. Quintilian is more moderate. He has no objection to those who give them some little attention—‘paulum etiam palaestricis vacaverunt’. But those who overdo it, who spend part of their life in oil and part in wine, and so cloud the intellect, he would keep at the greatest possible distance.[608] There was a feeling that the ‘Graeculus magister’ who took charge of the exercises, instead of the old Roman veteran, was largely responsible for the degeneration.[609]

Now the question arises whether gymnastic exercises were part of the school programme, as in Greece, and whether there was anything corresponding to the State-governed training of the ‘ephebi’. There seems to be considerable confusion of thought on this point.

Denk[610] writes of the school buildings of Autun that they ‘lay in the shadow of trees, in the neighbourhood of murmuring fountains, the water of which was utilized by means of canals for bathing and swimming establishments, while the Gymnasium and the Palaestra provided for physical training and fitness’. For this he quotes Bulaeus.[611] But the reference is wrong. Elsewhere[612] this unreliable author vaguely mentions a palaestra in connexion with Autun, but cites no authority for his statement. Nor does Tacitus,[613] whom he quotes, refer to anything of this kind at Autun.

On the other hand, there is the fact that neither Ausonius, who was interested in education, nor Sidonius, who was interested in games, says a word about gymnastics in schools.

It is true that Sidonius, in describing the pictures of his country seat at Avitacum, refers to wrestling bouts and to the ‘virga gymnasiarchorum’.[614] But he is writing about artistic representations, the content of which were probably literary and without reference to Gaul, and the ‘virga gymnasiarchorum’, if, like the description of the misers who are practised in the palaestra of detraction and rub their limbs with poison instead of oil,[615] it has a realistic and a local ring, may refer with greater pertinence to the public performances such as took place at the Ludi Circenses.

Nor need we depend on the dangerous argument from silence. The whole of Roman traditional sentiment was against such an arrangement. Seneca, and the influential Quintilian, definitely excluded it from their scheme of studies. The most that Quintilian will concede is a master of deportment, who will teach the art of gesticulation (chironomia, lex gestus), which is important for the orator, and who will train in the pupil a decorous grace of body. He will even go so far as to pass the war-dance of the old Romans, with the qualification ‘nec ultra pueriles annos retinebitur nec in his ipsis diu.’ But he clearly means to exclude the gymnastic training as practised by the Greeks.[616]

It may be that the misconception of Denk partly lies in an unconscious confusion of the word ‘gymnasium’. Early writers like Plautus use it in the Greek sense of a school for gymnastic exercises, but where we find it in later authors like Cicero and Juvenal, the meaning is ‘public school or college’; and so it is that Sidonius uses it.[617] However that may be, it seems clear that on the whole Cramer is right, when he says that in the West gymnastics were never looked on as a part of public education.[618]

In so far as they appeared at all in the Roman world, they were due to original Greek influences, which, however, sometimes lasted surprisingly long. We read, for example, that Augustus was a constant spectator of the young men at their exercises,[102] a considerable number of them (according to ancient custom) still being found at Capreae[619]—which was under the Greek influence of Naples. The inscriptions (as we have seen) point to the existence of a gymnasiarchia which superintended officially the physical exercises of the youths and children at Massilia,[620] though how late it persisted we cannot say. It is probable that even in the Greek city of the South the practice was discontinued in the fourth and fifth centuries, for Massilia’s glory was a thing of the past and her specifically Greek character had all but disappeared.

The Maeniana at Autun attracted so much attention that contemporary writers have left us a fairly complete picture of its organization and its structure, which may be taken as typical of the imperial schools in the larger cities of Gaul.

Autun, as we gather from the Panegyrici Latini, was full of big buildings—temples of Janus, Pluto, Jove, Apollo, Hercules, Venus, Proserpine, and Minerva—and possessed an amphitheatre, a ‘naumachia’ or artificial lake for mock naval battles, fountains, and aqueducts. To these, by the generosity of Constantius Chlorus, there had been added at the end of the third century the Maeniana, standing several stories high, in the most important part of the town between the Capitol on the one hand and the temples of Apollo and Herakles Musagetes on the other.[621]

The schoolroom was probably of the traditional type. The furniture was very simple. There were no desks (as we may infer, e.g. from the well-known fresco at Herculanum and the bas-relief at the Louvre)[622] and the pupils wrote on their knees. The benches on which they sat were arranged around the chair of the teacher. On the walls would be pictures of great historical[103] events and geographical maps[623] according to Seneca’s principle ‘homines amplius oculis quam auribus credunt’.[624]

A gravestone relief discovered at Neumagen near Trèves shows a tutor in a comfortable seat holding a roll of papyrus. On either side sit two elder sons also reading from rolls, while a younger son stands on the right with his wax tablets, furnished with a handle, waiting for his writing lesson. The stone dates from the first centuries of the Christian era, and probably represents a private school in the home of a wealthy Gaul who wished to boast of the good education which he had given his children.[625]

We do not hear much about private tuition, but the old Roman custom of having a household slave to teach the rudiments must have persisted in the wealthy families of Gaul. Paulinus of Pella gives the impression that he had such training,[626] and Sidonius writes to Simplicius[627] that it is his duty to admonish his sons who are spoiled and refuse to submit to his assiduous care—which suggests, as Hodgkin remarks, that he was their tutor.

In the schools a ‘chair’ (cathedra) was occupied by the teacher, who was variously called ‘professor’, ‘praeceptor’, or, more rarely, ‘magister’, and a schola meant the number of people grouped under one cathedra, just as, in the official language of the time, it meant a group of officials serving under one head—soldiers, servants of the palace, and so forth.[628]

It is vain to look for any detailed scheme of arrangement in the subjects of the schools. As we have seen, no definite compartments can be distinguished in a subject like ‘Grammar’, nor were the same number of subjects found in every school: Law, Philosophy, and Medicine being taught in accordance with the traditions and the size of the place. We are not even quite clear as to the relation of the various grades of schools to one another when we try to look at Gaul in particular. For a point that is left vague in one’s mind after reading the authorities for Gaul, is whether a distinction was made between the elementary[104] school and the more advanced classes of the grammarian. Julius Capitolinus, in his Life of M. Antoninus, the philosopher,[629] makes it quite clear that a different master was used at Rome during the second century for the two stages. ‘Usus est magistris ad prima elementa Euforione litteratore ... usus est praeterea grammaticis, Graeco, Alexandro Cotiaensi, Latinis, Trosio Apro et Pollione et Eutychio Proculo Siccensi. Oratoribus usus est Graecis Aninio Macro ... Latino Frontone Cornelio....’ Apuleius is just as clear. Drawn from the fountain of the Muses, he says that the first goblet provides the instruction of the elementary master, the second the teaching of the grammarian, while the third provides the rhetor’s eloquence; and that this is as far as most people go.[630] And in our period Augustine says that he was very fond of Latin literature ‘non quas primi magistri sed quas docent qui grammatici vocantur’.[631]

There is, therefore, a clear traditional distinction in the Roman world between the primus magister or litterator, the grammarian and the rhetor, and perhaps we may see this division in the stages of his career which Ausonius describes in the Protrepticon:[632]

But in the Gallic writers of our period the distinction between the first two stages is not at all clear. Ausonius, for example, who never directly mentions the elementary school, says that Macrinus was his first master, but he puts him under the heading ‘grammaticus’;[633] and in the Theodosian Code, while grammatici and rhetores are always distinguished in the laws of the emperors about teachers’ salaries and privileges, the elementary masters are[105] never specially named. Probably the work of the primus magister was considerably diminished in the schools by the fact that many families employed private tutors for the initial stages of education; and whether a school had a separate master for the lower classes depended, no doubt, on its size and circumstances. The whole of ‘primary’ education was loosely considered the province of the grammaticus,[634] who in most cases would have an assistant, called by the less honourable name of litterator[635] or primus magister. The proscholus sive subdoctor, mentioned by Ausonius,[636] seems to have been an assistant grammarian, different from his chief only in social position. For the proscholus described seems to have been as much above the ordinary grammarian in learning as the grammarian was above the litterator. But his learning was in inverse ratio to his pay, for Ausonius describes him as ‘Exili nostrae fucatus honore cathedrae’.[637]

Of Minervius, Ausonius says that he supplied the forum with a thousand of his pupils, and added two thousand to the number of the senate,[638] and Jullian[639] doubles this number (three thousand) to get the total number which Minervius taught (for he was rhetor at Constantinople and Rome as well as at Bordeaux) and, dividing by thirty (the probable number of his teaching years), allots to him two hundred students per annum. But Ausonius’s style and character hardly admit of such mathematical speculation. He was much too vague and careless about things to make a calculation of this kind anything but extremely uncertain. The most we can say is that Bordeaux, the most flourishing Gallic university of the fourth century, must have had an exceptionally large number of students, several hundred, perhaps, drawn from all parts of Gaul, just as the professors sometimes came from Greece or Sicily.

Education was begun at an early age. Paulinus of Pella began when he was five,[640] and Ausonius took charge of children in their infancy.[641] At fourteen or fifteen the boy usually left the grammarian. Paulinus, who was probably retarded by the difficulty he found with Latin, was still in his grammarian’s school at fifteen.[642] If, as it appears, the law-course lasted five years, law students who went to Rome from Gaul would spend only a year or so in the school of the rhetor. For the emperor forbade students to continue their studies at Rome after the age of twenty, when they were removed by force if they omitted to return. ‘His sane qui sedulo operam professoribus navant, usque ad vicesimum aetatis suae annum Romae liceat commorari. Post id vero tempus qui neglexerit sponte remeare, sollicitudine praefecturae etiam invitus[643] ad patriam revertatur.’[644] Such was the stringent enactment of Valentinian in A.D. 370. We hear of students attached to the ‘Corpora’ who continued their studies at Rome after their twentieth year.[645] But it appears that the general age for leaving the rhetor’s school was, at any rate, before twenty.

says Ausonius to Exsuperius,[646] which means that fifteen was a common age for boys to be at the rhetor’s school.

About school-hours we know very little. It does not seem likely that the grammarian had so many hours per week for each of the seven liberal arts. What he aimed at was extensive reading, primarily for philological and literary knowledge, and only secondarily for such historical and scientific facts as came under Capella’s various heads. ‘The grammarian’, says Seneca, ‘attends to language, and, if he wishes to go farther afield, to history, while the utmost limit of his activities is poetry.’[647] ‘If[107] he wishes to go farther afield’ is significant: the system was an elastic one.

Of the total number of teaching hours there is only one indication. Ausonius sends the teacher Ursulus six philippi, the usual New Year’s gift from the emperor which Ursulus had not received, and says that they are ‘As many as the men to whom the fates of the Romans and the Albans were entrusted, and as many as his teaching hours at school and the hours he sits at home’.[648]

Denk, therefore, seems to be wrong when he says of the teachers[649] that they had no limitations of subject or method or time.

When this schoolday of six hours started in Gaul we do not know; but it is probable that it began fairly early in the morning and went on into the early afternoon. This was the case at Antioch in the fourth century;[650] and Augustine says that the teacher is kept busy in the hours before noon.[651]

With regard to examinations we find nothing definite, but there is a passage in the famous law of 370[652] which points to the application of some test. The emperor wants a report from the prefect of Rome, with a view to imperial appointments, of all students who have completed their course and are going back to the provinces. Moreover, such reports (breves) must be lodged at the imperial office every year. ‘Similes autem breves etiam ad scrinia mansuetudinis nostrae annis singulis dirigantur, quo meritis singulorum institutionibusque conpertis, utrum quandoque nobis sint necessarii iudicemus.’

From a few scattered hints it looks as if there was some sort of academic dress. Domitius teaches Terence at Ameria, wrapped in a thick cloak (endromidatus) though the weather is warm[653]—a[108] picture which reminds us of Augustine’s ‘paenulati magistri’.[654] At Antioch the rhetor wore a philosopher’s mantle[655] (tribon), a costume which was not unknown in Gaul, for Sidonius remarks that Claudianus, though a philosopher, wore ordinary dress.[656]

That there were holidays at regular intervals is clear from Ausonius’s letter to his grandson:

And Sidonius invites Domitius to come and share the joys of the country after his laborious teaching in the stuffy schoolroom.[658]

When exactly the vacations began and how long they lasted in Gaul we do not know, but it is probable that the order and duration of the Roman holidays were imitated. Ausonius’s verses in the ‘Thirty days hath September’ style on the Feriae Romanae[659] indicate that the Roman holidays existed at least in the memory of the schoolboy. Tertullian implies that they existed also in his experience, though less splendid in the provinces than at Rome (minore cura per provincias pro minoribus viribus administrantur).[660] We hear of ‘Florales Ludi’, which were different from the Roman Floralia, in connexion with the academy of Toulouse. There were ‘Agones rhetorici et poetici quotannis celebrari soliti, quique etiamnum hodie Kalendis Maii (sic) quotannis in domo publica committuntur’.[661] It is doubtful when these games were first introduced. Justinus mentions them in his description of the foundation of Massilia. Tradition at Toulouse said they were instituted by a maiden of literary tastes, Clementia Isaura; another version is that she merely renewed them. She is mentioned in the Agonisticon of one Petrus Faber of Toulouse in the sixteenth century, and Papyrius Massonius wrote an ‘Elogium Clementiae Isaurae’. They set up a statue to her on which the inscription ran:[109] ‘Clementia Isaura ... forum frumentarium, vinarium, piscarium et olitorium ... Capitolinis populoque Tolosano legavit, hac lege ut quotannis ludos Florales in aedem publicam quam ipsa sua impensa extruxit celebrent....’

On such occasions a child would be taken by his parent to see the show, though he would not be allowed a seat (non sedens propter aetatem),[662] and at festivals such as those of St. Just he would enjoy a game of ball or dice.[663]

A calendar of about the middle of the fourth century would, Jullian[664] supposes, taking the evidence of Ausonius’s poem ‘de Feriis’, the calendar of Philocalus, and the Christian writers, show about eighty-nine holidays, of which he considers six doubtful. In the meantime Christian festivals were increasingly claiming recognition. Already in 321 we find Constantine prohibiting the exercise of certain trades on Sunday,[665] and in 389 the Biblical conception of Sunday is definitely recognized[666] (solis die quem dominicum rite dixere maiores) and a general cessation of business is enjoined. In the same year the pagan festivals were cut down; only the summer and autumn festivals (described, even in the law, with the usual literary diffuseness of the time), the New Year holidays, and the foundation-days of Rome and Constantinople were to remain.[667] On the other hand, shows on Sunday were forbidden, ‘so that the sacred rites enjoined by the Christian law should not be disturbed by any gathering of shows’[668] (A.D. 392), and at Easter the business of the forum and of the law courts[669] was suspended. In theory, therefore, there was a decrease in pagan and an increase in Christian holidays. In[110] practice, however, pagan festivals long persisted,[670] and it is significant of the tenacity of paganism that the Lupercalia was celebrated in the fifth century. Very often the church kept the old festivals, merely changing their meaning.[671]

There can be no doubt that the pagan festivals were observed as school holidays: the references in Horace and his contemporaries and the Roman conception of festus, fastus, feriae, as indicating solemnity and reverence,[672] point to this conclusion. Such was evidently the case in the fourth-century Italian schools, for Augustine waits to resign his professorship until the holidays of the ‘Vindemia’.[673]

Of the Christian festivals it is harder to judge, especially after the revival of paganism under Julian at the beginning of our period. But it is probable that while the earlier laws (e.g. those of Constantine) had no widespread effect on the schools, the increasing emphasis laid on Christian festivals, passing through the fourth and fifth centuries into the Germanic period of Gaul, must have meant the recognition of Sundays and such festivals as Easter in the school curriculum.

Besides the public festivals there was the long vacation, lasting from the end of July till the beginning of October.[674] At Antioch, similarly, classes were taken only in the winter and in the spring,[675] the vacation lasting from midsummer till the beginning of winter. When the vacation came, the Antioch rhetors used to go in for public speeches and imperial panegyrics.[676]

Moreover, any special event produced a holiday. At Antioch[111] any festive occasions, funerals,[677] or civil commotions,[678] served to close the schoolrooms. On the occasion of the marriage of Ricimer with the daughter of Anthemius, the schools of Gaul enjoyed a holiday.[679] Apparently the length of the holiday was not controlled by organized rules, and this time it lasted so long that even Sidonius protested.[680] ‘Tandem’, he says, ‘reditum est in publicam serietatem, quae rebus actitandis ianuam campumque patefecit.’

It is interesting to find signs of a common life among the students, the beginnings of a residential university. Aulus Gellius claims the authority of Pythagoras for this mode of life. ‘Here is another point we must not omit: all the students of Pythagoras, as soon as they had been admitted into that “corps” of his, pooled all their possessions, slaves, or money, and so a close and lasting society was formed.’[681] Suetonius tells of one C. Albucius Silus of Novaria (Cisalpine Gaul) who came to Rome and was received into the ‘contubernium’ of Plancus, the orator, i.e. lived under the same roof, became a ‘convictor’ with him.[682] ‘You can enjoy the possession of no good thing’, Seneca says, ‘without some one to share it.’ You will gain more by talking and living with (convictus) people than from set speeches. Cleanthes could never have interpreted the philosophy of Zeno if he had merely attended his lectures. But he lived with him, examined his private life, and watched him to see if he practised what he preached.[683] Similarly, Plato and Aristotle and the rest learned more from the conduct than the words of Socrates, and ‘Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus were made great not by the school of Epicurus, but by living with him (contubernium).’[112] Gellius gives many examples of this sort of literary fellowship. While master and students dined together, one of the servitors would read some passage from a Greek or Latin author, and if a difficulty arose the master explained. So at the table of Favorinus ‘servus assistens mensae eius legere inceptabat....’ and a discussion was introduced by the philosopher on the word ‘parcus’.[684] Literary criticism was the favourite thing, as when the Bucolics of Vergil and Theocritus were read together at a dinner, and it was noticed that Vergil had left alone passages which contained the peculiar Greek sweetness but could not and should not be translated.[685]

We have no direct data for supposing that this system was followed in Gaul in our period; but the Favorinus mentioned in Gellius came from Arles, and there appear to have been ‘contubernia’ in Massilia.[686] Moreover, the ‘Platonic clubs’ of Sidonius and the general social temper of the Bordeaux professors make it likely that something of the kind was found at the Gallic universities.

As to the payment of teachers, it is clear that before Vespasian it was very unequal. Verrius Flaccus, who was tutor to the children of Augustus, received a salary of 100,000 sesterces (£1,000).[687] Even the infamous Palaemon, to whom parents were forbidden to send their children by Tiberius and Claudius, got as much as 40,000 sesterces. Martial takes a pessimistic view. In his advice to a friend on a career for his son he counsels: Let him avoid grammarians and rhetoricians if he wants to make money:

In Gaul, it appears, teachers were paid by the State before this was the case at Rome; for Strabo remarks in the first[113] century A.D. that he found State-appointed teachers there.[689] But there must have been great lack of organization and equality because State-payment meant, at that time, payment by the municipal town, which could not always provide proper security. Security, indeed, became more and more shaken, and the improvement made by Vespasian when he fixed the teachers’ salaries was a much-needed measure. In the famous decree of 376 Gratian and Valentinian ratified this enactment.[690] Rhetoricians are to receive twenty-four annonae[691] from the treasury, Greek and Latin grammarians, twelve. The chief cities of the provinces are encouraged to elect professors who are to be paid according to the standard fixed by the emperors. Trèves, the imperial favourite, gets something more (uberius aliquid), thirty annonae for a rhetor and twenty for a grammarian.

There can be no doubt that the emperors tried to monopolize education. Julian’s decree[692] that the appointment of all teachers was to be subject to the imperial approval, and the law of Theodosius and Valentinian in the next century forbidding all public schools outside the imperial academy, are illustrations of this tendency. Nevertheless, there must have been a large number of private-school teachers who were not paid by the State. The imperial legislation of the later empire could not have done away entirely with so established and widespread a class of men. They survived, especially in elementary education, and possibly their number exceeded that of the officially State-paid teachers.

The law makes it quite clear that the State-paid school and[114] university teachers[693] were, at one time, dependent on their towns for pay; and the frequent mandates of the emperors to the municipalities not to neglect these salaries show that they were not always prompt in paying. Symmachus, also, complains of the withholding of salaries;[694] and it has been suggested in this connexion that the teachers were unpopular because they were mostly pagans. It is more likely that their unpopularity was due to the fact that their teaching did not touch the mass of the population, who nevertheless had to support them. That the municipal salary stopped when the imperial one came into existence seems unlikely. Denk thinks that the imperial-paid ‘auditoria’ were distinct from the lower municipal-paid schools,[695] but probably the individual cities went on contributing part of the professors’ salaries, even after the law of Gratian.[696] As to the amount received, the impression made by the upper circle of the Bordeaux professors is certainly one of material prosperity. Marcellus of Narbo,[697] Sedatus of Toulouse,[698] and Exsuperius[699] did very well for themselves, and Eumenius considers his salary of £5,000 as nothing extraordinary: ‘multo maiora et prius et postea praemia contulerunt’ (sc. principes).[700] Even of the grammarian Marcellus, Ausonius could say that riches came by teaching:

On the other hand the less distinguished seem to have had a disproportionately small salary. The frequent application of the epithet ‘sterilis’ or ‘exilis’ to the chair of the grammarian is a feature of Ausonius’s picture of them.

Besides the imperial and the municipal support there were the[115] gifts from the emperor,[702] and the possibility of presents from the family of the pupils—a practice which is still very much in evidence in many country centres. Finally, there were the fees from the pupils, part of which seems to have been paid directly to the teacher.

The class fee (merces, minerval) seems to have been stipulated for by the rhetors individually. Axius asks Merula in Varro’s De Re Rustica,[703] ‘to be his master in the shepherd’s art’, and the reply is, imitating the practice of the rhetors, ‘Yes, as soon as you promise to pay my fee’ (minerval). Juvenal refers to the same practice:

Bulaeus says that the amount of the fee was sometimes left to the generosity of the parents.[705] He can hardly be referring to a common practice. The fourth century was far too business-like for this sort of thing. Most of the teachers who were in a position to do so probably demanded a large fee, like Exsuperius.[706] How far this bargaining went on after the law of Gratian we cannot tell: but the fact that it went on after Vespasian had fixed the salaries shows that it was not necessarily stopped in 376. Much more liberal was the East. Lectures at Antioch were open to all, even to pupils of other rhetors:[707] and sometimes invitations to attend were sent round by the servant of the lecturer.[708]

As to the number of the professors appointed little is known. Probably from what Ausonius says there were ten at Bordeaux, six ‘grammatici’ and four ‘rhetores’—the highest number, Jullian thinks, that Bordeaux ever reached. At Constantinople Theodosius appointed in 425 to his special auditorium[709] three rhetors and[116] ten grammarians for Latin, five rhetors and ten grammarians for Greek, one professor of philosophy, and two for law. But this is Eastern exuberance. Trèves, the imperial favourite, had only two or three rhetoricians, one Latin grammarian, and one Greek grammarian—a post which could not always be filled.[710]

Denk, in remarking that the number of teachers was thus definitely fixed, adds that there is no trace of a principal who gave direction to the work of the students.[711] Now it is true that there was no definite organization, but it seems very probable that the emperors, when they interested themselves in a school and appointed teachers, would have some one at the head of the establishment to facilitate communication between the imperial offices and the school. Moreover, it is a natural and traditional thing the world over for a group of men more or less permanently banded together to have a chief. The Druids had their leader,[712] and among the Persian Magi there was an archimagus. Besides, we have at least one ‘trace’ which Denk does not notice. Eumenius, as head of the Maeniana, was called moderator, which looks like an official title. And in the Christian schools it was a common thing to have a head (primicerius), as will be shown later.

Jullian[713] notices as a praiseworthy feature of the fourth-century educational system that the master passed on with his pupils as they advanced from stage to stage. Our author reads into his idealized fourth century a method which has long been practised by the Jesuits. But perhaps the wish is father to the thought. For it is clear that this could not, in the majority of cases, apply to the elementary master, whose intellectual limitations would effectually prevent him from taking the higher classes. Ausonius tells us as much.[714] Such teachers were ‘humili loco ac merito’. He mentions Romulus and Corinthius[715] as the Greek grammarians who taught him ‘primis in annis’, and they do not appear[117] again in the list of his masters. When quite young he was put under his uncle Arborius (qui me lactantem, puerum iuvenemque virumque | artibus ornasti),[716] who may have been a kind of general tutor to him at that time. When he was about ten years old he went to Toulouse (c. A.D. 320) and was taught for eight years in the school of Arborius, who in 328 was appointed tutor to one of the sons of Constantine at Constantinople,[717] where he died. Ausonius then returned to Bordeaux where he seems to have continued his studies in the rhetorical school, studying under Minervius,[718] and Luciolus,[719] who was once his fellow student, and probably under Alcimus[720] and Delphidius,[721] while Staphylius took the place of Arborius[722] as general tutor:

All these later masters, like Minervius, are spoken of distinctly as ‘rhetor’ or ‘orator’, just as his early masters are distinguished as ‘grammatici’.[723]

Ausonius’s experience as pupil, therefore, seems to contradict the statement that the master followed his students from class to class. But it may be argued that the scheme was upset in Ausonius’s case by his temporary removal to Toulouse, and his experience as master may be urged. This is a plausible contention. For he tells us in the Protrepticon of three stages in his career corresponding presumably to those of the litterator, the grammarian, and the rhetor. Yet Jullian’s supposition is not therefore true. Not every primary master was an Ausonius who could rise to the top of his profession and become an imperial tutor. Obviously there were a large number who found, as they left, the teaching profession a poor and dreary task. The grammarians whom Ausonius mentions,[724] except, perhaps,[118] Nepotianus,[725] did not rise to the higher position, and some, in their old age, even lost the little glory they had achieved, as Anastasius did.[726] Moreover, Ausonius does not say that his promotion kept pace with the advance of his students. The terms he uses are quite vague (mox, idem). And even supposing the master could in this way remain with his pupils, what happened when they had reached the highest stage? Jullian maintains that he started at the bottom again with a new class: ‘Le même homme était tour à tour professeur de grammaire et rhéteur: il lui arrivait ainsi de suivre ses élèves, de les accompagner de classe en classe.’[727]

Now this is reducing the matter to an absurdity. The fixity of the distinction between grammarian and rhetor is so striking in all Latin literature, and particularly in Ausonius, that the system, however desirable, would have been impossible. It is quite clear that there was a definite status attached to the positions,[728] and the Theodosian Code prescribes different salaries. Is it conceivable (to mention no other objections) that a man would be constantly changing his social standing and his salary in order to accompany his class from stage to stage?

The most we can say is that the connexion between the lower and higher forms of education was sufficiently close (as in France to-day) to allow a man of merit to rise from the lowest to the highest. This is proved by Ausonius’s case, and Denk is not stating the whole truth when he says that the teachers were independent of one another.[729] There was a certain amount of independence, no doubt, between grammarian and grammarian, or rhetor and rhetor, but between the grammatical school and that of the rhetorician there was a considerable degree of interdependence.

C. OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL

(i) Administrative and Social Conditions

Before we can understand the working of the school and see it in its proper perspective, before we can grasp the inner meaning of the system and appreciate its merits and demerits, something must be known about the society in which the school flourished and of the imperial organization which gave direction to that society. As Guizot said in his History of Civilization, study must proceed from without to within.[730]

It is unnecessary to give a detailed account of a subject so well worn, but a brief summary of such points as bear on education is necessary.

An outstanding feature in the development of the later empire is the growth of civil power. The great military commands, so common previously, become more and more impossible, owing to greater subdivision. The imperial army was divided into one hundred and twenty[731] parts, as against forty-five at the end of Trajan’s reign, and of these Gaul had fifteen. The civil power was so far recognized that military and civil offices were separated. The civil administrator of a province was called ‘proconsul’ or ‘consular’ (which did not necessarily mean ex-consul) according to whether the province was reckoned as ‘old’ or not. Above him were the four supreme civil authorities of the empire, the Praefectus Praetorio (who had become a civil magistrate after the Praetorian Cohorts had destroyed themselves by supporting Maxentius against Constantine), the Praefectus Galliarum, the Praefectus Italiae, and the Praefectus Illyrici et Orientis. It is well to bear in mind the status of these officials, for it will help us to understand the meaning of the fact that a schoolmaster like Ausonius became ‘praefectus Galliarum’. Each praefecture was divided into ‘dioceses’ and at the head of each was a ‘Vicarius’. The tenants of the higher offices were divided, according to the honour of their position, into ‘Illustres’, ‘Spectabiles’, and ‘Clarissimi’.

An important point in this system is that there was no continuous official chain passing down from the emperor to the lowest official; the emperor could interfere at any point (a particular in which the Pope resembles the Roman emperors) and every official was regarded as directly responsible to him, though he was controlled by his superior official as well. Functionaries were made to change places rapidly, so as to prevent a man from obtaining undue influence by long residence in one place. Thus, though the growth of civil power was favourable to the development of schools, the coercive spirit which is destructive of true education remained. On the one hand, education was encouraged by the various departments of the extensive[732] Civil Service—the secretariat (scrinium ab epistulis), the Record Office (a memoria), the office for legal documents (a libellis), and that for the emperor’s engagements and arrangements (scrinium dispositionum); and on the other hand, the controller of the civil service (magister officiorum) sent forth his secret service men (schola agentium in rebus), who, beginning their career by superintending the post service (curiosi), became a pregnant source of corruption and oppression. Extraordinarily efficient as the imperial civil service was, it had this important loophole of corruption, while oppression was possible everywhere.

The centre of the bureaucracy was the ‘Consistorium’ or Privy Council.[733] Certain high officials became ‘comites consistoriani’, and special people were called in for particular points. The position of the senate in this scheme of things is interesting from Ausonius’s statement that Minervius added to it two thousand members.[734] The number of members tended to grow enormously owing to the increasing use made by the emperor of his ‘ius adlectionis et loco movendi’, and the ‘ordo senatorius’ was still in existence. Ultimately, all who were ‘clarissimi’ belonged to the senate. But in practice only the higher officials, the priests, and the ‘consulares’ actually took part in the proceedings,[121] which tended to become municipal rather than imperial. The position of the senate, therefore, regarded as an imperial body, was merely nominal, though it was of considerable local importance. Its chief function was to provide ‘panem et circenses’, paid for by the holders of the consulship, the praetorship, and the quaestorship, which alone survived from the old ‘cursus honorum’. At the head of the senate was the ‘praefectus urbi’, whose powers were wide and undefined. Rome’s loss of dignity, with the emperors frequently residing in Gaul and elsewhere, affected the prestige of the senate, which still met in the ‘eternal city’. Yet as the emperors became weaker we find the senate growing in importance, and during the last twenty-five years of the Western Empire its activity is remarkable.[735]

Society in Gaul during the fourth and fifth centuries may be divided into four classes:[736] (1) the senators, (2) the curiales, (3) the common people, and (4) the slaves.

The senators were exempt from municipal offices and from torture, and had a right to be tried in a special court. These privileges were hereditary, though subject to the emperor’s good pleasure, and were counterbalanced by the heavy taxes, especially the senatorial ‘aurum oblaticium’. Distinguished from this political aristocracy were the ‘curiales’ or ‘decuriones’, members of the ‘curia’ or municipal council of their town. Entry into the class was by nomination, and could not be refused by anybody who had the property qualification, and, once procured, it was hereditary. It was a most unpopular honour,[737] because it involved the collection of taxes, for which the ‘decurio’ was financially responsible. In practice it was often a ruinous position, since no effective jurisdiction was open to the collector.[122] In the fourth century there were about one hundred decurions in each town. The plebs comprised petty landowners, tradesmen, and free artisans. Whereas under the republic slaves worked for the family, and trade was domestic, free men now worked for the State, and trade became public. Guilds had sprung up under the republic, but, whereas they were then free, the empire more and more destroyed their liberty. Augustus made them dependent on the will of the prince and the senate, and in our period we find them regarded as rendering compulsory services under the tutelage of the emperor. What is more, the Theodosian Code proves that they had become hereditary.[738]

Finally, the slaves may be classified as domestic and rural, the latter comprising many different grades, from serfs of the soil to comparatively free labourers.

In spite of this rigid suppression of spontaneity and freedom, which is seen also in Diocletian’s Edict fixing the prices throughout the empire, there is a gain in other directions. The ‘societates publicanorum’ ceased to exist, and the provincial was less exposed to capricious plunder, which in some cases, however, was removed only to admit organized robbery. Diocletian had levelled the inequality of taxation, but had not made an equal oppression impossible. Yet there was the boon of peace, and the genuine efforts to help provincials on the part of emperors like Julian. He greatly reduced the land tax[739] and administered justice in person, revising the decisions of judges, and summarily dismissing corrupt officials. The supply of slaves had palpably decreased, for wars of conquest had ceased, and the Germanic prisoners, having been found to be unmanageable, had been granted a certain amount of independence. We find that as much as two hundred ‘aurei’ was paid for a single slave; and if we are forced to conclude that the slave in question must have been of a very special kind, we must grant that even so the price had risen enormously. This meant that people had to fall back on their own resources more frequently: a local and provincial[123] independence was fostered, and we have something more nearly approaching ‘natural economy’.

Such was the system of which the fourth and fifth centuries witnessed the failure. As time went on taxes continued to be oppressive,[740] the bankruptcy that inevitably resulted from keeping an army continuously on a war footing became more apparent, and the security afforded by the empire became less and less. A weak ruler in a despotic state makes room for all manner of corruption, and under the weak emperors of the later empire this result is evident from ‘the frequent creation of new offices whose object was to curb the corruption of the old’.[741] When the imperial defence at length breaks down before the repeated waves of barbarian invasion, we feel that the severance of Gaul from an imperial government so rigid and so inelastic has merely been forestalled: it would have come in any case.

The deadening effect of this system is evident. It left no room for life and growth; spontaneity and genius were stifled, and progress checked. Naturalness and truth were not at home in this age of officialdom and adulation. The Theodosian Code bears witness to the elaborate and involved etiquette which revelled in high-sounding names,—‘tua sublimitas, tua excelsitas, tua magnificentia, praecelsa sinceritas tua’,[742] &c.—to which even the emperors were bound by the enormous stress which public opinion laid on these distinctions. Not that this Byzantine etiquette was wholly evil. As a means of counteracting the confusion which had previously reigned, of creating a respect for the person of the emperor which meant better order and fewer rebellions, it was a master-stroke on the part of Diocletian. But its evil effects in the direction of artificiality in times when the emperors could, with less justice, be called ‘divine’ is not to be denied.

But by the side of this mechanical pagan society there was[124] growing up at this time ‘another society, young, energetic, fruitful of results—the ecclesiastical society. It was around this society that the people rallied ... the senatorial and curial aristocracy was a mere phantom: the clergy became the real aristocracy.’[743]

(ii) Class Distinction and Education

The cast-iron rigidity of class distinctions is apparent even from the slight foregoing sketch of social conditions. Yet it is worth while dwelling on it a little longer in view of the statements that have been made. Every man had his place allotted to him by the divine will of the emperor, and there he must remain on pain of committing sacrilege. Valentinianus (says the emperor in A.D. 384) has prescribed for every rank its proper place and worth. If, therefore, any one occupies a position not his own, let him not plead ignorance. He stands convicted of sacrilege, for he has neglected the divine commands of the emperor.[744] This was the general scheme of Roman society. Nor was it modified to any great extent in Gaul by the admixture of the Visigoths, who had much the same system.[745] How did its details affect education in Gaul? Jullian maintains that practically every free-born child regularly attended the schools, which were equally accessible, he thinks, to the children of freedmen.[746] He does not deny that distinctions were rigid and many: ‘le IVᵉ siècle est, comme le XIIIᵉ, un siècle de privilèges, de distinctions et de hiérarchie’: but he thinks that all the classes were equal in the matter of education and that rank disappeared in the school.[747] In a similar strain Denk argues that the curials[125] must have had a considerable school training in order to fit them for the management of municipal affairs. ‘In order to perform such duties thoroughly they must have had the necessary knowledge: and this they must have obtained from the school.’[748]

As for the free artisans and the slaves, Denk cites the education of the old Roman slaves. Cato had demanded that household slaves should be able to read and write, and Mommsen says[749] that the lower classes had considerable knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Similarly, Lavisse says[750] that the uneducated, on the whole, could not have been too numerous, for even the humble sergeant had to be able to read the word of command on the tablets, and there were schools for the sons of veterans.

What authority Jullian has for saying that the distinction between classes broke down in the matter of education he does not say; and an examination of the Theodosian Code and of contemporary authorities makes it entirely improbable.

First of all, it was only the upper class that could compete for the higher grades of imperial office, which was regarded as the prize of education. The pride which Ausonius took in his imperial honours is only half concealed,[751] and he puts before his grandson the same goal of studies.[752]

This particular incentive to education was lacking in all but the senatorial class, from which, Jullian confesses,[753] the greatest number of pupils was drawn. Freedmen were definitely excluded by law. The emperors of 426 forbade all of their station to[126] stand for the higher offices, or to be admitted as soldiers of the Imperial Guard.[754]

The laws which prevented the curial from leaving his class[755] were many and stringent. Once a curial, always a curial, and not even flight from his town could save him. The prize of five ‘aurei’ offered by the government would be sure to find him a captor.

Denk’s argument that the curial must have had a school training to manage municipal affairs does not go very far. The reading, writing, and arithmetic taught by the ‘litterator’ he would certainly need, but there is no reason for supposing that he went any further. The respectable curial on his freehold farm probably had little incentive to education, and found no inspiration in his forced work of somewhat anxious tax-gathering. He would probably have considered the poetical flourishes of the rhetor beside the point for his son. It would be much more important for him to learn the practical wisdom which his father had formulated as to the best methods of making people pay their taxes or of managing the problems of agriculture.

Now it is true that a law of Constantius[756] enacts that no one shall attain to the first rank in the ‘ordo decurialis’ unless he has passed through a course of studies. But firstly, the law applies technically only to the city of Rome, and its ‘decuriae’; secondly, the amount of education required was not excessive: all the emperor wanted was that a man of the first rank should be able to speak grammatically (ita esse litteris expolitum, ut citra offensam vitii ex eodem verba procedant); and finally, the regulation that this elementary knowledge was specially laid down as a qualification for the first rank (librarii) suggests that the other two (fiscales et censuales) were frequently held without such proficiency.

If the law tended to stifle the curial’s interest in education, much more was this so with those who belonged to a lower grade.[127] The incentive needed there was greater and the incentive given, less. The work of the artisans belonging to the rigidly separated ‘collegia’ was harder, though it varied with the trade. The bakers’ guild was not far removed from slavery. Here, too, frequent flight from the class points to oppression. The tendency to learn only the practical tricks necessary to make the trade a paying one must have been even more accentuated. For where there is no prospect except the drudgery of the trade in which he grew up, it must be an exceptional man who will take an interest in education or awaken it in his son. Even the school of the ‘litterator’ must have been a mystery to many of these ‘corporati’. Moreover, intermarriage between the classes was regarded with horror, and forbidden on the severest penalties. Senators or men who ranked as ‘perfectissimi’, or ‘duumviri’, or ‘quinquennales’, or ‘flamines’, or ‘sacerdotes’, suffered ‘infamia’ if they married a freedwoman or the daughter of a freedwoman, an actress or the daughter of an actress, a shopkeeper (tabernarius) or the daughter of a shopkeeper, or any one of low standing.[757]

Whatever we may think of the wisdom of such a measure, one thing is clear: the difficulty of imagining that all ranks were levelled, as Jullian says, in the school, and that the son of a senator sat on the same benches as the sons of freedmen.

Further, the tendency of the emperors to restrict people to the same place must also have had an effect on education.[758] For the imperial policy aimed at uniformity and immobility, and in attaining them it lost life and progress. The discouragement of[128] travel must have meant a restriction of knowledge and a strangling of that wonder which is stimulated by new scenes, and is, as Plato said, the beginning of philosophy.

Again, the inspiration which comes from the feeling of citizenship, the realization of being a living member of a group and helping to further its ends, was crushed out by the mechanical fiscal system of the empire. Men like Claudian and Sidonius might write with an enthusiasm inspired by this feeling, but what chance was there for the anxious curial or the fettered artisan to share this inspiration? For him the round of daily duty was too narrow or too relentless, to allow much room for ideals. ‘Municipal self-government, bereft of its political significance, restricted to the sphere of local interests and ambitions, is apt to degenerate into corrupt and spendthrift practices.’[759] To the curial, as he carried out the commands of the emperor, it must have been difficult to see any inspiring meaning in it all, when Gaul was day by day being more abandoned to the barbaric invasions, while the burden of taxation remained unalleviated. And yet it is where a meaning, an ideal, is most clearly seen, that education has its truest incentive and its most fruitful results.

Denk appeals to the fact that many Roman slaves could read and write, to Cato’s requirements of a household slave, and to Mommsen’s statement that there was much reading and writing among the lower classes. But (as far as the artisans and free labourers are concerned) the reference is to republican times when the guilds were free, and when a fiscal imperial system had not yet enslaved the people and created the frightful inter-class rigidity which culminated, to the detriment of education, in the fourth century. That there were, however, even then, some ‘collegiati’ who attained to higher education is clear from the law of 370.[760] The emperor, in asking the Prefect of Rome for a report of provincial students, makes an exception of those who are serving in the public guilds. But we must remember that these ‘collegiati’ probably belonged to the higher guilds, like[129] that of the ‘navicularii’, in which the higher classes had a share, and were probably picked men. Ritter, in his commentary on the law, suggests that they were young men who had voluntarily joined a ‘corpus’ and were allowed to stay longer than usual because they were doing public work. However this may be, they were certainly the exceptions. The impression derived from the Theodosian Code is that the ‘collegiati’ who had the opportunity of higher education were very much the fortunate few.

As for the slaves, it is true that there were some of them in the fourth century who could read and write like Ausonius’s ‘notarius’, but slaves qua slaves received no education. It was found useful to make them acquire a knack like shorthand, just as it is useful to break in a horse. Their knack was their only virtue. But there was no provision for them as a class, and no encouragement to extend their knowledge beyond their narrow speciality. A glance at the laws of the Theodosian Code is sufficient to show this. A ‘colonus’ is bound to the soil on which he is born, and if he runs away from the place of his birth he is to be brought back immediately, together with his family.[761] So says a law of A.D. 419. A law of Constantine had also enacted that ‘coloni’, who purposed flight, should be reduced to slavery and put in chains, and with this sentence upon them be compelled, as they deserve, to perform the tasks of free men.[762] The law shows that the ‘coloni’ were still regarded as belonging to the third rather than the fourth class. But their freedom did not exist in more than name, and it seems most improbable that they had any share in the education of the day.

Finally, the deduction of Lavisse that education was general from the fact that the sergeants could read, and that the sons of veterans had schools, is not altogether justified. For, again, the[130] soldier would pick up just the minimum of school knowledge to help him through (and this he might conceivably have done even without going to a ‘litterator’) more especially as the army by this time consisted largely of barbarians. As for the veterans, they were a privileged class, as the thirteen enactments of the Theodosian Code[763] regarding their status and immunity from public burdens can prove.

Turning now to the contemporary writers, we can trace the effect of the code on their methods and ideas. Sidonius clearly thinks of men in ‘ordines’. At the feast of St. Just, in which all classes participate, there is not much trace of intermingling or exchange of greetings, and when they scatter for relaxation the lines of demarcation are still plain.[764] Eumenius, too, illustrates the value which men attached to class privileges. He had been ‘magister sacrae memoriae’, and the emperor, in appointing him to the school at Autun, assures him that his ‘dignitas’ will not be impaired by the change. The gratitude of Eumenius for this boon, ‘ut salvo honoris mei privilegio doceam’,[765] is effusive and significant.

But the important point is that the upper classes came to look on education as their monopoly. Sidonius rebukes a friend who is absorbed in the material concerns of his estate for neglecting his reading.[766] It is a nobleman’s business, he finely says, to maintain a noble level of culture. Think of the disgrace of being distanced in your old age by one of humbler rank, and surpassed in honours by men whose worth is that of a lower class—‘cum eos, quos esset indignum si vestigia nostra sequerentur, videris dolens antecessisse’. The argument is that the nobleman has to undertake administrative and other imperial offices; they are his by right. Therefore he must keep up his education, which is the road to office, and also peculiarly his prerogative.[767] And so, when Ausonius says: ‘It isn’t right that I, a royal[131] master, should expound verses to the common herd’,[768] there is a background of fact to his jocularity. At the end of the empire, when the social fabric was tottering and the accustomed ranks and distinctions were vanishing away (iam remotis gradibus dignitatum), Sidonius sees in literary knowledge the only mark of nobility that will survive: ‘solum posthac nobilitatis indicium litteras nosse.’[769]

In these circumstances it is hard to see how Jullian is justified in calling the Roman society in Gaul during the fourth century ‘toute intellectuelle’.[770] Yet there are two considerations which must modify our conclusion. The first is that in practice the lines of demarcation were not so rigid as in theory. As we have seen in the case of the ‘collegiati’, there was higher education where we should not have expected it, and members of guilds were not always swallowed up in their guild work. The second consideration is that their interest in education was not always damped by discouraging surroundings. There was a strong and almost passionate loyalty to letters among the upper classes which must have spread lower down in society. The curial, no doubt, sometimes cultivated his intellect as well as land and tax-collecting, even though there was no material gain to be won. And it was felt, perhaps, that it was the respectable thing to send one’s son to a grammar school.

We must, therefore, allow a certain margin for higher education among the ‘curiales’ and the ‘corporati’, while we accept a very wide range of mere literacy,[771] such as could be obtained from an elementary school teacher. The enormous staff of scribes required for the imperial ‘scholae’ must have embraced many of a lower social standing. The need for people who could read[132] and write was great, and we may perhaps see in the large[772] number of grammarians[773] (as compared with the rhetoricians), which the emperors provided, an indication of this need. But, as we go down the social scale, it is only the exceptions who go beyond the grammarian, while the majority probably knew none but the elementary master.

(iii) The Teacher in Society

Libanius draws a picture of the rhetor lingering in the classroom after the day’s work because of the unpleasantness of conjugal and family difficulties at home;[774] and Ausonius roundly declares, emphasizing another side of the teacher’s unfortunate lot, that a grammarian is not happy and never was; that the very name of grammarian is incompatible with happiness. If beyond destiny and fate there has existed one that was happy, he must indeed have passed beyond the bounds of the mere grammarian.[775]

Routine produced its usual discontent, and it was true of the fourth century as of the first:

Yet the striking thing about the Gallic teachers (if we may take Bordeaux as typical of the province) was their sociability. Alethius is ‘comis’ and ‘liberalis’;[776] Luciolus is commended by the poet for his geniality to his guests, his good temper to his clients, his gentleness with his servants;[777] and to Minervius[778] he says: ‘No gall embitters your heart; your wit is abundant; yet your jokes are never such as lead to strife.’[779]

They loved their dinners and their jokes, and could jest without malice and in gentleness of spirit. So Nepotianus is addressed as a man ‘old in years yet witty and young in heart; a spirit unembittered and overflowing with much sweetness’.[780]

Leontius earns the cognomen Lascivus,[781] and Jucundus, though condemned for inefficiency, is admitted to the ‘numerus grammaticorum’ on account of his social and personal pleasantness.[782] It may be noticed, too, that Constantius, in appointing Eumenius to the head-mastership of the Maeniana, stated as one of his qualifications ‘his pleasing ways’.[783] Wine played a great part among them. Crispus, the old master of Ausonius, was believed to have tippled occasionally.[784] To the reader Ausonius says in his introduction to Bissula that he is to be read only by those who have dined and dined well:

About the futile Griphus he declares that all serious judgement must be suspended, for ‘iniurium est de poeta male sobrio lectorem abstemium iudicare’,[785] and the convivial spirit is further illustrated by the epistles to Paulus[786] and to Theon.[787] Moreover, a favourite ideal among these professors was to marry an heiress. Like Dynamius, who found fortune and a wife as a teacher,[788] the jovial Marcellus won the goodwill and the daughter of a nobleman,[789] as did the rhetor Alethius Minervius.[790] Even the Syracusan Citarius ‘soon attained to wedlock in a rich and noble family’.[791]

The Theodosian Code clearly shows how eager the emperors of this time were to increase the social status of the teacher. A law of 425, for example,[792] raises certain ‘grammatici’ and[134] ‘sofistae’ to the rank of comes, and adds that all such teachers, if they behaved well and showed skill in their profession, would enjoy the same privileges after twenty years of diligent service.

In the social world, therefore, these teachers ranked high: in the intellectual world their place was considerably lower. We find that there was a certain standard set for a teacher:

Jucundus[793] is reproached for not reaching this standard and being unworthy of his profession. But there can be no doubt that the requirements were fairly low and very irregularly fulfilled. Leontius knew only the little that his poor position demanded,[794] and masters like Ammonius and Anastasius were equally ignorant.[795] Ausonius twits Auxilius on his defective pronunciation and addresses him as ‘inscite magister’,[796] and Rufus, the rhetorician, had so little sense (cor) that he used to write ‘reminisco’ in his verses. Moreover, he was very like a statue in his lifelessness—only softer and more effeminate.[797] Philomusus, again, had stuffed his library full of books, but this was his only claim to knowledge.[798]

Jung[799] finds an illustration of the general tendency to superficiality in the fact that many of the Bordeaux professors were at the same time advocates, poets, and farmers.[800] But we feel that this is carping criticism, and that such combinations of activity are no more anomalous or indicative of shallowness than they are in many universities of to-day.

But, on the whole, we get the impression that Julian’s emphasis on the preparation of teachers,[801] apart from its motive, was much needed throughout this period, and that the level of the Gallic university was probably not much above that of a modern high school.[802]

In the professional world the status of the teacher had steadily risen, ever since Vespasian had given education the imperial blessing by appointing Quintilian to the first State-paid chair. We find Constantius, in his letter to Eumenius, deprecating the idea that the teachers’ task is a lower form of imperial service;[803] and there can be no doubt that Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries, all enthusiastic as she was for literature and culture, honoured her teachers more than had previously been the custom. With the full light of imperial favour upon them, they were respected, not so much for what they were, but for all the golden avenues of imperial office to which their profession could lead.

The picture which Ausonius gives of the Bordeaux professors suggests a resemblance to Oxford. The division of studies between the grammarian and the rhetor gives an ‘institutio’ which is the forerunner of the Oxonian School of Classics. For the grammarian did ‘Mods.’ work, training the pupil in a wide range of detailed facts, while the rhetorician aimed (though in a poor way) at a philosophic combination of the facts into a speech, and at grace and lucidity of style. And this is largely also the aim of ‘Greats’.

Moreover, there is a similarity of social atmosphere. There is a bright and genial contact of man with man, which implies a study of men as well as of books, and there is that emotional content springing from such intercourse, which, if kept within bounds, serves to keep thought fresh and balanced, and prevents the letter from killing the spirit. That there was also the danger, as at Oxford, of the social side looming too large, is clear from a study of these professorial portraits.

(iv) Imperial Protection

A change had come over the administration of schools in the later part of the empire. In early republican times there had been no public interference with education: the ideal of men like Cato was ‘in gremio matris educari’.[804] But even the spirit of Cato could not stop Crates of Mallos from establishing the first school of grammar, after the Punic Wars had opened the flood-gates of Greek influence; nor could it prevent fathers from[136] paying large sums for the services of these public teachers. A transition stage came in the first century, when the conflict between the old and the new reached a crisis. The censors grew alarmed, and issued a decree in 92 B.C. prohibiting the teaching of the Latin rhetoricians as being contrary to the ‘mos maiorum’.[805] They had endured Greek rhetoricians, but when Romans began to adopt the ways of these ‘Graeculi’ they thought it was time to interfere.[806] But public schools were rapidly growing, and when Vespasian fixed the salaries of teachers the old conservative Roman prejudice against public education had practically died out. In the second century Hadrian opened his Athenaeum—the first school for higher education. Alexander Severus gave salaries to teachers ‘etiam in provinciis’.[807]

The goodwill and personal interest of the emperors in the schools is seen in the letter of Constantius to Eumenius.[808] ‘Our loyal Gauls’, he says, ‘who enjoy the benefits of civilization in Autun, deserve that we should take thought for the development of their children’s talents. What gift, then, more fitting than that which fortune can neither give nor take away? Therefore, we appoint you to be head of this school; for we have learned to know from your service under us, your eloquence and your genial temper.’

Nor was this mere wordy benevolence. Public works, temples, schools had been repaired.[809] Augustodunum had suffered badly from the inroads of the barbarians, but so effective was the help given, that the restored city, says the orator, possibly with some exaggeration, was greater and grander than the old one (ipsa moles restitutionis immanior). Money was given for private as well as public buildings, and not only money, but artificers from over the sea, new inhabitants of high rank, and soldiers to guard them during the winter.[810] All this had a very real bearing on education. Like Britain, the city had gradually got rid of its[137] ‘barbarism’, and had emerged into the light of Roman culture.[811] Amid all the benefits of the emperors, says Eumenius, the greatest is their zeal in fostering liberal studies. Though the cares of state are great and engrossing, they find time to attend to education, and herein perhaps the true future of Rome may lie—‘si non potentia, sed etiam eloquentia Romana revirescat’.[812]

The Theodosian Code shows how Constantine continued and developed this patronage of education. Gaul appeared prominently in this connexion with the promulgation of the Law of Gratian and Valentinian in A.D. 376 for the regulation of teachers’ salaries, addressed to the prefect of the Gauls.

In this, as in many other laws, it is clear that the imperial policy aimed at the spread of education. ‘In the most populous, powerful and famous cities of every district entrusted to your Magnificence, let all the best teachers be appointed for the education of the young: we refer to Greek and Latin rhetoricians and grammarians.’[813] Similarly, Valentinian and Valens had exhorted any one who was qualified, either to open a new school or to revive an old one.[814] But the emperors were not content with a general policy for education. They provided directly for all the details of a student’s behaviour and discipline. Those Gallic students who went to Rome for the study of law had to submit to the enactment of 370,[815] which prescribed many regulations for their studies and their conduct.

A different and a closer interest in the schools had been shown by Julian—the interest of a philosopher. He had laid stress on the morals and efficiency, and on the personal share he desired to have in the appointment of teachers, probably with a view to ejecting Christians.

‘Masters and teachers must show excellence first, in character, and then, in eloquence. But, since I cannot be present in[138] person at every city, I command that all who wish to teach should not rashly and hastily leap into this profession, but only when their order has judged them fit and the unanimous vote of the best citizens has gained them a decree of the curials. This decree will be referred to me for consideration, so that the teachers may approach their work of public education with the higher honour of our approval.’[816] This moral emphasis is repeated in a decree of Valentinian and Valens: ‘si qui erudiendis adulescentibus vita pariter et facundia idoneus erit.’[817]

From pupil to teacher, from teacher to civil servant or imperial dignitary, the emperor’s influence was paramount. He decreed when studies must cease, and how they must be conducted; it was he who fostered the schools, and from him needy children received financial support. The institution of the ‘alimenta’ is said to be as old as Ptolemy, the founder of the Alexandrian library;[818] and we read that Nerva, like Augustus,[819] reared children at the public expense,[820] and that Trajan (as is proved by two famous inscriptions)[821] and Hadrian followed his example.[822] These ‘alimenta’, which had originally been instituted as a measure against the decreasing birth-rate, were fully organized in the early empire, but dwindled as financial difficulties grew.[823] Yet we find Constantine passing laws about the support of children which probably remained in force at least until the end of the fourth century. ‘Officium tuum’ is his mandate to the Praetorian Prefect, ‘haec cura praestringat ut si quis parens[139] adferat subolem, quam pro paupertate educare non possit, nec in alimentis nec in veste impertienda tardetur ... ad quam rem et fiscum nostrum et rem privatam indiscreta iussimus praebere obsequia.’[824] Again, in 322, there is a similar law, this time specially intended for provincials: ‘Quiquis igitur huiusmodi reperietur qui nulla rei familiaris substantia fultus est, quique liberos suos aegre ac difficile sustentet, per fiscum nostrum ... stipem necessariam largiantur....’[825] As far as actual schooling is concerned, this kind of imperial support, being intended for the relief of the lower classes, applied only to elementary education.

The teacher was dependent on the emperor (as we have seen) for his appointment. Sometimes a man would be directly appointed by the emperor, as Eumenius was,[826] but generally in Gaul, as at Antioch,[827] he would be nominated by his municipality, and his nomination would be subject to the approval of the imperial patron,[828] to whom he looked for all good things. The Gaul of Panegyric VI speaks of ‘privatorum studiorum ignobiles curae’, and the suggestion is that it is the approving glance of the emperor that makes them ‘nobiles’. Eumenius clearly brings out this relation between the teachers and the emperors, who are praised because they found time to appoint schoolmasters as well as masters of the horse.[829]

And finally, both teacher and student depended on the emperor for promotion. Imperial service was the conscious motive of education, and the rhetor could count among the officials of the empire many a former pupil. One of the panegyrists looks proudly and wistfully back to those who left his school and rose high in the forum or the offices of the palace, and fondly thinks of them as his children. ‘For many and not[140] ignoble are the streams that take their course from me,’ he exclaims to the emperor, ‘many whom I guided have risen to govern thy provinces.’[830] The reason why the emperors take so much care to appoint efficient teachers is, ‘lest those who ought to be appointed to the various forms of State service should be overtaken, as it were, by a sudden cloud midway on the waves of youth, and steer their course by doubtful stars of oratory.’[831] The service of the emperor is so obviously the best, that anything else looks like partial shipwreck. The imperial goal dominates everything. Ausonius served, like many of the Bordeaux teachers, on the municipality of his town, and rose to be consul and prefect. Even a man like Exsuperius, whom Ausonius criticizes as a trivial talker,[832] could become governor of a province. So much was a public career the fashion that Ausonius expresses surprise at Alcimus for keeping out of the imperial service:

All this finds its counterpart, of course, in the direct encouragement of the emperors. If Constantine had merely said: ‘We allow teachers to stand for office, if they wish, but do not compel them,’[834] Constantius, with an enthusiasm for letters rarely paralleled among princes, could promise that he would promote to higher rank him who by his studies and eloquence seemed to be worthy of the first place. ‘For literature must not be denied her rewards—literature which is the greatest of all virtues.’[835]

One of the main features of the imperial policy towards the teachers was the panegyric. The emperors had to mould public[141] opinion, and, not possessing newspapers, they fell back on the professor. And perhaps this is the reason why, during the fourth century, they made such a special point of residing in Gaul and expressing their fondness for her by word and deed—Gaul the home of rhetoricians. However that may be, the panegyric obtained a regular place among the teacher’s duties.

Ever since Pliny had set the fashion with his panegyric on Trajan, ‘there had gradually grown up a custom, especially in the cities of Gaul, where rhetorical studies were flourishing, a custom which became frequent in the times of Diocletian and Maximian, and again under Constantine and Constantius, of sending rhetors to the emperor to congratulate him on successes and to thank him for benefits.’[836] The panegyric was one of the accomplishments of the famous Minervius,[837] and among the ‘Panegyrici Latini’ it was a much-coveted honour to be allowed to air this accomplishment. ‘Summam votorum meorum’[838] is the description applied by the sixth panegyrist to his speech before the emperor. Nor need we consider this mere flattery; for the rewards were many and substantial. Sidonius’s panegyric on Avitus procured him a statue in the forum of Trajan,[839] after his panegyric on Majorian (who had been nominated by Avitus’s murderer Ricimer), he was admitted into the court and became a count, and when he performed the same service for Anthemius in 468 he was made prefect of Rome and president of the Senate; he tells us himself that he obtained the praefecture ‘sub ope Christi, styli occasione’.[840]

These were the rewards of the brilliant. But even the humblest grammarian enjoyed the emperor’s favour as a potential panegyrist. Many laws at different times protected him from taxes and military service. Constantine had decreed this, and had added that they were also to be free from prosecution and shielded from wrongdoing. The magistrates were to exact a fine of £1,000 from any one who injured them, or themselves[142] bear the punishment.[841] In the case of a slave whipping was prescribed. In 333 Constantine confirmed this law ‘to facilitate and extend the teaching of liberal arts and studies’.[842] His example was followed in 414 by Honorius and Theodosius, who decreed that grammarians, orators, and teachers of philosophy as well as certain court doctors, besides all the privileges granted to them by the emperors in the past, should enjoy freedom from the rearrangement, municipal or curial, of property which had been put together from several sources in order to be divided equally (conlatio), from the marking out of land for the senatorial or land tax (descriptio), and from all office and public burdens. Nor were they to have soldiers or judges billeted on them wherever they lived. Moreover, all these privileges were to be shared by their sons and wives, so that their children could not be forced to serve in the army.[843]

But the gratitude of the Gallic teachers to the emperor was based on more than personal benefits. They realized very clearly (in the fourth century, at any rate) that without the Roman military power education could not have flourished. Eumenius tells how, after the confusion of destroying barbarians, the trees flourish again and the corn-stalks lift their heads when the frontier is made secure. The age of gold has come again.[143] ‘Adeo, ut res est, aurea illa saecula, quae non diu quondam Saturno rege viguerunt, nunc aeternis auspiciis Iovis et Herculis renascuntur.’[844] Panegyric inspires comforting pictures, but in this case there is a basis of truth. There is a true ring about the praises of the Aeduan who describes the evil condition of his country, and pours out his thanks before the emperor,[845] even though he has a tendency to hysterics.[846] There is a certain amount of real feeling in his exclamation: ‘O divinam, imperator, tuam in sananda civitate medicinam’;[847] and the Gallic orator of the sixth panegyric is not very far wrong when he says: ‘Thence, O emperor, comes this peace which we enjoy: not the waters of the Rhine, but the terror which thy name inspires is the rampart that defends us.’

Valentinian I, ‘the frontier emperor’, restored the defences of the West against the barbarians (367-8). Trouble was brewing among the Persians,[848] says Ammianus, ‘but Valentinian, conceiving in his mind great things and profitable’, fortified the whole of the Rhine from Rhaetia to the sea, strengthened camps and forts, planted many towers in suitable spots along the Gallic frontier, and sometimes even across the river close to barbarian territory.[849] Zosimus remarks on his care for the provinces and for the Celtic peoples.[850]

Even the usurper Constantine, ‘the vain deliverer of Gaul’, as Gibbon calls him, in A.D. 407 ἐγκατέστησε ... καὶ τῷ Ῥήνῳ πᾶσαν ἀσφάλειαν, ἐκ τῶν Ἰουλιανοῦ βασιλέως χρόνων ῥᾳθυμηθεῖσαν.[851]

One of the panegyrists[852] mentions ‘sapientia’ as a blessing of the empire, ‘ipsa ... illa quae videtur rerum omnium domina esse’, and this wisdom comes by experience of men and things, ‘perspectis hominum moribus et exploratis rerum eventis’. By giving opportunities to the Gauls for studying and mixing with different types from all parts of the world, Roman rule contributed to the general culture of the country; and the provincial orator is not guilty of his usual exaggeration when he emphasizes the fact that in this way, too, the empire was a boon at this time to the education of Gaul.

But against these real and undeniable advantages there may be set some corresponding drawbacks. Elaborate centralization[853] may be good from a purely military point of view, but it checks the progress of the human spirit. The panegyrists show how excessive the expenditure of the central court was, and how the interests of the empire were sacrificed to the sovereign.[854] The accession of Julian was a boon, for ‘the provinces were exhausted, partly by the plundering barbarians, partly by the greed, destructive as it was disgraceful, of the provincial governors.’[855] And of Julian the orator asks in a way which affirms the charge on the part of his enemy Constantius: ‘Flagitiis administrantium non modo frena laxaret, sed etiam stimulator accederet...?’

This over-centralization resulted in over-interference in education. ‘The traditional liberty which had formed the foundation of Roman education was seriously infringed by the appearance of imperial privileges.... All these benefactions were in reality an interference in the affairs of education.... Thus from the second to the fourth centuries of our era, the complete transformation of school organization was quietly accomplished. It is the transition period between the ancient Roman school and the[145] formalism of the Middle Ages.’[856] This stiffening of the imperial support into formalism and tyranny is seen in the Theodosian Code. The personal liberty of the teacher becomes more and more restricted. Theodosius and Valentinian decreed[857] in 425 that no State teachers, on pain of being driven from the city with the stigma of ‘infamia’, were to hold classes in public outside the prescribed limits. Tutors in private families were permitted if they confined their teaching to the inmates of the house. But all who taught in the emperor’s Capitoline ‘auditorium’ were strictly forbidden to teach privately or else they must lose all the privileges of their office.

It looks as if this prohibition of all public schools outside the imperial academy was directed against the itinerant sophists. The law was issued at Constantinople and it may have been a salutary measure in some ways; but there is a suspicion that the emperor is rather abusing his authority to favour his own particular college, and the principle of vesting such unlimited powers over education in one man is a dangerous one. The penalty imposed on those who disobey this injunction (infamia and banishment) seems to be disproportionately severe. It smacks of that rigidity which made the emperor forbid the masters of his academy (intra Capitolii auditorium) to teach, even[146] privately, elsewhere. And it is a continuation of that coercive attitude on the part of the imperial patron towards the schools, which we see increasing from the beginning of our period when Julian enacted that every teacher must receive the imperial approval before he was qualified to teach.[858] He was right in insisting on efficiency, but his evident attempt to abolish private adventure schools can hardly be justified.

Extreme centralization had also another and subtler influence. We feel, as we read the words of Eumenius or Ausonius to the emperors, that there was an unhealthy relation between them, one which tended to destroy the individuality of the subject. The deification of the emperor looms very large in the Panegyrici:[859] his favour was the summit of a man’s ambitions, to him all ideas and ideals had to be accommodated. It is quite pitiful to watch the hysterics of the panegyrists. It is no more a case merely of the rules of rhetoric and the laws of the game; it is the complete breakdown of all self-respect and individuality, an abasement of body and soul before the temporal powers, springing partly from the rhetorical tradition and partly from a real sense of dependence on the emperor.

‘O that fortunate journey of mine!’ exclaims one of the panegyrists of his visit to the emperor at Rome, ‘O labour excellently begun and ended! What blessings do I taste of! With what joys am I furnished! What wonders will I dispense when I return to the cities of the Gauls! What numbers of thunderstruck people around me, what huge audiences will listen to me when I say: “Rome I have seen, Theodosius I have seen, and both together have I looked on. I have seen him, the father of the prince, I have seen him, the prince’s avenger, him, the restorer of the prince.”’[860] Such is the recurrent language of a distinguished man, Pacatus the Gaul, a friend of Ausonius, who dedicated to him the Ludus Septem Sapientum and the Technopaegnion, and said of him that none, save Vergil, was[147] better loved by the Muses.[861] Nazarius, who may be one of Ausonius’s professors,[862] solemnly maintains that it is wicked to form an opinion about the emperors, and reasons out his thin-spun absurdities thus: ‘Nam et in vestibulo suo inquirentem repellit obiecta veneratio, et si qui mentem propius adierunt, quod oculis in solem se contendentibus evenit, praestricta acie, videndi facultate caruerunt.’[863] The splendour of majesty (it is a golden glitter) affects the eyesight of the orator. Ausonius had been asked by the emperor to write a poem. ‘I have no talent for it: but Caesar has commanded: I will have. It isn’t safe to refuse a god.’[864] He speaks with great glee of his escape, in attaining to the consulship, from all the usual methods of candidature: all was summed up in Caesar ‘Romanus populus, Martius campus, equester ordo, rostra, ovilia, senatus, curia—unus mihi omnia Gratianus’.[865] The ease implied in the simplification of everything to the person of the emperor was no doubt pleasant: but it was a mark of decadence. It meant a limitation of ideas, a cramping of individuality, a slavishness of spirit which must eventually reduce education to spiritless formalism. What perverted results this militaristic control of education sometimes could produce is well illustrated by the Cento Nuptialis. Ausonius had enough education and taste to be half ashamed of his subject. ‘Piget enim Vergiliani carminis dignitatem tam ioculari dehonestasse materia.’ Yet what was he to do? ‘Iussum erat.’ Valentinian had commanded it: ‘sanctus imperator ... vir meo iudicio eruditus’. If we are to judge of this erudition by such fruits as these, we cannot say much for its depth or taste. ‘Ridere, nil ultra expeto’, says the poet. But there is more than one way of laughing, as he very well knew. Here, then, we have imperial interference making a man at the head of his profession, a man who would be imitated by his pupils and by other teachers as he imitated the[148] emperor, write for the edification of the world the most asinine and disgusting verses ever produced.

Not only the personal, but also the collective individuality, tended to be impaired by over-centralization. The sense of citizenship, which it is one of the duties of education to foster, was crushed in the great mechanical organization of the Empire. Loyalty to Rome grew hollow for lack of a subordinate and more immediate loyalty. Loyalty is in the first place evoked by personal contact, and the emperor was sometimes very far away. The subordinate official lost the full sense of partnership because some mighty power from without imposed laws and made regulations, and could interfere between him and his superior official at any moment. Even in men like Ausonius, who could get into touch with the emperor and feel genuine loyalty towards him by reason of a sense of partnership and personal benefits, we find Rome appearing as the symbol of the Empire in a very official capacity. In his description of noble cities he gives one perfunctory line to Rome and forty to Bordeaux. ‘Bordeaux has my love, Rome my respect’,[866] he says, and he gives the reason: ‘here stood my cradle, there my chair of office.’ Officialdom may evoke respect, but it can never call forth that spirit of love which is the basis of true loyalty in every sphere. Paulinus of Pella, writing after the barbarian invasions of the early fifth century, expresses himself in a similar way. Rome is only cursorily mentioned[867] in conventional terms,[868] and there is no point at which Rome touches him personally. Indeed, he has rather bitter memories of her:

If Rome and her rule appeared so artificial even to the upper class of society, much greater must have been the effect on the[149] less privileged and enlightened. There is evidence that the law providing immunity from public burdens in the case of teachers was frequently abused. So little public spirit and sense of citizenship was there that men falsely assumed the philosopher’s cloak to escape serving their city. Against this a law of Valentinian and Valens[871] (A.D. 369) protests. ‘Let every man be returned to his country who is known to assume the philosopher’s cloak illegitimately and insolently ... for it is disgraceful’ (does a ripple of humour momentarily penetrate the rigid face of Roman law?), ‘it is disgraceful that he who professes ability to bear even the blows of fortune, should shrink from the burdens of his country.’[872] The general feeling of citizenship, when we look beneath the rhetorical veneer, was unquestionably low; and it is only rarely that we find a man like Eumenius who really had the ‘amor reipublicae’[873] which issued in action, and the enthusiasm of a Sidonius for the Empire could hardly have been shared by the less privileged classes who had had fewer opportunities of enjoying Rome’s benefits, and had suffered so much more from her failure to protect them against the barbarian or the corrupt official.

Monroe, speaking of the imperial support of education, says: ‘This is probably but another evidence of the general decline in virility and morality, for it is in order to combat these tendencies that education is encouraged.’[874]

Now there were elements of decline in the education of the day, but the emperors did not see them. If they had, they[150] would have changed, not merely increased, the schools. If it was virility they wanted to restore, they would not have encouraged the panegyrists; if morality, they would hardly have expected teachers to write things like the Cento Nuptialis, and there would have been more of them who, like Julian, mentioned such an aim in their educational decrees. Much truer it would be to say that the support of education was due partly to a real enthusiasm for letters,[875] and partly to that policy which sought to gain the goodwill of the provincial youth, at a time when the provinces were becoming more and more important. And in education lay the key to the deeper Romanization of Gaul.

About the general sincerity of the emperors in passing their educational laws there can be no doubt. Jung thinks that these magnificent and munificent decrees were not always sincerely meant or carried out, ‘et multa interesse, ut Romani aiebant, inter os atque offam’.[876] But the concrete fact of the help given to Autun, and the general correspondence between the historical events and the school conditions as recorded in Ausonius and elsewhere, suggest that the suspicion is on the whole unjustified. The slackness in paying salaries, which he quotes, was one of the abuses to which the emperors specially addressed themselves, and Ausonius’s epigram about the happiness of the grammarian,[877] to which he refers, is no proof whatsoever. For it does not imply broken promises, and happiness may be impaired by causes independent of imperial laws.

1. Introductory: Church and State

We have seen how large the emperors loomed in the ideas and education of the fourth century, and what some of the evil effects of this were. As we pass into the fifth century we find a growing reaction. The balance is shifted, and the Church begins to receive from the emperors an authority which had previously been confined to the secular State.

At first the Church had been independent, unnoticed by the State; then, after the persecutions of the early Empire, it found imperial recognition with the accession of Constantine. But there was still a measure of independence of the State: the emperors did not interfere with Church dogma, and the bishops took no part in politics. They were, as yet, very humble and submissive, for they felt the need of imperial protection, having no sufficient organization of their own and no effective ecclesiastical government; though a considerable machinery had been created by the councils which had been meeting since the third century.

A third stage is reached when the bishops become haughty and imperious and begin to meddle with politics. The clergy have strengthened themselves by organization and training. The latent antagonism between Church and State becomes prominent, and the State sometimes comes off worse. And when the political framework goes under, the power of the Church grows and prospers.[878]

Now it is this growth of Church influence in the fifth century[152] and its effect upon ideas and ideals that is important for our purpose. On the material side this growth is indicated by an increase of civil power. The Edict of Milan restored the confiscated buildings of the churches, and Constantine in 321[879] allowed the clergy to receive bequests. A vast amount of property was bequeathed to the Church in the fifth century, the administration of which was settled by the canons of the various synods. These canons gave rise to an ecclesiastical law which was later augmented by the decisions of the Popes, and played a great part in the Middle Ages. Civil jurisdiction largely passed into the hands of the bishops, and against their sentence, which was carried out by the civil authorities, there was no appeal. The entire administration of the widespread Church property and affairs was in the hands of the bishop. The State reserved criminal law for itself. Like the pagan ‘flamen’, the bishop sat on the ‘Curia’ of his city, where he exercised great authority.

More and more the State came to recognize the ecclesiastical society as a separate polity. Manumissions within the Church were sanctioned by the emperors.[880] The clergy are repeatedly excused from all public burdens whatsoever.[881] This cleavage between Church and State, which had been momentarily accentuated by Julian’s law of 362 forbidding Christians to teach, is further emphasized by the establishment of separate courts for ecclesiastical offenders. ‘The clergy’ (so ran the law of Honorius and Theodosius in 412) ‘may be tried only before an episcopal court.’[882]

More and more, therefore, the bishop came to be appealed to as a civil power,[883] and when the crisis came bishops like Sidonius defended the towns against the invaders.[884] A sense of the failing Empire made men turn to the Church for help against the oppression of imperial officials, and the ruin of invading barbarians.[885] Above all they turned to her for education.

For this position the Church had strengthened herself by increased organization during the fourth and fifth centuries. She assimilated the principles of imperial government and law, applied them in creating her bishoprics, and modelled on them her methods of administration. Thus law, the great contribution of the Roman Empire, passed into the Church, and so down the ages.

On the spiritual side this development of Christianity is marked by a greater kindliness (due also to the teaching of the pagan philosophers[886]) in the hard Roman world. Hints of a new attitude to slaves are to be found in the Theodosian Code. There are lengthy laws providing protection from enslavement—‘non erit impunita labefactatio atque oppugnatio libertatis’[887]—and steps are taken to enable people to rise out of slavery by placing legal means within their reach and making the assertion of liberty easier.[888] Moreover, the breaking up of slave families is forbidden, and the objection is stated from the moral point of view. ‘Quis enim ferat liberos a parentibus, a fratribus sorores ... segregari? Igitur qui dissociata in ius diversum mancipia traxerunt, in unum redigere eadem cogantur: ac si cui propter redintegrationem necessitudinum servi cesserint, vicaria[154] per eum qui eosdem susceperit mancipia reddantur.’[889] But while we must grant to the philosophers and to Christianity an important share in the gradual disappearance of slavery, it must be remembered that the process was largely due to economic causes. It was found that it paid better to give a man some measure of personal freedom, and the economists tell us that the colonate which appeared at the beginning of the third century was a natural economic development of slavery. The absence of wars of conquest also contributed to this result.[890]

Moreover, liberation of body and spirit was aimed at by the attitude of the Church to the stage and the arena. Attendance was forbidden to Christians, and actors were not allowed to be baptized. The discredit thus cast upon these professions was emphasized by the emperors. A great many restrictions were introduced,[891] and games were forbidden on certain Christian feast-days.[892] It was enacted that actresses who had become Christians—‘quas melior vivendi usus vinculo naturalis condicionis evolvit’—should not be forced back into the profession.[893] Similarly, actors and actresses who had received the sacrament when thought to be dying must not be allowed to act again.[894]

Against the arena, too, a blow was struck. Constantine enacted in 325 that all those criminals who had previously been condemned to the arena should now be assigned to the mines. This did not mean the total abolition of gladiatorial contests, but it certainly meant a decrease in the victims of the ‘ludi gladiatorii’, and the moral lead it gave was valuable. ‘Cruenta spectacula’, he said, ‘in otio civili et domestica quiete non placent.’[895]

Later, he forbade soldiers to become gladiators,[896] and Valentinian exempted Christians from the punishment of the arena.[897] Gibbon gives the story of St. Telemachus to mark the final abolition of these contests by Honorius[898] in 404, though Bury points out that there is evidence of such shows some years later. As late as the fourth century we still find a man like Symmachus spending £80,000 on games for his son’s praetorship,[899] but, on the whole, the influence of the Christian ideal made for greater frugality and gentleness.

This influence was also seen in the increase of charities. The bishops, for example, often distributed corn among the people when times were bad.[900] That misuse was made of this spirit is seen from the strict law of Valentinian against mendicancy;[901] but the misuse is not so serious as the previous lack of charitable spirit.

The feeling of the Christians against slavery and the manual labour of the monks tended to destroy the aristocratic prejudice against practical work, and made for a simpler and more natural life. The artificial position in which the pagan world had placed women was to some extent remedied along the same line of the brotherhood of man. Jerome’s correspondence with Paula and Eustochium is an indication of this new attitude.[902] Naturalness also resulted from a reaction against the exaggerated centralization of the Empire, and was manifested in a development of individuality. The Western Church occasionally showed that it could stand up to the emperor.[903] When Constantius commanded that all the bishops assembled at the synod of Ariminum should[156] be given their food (annonae et cellaria) the bishops of Gaul and Britain refused the gift, fearing the diplomacy of Constantius because ‘it did not seem fitting. They refused the imperial support and preferred to live at their own expense.’[904]

There was, therefore, a considerable and increasing independence on the part of the Church. Yet Church and State co-operated in many things. One of these points of co-operation, which was most important for education, was the holding of councils. First the Council of Arles (314), representing the Western Church, and then the Council of Nicea (325), representing the whole Church, was summoned by Constantine. And the influence of these councils in clearing away provincial prejudices and producing breadth of vision must have reacted very favourably on education, though the bishops of Gaul, owing to the larger extent of their bishoprics, did not have that close relation of teacher and pupil with their congregations which was the case in the East.

With all this in her favour the Church drew into her service men of the best blood and intellect. The nobility became the holders of the bishoprics, and the Christians consented. Indeed, they did more than consent. They sometimes demanded it, as in the case of Ambrose, feeling, no doubt, the value of having a man of high social rank to protect them in the political world. Men like Sidonius who had been living quite a ‘worldly’ life became bishops, moved, one is inclined to suspect, rather by the sense of power than the spirit of devotion. Thus aristocratic ideas were introduced into the Church and the bishop’s office was sometimes made hereditary, as in the case of Eucherius and his sons Salonius and Veranius. These aristocrats were at the same time the intellectuals of their time, and men like Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who was consulted by all the writers of the South,[905] Arbogast of Trèves, afterwards Bishop of Chartres,[906] of whose learning, as of that of Auspicius, Sidonius thought much,[907] Patiens[157] of Lyons,[908] Faustus of Riez,[909] Mamertus of Vienne,[910] Graecus of Marseilles,[911] Perpetuus of Tours,[912] and many others, all friends of Sidonius and therefore of culture, shifted the balance of intellect from the pagan to the Christian side of society.

And yet, in spite of these hopeful signs, this growth in the power of ideals, we feel that the Church in Gaul did not transform the Roman Empire. Power the Church obtained, but found it a perilous possession. For with power came the whole host of political corruptions which had found a home in the imperial system, and entered, unsuspected, along the paths which custom had made. In becoming, to some extent, the successor of the Empire, the Church exposed herself to imperial dangers. Politics tended to overshadow principles. At least one of the two invasions of which Montalembert speaks[913] was needed in order that the Church should save Society—that of the monks from the South.

2. The Persistence of Rhetoric: Tradition and Reaction

The development of Christianity, then, in the fourth and fifth centuries, largely takes the form of a struggle between the old and the new. Everywhere in the ecclesiastical society there are, inevitably, survivals, and they loom particularly large on account of two factors: the entry of Roman law into the Church, and the assumption of Church leadership by large numbers of the aristocracy.

It is natural, therefore, that we should find survivals in education too, and the extent to which we find them is evidence of the strength and the universality of the rhetorical tradition. And we need to see this tradition in its proper perspective before we can fully appreciate the significance of Gallic education in our period.

As we look back on the long line of rhetorical teachers, we can trace an increasing degree of narrowness and futility. The conditions of life in the city-state had made public speaking a practical and personal necessity. What Isocrates strove to do in his rôle as pamphleteer was to raise oratory from the personal to the national level, to connect education with statesmanship,[914] and to unify it by setting before it the ideal of a united Greece. The sphere of rhetoric in his view was wide and humane.[915] It is true that he himself was a theorist, unskilled in the practical issues of politics.[916] He was what Crito in the Euthydemus called a ‘Boundary Stone’—one who tried to combine practical politics and philosophy, avoiding the extremes of each. His attempt was unpopular, though ultimately he succeeded, for his school became the university of Greece.[917] But the ideal which he put forward had a real inspiration, and had none of the cramping restrictions of later rhetoric. Moreover, he taught the unity of moral and intellectual education: ‘The more strongly a man desires to persuade his audience’ (the intellectual practice of the rhetorical school) ‘the more will he train himself in culture of mind and manners and in gaining the esteem of his fellow citizens.’[918] Speech is regarded as the instrument of Persuasion, from which all the blessings of human society proceed,[919] and its function is to advance civilization by educating the ignorant and testing the wise.

Such was the high educational ideal of Isocrates, and we find much of it reflected in Cicero, his admirer and his imitator. The breadth of view is not impaired. For Cicero maintains that the power of eloquence is such that it embraces[159] the rise, the force, the vicissitudes of all affairs, virtues, and duties; of everything in nature—character, mind, life. It defines the moral code, the principles of law and right. It regulates the State, and on every subject and in all its relations its words are many and eloquent.[920] There is the same attempt to connect rhetoric with politics, the same insistence that intellectual issues (doctrina bene dicendi) cannot be separated from moral ones (doctrina recte faciendi).[921] Wide and all-round knowledge is required of the orator: ‘mea quidem sententia, nemo poterit esse omni laude cumulatus orator, nisi erit omnium rerum magnarum atque artium scientiam consecutus.’[922] Yet Cicero was a panegyrist, and he followed the artificial rules of the game in exactly the same way as the Gallic rhetoricians of the third and fourth centuries did; and when he warns against spending too much time on philosophy,[923] which may be lightly learned, he says, we feel that he is giving rein to a natural Roman tendency to discount thought, and that this tendency proved the bane of rhetoric.

Cicero’s attempt to make the oratorical education something of wide scope, and to make it bear upon practical politics, was doomed to failure. More and more the tyranny of rhetorical rules, co-operating with the restriction of liberty under the Empire, produced a narrow and formal result. The sciolists of the fourth century believed that philosophy could be so easily learned that they hardly troubled to make its acquaintance. A political connexion with oratory was kept up, but it consisted in the degenerate panegyric. More and more rhetorical education narrowed its range, and retired within the academical[160] atmosphere of the school.[924] As for moral education, we must find in the criticisms of Tacitus and Juvenal an element of truth. The emperor set the fashion, and the subject did not always find an inspiring example.

The change that came over oratory was not entirely one of artificiality. This there had been in Isocrates, whose rules were just as artificial as those of the ‘Panegyrici Latini’. It was rather a question of ideal. Isocrates had a national ideal, which could give meaning and life to his utterances; Cicero had the interests of a party to inspire him; but the panegyrists of the fourth century were confined to the emperor; his birthday or his benefits are the sort of subjects that stimulate their oratory, and Pliny could praise with equal fervour the political reforms and the white horses of Trajan.

Thus the rhetorical tradition, the ideal of oratory as the goal of education, came down through the centuries to our period. It came to Gaul, and flourished exceedingly on account of the natural aptitude of the Gauls for eloquence. Lucian, in the Herakles,[925] gives a picture of the Gallic Hercules who drags all men after him by fine chains attached to his tongue and their ears, and they follow gladly though it is in their power to break away. Cerialis, in addressing the Treveri and Lingones, maintained that the Roman way of establishing justice was the sword, but that words had most influence with the Gauls.[926]

And Jerome said of the Gauls: ‘The fact that they are prolific of orators points not so much to the studious character of the[161] country as to the noise made by the rhetors: especially as Aquitaine boasts of its Greek origin.’[927] This is borne out by the inscriptions. We are struck in the south by the frequency of long-winded and ornate epitaphs, e.g.[928]

As we go north epitaphs of this description become much rarer, which seems to indicate that as the influence of the Celtic element, and, perhaps, the Greek Massilia, decreases, there is a decrease also in the ‘ubertas Gallici sermonis’.[929]

We can hardly realize to-day how enormous the power and the extent of rhetoric was. In all parts of the Empire it was the mark of a cultured gentleman. As we have seen, it was the basis of education, the condition of imperial appointments, a tremendous factor in the policy of the emperors. ‘If we lose our eloquence’, said Libanius,[930] ‘what will be left to distinguish us from the barbarians?’ and again, ‘If you know the art of speaking you know the art of commanding.’[931] From Isocrates to Libanius Persuasion (Peitho) cast her spell with unfailing charm, nor was[162] it Gaul alone that was bound by the chains of the tongue. Beyond the Graeco-Roman world the influence went: Sidonius, the conservative, could compliment an Arbogast on his eloquence,[932] and it was the rhetoric of pagan Gaul, as well as the religion of Christian Gaul, that led captive her fierce conquerors. So, too, beyond the pagan world, rhetoric invaded the Church and left its manifold traces on Christian education.

Kaufmann estimates that by the year 450 pagan schools in Gaul were disappearing under the influence of the Church militant.[933] Now it is true that the Church considered it a duty to condemn the rhetoricians, but their system persisted nevertheless through the monasteries up to our own day both in the matter and in method.

The Christian literature of the period shows this clearly. In poetry (except in a few cases like the Ad uxorem, and the De providentia Dei) the fetters of the tradition are still strong, and in trying to force biblical subjects into unsuitable forms, men like Sedulius, Marius Victor, and Paulinus of Nola produce mere lifeless paraphrases; in prose, where there were fewer rules to check naturalness and freshness of thought, the results are much more gratifying. In the schools it is recognized that the rhetorical system is indispensable. Tertullian[934] allows Christian children to attend pagan schools, though he will not permit Christians to teach in them, and Jerome, while he complains that the clergy are too fond of Vergil and the Comedies, is constrained to add ‘in pueris necessitatis est’.[935] The Church did not create a new educational system.

One or two particular cases of the survival of rhetoric may be given. Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia, born in 474 at Arles, illustrates in a typical way the enormous power which rhetoric could exercise over Christians as late as the end of the fifth century. He is passionately in love with the forms and methods of his[163] pagan authors, loves their pomp and glitter,[936] and is always playing a part in the hope of winning applause.[937] He makes rhetoric say: ‘I am she who does things or changes things done. Light can dispel the darkness, however vast, in which the law involves a man, and this light by reading I can give. I am she from whom men await prosecution if guilty and acquittal if innocent ... for my gain the Roman keeps vigil throughout the Empire. Unless I adorn them, office, riches, honours lose their attraction: it is I who rule the rulers.’[938] This is all very similar to what Isocrates had said centuries ago, when he talked of the power and benefits of Persuasion,[939] and the traditional moral note is there just as in Isocrates[940] and in Cicero.[941] Rhetoric, says Ennodius, is the only moulder of public opinion. Her charm is irresistible and universal. (Why mention so obvious a fact?) The opinion she creates is eternal. It is she who makes people believe whatever she wishes about the deeds of the brave, she who can suppress facts with impunity. She is the mother of poetry, jurisprudence, dialectic, arithmetic, and she gives them their value.[942] ‘Grammar’ is recognized as the necessary precedent, the nurse of knowledge and virtue, who produces the sparks that lead to the Ciceronian fire of speech.[943] The idea that rhetorical[164] adornment is specially connected with the school is still current. A correspondent begs him with many prayers that his letter to him should be embellished with the graces of the school (multis enim supplicationibus exegistis ut pagina vobis concinnationis didascalicae fingeretur[944]) and in the Libellus pro Synodo he urges ‘illas didascalici libelli relegamus argutias’.[945]

Later on Ennodius began to have misgivings about the part rhetoric played in his life. ‘Erat orandi fastidium dum perorandi tenebar cupiditate....’[946] He laments his placid satisfaction with his fine speeches, his elation at poetic successes, while he had no ear for the ‘angelorum chori’ owing to the intoxication of applause. ‘Quotiens adclamantium flatibus propter religionem vertex nudatus intumuit....’ But even in his confessions rhetoric is present, and she triumphs at the very time when he speaks of her defeat.

A curious instance of the survival of rhetoric is seen in the invective of Hilary of Poitiers against Constantius.[947] The author has worked up a great deal of feeling, and, to give it the most effective utterance, he lets it flow into the moulds prescribed by tradition. His divisions correspond perfectly to those of the schools. He spares no form of contumely, even at the expense of historical fact.[948] His railing reminds us of Milton’s denunciation of Salmasius:[949] for as late as the seventeenth century Latin retained its reputation as the language of invective. In spite of his preliminary professions of sincerity: ‘cesset itaque maledictorum opinio et mendacii suspicio. Veritatis enim ministros[165] decet vera proferre’, we feel that in following the rules of the game he has proved himself a good player, but not always ‘a servant of truth’.[950]

Of a truer type was the rhetoric of Hilary of Arles. Honoratus is enthusiastic about the copious eloquence of his oratory, the gems of expression which he produced, the varied shades and shapes of his descriptions.[951] There was plenty of rhetorical colour, but there was also elasticity. ‘If the learned company was absent, he fed the hearts of the untutored with simple food’; and it was the opinion of contemporary critics, the savants of the day, that Hilary ‘had attained something that was neither eloquence nor learning, something superhuman’.[952] Famous for eloquence were also Salvian, the master of fiery denunciation, and Lupus, ‘scholis adhibitus et rhetorum studiis imbutus’.[953] In the very monasteries the artifices of the rhetor’s school lingered. Valerian, Bishop of Cemelium (near Nice), gives many examples of this in his Homilies. He frequently uses Parallelism and Repetition: ‘Disciplina igitur magistra est religionis, magistra verae pietatis; quae nec ideo increpat ut laedat, nec ideo castigat ut noceat’;[954] or Chiasmus and Assonance: ‘Alter de subscriptione patris disputat: alter de fratris persona desperat’;[955] ‘Vitare ista, dilectissimi, per singulos gradus forte difficile est, et laboriosum multis simul hostibus per diversos errores occurrere’; or Alliteration: ‘Ita est ergo, ut in te antiqui iuris districtio nihil habeat potestatis, si ea quae legis plenitudo postulat, obedienter observes’.[956] ‘Et nullus profecto adhuc poenae finis nisi Christus noster cruentis legibus oleum misericordiae miscuisset.’[957] ‘Sic erit ut homo de humiliore loco ad celsiora perveniat et remuneratus honore condigno, caelestis gratiam potestatis adquirat.’[958]

The rhetorical tradition, therefore, lived on; and it survived the more easily because of the controversial nature of Christianity[166] at this time and the importance of preaching. The change from the rhetor’s ‘cathedra’ to the pulpit was often merely one of place and subject: the method was the same. And so the ideal of the orator persisted. In education it persisted for the further obvious reason that the monasteries had not yet organized themselves round the model of St. Benedict, and that very often Christian parents had to send their children to the pagan schools—in spite of Tertullian’s warnings.[959]

The triumph of rhetoric among the Christians, however, was only partial. When the Christian Fathers observed their congregations of simple and unlettered folk, and remembered the injunction of Christ[960] and the teaching of St. Paul,[961] they began to feel the need of a more direct style of speech. Largely, too, it was a natural reaction, springing from the opposition between Christian and pagan, and the ascetism which the monasteries preached.

This reaction is noticeable chiefly in the Church Fathers. In their prefaces it became the customary thing to proclaim their ‘rusticity’, and to hide (sometimes with false modesty) the traces of their rhetorical training.[962] So much was this the tendency, that Sidonius, with all his highly refined artificiality, must needs talk about his ‘countrified style’ (‘Si quid stilo rusticante peraravero’,[963] ‘in hoc stylo cui non urbanus lepos inest sed pagana rusticitas’[964]). Partly, of course, this was due to the over-courteous ways of high society at that time, as we may see from the correspondence of Symmachus or of Ausonius, and to an idea (never carried out by these gentlemen) that letter-writing ought to be careless and natural.[965] But the reaction against rhetoric[167] was very strong. None of the Christian clergy dared to defend the rhetoricians openly. Lactantius, who did so,[966] was a layman.

The inscriptions reflect this tendency, or at any rate one of its causes—the simplicity and ignorance of the people. The Christian epitaphs, though influenced now and then by rhetorical floridness, as in the case of those composed by Sidonius,[967] are much shorter and simpler than the pagan ones. Sometimes they consist merely of a cross with the name of the person.[968] Sometimes the words ‘pax tecum’ are added. The increase in Christian education is indicated by the fact that there are only four inscriptions dating from the fourth century and fifty-four from the fifth.

How constantly the Church Fathers strove to check the rhetorical tendency in themselves and in the clergy may be seen from their frequent protests. Jerome remarked reprovingly of Hilary of Poitiers that he was affected by the tragic and turgid vein in the Gallic character, and too much adorned with the ‘flowers of Greece’, so that his long periods were not understood by the simple friars.[969] And Vincent of Lérins had to warn that a priest’s language must be ‘disciplined and grave’.[970] ‘Docente te in ecclesia’, said Jerome elsewhere,[971] ‘non clamor populi sed gemitus suscitetur.’ Gallus, in Sulpicius Severus,[972] expresses his contempt for flowery language. ‘For if you call me a disciple of Martin (the stern saint of Tours) you must also allow me the right of following him in despising vain ornamental speech and verbal embellishment’ (sermonum faleras et verborum[168] ornamenta). In a sermon on Rebecca, attributed to Caesarius,[973] the preacher proclaims the principle of adaptability: ‘The educated must accommodate themselves to the ignorance of the simple. If, in expounding holy Scripture we desired the arrangement and the eloquence of (certain) holy fathers, ... the food of doctrine could reach only a small band of scholars (there is a secret satisfaction in having had a superior training), while the remaining masses of the people would go unfed. And therefore I humbly ask that the ears of the learned bear patiently the words of simplicity (rustica verba) if only the whole flock of God may partake of spiritual food by means of speech unadorned and (if I may say so) pedestrian.’ Ruricius, Bishop of Limoges, and a contemporary of Sidonius,[974] speaks of his ‘ineptia rusticitatis’,[975] his ‘rusticus sermo’.[976] ‘Rusticitatem meam’, he says, ‘malo prodere quam perdere caritatem’.[977]

This prevalent cultivation of ‘rusticitas’ was, as has been said, partly a reaction, and like all reactions it had a tendency to go too far. It is not surprising to find men like Jerome protesting (though with self-condemnation) against the bald style of certain Christian writings.[978] Heyne, after describing the ‘verborum fucos, concinnos et calamistrum’ of the rhetoricians, remarks on the uncultured and disgusting lack of style into which the later writers fell. It was natural, he says, that, having thrown eloquence overboard, they should fall into ‘barbaries’ and subjects vulgar and essentially trivial (per se tenuia). The charge of ‘barbaries’ is admitted. But the subject-matter was not always ‘per se tenuia’; it was essentially the reverse: and the ‘horrida oratio’ into which the Christian writers fell had the compensation of sincerity and the capacity of rising into genuine eloquence.

We have, then, these two facts: the persistence in Christian[169] thought of rhetoric, and the reaction in the direction of simplicity. But we must ask what the Christian attitude was towards pagan education as a whole, for on this attitude largely depended the nature of the Christian schools.

Sulpicius Severus is uncompromisingly harsh. All literature except the Bible and theological writings are utterly vain. ‘For what did the pagan writers themselves gain by a literary glory that was to perish with their generation? Or what profit was it to posterity to read of Hector’s battles or Socrates’ philosophy? Not only is it folly to imitate those writers, but not to attack them with the utmost fierceness is sheer madness....’[979] The pagan philosophy has been a mighty bane. ‘Qui quidem error humanus (pagan philosophy) litteris traditus in tantum valuit ut multos plane aemulos vel inanis philosophiae vel stultae illius virtutis invenerit.’[980] Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius on entering the Church abjured the heathen literature,[981] and Jerome conceived of the difference between the two groups of writers as that between light and darkness.[982] Philosophy was regarded as dangerous, and extensive secular reading deprecated.[983] Poetry was banned because it inflamed passion,[984] and Claudius Victor of Marseilles went so far as to trace the misfortunes of his day to the pagan schools and authors.

‘Is not ours the blame?’ he wails: ‘Paul and Solomon are neglected and the Vergil who wrote of Dido and the Ovid who described Corinna are recited, the verses of Horace are applauded and the scenes of Terence, and it is we, we who are at fault, we who basely feed those flames.’[985] Paulinus writes to his old[170] master Ausonius who is much concerned because his pupil has deserted the Muses, and declares with pathetic firmness that the Christian heart must needs say ‘No’ to Apollo and the Muses. ‘New is the force and greater the god that now moves the soul, and he permits not leisure in work or play for the literature of fable.’[986] To him the education and the literature of the pagan world is nothing but ‘the clever influence of a sophist, the knack of a rhetor, the false imagination of a bard’, and its professors men who miss the truth,

In order to understand this exclusive spirit we must remember the circumstances: the tenacity of paganism, which had taken its last stand in the public amusements,[988] the persecutions, the close connexion between the schools and the old religion. The Gallic panegyrists (most of them teachers) ostentatiously proclaim the gods of ancient Rome even to Christian emperors like Theodosius.[989] ‘Di boni’ and ‘Di immortales’ appear everywhere, the emperor is divine, and the school at Autun is ‘aedes Herculis atque Musarum’.[990] The rhetorical education had the immense advantage of being traditional. Then, as now, the argument carried great weight. Libanius in his defence of dancing asks indignantly (and the method of his protest is typical) whether the settled opinion of the ancients in this matter is to be upset: ἆρ’ οὖν πρᾶγμα ἀρχαῖον, καὶ παρὰ τοῖς οὕτω γενναίοις οὕτω γενναῖον καὶ καλὸν εἶναι δοκοῦν, εἰκῆ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἡμεῖς τῶν φαύλων εἶναι πιστεύσομεν;[991] Everything that was not cut according to the traditional pattern, according to the opinions[171] handed down with hardly any criticism, from one teacher to another,[992] tended to be despised, and this was the attitude towards the Christians in the educational world of the day.[993] Moreover, the old system was properly organized, and Christians in being compelled to send their children to pagan masters felt the danger. For the subject-matter of both the grammatical and the rhetorical schools was largely the pagan mythology, which was next door to religion. Even contemporary literature proclaimed pagan ideas: the fourth-century comedy Querolus is permeated by the heathen conception of fate.

To all these causes of opposition and bitterness towards the pagan culture, there were added the desperate earnest of these early Christians to whom salvation and perdition were piercing and vivid realities, and the bitter scorn of pagans like Rutilius Namatianus. As he returned to his native country, Gaul, he saw in the growth of monachism one of the causes of Rome’s decline—Rome who had all his devotion, whose magistrate he was proud to have been.

he says of Capraria,[994] where a monastery had been started. Pride and prejudice make the monks an inexplicable problem to him:

Either they are really criminals forced to live this sort of life, or else the slaves of black bile. To him, too, the youth who becomes a monk is ‘impulsus furiis’.[996] Such was the temper towards the Christians even as late as the fifth century, and the counterpart[172] of this bitterness is seen in the murder of Hypatia in Alexandria (A.D. 415).

The attitude of the ‘extreme’ Christians towards pagan literature is not, therefore, entirely inexplicable. But all were not extreme. The better spirits like Augustine, realizing that Christian education inevitably depended largely on the nobles who had come to the Church from the rhetorical schools, went on the principle of ‘spoiling the Egyptians’, of taking from pagan education and literature whatever was good and useful. Jerome protests against the narrow standpoint with considerable emphasis. He criticizes those who neglect style, and flares up at the suggestion that he is afraid of the pagan training of his opponents in controversy.[997] Ignorance, he says, is not holiness, and lack of culture is unfitting in a student of the Apostles. ‘Nec rusticus et tantum simplex frater ideo se sanctum putet si nil noverit, nec peritus et eloquens in lingua aestimet sanctitatem.’[998] He felt the need of rhetoric as a weapon against opponents. A holy ignorance, he argued, is a gain only to itself (he is curiously reluctant either to accept pagan learning entirely or to condemn it utterly), but all it builds up of the Church of Christ is lost if it does not meet its opponents.[999]

So, too, Paulinus of Nola and Prudentius ‘quidquid e paganis operibus novae fidei non adversabatur laudabant et servabant’.[1000] Sedulius, again, refused to draw the rigid line which the extremists drew: he wants to retain the culture of his time, but in a Christianized form. In the dedication of his Carmen Paschale to Macedonius he argues that he writes in verse because ‘there are many who, owing to their training in secular studies, are attracted rather by the delights of verse and the pleasures of poetry’; and that the Church must make use of this artistic[173] tendency in people (horum mores non repudiandos aestimo). They will remember divine truths better if they are pleased with the form in which they are presented, and everybody must be freely won for God along the line of his particular bent (ut quisque suo magis ingenio voluntarius acquiratur Deo). The way in which you approach the faith does not matter so long as you get there and remain there.[1001] It is clear that he stands for liberalism in this matter and does not object to pagan literature if only the object in view is the right one.

Thus the wiser among the Christians opposed the policy of exclusiveness. They foresaw that though bigoted zeal and a natural antipathy might keep out pagan letters for a time, in the end they could not do so; and they realized that it was one of the functions of the Church to hand down what was good in the old culture. So the two Apollinarii (fourth century), Christian teachers of Laodicea, turned the Old Testament into heroic verse and the New Testament into Platonic dialogues;[1002] Juvencus put the gospels into metre, and Nonnus wrote out St. John in hexameters. In order to appeal to the intellectual classes the Christian writers were bound to follow the pagan models, and so a virtue was made of necessity: for amid the distraction of the failing Empire it was the Church alone that could have saved the form and content of the ancient culture by providing scribes for the one and thinkers for the other. It would have been interesting to have Paulinus of Nola’s Panegyric on Theodosius. ‘Quid interfuerit tum inter Christianum oratorem, et oratorem, in scriptis saltem, paganum’ (says Monnard[1003]) ‘diiudicare liceret, nisi temporis invidia Panegyrico Theodosii, quem Paulinus scripserat, quemque cum Ausonii Panegyrico conferre potuissemus nos privavisset.’ We should also have been able to see how far he followed the pagan model, especially in view of his extreme statements to Ausonius[1004] on the subject of pagan literature. Probably he was just as rhetorical as Hilary in his Demosthenic denunciation of Constantine.[174] This supposition is confirmed by the words of Jerome, who is enthusiastic in his praise of the speech. ‘If the author’, he says, ‘surpasses others in the beginning of his oration, towards the end he excels himself. His style is brilliant with Ciceronian purity, yet copious in thought.’[1005] There was a certain amount of hypocrisy in the railing of the Christian writers against the pagan authors.

In spite of her criticism and antipathy, therefore, the Church listened to her leaders in their wiser moods and saved pagan culture. She set her monks to copy the ancient authors.[1006] Augustine ‘brought Plato into the (Christian) schools under his bishop’s robe’, and even Jerome expounded lyric and comic poets to the children at Bethlehem.[1007] Vergil, in particular, was admitted on account of the prophecy supposed to be contained in the fourth Eclogue. Roman law, of which Bossuet said that good sense, the master of human life, reigned throughout it, was regarded by the Church as a reflection of divine justice, and studied more particularly on account of its supposed similarity to the law of Moses.[1008] Through the Church it passed to the barbarians, and so became a heritage of the civilized world.

This ultimate attitude of the Church is the determining factor of Christian education, and it forms the background without which that education cannot be rightly studied. Kaufmann maintains that towards the end of the fifth century the rhetorical school lost its pedagogic significance,[1009] but his statement needs modification. The number of the rhetorical schools in Gaul certainly decreased as Christianity advanced during the fifth century: their spirit, their importance and meaning for education survived and, to a large extent, still survives.

3. The Rise of Christian Schools in Gaul

One of the ways in which Christianity supplemented paganism was the development of elementary schools. It began with the masses, where knowledge was small and opportunities few, but these common people it inspired with a desire to learn and made them potential scholars, who, though backward, were yet not decadent, and who shared their spiritual possessions with one another just as much as their material property.

In touching this kind of man Christian education did what the pagan schools had neglected to do, as we have seen, on account of the rigid class-distinctions. In paying particular attention to elementary education the Church followed her own needs and Christ’s example of sympathy with children. In so far as the Church applied the Pauline teaching of the essential brotherhood and equality of man these hard distinctions tended to disappear, and education became more generally diffused. There was a real democratization of letters, but the masses had so long been neglected that the diffusion was very slow. Caesarius knew prominent business men who could not even read or write.[1010] Their culture consisted largely in folk songs and tales handed down by word of mouth. And besides, the Church was not always true to her principles: the pagan influence, backed as it was by education, proved too strong when it came to organization. The old relation of simple sincerity between clergy and congregation had long passed away, and the fifth century was a time of ecclesiastical dissensions. The bishops were chosen more and more from the aristocracy, and the sort of church ‘cursus honorum’ which had been instituted soon created barriers. In theory the government of the Church was democratic, but Sidonius gives us a picture of the practice at the episcopal elections, which shows how unstable the democracy was. On one occasion there was a great tumult caused by the contending candidates: one boasts of his ancient see, one relies on the attractiveness of his kitchen, a third has a secret arrangement whereby he will allow his followers to pillage the church[176] property if he is elected. Finally, the bishops, Euphranius and Patiens, take the matter into their own hands, nominate an obscure worthy man, a ‘reader’ called John, and proclaim him their colleague.[1011] So, too, at Bourges, Sidonius is asked by the faction-wearied people to nominate them a bishop.[1012] In fact, the general impression, derived from reading the account of bishops and their elections in Sidonius, is that they would have said with Horace, in exactly the same pagan spirit (though they might have resented being connected with a pagan name), ‘Odi profanum vulgus et arceo’. They go in for charities,[1013] but these are often only a form of patronage.

Thus, in attempting to provide for plebeian education, Christianity had to contend with many difficulties. The first appearance of organized Christian education is represented by the catechumen schools which sprang up everywhere after the establishment of Christianity. The most prominent one was that of Alexandria,[1014] dating at least from the second century. The bishop, or, more frequently, a subordinate church official, following the Apostolic example,[1015] would go to some lecture-hall after the sermon and expound the doctrine of the Church to all who cared to come, or would gather his disciples round him in some private house. The school was therefore intended for adults. It had no formal organization nor was it of a permanent character. It was a kind of missionary movement that spread to all parts of the Empire. Among the first attempts in the direction of Christian elementary education, apparently, was the school at Edessa, where Lucian, a presbyter of the third century, who became famous as a teacher at Antioch,[1016] was educated.[1017] It was a place worthy of being a cradle of Christian education; its church was martyred in the second century, its teachers Protogenes and Eulogius were driven into banishment in the fourth, and in the fifth it became famous for its active share in the Nestorian controversy.

But in the West it was that ‘invasion from the South’, which Montalembert referred to, that was the instrument of Christian education. Tradition said that Athanasius introduced the idea of monasticism into Gaul (where it spread more rapidly than anywhere else in the West[1018]) during his exile at Trèves (336-7). This influence issued in action with Martin of Tours (the most popular saint of the Gallic Church), when he founded the monastery of Ligugé near Poitiers, and a second and larger one, Marmoutier (‘maius monasterium’) near Tours, about the middle of the fourth century. When he died, at the end of that century, there were numerous monasteries not only in the province of Tours but in Rouen and what afterwards became Normandy and Picardy.

The work of Martin influenced two men of Gaul, both of the upper classes, and both educated in all the learning of the day—Sulpicius Severus, ‘vir genere et litteris nobilis’,[1019] and Paulinus of Nola, the pupil of Ausonius. These men made monasticism fashionable—so much so that even Sidonius patronized it.[1020] At the beginning of the fifth century Cassian founded the monastery of St. Victor near Marseilles, and Honoratus the famous cloister of Lérins. About 450 Romanus established a monastery at Condat on the Jura, and around these centres there grew up a network of abbeys.

Now at this time there were no orders of monks, and the Rule of the Abbeys depended mainly on the choice of the abbot. The monasteries were merely groups of people who had come to live the common life (κοινόβιοι) and to discuss matters of common interest. Thus educational development was stimulated, and we find a much stronger intellectual life among the simple Christians than in the form-bound school of the rhetor. Whenever there was a dangerous heresy abroad in Gaul, Jerome or Augustine would write a refutation which was circulated throughout the country,[1021] and Sulpicius’s Life of Martin was eagerly read everywhere, and was much in demand at Rome.[1022]

This intellectual activity presently overflowed the boundaries of the monastery. Catechumens had to be trained for the Church, and it was found necessary to establish informal schools for them, where, besides religious training, they also received a smattering of the seven liberal arts. These were the forerunners of those cathedral schools which became, in the Middle Ages, the main intellectual support of the country.

The most famous episcopal school was at Arles, where Hilary taught a large number of students.[1023] Among his pupils were Cyprian, Bishop of Toulouse, Firminius, Bishop of Usez (Ucetia), and Bishop Vivencius. The interest of the Fathers in education may be illustrated from the life of Caesarius.[1024] ‘Who can describe how great and pleasing was the zeal that shone forth from him, when he discussed the Scriptures and expounded difficulties? His greatest delight was to be challenged to discuss a problem, and he himself very often urged his class, saying to us: “I know you don’t understand everything: why don’t you ask, that you may know?”’ Whatever may be said as to the extent of their teaching, it must be admitted that they showed the proper spirit of education in thus stimulating knowledge. At Arles, also, taught Pomerius, ‘scientia rhetor, Afer genere’,[1025] whose interest in literature and rhetoric was great,[1026] and whose lectures Caesarius attended. Another famous Christian teacher of the fifth century, versed particularly in ecclesiastical matters, was Victorius of Marseilles.[1027]

The monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles,[1028] built in the woods over the grotto where the martyr Victor, a Roman legionary, had been buried at the end of the third century, became a school for training the clergy, though not at once, for the motto of its[179] founder was to flee all bishops and women.[1029] It did good work, but its fame is almost entirely eclipsed by that of the older monastery at Lérins, the nursery of bishops. Vincent the theologian,[1030] Patrick of Ireland, Cassian the founder of St. Victor, Hilary of Arles, Faustus the bishop of the via media in theological controversy,[1031] Lupus, called by Sidonius ‘episcopus episcoporum’,[1032] Eucherius, and many other celebrities were sons of Lérins. From Lérins and St. Victor were drawn almost all the educated clergy of Gaul during the fifth century. ‘En général’, says Fauriel,[1033] ‘ce furent ces évêques ou ces prêtres, sortis des cloîtres de Lérins ou de Saint-Victor, qui formèrent la partie érudite et savante du clergé ou de l’épiscopat gallo-romain....’ The Chronologia Lerinensis[1034] likens Lérins to a trailing vine which fills the earth with its fruits and extends, by the grace of God, beyond the rest. Among the many other references to the monastery in the Chronicle, there are numerous verse panegyrics extolling its congenial surroundings and indicating a real love of learning. Sidonius, too, is enthusiastic in its praise;[1035] and his commendation, imbued as he was with rhetorical culture and prejudiced in its favour, says much for the educational standard reached by Lérins. So famous was its school that Lupus, ‘the prince of prelates’, came to study there for a year, before he went to spread its spirit of study and piety. For, like most of these monks from the aristocracy, ‘he had ... a cultivated mind and took an active interest in intellectual development. He was anxious about schools and educational facilities in his diocese, and gave protection to all who encouraged learning.’[1036] Indeed, we may say that all the most literary and philosophic men of the time, as well as the most religious, flocked to the island-quiet of Lérins. It is no wonder that Mamertus, in[180] describing the failing culture of the fifth century, mentions Lérins as an exception.

4. The Practice of Christian Education

In the Chronologia sacrae insulae Lerinensis[1037] we find a concrete example of a monastic school.

‘At the time when the studies of the monastery of Lérins flourished in the regions of Gaul, the Christian religion ... began to grow everywhere and to commit itself to the study of letters. In this place there was an excellent abbot, a holy man, Caesarius, the servant of Christ, who afterwards became bishop of Arles.’ Amid the general flocking of people to Lérins for education or edification (‘cumque ad eum omnes unanimiter concurrerent pro salute animarum sive studiis litterarum’), there came an Italian soldier and his son Siffredus, earnestly craving admittance. The soldier became a monk, and his son was put to school (‘filius vero litterarum studiis traditur’), and in a short time he attained proficiency in ‘grammar’, rhetoric, and dialectic.

Similarly, Salvian sends a fellow countryman of his to be educated at Lérins,[1038] and we may judge from the Regula of Caesarius that many boys went there for instruction. Laymen were not excluded. In 480 St. Melanius attended a school at Rennes controlled by priests, yet apparently attached to no monastery.[1039] That such semi-theological schools existed in Gaul, at least from the beginning of the fifth century, we may judge from the fact that the sons of Eucherius, Veranius and Salonius, were taught at Lérins in subjects religious and profane[1040] during the first years of that century.[1041] Not unjustifiable, therefore, is[181] the statement of Barralis that Lérins was ‘litterarum et virtutis emporium’.[1042]

But while the existence of Christian schools cannot be questioned, their extent and organization in Gaul during the fifth century are vague and undefined. St. Benedict’s example had not yet brought about an ordered system of monasteries, and there was still much that was erratic and irregular. Though the leaders of the Church in the main allowed the use of pagan studies in Christian teaching, yet in practice the methods employed must have depended on the sympathy and the inclination of the autonomous abbot. Now where an abbot had enjoyed a rhetorical training, we can hardly doubt that he imparted it to his pupils: for it requires a great deal of intellectual development in a master not to teach as he has been taught. But only a certain proportion of abbots could have had this training. There were many brilliant monks, many perhaps of whose distinction we do not know. But they could not have directed all the monasteries of fifth-century Gaul. The temper of the people, too, was all against literary studies. The number, therefore, of such schools as Lérins, in which secular and religious studies were simultaneously kept up, was probably not large. In the following century the division between secular and religious schools became progressively marked, chiefly owing to the influence of Cassiodorus. The division between one Christian school and another was naturally far from rigid; we read of Honoratus sending three of his scholars at Lérins to hear the lectures of Paulinus at Nola.[1043]

The children who came to the monastery schools were of two kinds: the oblati,[1044] who remained and became monks, and those who attended the schola exterior and lived a secular life after their education. The age at which they were admitted was an early one. Ennodius says that Epiphanius became a ‘lector’ at eight,[1045] and Sidonius that Bishop John of Châlons-sur-Marne was[182] ‘lector ab infantia.’[1046] Nunneries, like the one at Arles, took children at six or seven—‘ab annis sex aut septem, quae iam litteras discere et obedientiae possit obtemperare’.[1047]

Classes were generally held in the body of the church (in inferiori Basilicae navi[1048]) and the twenty-fourth canon of the fourth Council of Toledo (seventh century) probably represents the regular practice of our period. It provides that the children of the clergy should all be kept in one room to be trained in the ways of the Church, and that they should be entrusted to a senior person of approved character who was to give them both moral and intellectual instruction.[1049]

We hear of a head master variously called in later times ‘Scholasticus’, ‘scholaster’, ‘capischola’ (caput scholae) ‘Decanus’, ‘Cancellarius’. ‘Cum igitur Levitas feceris’, wrote Remigius, ‘Archidiaconum institueris Primicerium scholae clarissimae.’[1050] A sixth-century inscription of Lyons[1051] reads: ‘In hoc tomolo requiescit famolus D̅I̅ Stefanus primicirius scolae lectorum....’

Private teaching, which had always gone side by side with the schools, increased in the fifth century among Christian parents for three reasons: the opposition of pagan to Christian education, which, amid the unorganized state of the monastery schools, often forced home-education upon parents; the fact that the pagan schools catered chiefly for the upper classes and that Christianity was now inspiring the masses with a desire for instruction; and the influence of the monastic ideal which shunned public contact for fear of contamination.

In so far as the Christian writers refer to the detailed practice of Christian teaching, they deal chiefly with the elementary school, which is what we should expect. Protogenes, when banished from Edessa in the latter part of the fourth century,[183] set up a school at Antinoe (Antinoopolis), on the Nile. τόπον εὑρὼν ἐπιτήδειον καὶ τοῦτον διδασκαλεῖον καὶ παιδευτήριον ἀποφήνας, μειρακίων κατέστη διδάσκαλος, καὶ ... γράφειν τε εἰς τάχος ἐδίδασκε καὶ τὰ θεῖα ἐξεπαίδευε λόγια.[1052] Writing then (including shorthand), and scripture lessons (especially the Psalms and the Doctrine of the Apostles), formed the substance of his teaching. And the same general scope was found in the West. With considerable elaboration Jerome expounds to Laeta the method by which she is to teach her daughter the alphabet. She is to be supplied with letters carved of wood or ivory and be encouraged to play with them, for in playing she will learn.[1053] In this, as in most other educational matters, he follows the mighty authority of Quintilian.[1054] He deprecates a fixed order of the letters so that only the sequence is remembered. The child must mix the letters frequently, and then put them together for herself, ‘in order that she may learn to recognize them by the eye as well as by the ear’. Seneca’s motto[1055] about the visual being stronger than the acoustic memory seems to have held an important place in the education of the day.[1056] Elsewhere Jerome explains his method for learning to read. ‘Itaque Pacatula nostra hoc epistolium post lectura suscipiat. Interim modo litterarum elementa cognoscat, iungat syllabas, discat nomina, verba consociet.’[1057] He advocates the usual method of proceeding from letters to syllables, from syllables to words, from words to sentences. Again Quintilian is followed.[1058] Modern experimental psychology inclines to the view that the analytic method, which proceeds from sentences and words to syllables and letters, may be the more profitable.

Reading was a specially important subject on account of the ‘lectores’ who read the lessons in church. Originally they were charged with the reading of Scriptures, but later their duties[184] became more general. The ‘lectores’ formed the second of the minor orders, and the office demanded a certain amount of education, though sometimes the ‘lectores’ seem to have been no more than choir boys. Isidore of Seville states that any one who is promoted to this office must be trained in books and learning, and well equipped with a knowledge of words and their meanings.[1059] The eighth canon of the fourth Council of Carthage describes the solemn ordination of a ‘lector’.[1060] Sometimes qualifications of birth and rank added to the dignity of the office. Julian, the emperor, and his brother Gallus were admitted as readers into the church of Nicomedia, and Paulinus of Nola tells us that St. Felix was a ‘lector’.[1061] The readers stood, as has been indicated, under a ‘primicerius’, who was also the head of all the minor orders. ‘Ad primicerium’, said Gregory, ‘pertinent acolythi et exorcistae, psalmistae atque lectores.’[1062]

On the teaching of writing Jerome again follows Quintilian in recommending a tracing of the letters on the wax for the help of the pupil.[1063] ‘Cum vero coeperit trementi manu stilum in cera ducere, vel alterius superposita manu teneri regantur articuli, vel in tabella sculpantur elementa ut per eosdem sulcos inclusa marginibus trahantur vestigia....’[1064] These wax-tablets, dating from ancient Roman times, go on into the eleventh century.[1065] Copying was, of course, an important part in the monastic writing activities, and Sulpicius Severus says that it was assigned to the ‘brethren of younger years’.[1066] Such was the importance attached to it, that in the less advanced cloisters, like that of Martin, no other art was practised.[1067] Even[185] the nuns practised it. We find Caesarius exhorting them to vary their reading and psalm singing with transcribing, under the supervision of the abbess,[1068] and it was so that Rusticula, abbess of Arles, trained her nuns.[1069]

One of the borrowings from the pagan schools which the Church found most useful was shorthand. The bishops had their ‘notarii’ just as much as the officials of the imperial Civil Service. They were employed to take down the proceedings of the Councils, the acta of the martyrs,[1070] and the speeches and sermons of the prominent clergy. Their prevalence has been the plague of commentators, and has contributed much to the formlessness of Christian writing. For the scribe would take down the bishop’s speech verbatim and copy it out as it stood. There was no revision or rearrangement, and many errors and much diffuseness was the result, as in the Homilies of Hilary of Poitiers.[1071] Hilary of Arles, Honoratus tells us, used to have a ‘notarius’. ‘Sedili mensaque apposita liber ingerebatur et retia,[1072] adstante notario. Liber praebebat animo cibum, manus nectendi velocitate currebant, notarii simul ferebantur articuli et oculus paginam percurrebat.’[1073] Evidently the possession of a ‘notarius’ did not mean a decrease in activity, mental or otherwise. Similarly, Jerome on a certain occasion was compelled by his friend Ausonius to send for his secretary and dictate a letter to the bereaved Julian, and ‘as the words fell swiftly from his lips, they were swiftly overtaken by the hand of the writer’.[1074] Again, he describes the vigour of his secretarial[186] department in terms of martial ardour and excitement: ‘ecce noster Ausonius coepit schedulas flagitare, urgere notarios, et hinnitu ferventis equi, ingenioli mei festinus arguere tarditatem’.[1075] That shorthand was connected with the schools is clear enough from Prudentius.[1076] He tells us of a tablet in a church at Forum Cornelii representing the martyr Cassianus who had been a teacher of stenography.

Transcribers of books were patronized by wealthy families, and apparently sent from one house to another. Sidonius[1077] recommends to Ruricus one who had copied out the Heptateuch, and had on sale also a copy of the Prophets, which he had edited. The man was evidently of low social standing, for Sidonius leaves it to Ruricus to fix the price of the work; yet he must have had a considerable education to have been able to edit the Prophets. We hear also of a citizen of Clermont who had wormed out of the copyist or bookseller (scriba sive bibliopola) of Remigius at Rheims a copy of the latter’s Declamations,[1078] which shows that the scribe was sometimes also the librarian.

In arithmetic, the strict monastic rules for silence, which made it necessary, for example, to ask for things at meals by signs,[1079] increased the Roman tendency to finger-computation. How elaborate a system was thus worked out we may see from Bede’s work on the subject.[1080] Great stress was laid on the ‘Computus’, a set of tables for calculating astronomical events and the movable dates of the calendar. It was regarded by Cassiodorus as indispensable for the clergy.[1081] The ‘calculus’ of Victorinus of Aquitaine, who invented a new Paschal calendar about the middle of the fifth century, was frequently used.[1082] The idea of[187] mystical numbers, derived from Pythagoras, led to much fanciful nonsense in the Middle Ages, as we may see from Alcuin’s letter to his pupil Gallicellulus,[1083] in which he compared the numbers mentioned in the Old Testament with those of the New.

We have seen that monastic education, where, as at Lérins, the abbot was sympathetic, extended beyond the range of theological or church subjects. The Chronicle of Lérins insists on this,[1084] and its statements are borne out to a certain extent by the inscriptions, which show how strongly Vergil’s influence survived among the Christians. Several times we find on the tombstones:

and the words ‘Subiectasque videt nubes et sidera caeli’[1085] in an inscription on a Bishop of Arles recall the verse describing the apotheosis of Daphnis. An inscription of Narbonne, belonging, probably, to the fifth century, has the phrase ‘summi rector Olimpi’.[1086] As for the Fathers, they are constantly bursting forth into Vergilian language. Paulinus, in the midst of his tirade against the pagan Muses, in the heat of his appeal to turn to the Christian God, slips into ‘inania murmura miscent’,[1087] and Jerome, while urging Julianus to become a monk, ends with a Vergilian quotation: he must follow the example of the Holy Vera, ‘et sit tibi tanti dux femina facti’.[1088] Thus the Christian writers by their own words prove the folly of the extreme anti-pagan point of view, even when they themselves have held it.

We may take it, then, that Vergil was read. We hear also of the fables of Avianus, who lived under the Antonines,[1089] and the fourth-century Disticha Catonis, a collection of moral rules. The former work remained in the schools till the tenth century, while the latter was among the commonest of elementary school-books as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth century.[1090] The text-books of the grammarians were no doubt freely used. Sidonius praises the ‘discipline’ of Agroecius[1091] (fifth century), who wrote a famous work on Orthography, intended to supplement a book on the same subject by Flavius Caper. It is significant that the work is dedicated to Bishop Eucherius. As we go into the sixth century the traces of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium begin to appear.[1092] The fifth century was a transition period, in which the doctrine of the extreme monastic party (if we may speak of a party when so many eminent men spoke now on the one side and now on the other), and the teaching of the liberals, were represented in the schools in fluctuating and uncertain proportions. By the time of Gregory of Tours (sixth century) the extremists had so far given way that he allowed his theological students to pass through the seven arts of Capella, and to write poetry, which, however, was still suspect, and had fallen from its previous prominence to a precarious place at the end of the list.

When we take all this into account we cannot fail to see a certain exaggeration in Kaufmann’s[1094] statement that the training of the monastic school was entirely religious and moral. These elements were doubtless predominant, but they were not all.

During the fifth century, however, subjects for reading and discussion came to be taken more and more from the Bible. The Bible, introduced as literature in the schools, started its career of enormous influence on the speech and writings, and so on the education, of all centuries. The hexameters into which Claudius Marius Victor of Marseilles (fifth century) turned the book of Genesis were meant for use in schools, and represented a sort of compromise: Christian matter and pagan form. Psalm singing and lessons in scripture and church ritual were naturally given a fairly prominent place. Exegesis became the main subject of study, as we may see, e.g. from Eucherius’s Formularum spiritualis intelligentiae, Instructionum libri, Dialogorum liber. Scripture, he says, is to be discussed and explained ‘secundum historiam, secundum tropologiam, secundum anagogen’.[1095] ‘Historia’ is given a wide definition: all that comes under ‘veritatem factorum ac fidem relationis’. ‘Tropologia’ is to lead to the improvement of life and of the mystic intellect, and ‘Anagoge’ leads ‘ad sacratiora caelestium figurarum’. These two sides, which are speculative and philosophical, are developed at the expense of ‘Historia’; and falsely developed by abundant reference to allegorical explanation, which becomes a regular solvent of obscure questions.[1096]

Stress is also laid on the etymological side, which is rather unfortunate. Greek and Hebrew are studied to some extent, though the answers which Eucherius, following the example of Jerome, wrote to the questions of his son Salonius on these subjects suggest rather a low standard. Curious as this catechism is, some of the theological questions indicate considerable thought:

‘Scribitur in Genesi tentavit Deus Abraham, quasi ignorabat Dominus an fidelis Abraham foret.’

‘Cum nulla esse ignorantia apud Deum possit, quomodo ipse in libro Geneseos in exordiis dicit Dominus: Adam, ubi es?’[1097]

This part of Christian education as reflected in the Books of Instruction stands in sharp contrast to the part which deals with language, and suggests that the theological training far overshadowed the rest. Even at Lérins the distinctly pagan education was given very little prominence. Ennodius, of all people, forgetting his debt to pagan letters, and all unconscious of his enslavement to rhetoric, pompously states the superiority of ‘religious’ over ‘secular’ studies, thus advising Camilla about the education of her son: ‘The Lord of salvation rejects not those who hasten to him from secular teachings, but he refuses to let any one leave his glory for these. If you have already withdrawn the child from the world, you would not seek a worldly style in him. I blush to resort to the polish of secular embellishments in the education of one who professes to serve the Church.’[1098]

That there were different grades of advancement in the Christian schools is implied in the words of Eucherius when he[191] reminds his son that his education was begun by Hilary but finished off (consummatum) by Vincentius and Salvian.[1099] But the general standard was undoubtedly low. To the remark of Caesarius that many business-men in his time could not write, we may add the testimony of the inscriptions. On four monuments of Briord we read:

all for ‘Astutus largus patiens dulcissimus aptus’. And there are many variations of the lines inscribed by Jerome on Paula’s tomb:

which proclaim the ignorance of the inscribers.[1100] This does not mean that these people would have been better educated under the pagan system: there are many instances of mistakes in pagan inscriptions too. It merely means that Christianity was beginning to reach the simple folk, who otherwise would probably not have had the ability or the ambition even to make a wrong copy of a line of verse. In the pagan schools it is the upper classes that are prominent: in the Christian schools it is the lower.

Higher education, therefore, hardly appears at all in the Christian writers. The former rhetorical school, with its declamations and its applause, fell away, though its influence survived. The rules of rhetoric may have been illustrated by examples which were applied in the pulpit, but there was no separate school for the art of speaking. Yet the germ of the modern university—as far as intellectual search for truth is concerned—was found in some of the monasteries, and there is at least one subject in which they had a contribution to make to higher education, philosophy.

The curious way in which the Christian and pagan schools supplement and oppose one another is evident throughout. The Christian elementary school developed further the pagan system[192] for lower education: the monastic studies formed an antithesis to the social atmosphere of the Bordeaux University; and, in particular, the study of philosophy and theology supplemented that lack of thought which we have seen in Ausonius and the fourth century in general. For it is in the fifth century that the most flourishing period of Gallic theology begins. All the greatest minds of the day busied themselves with the philosophy of religion.

The main thought-currents need here only be named. First and foremost there was Pelagianism, with its questions of grace and free will, which raised the central problem of personality. More directly connected with Gaul (for its leaders were Cassian and Faustus) was Semi-Pelagianism, which sought a middle way between the predestination implied in Augustine and the free will of Pelagius. Then there were the questions about the nature of the soul—whether it was corporeal, as Faustus argued, or spiritual as Mamertus Claudianus maintained. There was also Neoplatonism, which was never strong in the West, but appears here and there in Hilary of Poitiers.[1101] How prevalent its incidental accompaniments of Daemonology and Divination were appears from the decree of Valens and Valentinian against magicians.[1102] Finally, there were minor theological questions and points of worship and church discipline, for example in the controversy between Vigilantius and Jerome.

Philosophy was divided by Eucherius into three parts: ‘Sapientia mundi huius philosophiam suam in tres partes divisit: Physicam, Ethicam, Logicam’,[1103] which includes metaphysics and theology. This was the traditional division alluded to by Seneca: ‘Philosophiae tres partes esse dixerunt et maximi et plurimi actores: moralem, naturalem, rationalem.’[1104] Of these, the part called ‘ethica’ or ‘moralis’ was naturally most popular, but the sort of theological discussion that came under ‘Logica’[193] was most developed by the thinkers of the time. Foremost in this department stands Claudianus, Bishop of Vienne, whose work De Statu animae was a real contribution to the thought of his age. ‘These ideas’, says Guizot, referring to this work, ‘are deficient neither in elevation nor in profundity: they would do honour to the philosophers of any period; seldom have the nature of the soul and its unity been investigated more clearly or described with greater precision.’[1105] This is high praise, but it is justified in the main. Claudianus was at least no mere compiler. He draws largely on Augustine and the Pythagorean authors like Philolaus, Architas, and Hippo Metapontinus (known to him, perhaps, only in extracts), whose works are now lost.[1106] Plato and the later Platonists, too, are extensively quoted. We feel that there is a great deal of vague metaphysics in his work, ‘purement négative, impuissante à pénétrer dans la nature intime des phénomènes’.[1107] As an example of this sort of thing we may quote the passage[1108] where he is referring to the work of Philolaus περὶ ῥυθμῶν καὶ μέτρων, and talks about the mystic number and the spiritual law according to which the soul enters the body, using this thesis as a satisfactory basis for argument. He is content to quote the ‘ipse dixit’ of Philolaus alone. ‘Memet’ (he declares) ‘causa auctoritatis in medium tanti testimonium philosophi iecisse sufficiet.’ There was an idea (not unnaturally) that the study of philosophy was prejudicial to religion, but Claudianus was one, says Sidonius, ‘qui ... indesinenter salva religione philosopharetur’.[1109] Plato was the main inspiration. Most of the Gallic Platonists were Christians, though Sidonius says that those who attack Faustus for his mystic philosophy will find ‘ecclesiae Christi Platonis academiam militare’.[1110] From Sidonius and Claudianus we should judge that Aristotle—especially[194] the Ethics and the Categories—was fairly prevalent in Gaul.[1111]

Methods and Masters.

Ennodius in his lines on ‘Grammatica’[1112] maintains that even in teaching philosophy a joke with the class is permissible, and that strict discipline must not always imply terror, and Sulpicius Severus writes to Bishop Paul[1113] commending his success in dealing with pupils without threats or force. But, on the whole, the pagan tradition of discipline was not mellowed by Christianity. It was rather reinforced by the ascetic spirit of the monasteries, and intensified by the added religious motive of mortification. The text ‘Quem enim diligit Dominus, increpat: flagellat autem omnem filium quem recipit’, was literally and extensively applied. Jerome talks quite naturally of education as equivalent to ‘manum ferulae subducere’,[1114] and the severe training of Lérins is indicated by the phrase of Sidonius; ‘post desudatas militiae Lerinensis excubias’ (the sweated vigils of your campaign at Lérins).[1115] Valerianus, in his homily ‘De bono disciplinae’,[1116] illustrates the ideas of the time on this subject, and strengthens the impression that we get from reading the various ‘Regulae’ for the cloisters. He expatiates on the disciplined order of nature, and everywhere thinks of ‘disciplina’ as equivalent to ‘castigatio’, which is always assumed to be the corner-stone of teaching and the condition of progress on the[195] part of the pupil. The militarism of the Roman Empire lingers on in seemingly uncongenial surroundings. Great stress is laid on fear. Fear has the great virtue of always obeying. It therefore knows how to avoid threatening dangers, or the wrath of judgement. Because of this estimable quality it has the power of keeping you safe. ‘All vices are prostrate before fear.’ He appeals to the word of the Prophet: ‘servite Domino in timore et exultate ei cum tremore’. The Old Testament harshness suits the temper of these disciplinarians very well, and appears far more frequently than the gentleness of Christ or the humanity of common sense.

Part of this idea of mortification and discipline was worked out in the manual labour which the monasteries made, and consistently have made, of considerable importance in their educational scheme. Partly, too, it was a reaction against the extreme artificiality of the rhetorical schools, and it was also undoubtedly an attempt to follow Christ and his Apostles in their adoption of some craft or trade. Mabillon shows[1117] how much this practical side was insisted on, and he speaks of a tradition which started in Gaul during our period. The correspondence between word and deed was made a vital point—a fact which proved a healthy corrective to the attitude apt to be produced by the rhetoric of the pagan schools. ‘Qui si volunt lectioni vacare ut non operentur, ipsi lectioni contumaces existunt, quia non faciant quod ibi legunt’,[1118] said Isidore of Seville, and his ‘Rule’, like that of Caesarius, expressed the thought of the fifth century as well as of the seventh. We find that at Lérins Hilary of Arles worked in the fields, and that it was the duty of Caesarius when he first entered that monastery to provide for the bodily needs of the brethren.[1119] Cassian made a strong point of manual labour. It prevents many faults,[1120] and we have the example of St. Paul[1121] and the precept of Solomon.[1122] The East, which gave the impulse to monasticism, emphasized[196] this point, for example in Egypt,[1123] and there is the story of the Abbot Paul who burnt every year the work of his hands lest he should ever lack work.[1124]

Thus in its development of elementary education, in its ‘rusticitas’, in its greater concentration on thought, and in its emphasis on practical work, Christian education in fifth-century Gaul was in reaction against the brilliant but superficial schools of the previous century. That this was so, and that the movement was strong enough to make itself felt against the whole weight of the traditional education, was partly due to skilful leadership. How far was this effective leadership general in the Christian schools?

Eucherius in a letter to Valerianus[1125] gives a list of men who have become monks. Clemens, ‘omni scientia refertus, omniumque liberalium artium peritissimus’; Gregorius, ‘philosophia primus apud mundum et eloquentia praestans’; another Gregorius, ‘litteris et philosophiae deditus’; Paulinus of Nola, ‘peculiare et beatum Galliae nostrae exemplum—uberrimo eloquentiae fonte’; Basilius, a rhetor and a learned man; and many others. Of Eucherius himself Claudianus says: ‘ingenio subtilissimus, scientia plenus, eloquii profluens’.[1126] There was, therefore, considerable learning in the monasteries towards the end of the fourth century. We have seen how many of the aristocracy brought pagan culture into the cloisters; we have also seen that the Christians were not without their rhetors (and rhetorical ability implied the liberal education of the day), nor without their theologians and philosophers. Of Hilary of Arles, whose eloquence Honoratus praises, Gennadius says: ‘Ingenio vero immortali aliqua et parva edidit, quae eruditae animae et fidelis linguae indicio sunt’.[1127] Even where a man did not have the initial advantage of education and birth, he often had the ambition and the opportunity to remedy his ignorance in the cloister. Vincentius, who had come to Lérins after having been a soldier, studied with such zeal that he became one of the[197] tutors of Eucherius’s sons and wrote in a style praised by Gennadius.[1128]

Now all these men became the teachers of the Christian schools. They taught unceasingly and with great eagerness. They had within them the joy of the pioneer, and the inspiration of a great ideal. And if one does not agree entirely with their theory of education, it must be admitted that intellectually they were in most cases better equipped than the professors of Ausonius, and that they did more to inspire a true love of education and to preserve the triumphs of culture. When Gaul was separated from the Empire, it was the schools, and mostly the Christian schools (for imperial protection of education failed with the failing Empire), that saved civilization in Gaul and helped to perpetuate Rome’s great contribution to the world—her Law. Dull and uninteresting as their educational labours often were, they were often, like Browning’s Grammarian, possessed by a real love of learning. The pedestrian quality of the work—the jealous watching over the text of Vergil, the copying of manuscripts, the relentless monastic routine—was perhaps the best service that could have been rendered to humanity. What the world wanted, in view of the dark times that were to follow, was a tenacious watch-dog type of loyalty to letters, not the brilliant genius who needs somebody to look after his manuscripts. Not only books but garden art, architecture, wood- and stone-carving, and pottery were preserved by these watch-dogs. The dull lack of appreciation with which we sometimes think of their work, forgetting its true perspective, is well expressed by Kaufmann:[1129]

While we have looked at the actual curricula and surroundings of the schools, it has been possible to treat Christian and pagan education apart. But there remain certain questions which do not directly or entirely belong to the schools, and yet are of importance for education because of the general educational principles underlying them (as in the case of history or the teaching of a strange language), or because of the ideas by which they moulded the individuality of people (as in the case of morality and art). Here the interplay of influences is such that, in the brief treatment which we propose, a strict division had better not be attempted. For not only would such a division be tedious within so limited a compass, but the merging into one another of customs and ideas makes it almost impossible. The questions we have indicated will therefore be regarded as common to either side of society.

1. Moral Education

To get an insight into the moral state of a bygone age is difficult for two reasons. The first is that the subject is one on which people are most tempted to be hypocrites in their own case, while they delight in expatiating on the wickedness of others, and the second, that there is an extraordinary tendency for particular cases to fill the horizon and prevent us from taking a general view. In our period we have to reckon with a special form of these difficulties: the preaching habit, which, though it was essential to Christianity, was nevertheless as much open to abuse as pagan rhetoric was, especially when it was a means of combating paganism. ‘The world is wide’, said[199] Stevenson in one of his essays, ‘and so are morals.’ But there is a standard—that of the Sermon on the Mount—which presents an ideal, though it does not give the right to condemn. In trying to follow this ideal the Christians saw pagan morality in a lurid light. How far were they justified?

The traditional trait of impulsiveness in the Gallic character suggested to many writers a proneness to immorality.[1130] Florus represents Livy as saying that the Insubrian Gauls, though brutal in spirit and abnormally large, were like their own Alpine snows: the glow of battle dissolved them into sweat, and even slight exertion thawed them like the sun. From this account Ammianus differs widely when he describes the Gauls of the fourth century as excelling in vigour and endurance irrespective of age.[1131] Yet he speaks of the ‘mollities’ of the Aquitanians.[1132] Perhaps in his description of their hardiness he was thinking chiefly of the northern Gauls, as opposed to their slacker brothers in the south. For it is against the south and against Aquitaine in particular that Salvian launches all the thunder of his denunciation. The Aquitanians need the chastisement of the barbarian invasions to kill off the worst among them and to reform the others.[1133] He rails at length against the prevailing corruption. The theatres ‘are so scandalous that no one can with modesty speak out about them’.[1134] The performances consisted of farces, ‘cotidianae obscenitates’,[1135] ‘restes dégénérés et méconnaissables du théâtre antique’ as Fauriel calls them.[1136] The Christian clergy lose no opportunity of condemning them. In contrast to pagan immorality, Salvian describes the chastity of the Goths. This he exaggerates for the sake of effect, but that there was a considerable[200] element of truth in his description is proved by the Codex Visigothorum.[1137]

If the preacher gives a discouraging picture of the moral state of Gaul, so does the writer of comedy. In the fourth-century Querolus much of the moral corruption pictured is due to imitation of Plautus, and we must remember that it was a comedy. Yet we can detect a strain of satire which is a criticism of existing conditions. Stealing, lying, adultery, perjury are treated as exceedingly common peccadilloes which the household god (Lar) is only too ready to pardon in a pleasing and jolly offender. Between the Plautine conception of the relation of slaves to their masters and that here portrayed we can detect no advance. On both sides morality is simply non-existent.

But if we must discount the evidence both of the preacher and of the comedy-writer, we may find a more impartial guide than either in the Law. The Theodosian Code shows that the aspect of a crime changed with the social status of the criminal. There was no consistent ethical standard. If the wife of a tavern-keeper was taken in adultery, she could be publicly accused; but if her servant girl was so taken, she might be dismissed as too cheap to worry about (pro vilitate).[1138] If a guardian corrupted his ward, he was punished by deportation and total confiscation of his goods.[1139] But a woman who had committed adultery with her slave was put to death, and the slave burned. So terrible did this interference with class-distinction seem that even slaves were allowed to give information.[1140] Again, in bringing a charge of treason which he cannot prove, an ordinary man is subject to torture, but a slave or[201] a freedman is denied an audience and crucified.[1141] If a slave or freedman brought an accusation against his master (except in the case of treason), he was to be beheaded before his charge was examined. ‘Vocem enim funestam intercidi oportet potius quam audiri.’[1142] Again, in the law of extortion, judges who have been convicted lose the marks of imperial favour, are stripped of their office, and ranked with the worst and lowest class in the State.[1143]

In the opinion of the law, and therefore of the mass of the people, being ‘pessimus’ means belonging to the plebs, and the punishment of crime comes to consist in loss of ‘caste’.[1144] That is to say, morality becomes a matter of social position, and the corollary is that anything may be done by those whose status is high, as long as they manage to maintain that status, while those at the bottom, having no status to lose, hardly care what they do. However much we may disregard particular descriptions of moral degeneracy, the Codex Theodosianus supplies a very damning commentary on the ethical standards of the time. Nor did the Christians effect any improvement in this legal respect of persons.

We have, of course, men like Paulinus of Pella who speak of the ‘sollers castorum cura parentum’[1145] which shielded him from every evil influence, and the Parentalia of Ausonius indicates happy home-conditions. Lavisse notes this,[1146] and makes much of the domestic felicity and the tender love reflected by these writers and by the inscriptions.[1147] But, apart from the fact that Ausonius and Paulinus were at the top of society, it is dangerous to presume too much from epitaphs. Then, as now, convention played a great part, and the stock phrase ‘Coniugi Karissimae’ may be as formal as the constantly recurring ‘memoriae aeternae’. It was the fashion to write epitaphs in which the superlative was[202] prominent.[1148] Besides, in most of these inscriptions there is no clue as to the dates.

We must conclude, then, that there was much for the Christians to educate, in society and in themselves, if they wanted to fulfil the Christian code of morals.

Turning to the question how far an attempt was made in the pagan schools to train the moral nature, we find that it is precisely this side of pagan education that Juvenal and Tacitus criticized. The old Roman tradition of strict moral education at home was impaired under the Empire by the influx of foreign elements, and the decline is familiar from the authors of the first century A.D. Seneca could see in the education of his day no moral element,[1149] and his criticisms apply to the scholars of Gaul as much as to those of Rome. How could there be (he argued), when the masters were so utterly corrupt? ‘The grammarians’, he said, ‘taught merely antiquarian stuff, not ethics. They asked whether Homer was older than Hesiod, and inquired into the ages of Patroclus and Achilles, or the wanderings of Ulysses.’ ‘Quid horum ad virtutem viam struit?’ The geometricians teach how to survey estates, but ‘what does it profit me to know how to divide a plot of land, if I do not know how to share with my brother? You know what a straight line is. What good is it, if you do not know what is straight in life? O man of learning, let us be content with the simpler title: man of virtue.’[1150] The burden of the cry is for perspective, for an ethical basis, without which education was seen to be like an anchorless storm-tossed ship.[1151]

This need continues to be felt through the following centuries. We have seen what stress Julian laid on the moral qualifications of the teacher. His ideal was Hellenic purity. Before him, Eumenius, on whom the imperial injunction was laid: ‘ut ... ad vitae melioris studium adulescentium excolas mentes’,[1152][203] proclaimed the ideal of practical morality advocated by Cicero. Similarly, the emperor in his zeal for education stressed the moral side as well as the intellectual (so at least his panegyrist maintained), and realized that letters were the basis of virtue.[1153] These virtues, he says, grow up in youth, and in manhood form the strong support of all the various duties of citizenship, whether in peace or war. And so letters are the cradle ‘of all diligence and all praise’.

To a certain extent this demand for moral education was met in the pagan schools. When Paulinus speaks of learning ‘dogmata Socratus’ at the age of five, what he probably means is a selection of well-known sentences chosen for their moral teaching.[1154] The didactic nature of the fables and rhetorical exercises has been noticed, and we cannot doubt that they played a considerable part in the moral theory of the pagan schools. An inscription of Limoges, belonging probably to the second century, contains the figure of a man with a scroll in his right hand, and the following words:

The inference is that the popular conception of the grammarian’s task included moral training. We find that ‘Grammatica’ was regarded as the nurse of the virtues. A training is obtained through it for practical life. Not only the orator but the soldier was supposed to be thus formed. It is the school of the grammarian that trains the soldier whom the Campus Martius receives. ‘Grammar’ has fired him with imaginary battles, taught him courage by accustoming him to the apparatus of war even among the blandishments of peace, and so will[204] make him obedient to the actual trumpet call.[1156] All this is claimed for the school. Such was the theory, but what sort of training was given in practice? It was of little use that fables with moral tags were put before the child if there was not at the same time the living example. And Seneca’s objection to the character of the ‘grammatici’ seems to have held to some extent in Gaul during our period. The disgusting picture of social vice which Ausonius gives in the latter part of the Epigrams applies in part also to the teachers. Eunus, the pedagogue, figures prominently in the list, and Ausonius himself speaks quite naturally about things that directly contradict the Christian morality which he professed. There was a hollowness in the teaching of the ‘grammaticus’ which logically followed from the attempt to maintain the precept without the example. The objections to the low ethical standard of the gods in Homer, which were urged in the fifth century as in the time of Plato and Cicero, were unheeded by the teachers, says Augustine, even when a man of their own school (ex eodem pulvere) proclaimed that Homer had transferred human qualities to the gods.[1157] A barbarism or a solecism was of more account than a moral offence: to forget the h in homo was more serious than to forget to love a fellow man.[1158]

‘Liberales Artes’, Seneca had said, ‘non perducunt animum ad virtutem, sed expediunt.’[1159] We must be content if the school-training merely creates a disposition of mind favourable to virtue. The Christian schools went further. They insisted on correlating theory and practice, and prescribed definite lines of action. As against the hollowness of the pagan moral teaching (and here again we can detect a reaction), the Christian teachers on the whole not only tried to practise what they taught, but saw to it that their pupils carried out their commands. They were exhorted to do so in the Canons of the Church. They put[205] before men a personal ideal, and, if their methods of striving after it were sometimes crude and exaggerated, their sincerity can hardly be doubted. So obsessed were they with the idea of working out their own salvation that their teaching tended to become oppressively moral. The long disquisitions of Jerome or Tertullian on the minute points of moral behaviour are sometimes positively unhealthy. But we must remember that they represented a reaction from an extreme. And in this reaction the seeds of a higher ethical standard were being sown. Not as the lightning lighteth the heavens, but as the growth of the mustard-tree, the stern teaching of the monks who saw a higher vision and fled the world for its sake penetrated and leavened the mass of society, whether that society called itself Christian or not. Already in the fifth century a better public opinion was being formed. We find Sidonius, half-pagan as he was, commending his villa at Avitacum because of the absence of immoral pictures and scenes—‘non hic per nudam pictorum corporum pulchritudinem turpis prostat historia, quae sicut ornat artem sic devenustat artificem.... Absunt lubrici tortuosique pugilatu et nexibus palaestritae (wrestlers) quoram etiam viventum luctus, si involvantur obscenius casta confestim gymnasiarchorum virga dissolvit.’[1160] So in his letter to his son,[1161] he praises him for loving purity and adopts the tone of the moral educator.

It is not suggested that the pagan efforts to advocate morality were worth less than the Christian, or that there was a steady and abiding advance in morals from this time onwards. Only, there are two facts to bear in mind: the moral state of Gaul was bad, and paganism as a motive to morality had failed. Where then was the incentive to come from? Without claiming for the Church any special virtue, and realizing its many grievous errors, we must answer that the moral inspiration for the future came at this time through Christianity. And the Church and her schools were the channels by which this inspiration reached the people. Thus once more Christian education supplemented the work of the pagan schools.

One of the ways in which Christianity exercised its moral influence consisted in raising the status of women; and this[206] was done, to a large extent, by making education more general among them.

In answering the question whether girls attended the schools at Bordeaux, Jullian[1162] says that this was probably the case. We may omit the ‘probably’. It would have been strange indeed if this had not been the case, seeing that at Rome girls’ schools go back possibly to the time of the unfortunate Virginia[1163] (449 B.C.), while in the Ciceronian period Hortensia belonged to the orators, Lesbia wrote poetry, and girls are mentioned as attending school with the boys by Martial[1164] and Ovid.[1165] Moreover, Ausonius says quite plainly to his grandson, referring to the ordinary school course:

Haec olim genitorque tuus genetrixque secuti ...[1166] and tells us that his aunt was a student of medicine, though he indicates that this was not the usual thing (more virum medicis artibus experiens).[1167] Sometimes the mother taught her daughter literature:

But such home-education was probably rare and confined to the upper classes. We hear of no such instance in Gaul. Yet we know that there was sufficient interest in the classics and in knowledge generally on the part of the Gallic women to elicit a lament from Claudius Marius Victor. For among the signs of corruption of his day he notes their preference for pagan authors. Moreover, they show a knowledge of abstruse questions and a desire to know which is truly monstrous:

But it is all the fault of the men, he says (sunt nostri crimina sexus). Without the example of the husband, the wife would never have strayed into such ways of wickedness:

Eulalia, the wife of Probus, was fond of reading the involved writings of Sidonius,[1170] who does not think it too much to expect from a wife that she will be interested in literature. For he reminds a friend that marriage need not interfere with his studious habits: have not Marcia, Terentia, Calpurnia, Pudentilla, Rusticiana, and many others ‘held the light for those who read’?[1171] We may conclude, therefore, that while a large number of girls received a home-education, chiefly in spinning and household crafts,[1172] many of them attended the schools and became interested in literature.[1173]

If there was an increasing liberalism about women’s education in pagan circles (to take the references from Ausonius and Sidonius under this head), the principle of a woman’s right to education assumed much wider and more active proportions among the Christians.

The spread of monasticism naturally affected a large number of women. Marcella was the first of the noble ladies at Rome to take the veil, and set an example which was so extensively followed that by 412 Jerome could boast ‘crebra virginum monasteria’.[1174] Avitus in 517 called together a Church Council at Epao (a small village south of Vienne), which regulated in one of its canons the admission to the ‘monasteria puellarum’,[1175] and he refers elsewhere to the cloister founded by Leonianus where Remilia was brought up (sub regulari disciplina nutrita).[1176] The nuns learnt weaving and spinning,[1177] but the various ‘Regulae’, though somewhat later than our period, make it probable that a portion of their time, at least, was spent in reading and writing.

From these scattered data the point that emerges is that there was a change of attitude towards the education and intellectual capacity of the ordinary woman.

Jerome showed quite clearly that he had no contempt for the feminine mind as such. He considers Paula and Eustochium competent judges of his Latin translation of the Bible, and treats their suggestions as coming from intellectual equals.[1178] The number of books dedicated to them is remarkable, though not when we remember that they inspired the translation.[1179] They, and many other women like Blaesilla, Felicitas, and Fabiola were adepts in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and frequently consulted Jerome on points of interpretation, as did women from all parts of the Empire, including Gaul. For if the rhetorical tradition was one and universal in the West, Christian teaching in the fifth century was almost more so. ‘If Augustine from his retreat at Hippo dictated a new treatise against the heresies of his time, all the churches of Italy, of the Gauls and of Spain listened with attention. Thus, at first sight, we can only discover one sole Latin Literature which, so to speak, began the education of all the races of the West.’[1180]

Sedulius, who had taken the side of liberalism in the matter of pagan literature, when discussing the dedication of his Carmen Paschale makes Macedonius mention many learned presbyters. ‘Nor need you be ashamed’, he continues, ‘to follow the example of Jerome the interpreter of the divine law, the student of the library of heaven (caelestis bibliothecae cultoris), in submitting to women, high born and of known high character, women in whose minds the passion for sacred reading has built the sober home of wisdom, the documents of your inmost reasoning. Who would not wish, would not be ambitious, to please the superb judgement of a Syncletice...?’ And he goes on to describe Perpetua, whose wisdom (gemina resplendens lampade) lends lustre to that of her sister.[1181]

Ennodius also testifies to the intellectual activity of women at the close of the fifth century. In counselling his correspondents to leave grammar and rhetoric, he recommends certain teachers. Among these he mentions with enthusiasm ‘domna Barbara, Romani flos genii’. She seasons her speech with a simplicity that is at once natural and artistic, and her eloquence is enhanced by her clarity of thought. There is also Stephania ‘splendidissimum catholicae lumen ecclesiae’.[1182] One of the points that emerge in the De Ordine of Augustine is that ‘Monica is not to be kept from discussing philosophy because of her sex’.[1183]

On the whole, we must say that though there had been an Aspasia in the time of Pericles, and though Hypatia taught at Alexandria at the beginning of the fifth century, there had never been such a general interest in education on the part of women as in the Christian circles of the Western Empire at this time. The references to educated women in pagan authors is slight when compared with those in the Church Fathers. Of all Symmachus’s letters not one is addressed to a woman, and neither Ausonius nor Sidonius (except for one letter to his wife) had a female correspondent; whereas not only Jerome, but Augustine, Cyprian, Tertullian, Ambrose, all followed Christ’s example when he taught the woman of Samaria. Yet when all is said, we feel that the extent of female education is still small, and that Ovid’s words still apply:

But we also feel that there is an interest which contains a promise for the future:

2. History

If a consideration of the state of moral education is necessary to show how far teaching had an ethical basis, we may find in an inquiry into the position and purpose of history in the schools an indication of the political basis of education. We have seen that in the pagan schools education as a whole was[210] directed by, and aimed at the fulfilment of, the imperial policy. In considering the sort of value attached to historical study, we may see in greater detail how far the scientific attitude of mind was entertained, and how far it was abused for the sake of politics. For there is no subject which illustrates more clearly these two possibilities.

The general outlook of history in our period was not very encouraging. There were no historians except Ammianus. It was a time when a writer like Suetonius was taken as a model. There were, however, numerous compilations. Eutropius, for example, wrote an abbreviated history of Rome towards the close of the fourth century. Chronography was a science started by Sextus Julius Africanus early in the third century, and his example was widely followed. Eusebius, and his translator and expander Jerome, carried on the tradition. Prosper of Aquitaine took up the record where Eusebius had left off, and Prosper’s work was continued by Idatius. Sulpicius Severus illustrated the same tendency, while Rufinus, the adversary of Jerome, did important work in translating and continuing the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius. Dry and formless as these chronographies were, they had the merit of giving a truer perspective of history by introducing the cold lucidity of dates.

Corresponding to this activity there had appeared on the Christian side the records of the Acta Martyrum. Many of these Acta were of a legendary character, and though they were useful for their local colour, they are certainly less valuable from a scientific point of view than the bare chronicles.

This was the general position of history. Its position in the Gallic schools was not more satisfactory. Throughout the ancient educational tradition, from the ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, of Posidonius to the ‘seven liberal arts’, there had been no place for the study of history. From Dionysius Thrax to Quintilian it is consistently treated as a side issue.[1185] Blümner says that when[211] Quintilian assigned ‘historias exponere’ as one of the tasks of the grammarian, it only meant that the teacher commented on such historical facts as turned up in the course of his reading, since history was not a school-subject.[1186] Yet this is not always true.[1187] For from what Ausonius says in the Protrepticon, it appears that at Bordeaux, at any rate, history determined the course of the reading and not vice versa, and that it was a school-subject to this extent that definite books were included in the course for its sake. For Ausonius prescribes for his grandson certain periods of Roman history: the conspiracy of Catiline, the twelve years after the events connected with Lepidus and Catulus, the Sertorian war.[1188] Among the encyclopaedic attainments of Staphylius, the Bordeaux teacher, is a knowledge of Livy and Herodotus.[1189] In the library of Ausonius there are

We must, however, be careful how we interpret ‘historia’. It was an elastic term. In the Technopaegnion, for example, Ausonius has a piece ‘de historiis’,[1191] but the subject-matter is almost entirely in the shadowy realm of mythology—the ‘history’ of Narcissus, Juno, and Philomela; and when the grammarians Crispus and Urbicus are said to be ‘callentes mython plasmata et historiam’, we feel that the juxtaposition of the two subjects is significant. ‘History’, Quintilian had said, ‘is akin to the poets, a sort of prose poetry.’[1192] The interest in the actual facts[212] of history and their meaning is small. A teacher like Ausonius takes very little notice of contemporary events. He refers vaguely to ‘tempora tyrannica’,[1193] and to the residence of Constantine’s brothers at Toulouse.[1194] But of all those contemporary events which we should have expected a man in Ausonius’s position to mention, the declaration as emperor in Gaul of the German Magnentius (350), the campaigns of Julian against the invading Franks (357-8), the crossing of Maximus to Gaul after having been declared emperor in Britain (383), and the affair of Arbogast and Eugenius (392)—these and many other contemporary events of importance do not appear in the pages of Ausonius.

If mythology was a danger for history on the one side, there was antiquity on the other. In the former the tendency was to wander away from facts altogether, in the latter there was a temptation to concentrate on bare facts too much. The historical facts which Sidonius sometimes enumerates sound very much like an inventory.[1195] Staphylius, who is noted for his knowledge of history, was steeped in the six hundred volumes of Varro,[1196] and the antiquarian Victorius dug deep into the musty documents of antiquity, spending on unexplored fields a keen intellect and a tenacious memory.[1197] Ausonius remarks that this meticulous encyclopaedism had made Staphylius neglect Cicero and Vergil,

Victorius had the scientific spirit, but no use can be made of it for history, which, to Ausonius, means something much nearer to the brilliance of the rhetor than to the patient study of a Victorius or a Staphylius, whom he regards with an airy smile[213] of contempt. The ‘prompta studia’ of the ordinary teacher who glibly talked the traditional stuff are separated with an air of respectability from the work of such cranks as indulge in dusty research.[1199] Rocafort rightly suspects that these students ‘irrisioni, sicut Ausonio, ita cunctis Burdigalensibus fuisse’.[1200] A practical sign of this is the low position which Victorius held: he was not even a grammarian but merely an assistant (subdoctor sive proscholus),[1201] poorly paid, ‘exili nostrae fucatus honore cathedrae’. The subsidiary position of history is indicated by Augustine when he says that it was an accessory to ‘Grammar’, and its mythological and artificial character is criticized in the remark that it was more worked at by grammarians than actual historians.[1202]

It is quite clear that history was studied in a very haphazard way. Even a teacher of sufficient prominence to deliver several[1203] panegyrics before the emperor, such as the Gallic author of the speech to Constantius, talks in a very vague way about some of the best-known statements of Herodotus. ‘Xerxes, ut audio, Persarum rex potissimus, pedicas iecit aureas in profundum....’ Unfamiliarity with Greek history is implied both on the part of the speaker and on the part of the audience. When Ausonius tells us that he wrote a Roman History for his son (ignota aeternae ne sint tibi tempora Romae[1204]), we get the impression that he did it largely because his name appeared in the list of consuls, and to urge his son to follow his footsteps.

It is a pity that the main part of the work is lost, but probably its author merely followed the tendency of the age to epitomize, as he did in the summary of Suetonius’s lives of the Caesars. The study of history, in fact, was merely ancillary: ‘ut aliquid nitoris et copiae orationi afferrent (sc. historiae studia) et aliquid materiae carmini.’[1207]

The models followed by the historians are chosen chiefly for their literary brilliance. Sallust is the most famous, and he plays a large part in Ausonius’s syllabus. Orosius was greatly influenced by Tacitus, and Arnobius by Lucretius.

The truth is that the ancients always regarded history more as an art than as a science. The books of Herodotus came to be called by the names of the Muses, Sallust and Tacitus strove predominantly after stylistic effectiveness, and even Thucydides gave oratorical technique a much more important place than would now be accorded to it. Rhetoric had cast her spell over the historians as over all the other intellectuals. Polybius alone resisted, and suffered, in consequence, at the hands of the critics. ‘The only ancient historian’, Norden writes of him,[1208] ‘who opposed with all his might the influence of rhetoric on the writing of history, and who, therefore, is most closely related to the modern point of view, belongs, according to the judgement of Dionysius of Halicarnassus ... to those dull authors whom nobody can bear to read through.’ So far had rhetoric asserted its sway over history, that Cicero, to whom we look for the sane and balanced conception of rhetorical education, could say that it was permissible for a rhetor to falsify history for the sake of style,[1209] and could describe the function of the historian as essentially rhetorical (unum ... oratorium maxime).[1210] A custom that gave special scope to this view of history was the insertion of imaginary speeches such as we find in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sallust, and Tacitus. And not only speeches, but letters and documents were set down in a fictitious form. Against this practice[215] Quintilian, like Polybius, had warned. The orator’s task, he maintained, was different from that of the historian. ‘Id quoque vitandum, in quo magna pars errat, ne in oratione poetas nobis et historicos, in illis operibus oratores aut declamatores imitandos putemus. Sua cuique proposita lex, suus cuique decor est.’[1211] But the warning was in vain. The historians were still trained in the rhetor’s school, and the rhetor frequently used historical subjects. When Ammianus wrote his history, he stood in the great tradition of Asiatic rhetoric. Thus history continued to wear the fetters of oratory.

As time went on these fetters became more and more galling. Just as the Athenians ceased to produce genuine history when their day of national greatness passed with the failing Empire and the inefficient democracy, leaving their learning and their civilization to be overgrown by the weeds of rhetoric and sophistic, so now the Gauls of the transition choked whatever history there was with an abundant growth of words. When the panegyric becomes fashionable in Gaul, we see how history develops into an instrument of imperial policy. Not merely beauty of form and the following of traditional rules, but the narrower purpose of praising the emperor becomes the goal. The facts of history are loosely and wildly used.[1212] Alexander the Great (with the old argument that he conquered merely ‘imbelles Asiaticos’), Hannibal, Augustus, are great names for these Epigoni to juggle with and to mingle promiscuously with the incense of adulation. Of Caesar it is said: ‘ille Graeculos homines adortus est, tu (Constantine) Subalpinos’.[1213] So far did the travesty of history go.

‘There’, said Eumenius of the Maeniana, ‘let the flower of our youth learn ... to praise the deeds of the mighty emperors—quis enim melior usus eloquentiae?’[1214] The school must teach them the proofs, varying with the different places, that establish the exploits of the prince; and as the news of victory comes hotly in from time to time, the teacher must point out the land concerned on the map—the double river of Persia, the parching fields of Libya, the curving ‘horns’ of the Rhine, the many-flowing mouths of the Nile. All these several exploits must mould the[216] mind of youth to a sense of imperial greatness, while he envisages the Pax Romana throughout the erstwhile troubled world, ‘for now, now at length we may look at the map of the world with joy, seeing in it naught that is foreign’.[1215]

This imperialistic use of history made men afraid to tamper with it, lest indiscretion should mar their fortunes. In the fifth century there was no longer a Domitian to put historians to death, but there was a tradition to bind and intimidate. When Leo, the minister of Euric, advised Sidonius to occupy himself with history during his banishment, the reply was: ‘turpiter falsa, periculose vera dicuntur’.[1216] In this sort of work, says Sidonius, the mention of the good wins scant credit, the mention of the great, unbounded enmity. ‘The writing of history’, he maintains, ‘seems to be the last thing a man of my class ought to undertake, for to begin it means envy, to continue it, trouble, and the end of it is hatred.’ The attitude of mind which made men write to order was spreading: Ausonius is an outstanding example. At the same time the rhetorical tradition in history was persisting. Sidonius wants Leo to undertake a history and the argument for his fitness refers merely to style: ‘nemo te celsius scripserit’.[1217]

The all-pervading imperial atmosphere, therefore, was not encouraging for the historian. We hear of histories begun but never finished. Symmachus tells of one Protadius, a nobleman, who set about writing a domestic history.[1218] Sidonius had been asked by Bishop Prosper to write a history of the war with[217] Attila, and actually set to work on it but gave it up.[1219] It was not only on the tax-payer that the Empire weighed heavily.

It may be, too, that the emperors interfered with the selection of the material for the historical course, such as it was. In the list given by Ausonius (Jung remarks) much stress was laid on the history of insurrections, and this was done by way of an object-lesson to the Gauls ‘quo magis rebellionem audientes detestarentur’.[1220] Whether this was actually the case, or whether the remark is a mere scholastic refinement, we cannot with certainty say. The imperial authorities were quite capable of such an act, but, on the other hand, the evidence is not conclusive. We are inclined to give the emperors the benefit of the doubt.

With the reaction against the superfluities of rhetoric in the Christian schools, there followed important results for history. Christian writers, as we have seen, reinforced and developed, especially in Gaul, the tendency towards chronography. This was part of the reaction against the domination of Form in historical writing, and it proved to be a valuable antidote from the historian’s point of view. But another and a greater service resulted. The Christian reaction, as we saw, affected thought as well as style, and the Christian historians, with their renewed interest in theology and philosophy, began to look for first principles in the series of events. The universality of the Christian religion made them look not only to single nationalities (though the Church fostered nationalism),[1221] but to the whole world. They tried to see all things in relation to their conception of the divine. Thus they tended to produce a philosophy of history, which, though often distorted and biased, set history on a much more markedly philosophic basis than before. As instances we may remember Augustine’s City of God, which was written to justify the fall of Rome, and the universal history of Orosius (who wrote with far less balance than his master Augustine), which attempted to prove that ‘there’s a Divinity[218] that shapes our ends’. Filled with the same note, and poignantly real, are the de Providentia Dei and the ad Uxorem, written in Gaul after the great invasion at the beginning of the fifth century had forced men to reconsider their philosophy of life.

We can hardly claim, however, that the Christian elementary schools were much affected by these contributions of Christianity. History was still very much of a subsidiary subject and its standard was low. Yet its extent was widened by the addition of Bible-history, which often, no doubt, ousted pagan history altogether; but the interest of men like Augustine in secular history, and the use they made of it to reinforce Christianity, would have prevented its disappearance from the more advanced Christian schools. Bible-history had the advantage, moreover, of not having an imperial policy behind it, and the greater simplicity and sincerity of the Christian ideal must have produced something nearer to historic truth (the absence of which Augustine deplores in the pagan schools) than the frills and draperies of rhetoric would generally allow. Bias and misrepresentation, born of the fervour of conversion, were responsible for a great many distortions, and the growing formlessness did much damage to the artistic side of history; but it cannot be denied that there was a greater desire for truth in the eager questions of the early Christian than in the smug complacence of the glib rhetorician.

History, in the hands of a skilful master, may become one of the very finest instruments of education. It has a legitimate use in inspiring patriotism. The deeds of a man’s ancestors become part of his individuality, and may be a source of high and noble action. Similarly, in proportion as a man realizes his national unity with his people, their history may become a motive and a driving force in his life. Now the Roman Empire set before the schoolboys of Africa and Italy and Gaul the events of the Roman republic and the deeds of the emperors. But the area was too wide. The Gallic schoolboy could not feel the value and the force of things so far distant, different from his own conditions, and so slightly connected with them. He could not feel that he was a responsible member of an Empire which could not[219] defend him. Moreover at this time nationality was coming to be more and more clearly realized under the influence of the Church:[1222] each province sought to uphold the specific doctrines of its leaders, and bishops waged fierce controversial warfare for the traditions of their country,[1223] especially in Africa. There is a dim individuality to be seen in Spain,[1224] and Salvian’s attacks on the Empire had an aspect which pointed to the beginning of Gallic nationality. The Roman Empire was beginning to feel the strain of national individuality. In these circumstances, history, being hedged in as we have seen by imperial persons and questions, must have become more and more artificial. The lack of citizenship which was so prevalent at this time increased for lack of an inspiring national or international ideal. And such an ideal might have come partly through a method by which history would have become more vivid and real to the children in the schools.

Another possibility that was missed was that of using history to see the logical and psychological connexion between events. With the narrow conception of the subject that was entertained at the time this was impossible. The only sort of causal chain that the student was induced to see was that, if you did not please the emperor, so much the worse for you. Not only the reason, but also the critical faculty, was thus left undeveloped in this age of adulation and prescription.

In the same way the moral significance of history was overlooked, and here again the cause was restriction. For in order to realize the influence of character on the march of events, a wide, and, if possible, a comparative study of the subject must be undertaken, and the values attached must not depend on a gilded imperial figure, but on ethical truth. Again, it was impossible to judge of the various aims and theories of men in the past age, to form some sort of opinion of the development of political theory, to be interested in truth and progress, as long as rhetoric, the handmaid of a rigid Imperialism, reigned supreme.

3. The Position of Greek

When Ephorus called the Celts philhellenes,[1225] he was doubtless thinking of the Greek influence which Massilia (as we have seen) so effectively spread in Gaul. This influence survived in the south as late as the seventh century and even later,[1226] but Massilia’s influence had long been waning. During the fourth and fifth centuries Latin had more and more become the language of the upper classes,[1227] so that the impetus to Greek studies from this quarter was becoming almost negligible. But tradition still counted for something. The Aquitanians, who boasted of the legend which connected their origin with Greece and Bordeaux, kept up commercial relations with Greece[1228] during the fourth century. It is they who are the most faithful to Greek and among whom we find most traces of Hellenism.

Now Julian had created a sort of contrast between Greek learning and Christianity. Hellenism came to be identified with paganism, and so tended to fall into disrepute as Christianity gained ground in the fifth century. The inscriptions show remarkably few traces of Greek. Where they occur they are usually very short, as in the case of the one found in the Alps near Vienne and belonging probably to the fourth century:

or else they refer to some foreigner, as the one at Trèves Οὺρσίκινος ἀνατολικός[1230] (i.e. from the land of the rising sun, eastern), who was probably one of those traders called in a general way ‘Syrians’.[1231] Conrad Celtes speaks of Greek inscriptions[221] in Gaul which he had seen there in the fifteenth century:

but these could not have been very many. Altogether we have only nine Greek Christian inscriptions in Gaul.[1232] Nor are the Greek remains on the pagan side more numerous. That Greek was declining is abundantly evident from other sources too. The Greek of Autun in the north shows signs of decadence even at the end of the third century. But it needed less than a century for the neglect to spread even to the Grecized south. Eumenius found it necessary in a formal and imperial speech to explain the word ‘Musagetes’ to his audience.[1233] He himself, of course, and many of his fellow teachers were familiar with Greek. Greek forms like ‘Heraclen’, ‘Pythiados’ are often used, and the orator of Oration VI, who was a Gaul, could quote Homer.[1234] Ausonius says in his quaint mythological style of Harmonius, professor of Greek at Trèves, that he was the only one who mingled Greek wine with Italian.[1235] But the subject was fast becoming a schoolmaster’s acquisition. By A.D. 376 it was not even that; for the emperors, in speaking of the appointment of a Greek rhetor, add dubiously ‘if any one worthy of the post can be found’.[1236] It was partly this neglect of Greek, no doubt, that made Julian refer so often to ἡ τῶν Κέλτων άγροικία.[1237]

As the grandfather of Eumenius was an Attic Greek,[1238] we cannot suppose that it was the un-Greek atmosphere of his surroundings, but rather personal disinclination or disability that[222] allowed Greek to dwindle in the schools. Ausonius says that his father’s Latin was halting:

and the verses are a commentary on the swiftness of the decline. Ausonius himself, in spite of his confession that he neglected Greek at school,[1240] is quite familiar with the language, and loves to display his knowledge of it—‘magnopere sibi videtur placere graecissando’.[1241] He drags it in pedantically in his epistles and the capers he cuts with it are merely annoying.[1242] But whenever he addresses the general public he finds it necessary to translate even the simplest words and phrases, as in the Ludus septem sapientum when the pantomime player (ludius) speaks.[1243] And he admits that Greek was not very successfully taught, though the Greek grammarians were industrious enough.[1244] There was not much enthusiasm for the language and its literature, as there had been in past times. To Citarius, the Sicilian teacher of Greek, Ausonius says that he would have gained as much glory for learning as Aristarchus or Zenodotus among the Greeks were it not that the scale of values had changed.[1245]

Still lower did Greek sink in monastic education. There was opportunity in the south for learning Greek, but it was exceptional to do so. About the middle of the fifth century Eugendus came as a scholar to the monastery at Condat on the Jura mountains, and the record says of him that[223] he learned the Greek authors as well as the Latin, such was his enthusiasm for study.[1246] But a certain elementary knowledge of Greek was necessary. The ‘Litterae formatae’, letters of commendation given to travelling priests by their bishops, according to the councils of Nicea (325), Laodicea (366), and Milevis (402), were sometimes drawn up in Greek. The decrees of the bishops were marked with certain Greek letters to indicate their authenticity. The work of Dositheus (Ἑρμηνευμάτων libri III), a sort of motley lexicon interspersed with extracts and dialogues, chiefly of a juridical character, was used by those who, like the Northern Gauls, found Greek difficult. We have referred to the low standard of the Books of Instruction written by Eucherius for his son Salonius, who was neither very young (about twenty) nor very stupid (he was made bishop, and could, as we have seen, ask profound theological questions). As far as the study of language is concerned, we need to remember that philology is a comparatively modern science: but such exposition (consisting mostly of mere translation) as that of talentum, obol, drachma, Theos, Christus, Hagios, Angelus, &c., under the heading ‘Quaestiones difficiliores’, must point to a surprising ignorance of Greek even among the intellectuals of the day.

It was not only in Gaul that schoolboys of that age found Greek difficult. Augustine had the same trouble in Africa, and his complaint in the Confessions is well known.[1247] He was by nature romantic, and instinctively hated drudgery. The hateful repetition of the elementary school ‘unum et unum duo, duo et duo quattuor’ bored him beyond words. What he liked was to read about the wanderings of Aeneas and the distress of Dido. But this was not the whole reason for his difficulty with Greek. The prevailing conception of discipline made things unpleasant. He was urged ‘saevis terroribus ac poenis’. Yet this does not explain the matter, for it applied to Latin as well. He himself could hardly understand what was wrong. Why should he have hated Greek so much? ‘Quid autem erat causae cur Graecas[224] litteras oderam quibus puerulus imbuebar, nec nunc quidem exploratum est’;[1248] and again ‘Cur ergo Graecam ... grammaticam oderam?’[1249] The difference between Greek and Latin could not lie in the different material of the books read, because they were Vergil and Homer; and if he liked Aeneas why did he not like Odysseus?

Rocafort,[1250] in his study of the life of Paulinus of Pella, is struck with the extent of Greek in the curriculum of the Bordeaux schools. ‘Here too we must note how great a place was given to Greek literature in that scheme of studies. For from the Greek poets, orators, and philosophers the children learnt poetry, eloquence, and philosophy at one and the same time as from the Latin; or rather, they learnt from the Greek first. To such an extent had the conquered captured the conqueror.... Of the public schools in Gaul, not a single one neglected Greek (publicarum scholarum, quae in illa provincia (Gallia) erant, non fuit una in qua Graecae litterae neglectae fuerint). The schoolboys of that time, he argues, must have been well versed in Greek ‘because in the schooldays of Ausonius there were those who could compare the Greek verses of the schoolmaster Citarius with those of Simonides, and the Greek speeches of Urbicus, also a schoolmaster, with those of Ulysses and Nestor’.[1251]

But the author forgets that the official acceptance of a tradition, the mere inclusion of Greek-texts in the syllabus, the mere following out of the traditional order, does not indicate thoroughness or efficiency. Paulinus talks of studying ‘dogmata Socratus’ at the age of five, but this does not mean that the wealth of Greek philosophy was opened up for the scholar. Indeed, we have evidence that the reverse was the case. And where we learn from both scholars and teachers (as we do) that the results of Greek study were barren and fruitless, it is surely wrong to draw from the prominence of Greek books in the school the inference that Greek studies were in a flourishing state. Moreover, if Paulinus seems to have appreciated his Greek, we must remember that he was born at Pella, and that[225] when he came to Gaul the household servants habitually spoke Greek to him.[1252] He is therefore a special case in the sense that Greek was his mother-tongue. The fact that the literary products of Citarius and Urbicus were compared to those of great men need not mean anything. We have seen with what elaborate and artificial courtesy the ‘litterati’ of Gaul treated one another at this time. They called one another Ciceros and Vergils on the slightest provocation.[1253] As for the argument that Greek was taught first, it may appear that this was to its detriment rather than in its interest. The quite abnormal difficulty which Augustine found in learning the new language (he compares it to gall embittering the sweetness of the poem) is not explained.

Nor can we very well account for Augustine’s distaste for the language by reference to national antipathies. ‘He detested the Greeks by instinct’, says M. Bertrand.[1254] ‘According to Western prejudice, these men of the East were all rascals or amusers. Augustin, as a practical African, always regarded the Greeks as vain, discoursing wits.... The entirely local patriotism of the classical Greek authors further annoyed this Roman citizen, who was used to regard the world as his country: he thought them very narrow-minded to take so much interest in the history of some little town.... It must be remembered that in the second half of the fourth century the Greek attitude ... set itself more and more against Latinism, above all, politically.’ This may be all very well for the educated citizen who could appreciate the considerations of politics and cosmopolitanism, but it hardly applies to the time of life at which we find the complaints against Greek, namely childhood. What we should expect from this thesis is that in later life, with a fuller realization of these things, the men of the West would have shunned Greek. Yet we know that it was precisely then that Ausonius took to Greek,[226] and Augustine, judging from his frequent references to Greek authors, must have done the same.

We need some other explanation, and we begin to find one when we realize that it was not so much the intrinsic difficulty of Greek as the way of teaching the second language that was the real problem. The relation of the one to the other is pronounced unsatisfactory by Paulinus of Pella, who was educated at Bordeaux. He complains that this ‘double learning’ is all very well for the more powerful minds to whom it gives a ‘double glory’, but in the case of the duller boy like himself this scheme is too difficult.[1255]

A proof of this unsatisfactory training we find in the verses he writes. There are many anacolutha, and, as his editor Brandes remarks, ‘metricae artis ita expertem se praestiterit ut nullam paginam foedis maculis non conspergeret’,[1256] though much of this must be attributed to the illness which put a stop to his studies at fifteen,[1257] just when he was beginning to make good progress.[1258]

What, then, exactly was wrong with the teaching of the second language? Partly it undoubtedly was (as has been indicated) that stupid concentration on the dry bones of grammar which persists up to the present day in the teaching of a strange language. The assumption is that learning a language must necessarily be a synthetic process in which you pass from the details to the whole, instead of being rather analytic, a process in which you pass from an appreciation of the general rhythm and sense and structure to the details of construction, which only have a meaning in so far as they are related to the larger thing. But there was a deeper cause. Augustine gets the root of the matter when he says that it was unnaturalness. The reason why Latin was not to him the drudgery that Greek was lay in the[227] fact that it came to him naturally and easily and pleasantly, ‘inter blandimenta nutricum et ioca arridentium et laetitias alludentium’. He learnt with an interest that was natural and delightful ‘not from lessons but from conversations with those in whose ears I longed to pour out all I felt’. It is interest and not force that produces the best results. ‘Hinc satis elucet’, he says, ‘maiorem habere vim ad discenda ista liberam curiositatem quam meticulosam necessitatem.’

Now naturalness means giving scope to the individuality, and developing that sane curiosity which can be elicited by proper methods from every child. Its practice in education, therefore, must mean a protest against the militaristic disciplinarian, and as such Augustine mainly intended it. But it contains, also, a reproof for the thoughtless and unscientific teacher who regards the child as a receptacle for external and ready-made ideas, a protest against the spiritual militarist who does not start with what there is in the child’s mind, but begins by introducing alien matter and perverting the natural resources.

This was exactly what Roman education had always done. It had taken the Latin-speaking child, and, instead of starting with his knowledge of Latin, it began as a rule by cramming in a foreign language, Greek. When Augustine speaks of the Greek studies ‘quibus puerulus imbuebar’,[1259] he is merely affirming that his school followed the ordinary Roman tendency to put Greek first. Greek influence had early captured the Roman schools, and had been widely spread at various times by Scipio and his circle,[1260] by Hadrian,[1261] and by Julian. That easy acceptance of the Greek example, especially in matters of culture, which Plutarch notices,[1262] called for the strong protest of patriots like Cicero on more than one occasion.[1263] But here, as in the[228] matter of rhetoric, the protest was unavailing. We can trace the hellenizing influence as the Empire goes on. Pliny is quite ready to admit the charge of ‘egestas patrii sermonis’ which Cicero is always denying,[1264] and Seneca writes at length on the subject (Quanta verborum nobis paupertas).[1265] To a certain extent, of course, this was true, but it is the spirit of the writer that is significant. Whereas Cicero tried to coin philosophical terms[1266] to enrich his language, the later writers merely criticize, or advocate the substitution of Greek. Suetonius quotes Cicero’s letter to Titinius: ‘I remember how, in our boyhood, a certain Plotius was the first to teach Latin. He obtained numbers of pupils ... and I grieved that I could not go too. But I was restrained by the opinion of the experts who thought that the intellect could be better nourished by a Greek training.’[1267] How far national pride had declined is indicated by a comparison of Cicero’s Dream of Scipio which Macrobius has preserved for us, and the notes of the commentator. In Cicero’s text the heaven depicted is pre-eminently for patriots; in Macrobius’s commentary entry into public life is a hindrance rather than a help.[1268] And the failure of patriotism meant increased readiness to adopt and ape the foreign thing simply because it was foreign. It meant that education came to be identified with a knowledge of Greek.

Pliny, in spite of his leaning to Hellenism, complained that in the legal profession young men begin with the civil suits of the centumviral court, just as in the schools they begin with Homer,[1269] and his comment is in the nature of a criticism: ‘For here, as there, they start with what is most difficult.’ Suetonius[1270] indicates the Greek tradition in Roman education when he says that grammar at first made no great progress, since the first teachers, who were at once poets and semi-Greeks, explained none but[229] Greek authors to their pupils, merely reading out to them an occasional Latin composition of their own. And Julius Capitolinus in the life of Maximinus Junior[1271] mentions the Greek training and the Greek grammarian in such a way as to indicate that Greek was taught first. This is distinctly maintained by Petronius:

Homer and Socrates and Demosthenes come first: then Latin literature adds the final flavour. Finally, it was Quintilian’s injunction that the orator must begin his education with Homer.[1273] Jung thinks that Latin and Greek were probably taught together; but he bases his argument on the slender proof that Crispus and Urbicus are called ‘Grammatici Latini et Graeci’.[1274]

This strong tradition was adopted in Gaul, largely, no doubt, on the authority of Quintilian. Paulinus, who went through the regular school-course at Bordeaux, started with ‘dogmata Socratus (Σωκράτους) et bellica plasmata Homeri’.[1275] In Ausonius’s scheme of studies for his grandson, Homer and Menander came first.[1276] And Jerome advises this order for the education of Laeta’s little daughter: ‘ediscat Graecorum versuum (of the Bible) numerum: sequatur statim Latina eruditio.’[1277] ‘L’Hellénisme’, says Jullian[1278] of the Bordeaux schools, ‘est la sauvegarde des esprits et le salut des âmes. C’est l’idéal de l’École,’ and again, ‘les œuvres d’Homère étaient les premières livres qu’on mettait aux mains d’un enfant, qu’il fût Grec ou Romain.’

This is the point, ‘Greek or Roman’. Educational experience has shown that a school-system must be elastic and accommodate[230] itself to the psychology and the needs of the child. Wherever there have been bilingual countries the problem has arisen. What is educationally the soundest principle of manipulating the language question? At first it was thought that the language of the higher culture should be enforced on all. It would save time and expense and trouble; moreover (so men argued), it would be in the interest of the child whose mother-tongue was thus disregarded, for he would have so much more time to learn the language of the ‘superior culture’. Your own language, they told the other party, you know already and your children need not spend time on it at school. Better, therefore, to have a uniform language throughout.

Now such a course (looking at it from the educational point of view) has been proved over and over again to be utterly unsound. The verdict of history has been to uphold, even at the cost of money and time and trouble, the principle of mother-tongue instruction. You must, as Augustine implied, start with what is natural to the child. If you begin with what is strange and has no connexion with his thoughts and speech, you are merely delaying his progress. You will, no doubt, develop his memory, but his thought will remain untouched. Inspectors in the schools of South Africa have reported repeatedly the case of Dutch children who have been started on English, that they read and spell perfectly, but are quite unable to explain the meaning of an English sentence. The consequence is that they take twice as long to pass the elementary standards as they normally would. The same has been found in Quebec and in India and Burma. Teachers and missionaries everywhere have discovered that the mother-tongue principle is the only fruitful one. They have found that where it is applied progress follows in an unexpected way. Once the child has learned to use, to analyse, to understand his own language, once his thought has been set going, he will learn the second language more quickly than the child who started with the second language. He is therefore ahead in three respects: his thought has been stimulated, he has learned his own language, he has learned another language, whereas the other has not been induced to think, knows his own language superficially and the second language imperfectly.[231] This can be substantiated by many cases from the experience of teachers in bilingual countries.

May we not, then, find the ultimate cause of the failure of Greek in the schools of our period, in this mistaken policy of starting with the second language? At a time when Latin was becoming more and more the household tongue of Gaul, and Greek proportionately strange, the effect of beginning with the latter could not but lead to sterile results. There seems to have been an idea, which we find also in Jung,[1279] that they should clear the second language out of the way first, ‘quo postea linguam suam plenius ac melius ... ediscerent’. They seem to have thought that whatever you learn last has the strongest influence, and therefore, if you must learn Greek, do so first, lest it mar your Latin. How far this peculiarly Roman and unpsychological attitude failed is a question which needs no further comment.

4. Art

In a survey of Gallic education art must be mentioned, but the space given to it must of necessity be very limited. Only in its possible effect on education can it be briefly touched on, and even then not as a school-subject, but rather as an influence behind official teaching.

The Gauls were by nature fond of art. That eager curiosity and excitability which Caesar noticed[1280] in them were the basis of an artistic temperament. Ausonius, in his epigrams, refers frequently to works of art,[1281] and his enthusiasm over the sculptured calf of Myron is remarkable.[1282] He maintains the advanced[232] doctrine that art is greater than nature. Of Myron’s heifer he says:

In the ‘poems added by Thaddaeus Ugoletus to the epigrams of Ausonius’ the same statue is referred to in three epigrams,[1284] and we have one ‘on the marble statue of Niobe’, expressing a certain amount of artistic appreciation. We hear of one of Sidonius’s friends who was a student of Vitruvius,[1285] and Patiens was much interested in the adornment of the churches of Lyons.

But there were two considerations that affected this natural love of art in the Gauls: the Roman element in them, and the fact that art, like literature, was becoming a matter of form. Just as beauty of style had once been a living and inspiring thing to the Greeks, but became in our period a juggling with phrase and rule, so art had lost its true and inner meaning. And just as the Greek influence of Massilia had encouraged the artistic instinct of the Gauls, so the harder Roman spirit proved an impediment. Sidonius illustrates this fact admirably. Surrounded by all the luxury of his time, he felt bound to include art products among his possessions, and liked to talk about them, with the comfortable assurance that it was a respectable and cultured thing to do. But he shows little real appreciation. Purgold has shown[1286] that most of the descriptions in his poems referring to art are borrowed from Claudian and other Roman poets. In his account of the castle of Pontius Leontius we have a list of artistic productions[1287] in the usual Roman encyclopaedic style, and similarly his acquaintance with sculpture is merely conventional. He knows the stock attitudes that sculptors give to philosophers,[1288] and this is the order of his artistic attainments.[233] In describing the churches of Patiens at Lyons[1289] and of Perpetuus at Tours,[1290] he is much more interested in the inscriptions[1291] he wrote for them than in the architecture. And this in spite of the fact that Perpetuus had employed a style in rebuilding the church at Tours in 470 which was new to Gaul, and had introduced a form of choir which was the point of departure from which the ‘chevet’ of French, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture developed.[1292] This lack of appreciation was part of the general decline in art at this time. In the triumphal arch of Constantine (early fourth century) part of the design is inserted from the arch of Trajan, and has, therefore, little original artistic value, while the other part, which is contemporary, illustrates the decay of aesthetic taste. Similarly, the contemporary part of the discus of Theodosius is merely profuse and conventional.[1293]

Art in Gaul, as at Rome, was largely produced by foreigners. The great statue of Mercury of Auvergne, the only Gallic piece of sculpture we know, was executed by the Greek Zenodorus, who sold his work for 400,000 sesterces, and was then called to Rome to make a statue of Nero. Of the statues found at Martres, near Toulouse, the oldest belonged to the first century, the more recent to the third and fourth. Why is it that so many were found in the same place? Lavisse thinks that the Christians, in the height of their anti-pagan fury, collected, mutilated, and threw them together in some out-of-the-way spot. Now it is commonly held, as we have seen,[1294] that the sort of marble of which they were made is the same as that of the neighbouring quarries, especially that of Saint-Béat on the Upper Garonne. It is therefore probable that they were produced in the neighbourhood, and the thought is suggested that perhaps, for all we know, they may represent some school of sculptors which flourished during our period. Of Gallic sculpture and its relation to Greek art, the influence of Alexandria, the centre of[234] Hellenistic art in the first century, the industrial art of Gaul and its relation to Greece, a sound and recent summary will be found in Lavisse.[1295]

The splendour of public buildings both at Trèves and at Autun is often expatiated on by the panegyrists.[1296] The descriptions show considerable interest in architecture, and this interest when presented externally in a building like the Maeniana must have had an educative value for those who attended the institution. But it was Christianity that accomplished most in this field. When Christian art began to develop it took for its first church model the basilica which was already seen in the chapels of the catacombs. We hear of bishops of Gaul who got workmen to come over from Italy in order to build churches after this style. The basilicas of Constantine and Theodosius, the sepulchral bas-reliefs at Rome, Ravenna, and Arles, and at many other places, are well known. ‘Before the fall of the Empire’, says Ozanam, ‘there was to be seen that Romanesque and Byzantine architecture which was soon to cover with monuments the shores of the Loire, Seine and Rhine, and which, from the broken arch of its vault, was to produce all the beauties of the pointed Gothic.’[1297] That the interest which Sidonius and his friends showed (though superficially) in architecture did not die with them is proved by the letter of Cassiodorus (at the beginning of the sixth century) to the prefect of Rome.[1298] He is anxious to have a competent man in charge of the public architecture. ‘Romanae fabricae decus convenit peritum habere custodem’, who must be an expert and a student: ‘Det operam libris antiquorum, instructionibus vacet.’ There were within the church a large number of narrow and uneducated zealots, who, like Martin of Tours, banished all art. ‘Ars ibi’, says Sulpicius Severus of Martin’s monastery, ‘exceptis scriptoribus, nulla habebatur.’[1299] Even the books were assigned only to the younger[235] brethren: ‘maiores orationi vacabant’. In his theory of education Augustine allows pictures and statues and such-like to be used for instruction. But, except for strictly scientific purposes, they must be looked on as otiose: ‘hoc totum genus inter superflua hominum instituta numerandum est, nisi cum interest quid eorum, qua de causa, et ubi et quando et cuius auctoritate fiat.’ Cassiodorus expresses the view of the more liberal and enlightened Christian teachers when he sees that art may be used to improve the works of the ancients by avoiding their mistakes, to clothe the new in the glory of the old.[1300] Similarly in Paulinus of Nola we find the motto of ‘Spoiling the Egyptians’ in regard to art, and the note of ‘Soli Deo gloria’. To art conceived in this way he has no objection; rather, he seeks it out with enthusiastic eagerness. ‘Videamus autem aedificantes quid de nostra fragili terrenaque substantia dignum divino fundamento superaedificare possimus, ut ipso principali lapide unificati lapides in fabricam templi caelestis optemur.’[1301] Thus, while there was much in the conception of Christianity at the time which made for a philistinism in art, there were also encouraging elements.

In the catacombs, too, we find traces of other artistic developments. Ignorant and untrained as those early Christians were, they had within them a strong emotion based on sincere conviction, and this emotion found an outlet in verse and painting, sculpture and mosaic, which, though often of the most rudimentary order, represented the beginnings of new artistic movements. A glass patera found at Cologne has gold figures on a white background, representing the vision of Ezekiel, and it belongs to the first few centuries of our era.[1302] Gilt glasses, frequently produced at Cologne, and decorated with the heads of Christ and the apostles, have come down to us from the early Christian centuries. There are also finely wrought and figured lamps and linens. But most striking are the ivories, of which a large number is now in the British museums. They are extremely beautiful and belong to a school of the fourth and[236] fifth centuries. Pilate washing his hands, Peter’s denial, Judas hanging himself, Christ bearing the Cross—such are the themes portrayed on them, possibly by Eastern carvers.[1303] At Arles there is a large collection of paintings which show that the passage of the Red Sea was a favourite subject. And Paulinus of Nola, in his long letter to Severus,[1304] shows clearly that it was a common thing to have paintings in the churches. He describes the prominent picture of Martin, ‘qui etiam in splendoribus sanctorum conspicua claritate praefulget’, and mentions another of himself on an adjoining wall. Numerous verses are addressed to Severus on the subjects of his pictures, and his skill is praised as worthy of his themes:

He describes various church pictures representing the Trinity, the Good Shepherd, the Baptism of Christ, the Crucifixion,[1305] and so on, in the church of Nola. Similarly the pictures in the church of Fundana are described. The elaboration of the scene strikes us as a harbinger of mediaeval art. In a single picture we have the themes of God in paradise, Christ and the Cross, the Spirit and the Father crowning Him, and the Day of Judgement.[1306]

This elaboration is found, too, in the architecture and in the general adornment of the churches. Paulinus describes arches, chambers, fonts, &c., in detail, as, for instance, those of the church at Nola.[1307]

Similarly the church at Fundana is described.[1308] Now the church was the place where the mass of the people met, and if we must recognize it at this time as the religious, the moral, and the intellectual teacher of the people, we must also recognize in its training, to some extent, an element of artistic education.

But the form of art that was most commonly cultivated by the men of this time was music. There is an epitaph of Vienne to one Nicias a citharoedus,[1309] and another of Nemausum to Avidius Secundus, a maker of musical instruments (musicarius).[1310] Gaul had inherited all the musical devices and appliances of Rome, and like Rome had used them chiefly for frivolous pleasures. But Sidonius notes that Theodoric II cared only for serious music. Hydraulic organs and dancing girls he dispensed with.[1311] Still more did the Christians dispense with such things. But if they would not and could not develop the instrumental side, they certainly made a speciality of singing. There is a doubtful but interesting legend which says that when the Empress Justina threatened to deliver the basilica of Milan to the Arians, Ambrose and his congregation spent a day and a night in the building. To pass the time he introduced hymn-tunes, already adopted by the Eastern Church. Augustine testifies to the impression which these hymns made on him at Milan. They were the means of bringing the truth home to him. ‘Quantum flevi in hymnis et cantibus tuis, suave sonantis ecclesiae tuae vocibus commotus acriter! Voces illae influebant auribus meis et eliquabatur veritas in cor meum, et exaestuabat inde affectus pietatis, et currebant lacrimae, et bene mihi erat cum eis.’[1312] He had doubts at first as to the propriety of such sense-seducing music, but his scruples did not long survive. He himself showed considerable interest in the art and wrote six books De Musica in a didactic strain.

Nor was the interest confined to him. Everywhere in the Christian schools choristers were trained. Jerome speaks of hymn-singing or chants in the schools, where the little ones sing of Pharaoh’s disaster in the Red Sea and the triumph of[238] the just.[1313] Claudianus Mamertus trained a choir for his brother, the Bishop of Vienne[1314] (instructas docuit sonare classes). Antiphonal singing (i.e. the older practice of the alternate singing of psalms) is often mentioned. Sidonius speaks of the monks and priests who chant psalms with alternating sweetness,[1315] and we have seen how Caesarius, when he became bishop, made his congregation sing in this way. In the clerical training singing came to be very important. It was forbidden by Gregory to take orders without it. Columban complains of the harsh discipline which accompanied it.[1316]

The beginnings of hymn-singing in this period have a particular interest for Gaul because they are connected with Hilary of Poitiers. We have Jerome’s statement ‘Hilarius in hymnorum carmine Gallos indociles vocat’,[1317] which seems to mean more than the remark he makes elsewhere[1318] that among the works of Hilary was Liber hymnorum et mysteriorum. For it suggests that Hilary tried to introduce hymn-singing into Gaul and did not meet with great success. This is supported by the definite statement of Isidore of Seville ‘Hymnorum carmine (Hilarius) floruit primus’.[1319] With Ambrose, Hilary shares the distinction of being a pioneer in this department. So important was their work that the Fourth Council of Toledo (633) in its Thirteenth Canon referred to their hymns (‘quos beatissimi doctores Hilarius atque Ambrosius ediderunt’). These hymns were regarded as having a sort of direct spiritual influence which effected the routing of a personal devil[1320]—a conception[239] which appears throughout the Middle Ages and in Faust. But they had their value for literature as well. Apart from the beauty of some of Ambrose’s hymns, the metres which they popularized formed a point from which the development of specifically modern metres can be traced. The influence of these hymns which the mass of the people, unprejudiced by an elaborate training in classical metres, daily heard and sang, must have been enormous in forming a public opinion on the technique of poetry. For there are few things that grip the popular imagination more than tunes of this kind.

Bulaeus[1321] states that Nicetius, Bishop of Lyons in the latter half of the sixth century, was the first to introduce hymn-singing into the church at Lyons. He refers to the epitaph which we find in the Bollandist records:[1322]

But the reference of Sidonius, quoted above,[1323] to the choir-singing in the church of Lyons in the fifth century, makes it probable that what is here referred to is either a revival of the old part-singing which had become usual in Hilary’s time, or else some specialized form of chant which was slightly different from the ordinary style. In any case we may safely conclude that Gaul played no unimportant part in the development of church-singing during the fourth century.

1. Gallic Students Abroad

We have traced the main branches of study that were pursued in Gaul, and the question naturally arises: ‘How far did the Gauls give and receive education outside the boundaries of their country?’

Modern parallels suggest, at first sight, that a liberal education would not have been considered complete in the provinces unless the student had attended the imperial universities. But Gaul at this time held so prominent a position in the educational and political world that the analogy fails. The professors appointed, both in Gaul and elsewhere, were frequently men who had had all their education in that province. There is no trace that Ausonius ever studied at Rome or Constantinople: he came into contact with the imperial house while studying at Toulouse, where Constantine’s brothers were staying.[1324] Minervius[1325] was a popular teacher at Rome and at Constantinople, where Arborius also was famous as a rhetor.[1326] The son of Sedatus, rhetor at Toulouse, taught at Rome:

Even the poor Victorius went to Sicily and to Cumae, presumably to study and to teach,[1328] while Dynamius became a rhetor in Spain.[1329] To some extent that wandering and eclectic spirit of learning which broke out anew in the movement that has been called ‘Die zweite Sophistik’, and which appears in[241] the professors and students of Philostratus, Lucian, and Apuleius, was still operative. But more important was the prominence of Gallic studies which not only created a demand for the teachers of Gaul in Rome and Constantinople, but drew men from Sicily[1330] for the comparatively unimportant position of grammarian.

Yet there was a certain number of Gallic students who went to study at Rome, chiefly in jurisprudence. It was there that Ambrose, born in all probability at Trèves about 340, studied law.

Of the conditions under which he and students like him studied the Theodosian Code has much to say. The decree of Valens and Gratian in 370[1331] prescribed that any provincial student who wanted to take a course at Rome must apply for leave to the provincial judges, and must, on his arrival in Rome, show his letter of permission, which mentioned the town to which the student belonged, his relations, and connexions, to the Master of the Census. The regulation about getting special permission from the governors of the provinces is an instance of the usual coercion of the individual in the Roman Empire; but it is also based on the rigid economic system of the emperors, and it may have had its good side in preventing students from coming over too young. Of a piece with it, and illustrating the utilitarianism of the Roman mind, is the rule that no one may remain in Rome as a student after the age of twenty, for no one must escape the public burdens longer than that (‘ne diutius his patria defraudetur, muneraque adeo publica declinent’).[1332]

During the student’s residence in the imperial city he stood under strict supervision and drastic discipline. He must state clearly what his special subject is so as to waste no time, and the Censuales must know where he lives and keep an eye on his studies. His public conduct and associations are carefully watched. Shows, theatres, and late banquets are specially mentioned as snares and delusions in the path of youth. Any one who behaves in unseemly fashion is to be publicly whipped and shipped home to his province. So far did the coercive Roman[242] spirit in education go. For the Romans always looked on education as a discipline which must serve some external end, and not (like the Greeks) as a development of the human spirit valuable for its own sake.

But while we cannot justify this drastic interference with individual development, we must remember that the strictness of the moral discipline was probably wholesome and necessary. The state of Rome, which Ammianus twice in his history describes with considerable care,[1333] and the account which Augustine gives of the ‘eversores’, or bands of rowdy students,[1334] in the contemporary African schools of rhetoric warrant such a supposition. We must reflect, moreover, that the custom and temptations of life in a metropolis were probably new to most of the provincial students and apt to have disconcerting results.

There is a curious inscription of Lyons which bears on the question of Gallic students abroad. It reads as follows:

It is evident that the translation must be something like this: ‘To the memory of Aulus Vitellius Valerius. He died at the age of ten while studying at Rome. His parents Nymphius and Tyche (set up this stone) to their beloved and only son.’ But how a boy of Lyons could reasonably be a student in Rome at the age of ten is less clear. We may arrive at an explanation by supposing that ‘X’ is wrong; more especially as the editors quarrel over it, some omitting it altogether, while others find a variant reading. On this assumption the only way of making it fit in with the facts known about Gallic students at Rome is to[243] read ‘XX’. The student would then have come over at the usual age, and have been in the last year of his studies at the time of his death. If the reading ‘X’ is adhered to, on the grounds that it is much the clearest, we suggest that ‘in studiis’ here means in the office of the imperial secretary ‘a studiis’, who did researches for the emperor when he had a difficult rescript to compose involving historical or legal research, and that the boy was a sort of Bodleian boy employed in fetching and carrying books.[1336] It is not inconceivable, however, that he may merely have been sent to a grammarian at Rome as a sort of junior boarder.

2. The Invaders

But in spite of the extent and the fame of Gallic studies there come to us, every now and then, hints of decadence in education. The fourth-century Ammianus says that even the few homes in which the studious atmosphere of earlier days had survived were in his day given over to vanity. All they abound in is the trifling of sluggish idleness, while they resound with voices and the wind-borne tinkling of the lute. The singer replaces the philosopher, and instead of the orator they summon the actor to give them amusement.[1337] In the fifth century we find Sidonius frequently referring to the decline of culture,[1338] and Paulinus of Pella says of his former studies that they have all ceased to flourish, because, as all know, they have fallen on evil days.[1339] Claudianus Mamertus, in the letter to the learned Sapaudus, after a eulogy on Greece as ‘Disciplinarum omnium atque artium magistra’, uses strong language about the failing culture of his age: ‘Bonarum artium ... facta iactura, et animi cultum despuens’, ‘deliciis et divitiis serviens et ignaviae et[244] inscitiae famula’, ‘pessum dedit cum doctrina virtutem’.[1340] There is no progress and creative genius: hardly any one wants to learn. It cannot be, he reflects, that the nature of the human mind changes: history testifies to the contrary. No, the truth is that there is no enthusiasm or application. ‘Nostro saeculo non ingenia deesse, sed studia.’ A mark of decadence is the barbarization of the Latin language.[1341] Barbarism and solecism are the tyrants that reign. Rhetoric (conceived in the Ciceronian sense) is too big for the petty compass of these present-day Epigoni. Music, geometry, and arithmetic call forth only their violent hate, and philosophy is utterly despised. The emphasis laid on oratory makes us suspect that the truth of some of his statements rather suffers from that ‘declamationum suavitas’ which he finds in Sapaudus.[1342] But in the main he was undoubtedly right. No matter how enthusiastic the fifth-century ‘litterati’ were about letters, the stern march of economic and political events inevitably made for a decline. At the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century the Salian Franks, who were destined to conquer Gaul, were established in Toxandria in the north; and in ceasing to recognize the supremacy of Rome they slipped away from Roman civilization and from Christianity.[1343] In the south the Goths were settled in the second Aquitaine and Toulouse under their own king in 419, and the step was significant of the decentralization of the Empire. More and more the Teutonic element encroached. ‘The process of history in the Western Empire during the period which lies between the death of Alaric (410) and the fall of Romulus Augustulus (476) is toward the establishment of Teutonic Kingdoms.’[1344] However imperialistic Gaul might be, the Goths in the south-west, the Franks in the north, the[245] Burgundians in Savoy, the Alemanni on the upper Rhine, and the Alani at Valence and Orleans in the middle years of the fifth century proved an effective barrier to the direct advance of Roman civilization. This civilization might advance, ultimately, through the barbarians: but meantime there was a transition period in which the shock of nations produced confusion and darkness. Euric aspired to dominion over Gaul, and by 476 he had attained his desire.

But more direct in their effect upon education than these large political movements, and swifter than the ‘barbarization’ of Latin as it passed into the Romance languages, were the invasions. Pagan and Christian alike testify to their horror. Rutilius Namatianus gives us a description of Gaul, piteously defaced by long wars, when he returned thither in 416 after having been prefect at Rome.

So terrible were the injuries inflicted that dumb objects seemed to urge him on when the violence of his lament abated:

This is the description of the spectator after the event. More poignant are the words of those who actually suffered:

All strongholds have given out against the barbarian arms—‘ultima pertulimus’. The author of the ad Uxorem writes in the same strain:

What is the good of the winding, gushing river, the woods which outlive the ages, the flowery meads which the season renews?

Added to these troubles from without was the internal commotion caused by robber bands like the notorious Bagaudae, who, in spite of periodical repressions,[1352] continued to exist.[1353] So formidable were they that in 407 Sarus, the general of Honorius, was obliged to buy from them his passage into Italy with a rich portion of spoil.[1354] The oppression of officials swelled their ranks,[1355] and in the middle of the fifth century they established a commonwealth which took a prominent part in the fighting in Spain at that time. Thus they were a constant source of disturbance, and the prolongation of this unrest is mirrored in the pages of Sidonius. In a letter to Lupus,[1356] he tells of a woman who has been carried away by bandits, the local Vargi who were the spiritual descendants of the Bagaudae. The attacks of the Goths towards the end of the fifth century made travelling dangerous, and Sidonius postpones writing to Eutropius on this[247] account.[1357] He sends his messenger only after he hears that ‘the treaty-breaking race’ (foedifragam gentem) has returned within its borders. We hear of a man who had fled with his family into the diocese of Bishop Censorius ‘depredationis Gothicae turbinem vitans’. Sidonius asks Censorius to treat him indulgently and to remit the glebe-dues in his case, so that he may have the whole harvest for himself.[1358] And so it went on. There were constant disputes,[1359] and whenever there was an invasion the Arvernians suffered: ‘huic semper irruptioni nos miseri Arverni ianua sumus.’[1360]

We can hardly wonder that this constant unrest made men despair of final peace. Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, writes to Aurelian in a pessimistic strain.[1361] The evils of the time, he thinks, are not really healed. At best they cannot be said to be more than kept within bounds, so that the peace which coyly appears is fictitious. The mind is lulled to rest with a false security only until there comes the recrudescence of a worse fear and the faltering sobs of grief. ‘Wherefore, my good friend, cease to hope for the end of our evils in the midst of fiery ills, and when a change comes and the storm has abated and the face of ever so small a calm shows itself, do not delight in the altered events; make use of them.’

The effect of this upon the social fabric, and so on education, is obvious. Even if, as Freeman thinks, the youth of Gaul were not much concerned in the defence of their country, which was left mainly to such allies as the Franks,[1362] education must have shared in the general disorganization of society. The material means of instruction was frequently removed by the impoverishment of families.

The roads, which had promoted education by linking up towns and spreading civilization, were now (as we have seen) uncertain and unsafe. Centres, consequently, which had previously teemed with life, now became isolated, torpid, despairing. Schools and books were neglected.

The sum total of education was decreased materially by the slaughter of children:

Yet there is the spark which kept alive the flickering torch of learning in the dark ages, the interest in literature surviving material ruin. For, in spite of the crash of circumstances and although times are sad, there is a feeling that the mind, even when oppressed by misfortune, should keep unconquered its interest in education:

There is much of rude and rushing violence in this ‘barbarization’ of Gaul. One of the writers likened it to a flood, and as far as the time at which he wrote is concerned he was right. But, regarded as a whole, the process was gradual and persistent. Gaul became de-Romanized ‘not as a valley is ravaged by a torrent, but as the most solid substance is disorganized by the continual infiltration of a foreign substance’.[1366] So Rutilius says of Rome, referring to Stilicho’s German followers:

But subtler still than gradual infiltration of foreigners in producing the decline of culture were the ideas and ideals that lay at the root of the imperial and the rhetorical systems. While on the one hand the Empire made the schools of Gaul its proper care, it was, by its economic system, calling into life the subversive power of Bagaudae bands.[1368]

While the schools were fostering education and creating a love of learning, they were at the same time killing the true spirit of education by the methods they employed. It was a matter of ends and ideals, and these we must now briefly consider.

3. Ideals

The rhetorical system of education, much praised and universally accepted, had many points in its favour. It seemed to be the only method, backed as it was by a great tradition. It was regular and well organized and stable by reason of its imperial support. It had produced many great men in the past and had the blessing of mighty names. That was enough for the fourth-century Gaul, who did not trouble to make distinctions. For the voices of protest had long died down, and this was the time of ‘Rhetorica triumphans’.

It was also undoubtedly a necessary means of training men for public speaking, popular because the emperor so substantially encouraged the imperial orator. The service of the State was a laudable aspiration. Moreover, the rhetorical exercises produced[250] ingenuity and nimbleness of wit. They were very laudable, also, for creating lucidity of thought, by insisting-on clear-cut arrangement in every theme. The ‘Panegyrici Latini’ are an example of this. To themselves they could have applied the saying of Voltaire: ‘nous sommes comme les petits ruisseaux: sommes clairs parce que nous sommes peu profonds’.[1369] They have neither the formlessness of the Fathers nor the complexity of Sidonius. Further, there was a good side to all the concentration on form that is so prominent in this period. It kept the language pure at a time when it was feared that Latin would be utterly barbarized.[1370] It preserved the grammar, and did much to preserve the form. When we find Rome tenaciously keeping for herself the teaching of law, and standardizing education by connecting the teachers directly with the emperor, it is because she realizes that the Latin language is the medium through which she rules, and that uniform obedience depends on her subjects uniformly understanding her commands.

There was also a physical aspect. Proper exercise of the organs of speech is regarded by medical opinion as comparable to walking and swimming. In modern times we lay stress on the exercise of all parts of the body, but tend to neglect the proper cultivation of elocution. If we developed it more we might hear less of such prevalent things as ‘minister’s’ and ‘schoolmaster’s’ sore throat. Medical evidence goes to show that better exercise of the vocal organs is far more effective than surgical remedies.

More important was the aesthetic side. We to-day have largely lost the sense of beauty in speech. Language has become to us for the most part a matter of the written word. We have ceased to feel as vividly as Isocrates did in his letter to Philip[1371] the need of the living voice to express the soul of which the letters are the body. The artistic joy which is found in the form and arrangement of words, in the sound given to them by a dramatic speaker, in the gestures of an accomplished[251] orator—this joy has largely disappeared. Yet we feel that it was there in the Latin panegyrists. We may say that theirs is ‘a tale of little meaning’, but we must admit that ‘the words are strong’—strong and beautiful. To read their productions is like looking on a piece of mediaeval art, a stained-glass window, where the figures are grotesque and the fable futile, but the richly blended colours bind us by their beauty. They knew and lived for the inner loveliness of words. And perhaps they would say to us: ‘You who read so widely and know so much, you think you understand. But in order really to understand you must hear the word pronounced so that its sound as well as its form calls up a picture to the mind. It is only when you conceive of the study of a language as artistic both in sound and in form that it becomes the key to poetry. Do you not sometimes neglect the sound in your studies?’

They might also have said that there was an inarticulateness in modern times which led to misunderstanding: that if men had been taught to express their thoughts better there would be less strife and less dumb agony. And to a certain extent they would have been right.

But against them we can urge serious charges. The simplest and most fundamental objection to the rhetorical system is that it neglected the search for truth. It thought too much of means and too little of ends. Lessing stated in his Laocoon the eternal aim of science. ‘The ultimate object of the sciences is truth. Truth is necessary to the soul, and in the satisfaction of this essential need it is tyranny to employ even the slightest check.’[1372] The words apply to the education of our period. For the teachers of that time did not make truth their chief end, and how much tyranny there resulted for the soul of man we have had some opportunity of seeing.

The ancients felt this themselves. They recognized the force of Seneca’s dictum: ‘Scholae non vitae discimus’. Tacitus had criticized the system in his Dialogue, and Petronius is very outspoken in his condemnation. He considers that the school[252] produces in its pupils not wisdom but folly, seeing that what they hear or see there has no bearing on practical life. ‘It is for ever pirates standing in chains on the beach, tyrants writing edicts in which they order sons to cut off their fathers’ heads, oracles to avert a pestilence demanding the sacrifice of three or more virgins, verbal honey-balls, all words and acts sprinkled, as it were, with poppy seed and sesame. Children brought up in these surroundings can no more be sensible than those who live in a kitchen can be fragrant.’[1373]

The school-exercises which Aphthonius prescribed clearly illustrate these objections. The artificiality of obeying all the rules at all times for a certain type of subject is apparent even in the models. In a little essay on ‘Poverty’, introduced by two verses of Theognis, the poet, under the heading ἐγκωμιαστικόν, is praised at length for seeing what an exaggerated emphasis poets lay on myths, and turning to serious moral teaching.[1374] He is also praised for observing metrical rules, which is at any rate less harmful than the sentiment expressed in the text that it is better to die than to be poor. Under the heading ‘cause’ it is alleged that poverty is incompatible with virtue. Those who are rid of poverty grow up fine men and do glorious deeds and entertain the poor. Look at Irus, the beggar (under the heading παραδείγματα)—he was so poor that he had even to change his name: for formerly he was called Arnaeus. And think of all the woes of Ulysses himself when he came home in the disguise of a beggar. How terrible it is to be poor! For all this a verse must be found from some poet (under the heading μαρτυρία παλαιῶν) in order to give the seal of respectability. This quotation is generally chosen quite irrespective of the main theme, Euripides being quoted on this occasion to the effect that poverty cannot change nobility of birth.

Truth is made to consist in the nature of the charge brought, and not sought in the human facts of the case. Thus, in the stock example of a speech against a tyrant,[1375] we have a ‘conjectural[253] attack on the man’s past life’, and an ‘exclusion of pity’ worked up with the utmost artificiality. Ingenuity, not truth, is the object. And the same can be said of the ‘Encomium’, in which we find the germ of the panegyric. Of all these exercises those which fall under the heading of ‘Description’[1376] are the only ones which possess any kind of naturalness.

The reflection of this unnaturalness is abundantly seen in the literature of the day. Almost any work of Ausonius could be taken as an illustration. He consciously opposes grace to strength, and the result is disappointing. ‘Si qua tibi in his versiculis videbuntur ... fucatius concinnata quam verius, et plus coloris quam suci habere, ipse sciens fluere permisi, venustula ut essent magis quam forticula.’[1377] He takes nineteen lines to express the number six,[1378] and fourteen lines to say that there were thirty oysters.[1379] Such a ‘numerum doctis involutum ambagibus’ seems to have been a common way of expending ‘poetic’ energy. Then, as if this were not enough, he goes on to expound the ‘doctae ambages’ in the baldest possible way (Septenis quater adde et unum et unum, etc.) in twelve more lines. Similar examples could be indefinitely multiplied. Nor were they just the whim of an idle humour. We meet them everywhere. Bishop Sidonius at the age of fifty says, in a serious estimate of a man’s poetic abilities, that he was good at ‘echoing’ and ‘recurrent’ verses, and at ‘anadiplosis’[1380] (i.e. resuming a verse with the end phrase of the previous one). Asked by a correspondent as to recurrent verses, he gives a stock example (antiquum), which shows that the literary practice was of some standing. The point of such a verse was that it could be read backwards letter for letter without altering the sense:

while in a ‘versus echoicus’ the first part of the first verse was the same as the second part of the second. He adds another kind which he had composed while delayed by a swollen river, and here the merit was that the words could be read backwards[254] retaining the order of the letters in each word, without prejudice to the sense:

His appreciation of Remigius’s declamations show the same emphasis on formal and external merits.[1382] The point is not so much that responsible poets went in for writing verses of the kind quoted, but that they attached so much importance to them.

It is striking how many of Ausonius’s poems have to do with the dead[1383] or the unreal.[1384] Even his letters are full of artificialities. In the same way Sidonius and Avitus of Vienne are always writing epitaphs. Their interest is with the past, of which they are the conscious imitators;[1385] and if Ausonius was genuinely interested in the living present when he wrote the Mosella, that is his one poem which has commended itself to readers of every age. In general, we may say that the ‘litterati’ of this time imitated the past in style and language to a degree that destroyed individuality. Though Sidonius criticizes Titianus for copying people not of his age,[1386] his own writings abound in archaisms.[1387] He praises Claudianus Mamertus[1388] and Leo, the minister of Euric,[1389] for their imitation of antiquity. Claudianus Mamertus recommends as models of style Naevius, Plautus, Cato, Varro, Gracchus, and ‘Chryssiphus’, Fronto and Cicero, adding that even the modern writers of note did not read the moderns: attention must therefore be concentrated on the ancients, for they are the source of modern merit.[1390] Nor was this merely theoretical advice. How extensive the worship of the ancients was, from the scrupulous imitation of Cicero in Eumenius and the[255] panegyrists[1391] to the plagiarism of Vergil by everybody, has been fully demonstrated by the various editors.[1392] All this meant a turning away from the living language, the creation of a scholastic tongue, the intellectualization of education. So, when Greek literature lost its vitality, we find a rigid and senseless Atticism appearing in Dionysius of Halicarnassus during the first century B.C.; the dual was brought up from the underworld; and language, instead of developing its resources, was stretched on the Procrustes-bed of a standard that had ceased to be natural.[1393] So, too, when the living genius of Petrarch and Dante arose, it broke away from the half-dead Latin and turned to Italian. The problem here involved arises to-day in many countries. In Holland the growing Flemish Movement headed by Stijn Streuvels and others has compelled recognition; in Norway there is a similar movement; and in South Africa the Education Department is increasingly recognizing the use of Afrikaans in the schools. For the more education disregards the form of the language that lives in the hearts of the people, the less will it understand and be able to teach them effectively. In other words, an undue archaism means artificiality, means a wandering from the truth.

The result was (as we may judge from the complaints of the critics) that the product of the rhetorical system often found himself in the position of a fire-brigade without a fire. He had all the machinery, and had used it all in mock alarms, but had missed that contact with reality which makes for understanding. He had come to look on facility of speech (to which the Gauls were particularly prone)[1394] as an end in itself. He had been taught to think that everything was a matter of rule,[1395][256] and often found too late that life demanded a different and a deeper method.

Why was it that the rhetorical system, with all its virtues, failed in this way? To put it quite shortly, we should say that it failed because it did not aim at the best. Ennodius indicates its aims in two brief sentences. ‘Nos vitae maculas tergimus artis ope’[1396]—polish, style, external refinement; ‘Qui nostris servit studiis, mox imperat orbi’—imperial service. These were the two main objects, both of them good and desirable in themselves, but not the highest. And it was because the abuse of these two aims led to a conflict between them and the highest aim, truth, because the rhetorical system was content with a second best[1397] which could not remain uncorrupted except in connexion with the best, it was for this reason that, ultimately, failure inevitably ensued. Other and more material causes may easily be argued, but this is the inherent and fundamental cause.

How far did the Christian ideal prove a truer inspiration to education? It has been remarked that paganism had no idea of progress. The note of pessimism in Roman literature is typified in such passages as Horace’s:

But with the Gospels, when the watchword of ‘Estote perfecti’ turned men’s backward glances forward to the light, the doctrine of progress began to establish itself more firmly.[1398]

Now progress depends on the truth and the vividness of the ideal in view, and there can be no doubt that the Christians of our period felt their ideal as a much more living and constant inspiration than the pagans felt theirs. Paulinus of Pella illustrates this. His poem is alive with sincere devotion, and the usual dryness of the author draws a vigour and an inspiration from religious emotion which makes the work, in spite[257] of its lack of literary formalities, compare favourably with the Panegyrists or the semi-Christian writers.[1399] His ardour and singleness of purpose[1400] are also seen in the De Providentia and the Ad Uxorem. In spite of all the sufferings of the ten-years’ slaughter (caedes decennis), there is the clear-eyed calmness of one who sees an ideal whose brightness and steadiness are undimmed by the storm.

Nor is the result of this a sighing resignation: the ideal inspires vigorous action:

and throughout there is the note of joyful confidence, the certainty of ultimate victory:

All this is found again in the Ad Uxorem. In spite of fire, torture, chains, the final note is a cry of joy:

There can be no doubt that these men were genuine. We feel without being told that the verses are

The ideal was deeply felt and widely spread. Even Sidonius could say of Lupus: ‘tota illi actionum suarum intentio ... Christus est’.[1405] There was a conscious strength in the idealism of these men which counted for much. ‘The Roman world crashes into ruin’, wrote Jerome, in another connexion, ‘yet our heads are upright and unbowed.’[1406]

This ideal had its effect on oratory. When Augustine wrote the Christian theory of eloquence,[1407] though he bases the technical part of it entirely on Cicero and though his sermons abound in parallelism, homoioteleuta, and even word-play, yet he made a great advance in declaring that eloquence was not dependent on rhetorical rules but based, rather, on genuine knowledge and true wisdom.[1408] He felt keenly the lack of truth in the rhetorical system. Of its teachers he says that truth was found constantly on their lips but never in their lives: ‘Dicebant Veritas et Veritas, et multum eam dicebant mihi, et nusquam erat in eis, et falsa loquebantur.’[1409] And he laid down his professorship of rhetoric so that he should not be guilty of selling material for the madness of the youths who studied the foolish falsehoods and practised the quibbling disputations of the rhetorical system.[1410] In the Principia Rhetorices he lays stress on understanding the case,[1411] and maintains that the end of oratory is not merely ‘bene aut vere dicere’ (as the later rhetoricians certainly[259] thought), but ‘persuadere’.[1412] Thus he brings out the Christian conception of the essential relation of oratory to man—an ideal which Isocrates and Cicero had preached, but which had gradually been lost.

Similarly, in his theory of Christian education, the influence of the ideal is seen. In his scheme of learning, philosophy must make us understand ‘the order of things’, and help us to distinguish two worlds and Him who is the Father of the Universe.[1413] The whole perspective is determined by the Divine. Everything is related to it. And it is not a mere philosophical abstraction but a real and life-giving centre.

Jung, having described the barrenness of pagan studies, says: ‘Studia eadem in scholis clericorum’,[1414] and proves from Isidore and Gregory that the old Roman scheme of education was accepted throughout by the Christians. But there is something more to be said. The Christian schools, in so far as they did not fall into utter formlessness, accepted the scheme of Martianus Capella and of pagan education. But, in many cases at any rate, there was a change for the better in method and spirit. The Christians used their rhetoric in a living cause, their dialectic to probe questions crowded with contemporary interest; their Livy and Sallust to develop a philosophy of history, their literature to understand and spread the cause of truth for which they had been martyred. The pagans, on the other hand, used their rhetoric for fictitious cases (falsas lites), their dialectic for ingenious trifling, their history as the handmaid of rhetoric, their literature to imitate Cicero or Fronto or Pliny, to write freakish verses, or to flatter the emperor. A sign of the advance made by the Christians in the search for truth is that criticism begins to awake in a world on which traditional ideas had lain

Vigilantius in Gaul criticizes the rites of the Church and[260] Pelagianism, Priscillianism, the questions about the spirituality of the soul—all point to a new stimulation of the intellect.

Yet Christian education also failed in its search for truth. As we have seen, the exigencies of the time drove its exponents to a zealous narrowness whose watchword was stated by Claudianus Mamertus, when, in his Contra vanos poetas, he said that the divine alone must be studied:

By limiting the meaning of ‘divina’ to dogma, the Church imposed fetters on the seeker after truth which, though not very prominent in our period, became exceedingly galling in the times that followed. Eucherius (to take a final example) writes to Valerian appealing to him to lay aside the love of the world and the study of worldly philosophy, to turn to the study of true piety and true philosophy.[1415] The key-note of the letter is: ‘Quid enim prodest homini si mundum universum lucretur, animae vero suae detrimentum patiatur?’ with a special connotation of ‘mundum’. The incompatibility between secular and sacred literature is emphasized, and illustrated by edifying stories about Clement, Gregory, and Paulinus of Nola. The conclusion is: ‘Quin tu, repudiatis illis philosophorum praeceptis ... ad imbibenda Christiana dogmatis studia animum adicis?... In illis namque eorum praeceptis vel adumbrata virtus vel falsa sapientia....’ The position is not that the philosophers should be read and then rejected, but that they should not be read at all.

Thus, the leaders of Christian education in Gaul, however excusable their attitude at the time, established that regrettable dichotomy between secular and sacred knowledge which has been the bane of succeeding ages. While, on the one hand, they made an advance towards truth by stimulating thought and criticism, on the other, they did not, perhaps could not, succeed in recognizing that truth is one and indivisible, and that her seekers know of no such divisions.

And so we are forced back on our ever-recurring problem: how is man, his emotions and environment being what they[261] are, to attain to the scientific attitude of mind? Socrates long ago saw the difficulty of having a body which fills us with ‘passions and desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and foolishness’, and makes it impossible for us to be single-minded in our pursuit of the truth.[1416] Yet he, and the great teachers of mankind throughout the ages, have insisted with an earnestness that reached to martyrdom, that such an unswerving and disinterested quest is the one result in education that truly matters, that it is the condition of progress and the criterion of culture. And if the way is long and the battle fierce, we must choose the dust and heat rather than lose sight of the ideal. καλὸν γὰρ τὸ ἆθλον καὶ ἡ ἐλπὶς μεγάλη.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Cf. Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, pp. 31 ff.

[2] e.g. Bury, Roman Empire, Introd., p. vii; Freeman, Western Europe during the Fifth Century, p. 260.

[3] Cf. Lavisse, Histoire de France, I. ii. 325 and 326, ‘Chrétiens et païens s’accordaient pour reconnaître ‘en lui un sauveur’.

[4] Pacatus (Pan. Lat. ii. 28) celebrates his loyalty, while Prosper condemns it (Bury-Gibbon, iii. 138). Hodgkin, i. 380, accepts his fidelity.

[5] ‘An ego nunc receptas virtute tua Gallias, barbariam omnem subactam, pergam quasi nova et inaudita memorare? Quae in hac Romani imperii parte gloriosissima sint famae laude celebrata....’ Pan. Lat. iii. 3. Baehrens reads sint, though the indicative would seem more natural.

[6] Ibid., § 7.

[7] Ibid., § 4.

[8] ‘Tu, tu, inquam, maxime imperator ... extincta iam litterarum studia flammasti, tu philosophiam paulo ante suspectam ... non modo iudicio liberasti sed amictam purpura, auro gemmisque redimitam in regali solio conlocasti.’ Ibid., § 23.

[9] The phrase is Freeman’s. Syagrius fled to Toulouse after the battle of Soissons (486). But he was pursued by Alaric II, whose protégé he had been, and handed over in chains to the victorious Franks. Greg. Tur., Historia Frankorum, ii. 27.

[10] Jullian, ‘Les Premières Universités Françaises’, Rev. internat. de l’Enseignement, 1893.

[11] Freeman, Historical Essays, vii. 164.

[12] Ammianus, xv. 9. 7 (ed. Gardthausen). Cf. Plut. Solon, ii. 15; Pausan. x. 8. 6 (ed. Dübner). So Isidore of Seville, Migne, Patr. Lat. lxxxii. 537. Cf. Mela, ii. 77.

[13] Athen. xiii. 576a (ed. Kaibel).

[14] Lucan, Phars. ii. 298; v. 53 (Phocis), as against the majority, e.g. Strabo, iv. 1. 5 (Phocaea).

[15] Thuc. i. 13. 6; Seneca, Ad Hel. vii. 8; Silius Ital. xv. 168 ff.; Jerome, Praef. Lib. II, Ep. ad Galat., &c.

[16] Head, Historia Numorum (1911), p. 7.

[17] Pro Fonteio, 15. 34 ‘Urbs Massilia ... fortissimorum fidelissimorumque sociorum’. Cf. Phil. viii. 6. 18, 19 for a glowing tribute to Massilia’s friendship.

[18] Strabo, iv. 4. 5 τὴν πρὸς Ῥωμαίους φιλίαν, ἦς πολλὰ ἄν τις λάβοι σημεῖα.

[19] Ammianus, xv. 11. 14. Cf. Justinus (following Trogus), Hist. xliii. 4 ff. (ed. Benecke), on the traditional friendship of Massilia with Rome at the time of the battle of the Allia.

[20] Liv. xxi. 20, 25, 26; Polyb. iii. 95.

[21] Caesar, Bellum Civile, i. 34. Cf. Dio Cassius (ed. Boissevain), xli. 19; Paneg. Lat. (ed. G. Baehrens), vi. 19, 3; Orosius, vi. 15. 6, 7 (ed. Zangemeister).

[22] Caesar, Bell. Civ. ii. 22; Dio Cassius, l.c.

[23] Jullian, Hist. de la Gaule, i. 216, 217, 407.

[24] Justin, xliii. 5. 2; Thuc. i. 13. 6.

[25] Desjardins, Géograph. hist. de la Gaule Romaine, ii. 148.

[26] Strabo, iii. 2. 9 τὸν δὲ κασσίτερον ... καὶ ἐκ τῶν Βρεταννικῶν δὲ εἰς τὴν Μασσαλίαν κομίζεσθαι.

[27] ‘De Lapidibus’ in Bouquet’s Recueil des Hist., p. 654.

[28] Plin. Nat. Hist. xviii. 7. 12.

[29] Mela, iii. 2. 17.

[30] Pro L. Flacco, 26. 63 ‘Neque vero te, Massilia, praetereo ... cuius ego civitatis disciplinam atque gravitatem non solum Graeciae, sed haud scio an cunctis gentibus anteponendam iure dicam’. The Rhodians in Livy (xxxvii. 54) say that they have heard that the Romans respect and honour the Massilians as much as though they were the centre of Greek culture (umbilicum Graeciae).

[31] Cf. Strabo, iv. 1. 5.

[32] Strabo, iv. 1. 5. Cf. Jullian, ‘Les Premières Universités Françaises’ (Rev. internat. de l’Enseignement), 1893.

[33] ‘Sedem ac magistram studiorum ... habuit, locum Graeca comitate provinciali parsimonia mixtum ac bene compositum’, Tac. Agr. 4. Augustus sends L. Antonius, his sister’s grandson, to Massilia, ‘ubi specie studiorum nomen exilii tegeretur’, Tac. An. iv. 44.

[34] Casina, V. iv. 1.

[35] Val. Max. ii. 7.

[36] Strabo, iv. 1. 5.

[37] In later times it fell into effeminacy. Justin, xii. 523 c; Polyb. iii. 79; Liv. xxii. 2, xxxvii. 54.

[38] Livy, xxxvii. 54.

[39] Mela, ii. 77.

[40] Pol. 1321 a 37; Strabo, iv. 1. 5.

[41] Justin, xliii. 4. Cf. Macrob. Somn. Scip. ii. 10. 8.

[42] Strabo, iv. 1. 5 πάντες γὰρ οἱ χαρίεντες πρὸς τὸ λέγειν τρέπονται καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν, ὥσθ’ ἡ πόλις μικρὸν μὲν πρότερον τοϊς βαρβάροις ἀνεϊτο παιδευτήριον, καὶ φιλελληνας κατεσκεύαζε τοὺς Γαλάτας (Gauls), ῶστε καὶ τὰ συμβόλαια Ἑλληνιστὶ γράφειν.

[43] Ammianus, xv. 9.

[44] Justin, l.c.

[45] Livy, xxxviii. 17.

[46] Strabo, iv. 1. 5 σοφιστὰς γοῦν ὑποδέχονται τοὺς μὲν ἰδίᾳ, τοὺς δὲ κοινῇ μισθούμενοι καθάπερ καὶ ἰατρούς.

[47] Lucan, iii. 592.

[48] Cf. Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Paris. 19.

[49] Controvers. ii. 5. 13.

[50] Ibid. ii. 6. 12.

[51] Moralia, 897 (ed. Dübner).

[52] Gräfenhan, Gesch. der Philol. i. 276.

[53] Monnard, de Gallorum oratorio ingenio, p. 3; Wolf, Prolegom. 39, p. 174.

[54] Isidore, Etymolog. xi; Jerome, Prolog. in Lib. II, Ep. ad Galat., both of them quoting Varro.

[55] e.g. Neapolis (Napoule), Antipolis (Antibes), Athenopolis (Antea).

[56] Histoire littéraire de la France, i. 59, 60.

[57] ‘Compulit ut laicorum popularitas psalmos et hymnos pararet ... alii Graece alii Latine prosas antiphonasque cantarent’, Vita Caesarii, Migne, Pat. Lat. lxvii. 1008.

[58] Jung, Romanische Landschaften, 210. Cf. also Inscriptions, Le Blant, Nouveau Recueil, 60, 150, 326, 374, and L’Épigraphie chrétienne, p. 43.

[59] Justin, xliii. 3.

[60] Cf. Jullian, Hist. de la Gaule, iii. 33 ff.

[61] Suet. Tib. 4. Cf. C. I. L. xii. 689.

[62] Lavisee, Histoire de la France, I. ii. 210.

[63] Cf. Holmes, Christian Church in Gaul, 293, 381.

[64] Justin, xliii. 5. Cf. Strabo, i. 41.

[65] Recueil des Hist., Introd., xxv.

[66] Keil, Gram. Lat. i. 202.

[67] B. G. vi. 17. Cf. Minuc. Felix, vi. 1; xxx. 4.

[68] C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1, 2606. Cf. further C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1, 2607, 2608, 2609, Chalon-sur-Saône; 2631, 2636, near Autun; 2830, N. of Prov. Lugdun.; 3011-13, Melun; 3020, Troyes; 3183 ff., Berthouville; 3250, Caleti.

[69] C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1, 1125.

[70] C. I. L. xiii. 1. 2, passim.

[71] C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1, 3100.

[72] That the Gallic Mercury resembled his Roman namesake in this respect is proved by the fact that one of the names of the Celtic Mercury was Visucius, which comes from the root VID = know (Robert and Cagnat, Épigraphie de la Moselle, p. 59). And Caesar noted as one of the characteristics of the Gallic Mercury that he was ‘omnium inventorem artium’ (Bell. Gall. vi. 17), though in later times he comes to be connected chiefly with commerce (cf. Caesar, l.c.). See Daremberg-Saglio.

[73] Polit. 1269 b 26, 1324 b 9.

[74] Var. Hist. xii. 23.

[75] Ἐμπειρίᾳ τῇ ἐς τὰ πολεμικὰ ἀπέδεον. They charge μετὰ οὐδενὸς λογισμοῦ αθάπερ τὰ θηρία, Pausan. x. 21.

[76] Strabo, iv. 4. 4.

[77] Ael. Var. Hist. xii. 23.

[78] Athenaeus (quoting Posidonius), vi. 46 (ed. Kaibel).

[79] v. 31.

[80] B. G. vi. 13. 4.

[81] Hist. Litt. i. 41, 42.

[82] ‘Disciplina in Britannia reperta atque inde in Galliam translata esse existimatur, et nunc qui diligentius eam rem cognoscere volunt plerumque illo discendi causa proficiscuntur’, Caesar, B. G. vi. 13. 11.

[83] Caesar, B. G. vi. 14.

[84] Desjardins, Géog. hist. de la Gaule, ii. 214, note.

[85] Caesar, l.c., and Diodor. v. 28.

[86] Caesar, l.c., and Diodor. v. 31.

[87] De Divin, i. 41 (90).

[88] iii. 2 (19).

[89]

Solis nosse Deos et caeli numina vobis

aut solis nescire datum: nemora alta remotis

incolitis lucis.—Phars. i. 452 ff.

[90] Hist. Litt. i. 41, 42.

[91] ‘Huius Gallorum philosophiae, quam Valerius Maximus (ii. 6. 11) “avaram et faeneratoriam” nuncupat, tenebras dissipavit lux e Graecia allata in Phoceensium coloniam, Massiliam’. De Gallorum Orat. Ingen. 2.

[92] Cambr. Mediaev. Hist. i. 185.

[93] Tac. Hist. iv. 54.

[94] Cf. Jung, De Scholis Rom. in Gall. Comata. 2.

[95] ‘Druidarum religionem apud Gallos dirae immanitatis, et tantum civibus sub Augusto interdictam, penitus abolevit (sc. Claudius)’, Suet. Claudius, xxv. 5.

[96] De Caes. iv.

[97] Nat. Hist. xxx. 1. 4 ‘Namque Tiberii Caesaris principatus sustulit Druidas’.

[98] Nat. Hist. xvi. 249; xxiv. 103; xxx. 13.

[99] Script. Hist. Aug. xxvi. 44 ‘Sciscitantem utrum apud eius posteros imperium permaneret’.

[100] Ibid. xxx. 14.

[101] Hist. de la Gaule mérid., i. 541.

[102] Lavisse, Hist. de la France, I. iii. 385.

[103] Caesar, B. G. vi. 14.

[104] iv. 1. 12.

[105] Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vii. 444.

[106] Script. Hist. Aug., Alex. Sev. 60.

[107] Auson. Prof. iv. 7; x. 27.

[108] Ausonius may be using ‘Belenus’ for ‘Apollo’ in a playful mood, as Mommsen thinks; but the name Belenus was exceedingly well known in Gaul, and indicates that Celtic civilization had left its mark. See Pauly-Wissowa, s.v.

[109] Technop. xiv.

[110] Ep. iii. 3. 2.

[111] His use of quia and quod instead of the infinitive construction; abstract for concrete nouns; the growing importance of prepositions; peculiar words like fatigatio (banter), eventilare (search through), humanitas (hospitality). See Dalton’s preface to his translation of Sidonius, and Baret’s introduction to his edition (pp. 106 ff.).

[112] Comment. in Ep. ad Galat. Migne, Pat. Lat. xxvi. 357.

[113] Historical Essays, Series III, pp. 74 ff.

[114] Hist. de la France, I. iii. 388.

[115] Revue celtique, 1870-2, p. 179.

[116] Gaule romaine, p. 129.

[117] Freeman, Western Europe in the Fifth Century, p. 143.

[118] e.g. lox (la ruche), hive; alauda, Fr. alouette; carrum, Fr. char; *cambitâ, Fr. jante (felly) (Körting, Lat.-roman. Wörterb., 1778); betullus, O.F. booul, M.F. bouleau (birch); braca, M.F. braie; camisia, M.F. chemise; landâ, Fr. lande (Körting, op. cit., 5419); probably jambe and javelot. See Schwan-Behrens, Grammaire de l’Ancien Français, p. 5. Paris, Fischbacher, 1913.

[119] C. I. L. xiii. 2638.

[120] Pirson, La Langue des Inscriptions lat. de la Gaule, p. 237.

[121] Romanische Landschaften, p. 272.

[122] Gröber, Grundriss der roman. Philol., i. 383.

[123] Lavisse, Histoire de France, ii. 1. 2, p. 59.

[124] Gothofredus, C. Th. ix. 23. 1, refers to a law by which ‘in Gallia vetita auri et argenti extra regnum exportatio’. So C. Th. vii. 16. 3 ‘Ne merces illicitae ad nationes barbaras deferantur’. ‘Merces illicitae’ are defined by Gothofredus as ‘vinum, oleum, liquamen (lye), ferrum, frumentum, sales, cos’ (mill-stone).

[125] Pan. Lat. vi. 6 ‘Ut in desertis Galliae regionibus collocatae (nationes) et pacem Romani imperii cultu (agriculture) iuvarent et arma dilectu’. Cf. viii. 9 ‘Arat ergo nunc mihi Chamavus et Frisius’.

[126] Gröber, Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, p. 383 (article by F. Kluge. A certain allowance must be made for nationalist bias).

[127] H. Paul, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, i. 328 ff.

[128] De Bissula, iii.

[129] Cod. Theod. iii. 14. 1, ed. Mommsen and Meyer.

[130] Histoire de France, ii. 1. 2, p. 59. Cf. Süpfle, Gesch. des deutschen Cultureinflusses auf Frankreich, i. 1. 1.

[131] Oros. vii. 32, quoted Bury-Gibbon, iii. 350 n.

[132] Cf. Fauriel, i. 541.

[133] ‘Id tu Brute iam intelliges, quum in Galliam veneris: audies tu quidem etiam verba quaedam non trita Romae, sed haec mutari dediscique possunt’, Cic. Brutus, 171.

[134] ‘Tantum increbruit multitudo desidiosorum ut, nisi vel paucissimi quique meram linguae Latiaris proprietatem de trivialium barbarismarum robigine vindicaveritis, eam brevi abolitam defleamus interemptamque’, Sid. Ep. ii. 10. 1.

[135] Ep. iv. 17. 2.

[136] e.g. Franko (Fr. franc), Alaman (O.F. Aleman), &c.; sturm, O.F. estour; wahta, O.F. guaite (watch); helm, &c.; siniskalk, Fr. sénéchal; marahskalk, Fr. maréchal; alod, O.F. aleu (freehold); sparwâri, O.F. esparvier; haring, Fr. hareng; wald, O.F. gualt; *hapja, Fr. hache (hatchet); want, Fr. gant (glove); bald, O.F. balt; spëhon, O.F. espier, &c. Affre < Old Low Frank. aibhor (Körting, op. cit., 384); hâte (Eng. haste), Germ. *haist- (Körting, 4459); guise (Eng. wise), Germ. wīsa (Körting, 10403); orgueil, Germ. urgōlī (Körting, 9914). Schwan-Behrens, op. cit., p. 6. For the traces of Germanic in inscriptions see Pirson, op. cit., p. 236.

[137] Sidon. Ep. i. 2. 1.

[138] Ep. i. 2. 6.

[139] Ibid.

[140] Ep. ii. 1. 2.

[141] Ep. iv. 17.

[142] Ep. i. 2. 5 (§ 8).

[143] Ennod., Script. Eccles. Lat., p. 353.

[144] The acts and decrees of the Visigothic and Burgundian kings were in Latin, and they chose their secretaries from the Latin rhetoricians and poets. Sidonius speaks of documents drawn up by himself for the Gothic king (Ep. viii. 3). Thus the star of rhetoricians and grammarians rose high at the court of Theodoric.

[145] Cf. Camb. Mediaev. Hist., p. 291.

[146] Cf. Fauriel, Hist. de la Gaule mérid., i. 466.

[147] Ep. ii. 5; viii. 1.

[148] Sid. Ep. v. 7.

[149] Paulin. Euchar., verse 304.

[150] Paulin. Euchar., verses 289, 290.

[151] Vide 306:

Cum iam in republica nostra

cernamus plures Gothico florere favore,

tristia quaeque tamen perpessis antea multis,

pars ego magna fui quorum....

and cf. 311 ff.

[152] Paulin de Pella, p. xxiii.

[153] Cf. Sidon. Ep. v. 14.

[154] Fauriel, op. cit., i. 559.

[155] ‘Ut ... populos Galliarum ... teneamus ex fide etsi non tenemus foedere’, Ep. vii. 6. 10.

[156] Gröber, Grundriss der röm. Phil., i. 387. In order to indicate the nature of the barbarous Gothic with which he is surrounded, the poet contemptuously quotes some Gothic that came into his mind. The interpretation is not certain. Massmann (Zeitsch. f. d. Altertum, i. 379 ff.) suggests ‘Hail! provide us with meat and drink’. In any case, their language is incompatible with Latin poetry.

[157]

Ex hoc barbaricis abacta plectris

spernit senipedem stilum Thalia

ex quo septipedes videt patronos.—Carm. xii.

[158] Ep. vii. 14. 10.

[159] Ep. ad Diversos, lvii (ed. Peiper).

[160] i. 44.

[161] Cf. Boissier, La Fin du Paganisme, ii. 59 ff.; Fauriel, Hist. i. 440.

[162] Tac. An. xi. 24; Dessau, Inscrip. Lat. Sel. i. 212.

[163] Ammian. xv. 11. 5 ‘Aquitani ... facile in dicionem venere Romanam’.

[164] Even the inscriptions give no help, for they are drawn up in formal phrases.

[165] Cf. Lavisse, Hist. de France, i. 3. 338.

[166] Tac. Hist. iv. 55-9.

[167] Historical Essays, iii. 80.

[168] iv. 4. 2.

[169] Trebellius, Script. Hist. Aug. xxiii. 4 ‘Galli ... quibus insitum est, leves ... et luxuriosos principes ferre non posse’.

[170] Ammian. xv. 6. 4.

[171] Script. Hist. Aug. xviii. 60. 6.

[172] Zos. vi. 5 ὁ Ἀρμόριχος ἅπας καὶ ἕτεραι Γαλατῶν ἐπαρχίαι ... ἐκβάλλουσαι μὲν τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἄρχοντας, οἰκεῖον δὲ κατ’ ἐζουσίαν πολίτευμα καθιστᾶσαι....

[173] ‘Galliaque quae semper praesidet atque praesedit huic imperio ... se suasque vires non tradidit, sed opposuit Antonio’, Phil. v. 13. 37. Cf. iv. 4, and Ep. ad Fam. xii. 5 ‘totam Galliam tenebamus studiosissimam Reipublicae’.

[174] Nat. Hist. iii. 4.

[175] De Consul. Stilich. iii. 53.

[176] Carm. Min. 30. 61. Cf. In Eutrop. ii. 248.

[177] Pan. Lat. v. 2 ff.

[178] ‘Constituta enim et in perpetuum Roma fundata est, omnibus qui statum eius labefactare poterant cum stirpe deletis’, Pan. Lat. iv. 6 and 31.

[179] De Reditu, i. 19 ff.

[180] Bury-Gibbon, iii. 234.

[181] i. 51 ff.

[182] i. 95.

[183] De Consul. Stil. i. 192.

[184] Pan. Lat. v. 7.

[185] It must, however, be admitted that the local provenance of the marble at Martres Tolosanes is disputed by some authorities, e.g. Espérandieu, Les Bas-reliefs de la Gaule romaine, vol. ii, p. 29.

[186] Déchelette, Les Vases céramiques ornés de la Gaule romaine.

[187] Cf. Pichon, Études sur la Litt. lat. dans les Gaules, i. 110 ff.

[188] Cf. Constantine’s treatment of the Franks, Pan. Lat. vi. 10. 12.

[189] ‘Terram Bataviam ... a diversis Francorum gentibus occupatam, omni hoste purgavit, nec contentus vicisse, ipsas in Romanas transtulit nationes, ut non solum arma, sed etiam feritatem ponere cogerentur’, Pan. Lat. vi. 5.

[190] Pan. Lat. vi. 6.

[191] Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, p. 3.

[192] E. W. Watson, Hilary of Poitiers, Introd., ii.

[193] Ep. ix. 11. 2.

[194] Ep. viii. 6. 9 (Seeck).

[195] ‘Romanum denique eloquium non suis regionibus invenisti, et ibi te Tulliana lectio disertum reddidit ubi quondam Gallica lingua resonavit. Ubi sunt qui litteras Latinas Romae, non etiam alibi asserunt esse discendas? ... mittit et Liguria Tullios suos’, Variarum, viii. 12; Migne, Pan. Lat. lxix, p. 745.

[196] ‘Neque enim ignoro quanto inferiora nostra sint ingeniis Romanis. Siquidem Latine et diserte loqui illis ingeneratum est ... ex illo fonte et capite imitatio nostra derivat’, Pan. Lat. xii. 1. 2.

[197] As we gather from his references to the Rhine defences (§ 2).

[198] According to G. Baehrens.

[199] Cf. Freeman, Historical Essays, Ser. III, 119: ‘The panegyrist, at all events in addressing princes, some of whom were certainly very far from fools, is not likely to venture on much in the way of mere invention. He will leave out a great deal, he will exaggerate a great deal, he will pervert his own moral sense to praise a great deal that ought to be blamed: but the main facts which he asserts are pretty sure to have happened much as he states them. He is a fairly good authority for positive facts, bad for negative ones.’ Cf. Pichon, Études sur la Litt. lat. dans les Gaules, i. 74.

[200] Suet. Gram. 3.

[201] Ritter has pointed out that Maternus was a Gaul in his 1848 edition of Dialog., ch. 10.

[202] Suet. Gram. 7.

[203] Suet. Gram. 11 ‘peridoneus praeceptor maxime ad poeticam tendentibus’.

[204] In the list of rhetors left by Suetonius, incorporated by Jerome in his translation of Eusebius’s Chronicle, which also includes Pacatus and Gabinianus who taught in the first century A.D. under Tiberius and Augustus at Massilia, Statius Ursulus of Toulouse, famous as a rhetor under Nero, and his contemporary Domitius Afer of Nîmes.

[205] Recueil des Hist., i, Intro., p. lxxvii.

[206] Cf. Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Paris. i. 19.

[207] ‘Les Prem. Univ. Franç.’, Rev. intern. de l’Enseignement, 1893.

[208] Tac. An. xi. 24.

[209] Mart. Epigr. ix. 99. Cf. Auson. Parent. iii. 11; Prof. xix. 4; Sidon. Carm. vii. 437.

[210] Epigr. vii. 88:

Me legit omnis ibi, senior iuvenisque puerque,

et coram tetrico casta puella viro.

[211] Agric. 21. Cf. Juv. xv. 111 ‘Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos’.

[212] i.e. ‘The Britons had a natural capacity superior to that of the Gauls ... they only needed the same training to make them better orators’ (Furneaux, ad loc.).

[213] Praef. Herac. 8.

[214] Noct. Att. xv. 1.

[215] ‘Quasi ex lingua prorsum eius capti prosequebamur,’ ibid. xvi. 3.

[216] Noct. Att. xviii. 5.

[217] Ibid. xvii. 5.

[218] Monnard, De Gallorum Oratorio Ingenio, 37.

[219] Monnard, l.c.

[220] Elegantiora studia ... novas quasi receperunt vires, et insignem recuperandam linguae promiserunt dignitatem, quod in eius (Latinae linguae) cultum et optimas litteras perpoliendas propagandasque cum veteribus magistris sanctioris doctrinae praesides conspirarent’, Funccius, De Vegeta Latinae Linguae Senectute.

[221] ‘Rhetoribus et philosophis per omnes provincias salaria et honores detulit’, Script. Hist. Aug. iii. 11. 3.

[222] C. Fronto, Reliquiae, ed. Niebuhr, 271.

[223] Histoire litt. de la France, i. 309.

[224] Ibid. 314.

[225] Script. Hist. Aug. xxviii. 30. 31.

[226] Ibid. 44. 4. He favoured the study of law in the provinces.

[227] Pan. Lat. ii. 4 ‘Florentissimas quondam antiquissimasque urbes barbari possidebant. Gallorum ita celebrata nobilitas aut ferro occiderat, aut immitibus addicta dominis serviebat. Porro aliae, quas a vastitate barbarica terrarum intervalla distulerant, iudicum nomine a nefariis latronibus obtinebantur.... Nemo ab iniuria liber, nemo intactus a contumelia.’

[228] ‘Ab arcanis sacrorum penetralium ad privata Musarum adyta’, Eum. Pro Instaurandis Scholis, Pan. Lat. ix, § 6 ff.

[229] An. iii. 43.

[230] Pro Inst. Schol. 4 ‘Latrocinio Bagaudicae rebellionis obsessa (civitas)‘.

[231] The origin of the name is doubtful. Bulaeus (Hist. Univ. Paris. i. 25) thinks that there may have been a founder Maenius, or that it may have been near the town wall (prope moenia). Lavisse favours moenianum in the sense of a portico on which were displayed maps of the Empire (Hist. de France, i. 3. 367). Lewis and Short give Maenianum, gallery, balcony (Cic. Suet.).

[232] Lipsius, quoted Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Paris, i. 25 ff.

[233] Ibid.

[234] Cf. Jullian, ‘Les Prem. Univ. Franç.’, Rev. intern. de l’Enseignement, 1893.

[235] Ibid.

[236] Antike Kunstprosa, ii. 631. Cf. Dill, Roman Society during Last Century of Western Empire, p. 406; Guizot, Hist. of Civilization (transl. Hazlitt), i. 349.

[237] The struggles of Julian, Valentinian I, and Gratian against the barbarians were confined to the North and did not affect the main centre of Gallic education—Aquitaine.

[238]

Factio me sibi non, non coniuratio iunxit:

sincero colui foedere amicitias.—Domest. iv. 21.

[239] Bissula, Praef.

[240] ‘Les Prem. Univ. Franç.’, Rev. internat. de l’Enseignement, 1893.

[241] Pan. Lat. iii. 20 ‘multi laboris et minimi usus negotium’.

[242] ‘Fuligine et aranearum telis omnia Romae templa cooperta sunt ... dii quondam nationum cum bubonibus et noctuis in solis culminibus remanserunt ... iam et Aegyptius Serapis factus est Christianus ... de India, Perside et Aethiopia monachorum cotidie turbas suscipimus; deposuit pharetras Armenius, Huni discunt psalterium, Scythia frigora fervent calore fidei ...’, Jer. Epist. cvii. 1, 2.

[243] Ibid.

[244] Cf. Speck, Quaestiones Ausonianae, pp. 3 ff.; Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, pp. 109 ff.; and almost every writer on Ausonius.

[245] Pro Instaur. Scholis, 11 ‘Hoc ego salarium ... expensum referre patriae meae cupio, et ad restitutionem huius operis ... destinare’.

[246] Domes. iv.

[247] Parent. iv. 17-20.

[248] Parent. vi.

[249] Prof. xi.

[250] Parent. iii.

[251] Pan. de Quarto Consulatu Honorii, 582 (ed. Koch):

Inlustri te prole Tagus, te Gallia doctis

civibus et toto stipavit Roma senatu.

[252] Ep. vi. 34, ed. Seeck.

[253] Ep. ix. 88 ‘Gallicanae facundiae haustus requiro’.

[254] Chronicon (Migne, Pat. Lat. xxvii. 687) ‘A.D. 358 Alcimus et Delphidius rhetores in Aquitania florentissime docent’, and in the same year ‘Minervius Burdigalensis rhetor Romae florentissime docet’.

[255] Ep. 125. 6.

[256] Ebert, Gesch. des Mittelalters, p. 365, ‘der offenbar mit vielem Erfolg die noch immer hervorragenden Schulen seiner Heimath besucht hatte’.

[257] Ep. v. 5. 1 (Oxford Trans. by O. M. Dalton).

[258] ‘Quae ille propositionibus aenigmata, sententiis schemata, versibus commata, digitis mechanemata fecit!’ Ep. i. 9. 1.

[259] Ep. i. 11. 11.

[260] Ep. ii. 1. 2.

[261] Ep. iii. 3. 2 ‘nunc etiam Camenalibus modis imbuebatur’.

[262] Cf. Fauriel, Hist. de la Gaule, i. 407: ‘Dans ce siècle (5ᵉ) comme aux précédents, les Gallo-Romains cultivèrent toutes les branches du savoir et du génie romains.’

[263] Mayor, Latin Heptateuch, p. liv.

[264] Cf. Jerome, Ep. 83.

[265] Ep. ii. 8. 2; ii. 10. 3; iii. 12. 5, &c.

[266] Ep. iv. 8. 4.

[267] Ep. ii. 10. 5.

[268] The Monks of the West, v. 105. He quotes Mabillon, Traité, i. 13, 14.

[269] Ibid., p. 108. Montalembert adds Arabic, but this would be an anachronism for our period. He quotes Bede, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2 (sixth cent., but true of our period also) ‘Litteris sacris simul et saecularibus abundanter ambo erant instructi ... ita ut etiam metricae artis astronomiae et arithmeticae ecclesiasticae disciplinam inter sacrorum apicum (writings) volumina suis auditoribus contraderent.’

[270] Ep. 120 and 121.

[271] Ep. 107.

[272] Reg. ad Monachos, Migne, Pat. Lat. lxvii. 1100, rule xiv.

[273] e.g. Augustine on Pelagianism, and Pomerius on the nature of the soul. Kaufmann, Rhetoren und Kloster-Schulen, p. 56.

[274] Migne, Pat. Lat. l. 773.

[275] Cf. Salonius’s exposition of the Proverbs to Veranius, and the letters of Jerome.

[276] Cf. Life of Martin, 1.

[277] Cf. Sulpic. Sever. Dial. i. 23.

[278] Cf. Meyer, Die Legende des heiligen Albanus, p. 5, on the hagiographical literature of the early Church: ‘Die glänzenden Gedanken und die glänzende Darstellung der Cecilialegende entspricht der feinen Kultur Roms im 5. Jahrhundert.’

[279] C. I. L. xii. 1921 (grammati probably = γραμματεῖ).

[280] C. I. L. xii. 2039.

[281] Boissieu, Inscrip. de Lyon, p. 548.

[282] Ep. v. 17.

[283] Migne, Pat. Lat. xxvii. 687.

[284] ‘Sed dum cogito me hominem Gallum inter Aquitanos verba facturum, vereor ne offendat vestras nimium urbanas aures sermo rusticior’, Dial. i. 27.

[285] De Gub. Dei, vii. 8 ‘Aquitanos ... medullam fere omnium Galliarum’.

[286] Ep. ix. 44 (ed. Seeck).

[287] Prof. xx.

[288] Ep. xi (Iculisma).

[289] Prof. x.

[290] Epigr. x.

[291] Parent. iii.

[292] Cf. Jullian, Rev. internat. de l’Enseignement, pp. 24 ff.

[293] Strabo, iv. 190.

[294] Jung, Roman. Landschaften, p. 231.

[295] Jullian, Hist. de Bordeaux, p. 42.

[296] Rev. internat. de l’Enseignement, 1893, pp. 25 ff.

[297] Cf. Jung, De Scholis Romanis in Gallia Comata, p. 5.

[298] Prof. xxv. 8.

[299] Praef. 2.

[300] Lavisse, Hist. de France, I. ii. 395.

[301] Pro Instaur. Schol. 5. Cf. 20 ‘antiqua litterarum sede’.

[302] Cf. Lavisse, Hist. de France, loc. cit.

[303] Mosella, 383.

[304] Misopogon, 342, ed. Hertlein: ἡ Κελτῶν ... ἀγροικία.

[305] Mis. 348 C, and compare 349 D.

[306] ὥσπερ τις κυνηγέτης ἀγρίοις ὁμιλῶν καὶ συμπλεκόμενος θηρίοις, ibid. 359 Β.

[307] Ibid. 350 D.

[308] Epigr. ix. 32.

[309] Mart. Epigr. v. 1. 10 ‘et tumidus Galla credulitate fruar’. Strabo, iv. 4. 2, speaks of the race as ἁπλοῦν (ingenio simplici).

[310] Migne, Pat. Lat. xxvi. 355.

[311] Jullian, Rev. intern. de l’Enseignement, 1893.

[312] Orat. iii. 124.

[313] B. G. vii. 22.

[314] Diodor. v. 31.

[315] Stromatum lib. i; Migne, Pat. Graeca, viii. 776, 777.

[316] Pan. de Quarto Consul. Honor. 392 ‘animosa tuas ut Galli a leges audiat’.

[317] Bell. Gall. iv. 5. Cf. vii. 42.

[318] Epigr. viii ff.

[319] Prof. x.

[320] Jung, De Scholis Roman., p. 15.

[321] Cf. Tac. Agric. 11; Strabo, iv. 4. 2.

[322] Liban. Orat., ed. Reiske, iii. 255 ff., and cf. Or. 32 πρὸς τὰς παιδαγωγοῦ βλασφημίας.

[323]

Et te de genetrice vagientem

tinxerunt (sc. Musae) vitrei vado Hippocrenes,

tunc hac mersus aqua loquacis undae

pro fluctu mage litteras bibisti.

Carm. xxiii. 206 (vitrei. He apparently regards ‘Hippocrene’ as masc. as in Carm. ix. 285).

[324] Ibid. 210-14.

[325] Ibid. 439.

[326] Ibid. 490.

[327] Ep. iv. 12. 1.

[328] Cf. verses 89 ff. and 121 ff.

[329]

Studiumque insigne parentum

permixtis semper docta exercere peritum

blanditiis, gnaramque apto moderamine curam

insinuare mihi morum instrumenta bonorum,

ingenioque rudi celerem conferre profectum.—(Eucharisticon, verse 60, ed. Brandes.)

[330] Euchar. 65.

[331] Probably his early teaching was in the hands of a household slave. Cf. Rocafort, Paulin de Pella, p. 32.

[332] Rocafort, Paulin de Pella, xi, thinks the reference is merely to ‘locutions inusitées’. ἀκοινονόητα is read by Brandes, though ἀκοινώνητα, except for metrical difficulties, would seem better.

[333] Verse 66.

[334] l.c. 79.

[335] Not eighteen, as Rocafort says.

[336] l.c. 117.

[337] Gilbert Murray, Religio Grammatici, pp. 10 ff.

[338] Protrepticon, 45 ff.

[339] Cf. Quintilian’s emphasis on starting with Homer (Inst. x. 1. 46). He is the poet par excellence: ‘omnibus eloquentiae partibus exemplum et ortum dedit’. Not to be able to read him is a mark of utter ignorance. Cf. viii. 5. 9; xii. 11. 21.

[340] Ibid. 46, 47.

[341] Verses 56-60.

[342] De Idol. 10. Cf. Aug. Confess. i. 14. 23.

[343] He had read Vergil ‘unum omnium maxime veterum auctorum atque haud scio an unicum’. Brandes, Corp. Scriptt. Lat. Eccl. Paul. Pell., p. 279.

[344] Ep. i. 9. 8; ii. 2. 2; iii. 13. 1; iv. 12. 1; Carm. xxiii. 147; xiii. 36.

[345] Ep. i. 11. 1; Carm. ix. 225; xxiii. 452.

[346] Ep. i. 9. 8; Carm. xxiii. 149.

[347] Ep. iv. 12. 1; Carm. ix. 213; xxiii. 130.

[348] Protrep. 61 ff.

[349] Prof. xxvi.

[350] Rocafort, De Paul. Pell. Vita et Carmine, 33.

[351] Prof. xxvi, Platonicum Dogma.

[352] The traditional Roman order is here assumed. The relation of (1) and (2) in Gaul will be discussed later.

[353] Prof. i. 2.

[354] Mosella, 403.

[355] Ep. 125 (Migne, Pat. Lat. xxii. 1079) ‘post Quintiliani acumina’.

[356] ‘Num quid fas est adversus Quintilianum nisi pro veritate dicere?’ Dictio, xxi.

[357] Carm. ix. 314. Cf. Carm. ii. 191; Ep. v. 10. 3.

[358] Ep. 70 (Migne, Pat. Lat. xxii. 668).

[359] Instit. i. 1. 27.

[360] Cf. Seneca, Ep. 94. 54.

[361] Mart. iv. 86. 11.

[362] Juv. x. 117.

[363]

Afranio clari lib. Graphico

doctori. librario. lusori

latrunculorum etc.—C. I. L. xiii. 1. 444.

[364] Das Privatleben der Römer, p. 151.

[365] Cf. Blümner, Röm. Privatalterthümer, 321. He quotes Bücheler, Carm. Epigr. 219

Puer ... iam doctus in compendio

tot litterarum et nominum

notare currente stilo

quot lingua dicens diceret.

[366] Ephem. 7 ‘puer, notarum praepetum sollers minister’.

[367] Sid. Ep. v. 17. 10.

[368] Instit. i. 1. 24.

[369] Migne, Pat. Lat. xc. 686. He does not set out to write specially for dumb people, as one might think from the title, but ‘ut cum maximam computandi facilitatem dederimus tum paratiore legentium ingenio ad investigandam ... computando seriem temporum veniamus’, Praef. Cf. Macrob. vii. 13. 10, and Quintil. Inst. i. 10. 35. Pliny (N. H. xxxiv. 7) tells of a statue of Janus ‘digitis ita figuratis ut CCCLXV dierum nota per significationem anni, temporis et aevi esse deum indicent’.

[370] Auson. Prof. xxii.

[371] Cf. e.g. Diocletian’s Edict, A.D. 301 (Mommsen, Berichte der ... Sächs. Gesellschaft, iii. 56).

[372] Cf. Macrob. i. 24. 5 ‘videris enim mihi (says Symmachus to Evangelus, whom he accuses of shallowness in a Vergilian discussion) ita adhuc Vergilianos habere versus, qualiter eos pueri magistris praelegentibus canebamus’; and Suet. Gram. 16.

[373] Cf. Quintil. i. 8. 1.

[374] Rutherford, History of Annotation, p. 12, quoted Murray, Religio Grammatici, p. 16.

[375] Ibid.

[376]

Tu flexu et acumine vocis

innumeros numeros doctis accentibus effer

adfectusque impone legens. Distinctio sensum

auget, et ignavis dant intervalla vigorem.’—Protrep. 47 ff.

[377] Quint. i. 8. 13; Aug. Confess. i. 14. 23.

[378] Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 71.

[379] Ozanam, Hist. of Civilization in Fifth Century, i. 202.

[380] Walde, Lat. etymol. Wörterb., 1910, derives it from tendo.

[381] Cf. Murray, Religio Grammatici, pp. 16 ff., for Dionysius’s six departments of Grammatikê.

[382] Aen. i. 45.

[383] Aul. Gell. xiii. 21. 10-11, 16.

[384] Aen. x. 18.

[385] Aen. i.

[386] Cf. Keil, Gram. Lat. iv, Praef. xxxvi.

[387] Hier. Chron., An. 358; Migne, Pat. Lat. xxvii. 687.

[388] Keil, Grammatici Latini, iv. 353 ff. Cf. Quintil. i. 8. 14.

[389] Ozanam, op. cit., i. 203.

[390] Ep. v. 16. 3. He may be the same as the Argicius or Agricius of Auson. Prof. xvi. 6.

[391] Keil, Gram. Lat., Supplement, p. 187.

[392] Keil, op. cit., vii. 376 ff. Krumbacher speaks of its text as ‘durch den Schulgebrauch jedenfalls vielfach abgeschliffen’, Rhein. Mus. xxxix, p. 352.

[393] Migne, Pat. Lat. xxiii. 952 ‘Legamus Varronis de Antiquitatibus libros et Si(se)nnii Capitonis ... caeterosque eruditissimos viros’. Capito was probably a junior contemporary of Varro. See Hertz, Sinnius Capito, pp. 6-13.

[394] Funaioli, Gram. Rom. Frag. (1907), p. 457. Cf. Gell. v. 21. 6.

[395] Funaioli, op. cit., p. 461.

[396] Op. cit., p. 459; Keil, Gram. Lat. v. 110.

[397] Funaioli, op. cit.

[398] Op. cit. 462 ‘Hoc versu Lucili significari ait Sinnius Capito’, &c.

[399] Op. cit. 464.

[400] Op. cit. 460.

[401] Op. cit. 465.

[402] Op. cit. 462.

[403] See Teuffel-Schwabe, transl. Warr, pp. 538 ff.

[404] Cf. Keil, Gram. Lat. vii. 49, 51, 80, 266.

[405] Gram. 19.

[406] Privatalterthümer, p. 328.

[407] Grundriss der röm. Litt., p. 721.

[408] De Re Rustica, i. 2. 1.

[409] ‘Cogor et e tabula pictos ediscere mundos’, v. 3. 37.

[410] Nat. Hist. ii. 75.

[411] Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Paris. i. 19.

[412] So Agrippa made a map of the world (Plin. N. H. iii. 2) which was put up in the Porticus Vipsania ‘tempore Augusti’, and it is thought that he wrote geographical commentaries which became the basis of Pliny’s remarks on the subject. See Cantor, Die röm. Agrimensoren, p. 84.

[413] ‘Videat praeterea in illis porticibus iuventus et cotidie spectet omnes terras et cuncta maria et quidquid invictissimi principes urbium, gentium, nationum, aut restituunt aut virtute devincunt aut terrore devinciunt’, Pan. Lat. xi. 20.

[414] Cf. Seneca, Ep. i. 6.

[415] Pan. Lat. xi. 20. Cf. 21 ‘Orbem spectare depictum’.

[416] Ch. 2.

[417] Voyage dans le Midi de la France, i. 340.

[418] Parent. iv. 17.

[419] Sid. Ep. iv. 3. 5.

[420] Carm. xxii, Intro.

[421] ‘Cuius collegio vir praefectus non modo musicos quosque, verum etiam geometras arithmeticos et astrologos disserendi arte supervenit, si quidem nullum hoc exactius compertum habere censuerim quid sidera zodiaci obliqua, quid planetarum vaga ... praevaleant’, Carm. xxii, Intro.

[422] Quintil. i. 4. 4 ‘nec si rationem siderum ignoret poetas intelligat’.

[423] Jullian, Rev. internat. de l’Enseignement, 1893, p. 43.

[424] Cf. Auson. Prof. xxvi ‘poeticus stylus’, and the productions of the Panegyrici Latini. The Grammatici Latini, on the other hand, amply illustrate the prosiness of the grammarian.

[425] Cf. Denk, Gallo-fränk. Unterrichts- u. Bildungswesen, p. 133.

[426] Confess. i. 17.

[427] Dictiones, xxviii.

[428] Ibid. xxvi.

[429] Ennodius, Dict. xx.

[430] ‘Titianus et Calvus ... qui themata omnia de Vergilio elicuerunt et deformarunt ad dicendi usum, in exemplo controversiarum has duas posuerunt adlocutiones, dicentes Venerem agere statu absolutivo, cum dicit Iunoni “causa fuisti periculorum his quibus Italiam fata concesserant”; Iunonem vero niti statu relativo, per quem ostendit Troianos non sua causa laborare sed Veneris’, Verg. x. 18.

[431] Artis Rhetoricae lib. iii.

[432] Institutiones Oratoriae.

[433] ‘Contuli in ordinem ea quae fere de oratoria arte traduntur, secundum institutum magistrorum meorum ... ita tamen ut ex arbitrio meo aliqua praeterirem, pleraque ordine immutato referrem, non nulla ex aliis quae necessaria videbantur insererem’, Pref. (Teuffel-Schwabe, ii, § 427. 6).

[434] Cf. the Suasoriae with the Dictiones of Ennodius.

[435] e.g. Liban. Ep. 1313, ed. Reiske.

[436] Philostrat. Via Soph., p. 8, ed. Kayser.

[437] Seeck’s ed. of the Letters, p. 309.

[438] I owe the suggestion that the Rhetores Graeci might serve as illustrations of the rhetorical methods of the time to Prof. J. A. Smith of Magdalen.

[439] Quintil. i. 9.

[440] Blümner, Privatalterthümer, 327.

[441] Quintil. i. 10. 1.

[442] Theon. Prog. i. Cf. Quintil, i. 9 ‘Adiciamus eorum (i.e. Grammaticorum) curae quaedam dicendi primordia, quibus aetates nondum rhetorem capientes instituant’.

[443] Ep. 985.

[444] De Theone Hermogene Aphthonioque Progymnasmatum Scriptoribus, p. 14.

[445] Ibid., p. 34.

[446] Ibid., p. 24.

[447] Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Aphthonius.

[448] Rhetores Graeci, vol. ii, ed. Spengel.

[449] Instit. ii. 4.

[450] Strange. Perhaps the meaning is bright like flowers, brilliant, pointed. But more likely, as Prof. Murray has pointed out to me, the author is thinking of embroidery. The boy’s composition must be rich like a gold-embroidered cloth, but also compact like a pattern.

[451] Conringius, De Antiquis Academiis, i. 17; Gothofredus, Ad Rescriptum Gratiani Anni 376; Ritter, Ad Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 11.

[452] Scriptt. Hist. Aug. iii, ch. 11, ed. Peter.

[453] Euchar. 67.

[454] Prof. xxvi.

[455] Prof. xv.

[456]

Hinc etiam placidis schola consona disciplinis

dogmaticas agitat placido certamine lites,

hinc omnis certat dialectica turba sophorum.—Eclog. iv. 15.

[457] Ep. ix. 9. 15.

[458] Carm. xv. 41.—Cf. ii. 156 ff.

[459] Ep. iv. 1. 2.

[460] ‘Voluptuosissimum reputans si forte oborta quarumpiam quaestionum insolubilitate labyrinthica scientiae suae thesauri eventilarentur’, Ep. iv. 11.

[461] Ep. iv. 9. 1. Cf. iii. 6. 2 ‘Vos consectanei vestri Plotini dogmatibus inhaerentes ad profundum intempestivae quietis otium Platonicorum palaestra rapuisset’. Carm. xiv, Intro. ‘tibi et complatonicis tuis nota sunt’.

[462] Ep. ix. 9. 13.

[463] Hist. de la France mérid. i. 410.

[464] Carm. xiv, Intro.

[465] E. W. Watson, Hilary of Poitiers, p. iv (Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers).

[466] Ibid.

[467] Tac. Agr. 4.

[468] Puech, De Paulini Nolani Ausoniique Epistolarum Commercio.

[469] Eclog. ii.

[470] e.g. Prof. xxiii. 13 ‘sensus si manibus ullus’; xxvi. 7 ‘si qua functis cura viventum placet’.

[471] Carm. xiv, Intro., ‘Igitur, quoniam tui amoris studio inductus, homo Gallus scholae sophisticae intromisi materiam, vel te potissimum facti mei deprecatorem requiro’.

[472] ‘Lecturus es hic etiam novum verbum id est, essentiam; sed scias hoc ipsum dixisse Ciceronem’, Ibid.

[473] Jung, De Scholis Rom. in Gallia Comata, Paris, 1855, pp. 8 ff.

[474] Sat. vii. 147 and xv. 111.

[475] Toxaris, 24.

[476] Prof. xxvi.

[477]

Exesas tineis opicasque evolvere chartas

maior quam promptis cura tibi in studiis.—Prof. xxii.

[478] Hist. de la Gaule, i. 407. Of the state of Roman law in the fifth century and its relation to Christianity, Ozanam gives a fine but biased account, History of Civilization in the Fifth Century, i. 152 ff.

[479]

Quo bis sex tabulas docente iuris

ultro Claudius Appius lateret

claro obscurior in decemviratu.—Carm. xxiii. 447.

[480] Ibid. 465.

[481] Sidon. Ep. ii. 5; v. 1; viii. 1.

[482] Ep. viii. 69. Cf. v. 14 ‘Lectissimorum iuvenum Titiani atque Helpidi praeceptor adseruit ... esse in illis scientiam iuris idoneam nimis in omnes usus iudiciarii et forensis officii’.

[483] Ep. i. 6. 2.

[484] De Reditu, i. 77.

[485] Cf. De Reditu, ii. 55, 59 ‘Hic (Stilicho) immortalem, mortalem perculit ille (Nero)’.

[486] De Reditu, i. 134 ‘Solaque fatales non vereare colos’.

[487] Cf. i. 157 ‘Regerem cum iura Quirini’.

[488] De Reditu, i. 209. Cf. Aug. Confess. vi. 8 ‘Romam praecesserat ut ius disceret’.

[489] ‘Atque ut in eum perfectio literarum plena conflueret, post auditoria Gallicana intra urbem Romam iuris scientiam plenitudini perfectionis adiecit’, Vita S. Germani, Bolland, July, vii, p. 202. Cf. Cassiodor. Var. x. 7.

[490] Cf. Ritter, Comment. on Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 1.

[491] His name is generally given as Mamertinus. He was probably a Gaul like the other panegyrists, for Gaul was the usual residence of Maximian at the time. § 9 shows that the orator is speaking in a northern province.

[492] Pan. Lat. xi. 9.

[493] De Scholis Rom. in Gallia Comata, p. 8.

[494] Cf. Fauriel, op. cit., i. 407.

[495] ‘Summa itaque ope et alacri studio has leges nostras accipite et vosmet ipsos sic eruditos ostendite ut spes vos pulcherrima foveat, toto legitimo opere perfecto, posse etiam nostram rempublicam in partibus eius vobis credendis gubernare’, Proem. Iustin. Instit., ed. Krueger, vol. i. Cf. Inst. ii. 7. 20 ff. Imperial titles reserved for advocates when they cease to practise, &c. For an account of the teaching of law see Modderman, Handboek voor het Romeinsch Recht (3rd ed.), i. 42, 60.

[496] Bury-Gibbon, ii. 172.

[497] Antecessor, used in late Latin in the sense of ‘teacher’. Cf. Tertull. Adv. Marcionem, i. 20 ‘ab illo certe Paulo qui ... tunc primum cum antecessoribus apostolis conferebat’ (Corp. Script. Eccl. Lat. xlvii, p. 315).

[498] Cf. Aul. Gell. N. A. xiii. 10.

[499] Justin. Digest. I. ii.

[500] Justinian, Corpus Iuris Civilis, vol. ii, ed. Krueger, ii. 7. 11.

[501] Corp. Iur. Civ., l.c., 23 ff.

[502] xxx. 4. 8 ff.

[503] Ibid.

[504] Ep. ii. 1. 2.

[505] Ep. vi. 3.

[506] Gesch. des gallo-fränk. Unterrichts- u. Bildungswesens, p. 78.

[507] The Schola Medicorum on the Esquiline (C. I. L. vi. 5. 978) is rejected by Reinach, Dict. des Antiquités, s.v. Medicus.

[508] Prof. xxvi.

[509] ‘Crinas quidam, Nerone Claudio imperatore, primus, ut creditur, medicinae scientiam atque usum in schola Massiliensi provexit: et ita in eo studio profecit ut si cum aliis eiusdem artis professoribus conferatur longe omnes superasse videatur’, Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Parisiensis, i. 19. See also Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxix. 1. 5, where he also mentions Charmis, another Massilian. Cf. Galen, viii. 727, xiii. 855, for the Massilian oculist Demosthenes.

[510] Galen, vol. xiv, p. 177 (ed. Kühn), περὶ ἀντιδότων. Cf. περὶ συνθέσεως φαρμάκων, vol. xiii, p. 71.

[511] ‘Nec solum veteres medicinae artis auctores ... cui rei operam uterque Plinius et Apuleius ... aliique non nulli, etiam proximo tempore illustres nonoribus viri, cives ac maiores nostri Siburius, Eutropius atque Ausonius commodarunt, lectione scrutatus sum ...’, Marcellus, De Medicamentis, ed. Helmreich. For the power which these doctors had at the imperial court v. Hist. litt. de la France, ii. 49.

[512] Cf. Galen, vol. xiv, p. 459 (ed. Kühn).

[513] See Geyer on ‘Traces of Gallic Latin in Marcellus’, Archiv für lat. Lexicographie, viii. 4, p. 419.

[514] Hist. litt. de la France, ii. 52.

[515] Parent. vi.

[516] Daremberg-Saglio, s.v. Medicus.

[517] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 3.

[518] See p. 87, supra, n. 3.

[519] Nat. Hist. xxix. 1. 8.

[520] Ep. ad Traian. v, ed. Kukula.

[521] Ael. Spart. Vita Hadr. 25.

[522] ‘Medicinae autem ... ita studia augentur in dies ut, licet opus ipsum refellat, pro omni tamen experimento sufficiat medico ad commendandam artis auctoritatem, si Alexandriae se dixerit eruditum’, Ammian. xxii. 16. 18.

[523] Quoted Denk, op. cit., p. 139.

[524] Cf. Martial, v. 9, to the doctor after treatment: ‘non habui febrem, Symmache, nunc habeo’.

[525] Cantor, Die röm. Agrimensoren, p. 139.

[526] Cod. Theod. ii. 26. 1 (A.D. 330); ii. 26. 4 (A.D. 385).

[527] Cod. Theod. vi. 34 (A.D. 405).

[528] Mommsen, in Die Schriften der röm. Feldmesser, ii. 174.

[529] Ibid. i. 50. So Aggenus Urbicus, who probably lived in the fourth century.

[530] Ibid. i. 29. Gaul is frequently mentioned in the writings of these agrimensores, e.g. i. 29, 136, 307, 353, 368, &c.

[531] Ecl. x. Cf. another version, Ecl. xi.

[532] Ecl. xiii.

[533] Ecl. xiv.

[534] Ecl. xv.

[535] Ecl. xix.

[536] Ecl. xx, xxi.

[537] Ecl. xxv.

[538] Ecl. ii. 184 (ed. Peiper).

[539] Ecl. iii, ibid.

[540] Ecl. iv, ibid.

[541] De Orat. ii. 86.

[542] Instit. xi. 2. 1.

[543] De Orat. ii. 87.

[544] e.g. Carm. ix. 260 ff.

[545] Cf. Denk, op. cit., p. 134.

[546] Protrep., p. 261.

[547] Instit. xi. 2. 34.

[548] Instit. xi. 2. 21.

[549] Instit. xi. 2. 18 ff.

[550] Prof. i. 21-30.

[551] Prof. xvi. 13.

[552] Cf. Newman, Idea of a University, p. 127, ‘Memory is the first developed of the mental faculties’, and ff.

[553] Ep. 1119. Cf. Orat. iii, p. 436 (ed. Reiske). It is interesting to compare in this connexion Athenian school records of the classical period, in which there is no evidence that children were beaten, with the mime of Herondas, in which the flogging of a boy is elaborately described.

[554] Confess. i. 8 ff.

[555] Ch. 12.

[556] Cf. also Confess. i. 16, 17.

[557] Cf. Mosella, 85 ff.

[558]

Ergo notas scripto, tolerasti, Pergame, vultu,

et quas neglexit dextera, frons patitur.—Epigr. xxxvi, p. 325.

[559] Protrep. 5.

[560] Protrep. 9.

[561] This is the accepted reading, though the ‘o’ of Chiron should of course be long. There is a varia lectio ‘Achillea Chiron’. Glover remarks that Ausonius was prone to metrical blunders.

[562] Sat. vii. 210 ‘metuens virgae iam grandis Achilles’.

[563]

Tu quoque ne metuas, quamvis schola verbere multo

increpet et truculenta senex gerat ora magister ...

... nec te clamor plagaeque sonantes

nec matutinis agitet formido sub horis.—Protrep. 24.

[564] Protrep. 33. The flogging tradition persisted in the schools of Europe more or less unaltered at least thirteen centuries after Ausonius.

[565] Ep. ii. 10, v. 5.

[566] Ep. iv. 1. 3.

[567] Or. i, p. 171 (Reiske).

[568] Aug. Confess. i. 17.

[569] Libanius complains of the conduct of his students, Or. i. 199. The lecture was often interrupted by cries, i. 63. Cf. Ep. 348 ἐγένετο θόρυβος καὶ κρότος.

[570] Sievers, Das Leben des Libanios, p. 36, quoting Greg. Naz. Or. xx.

[571] Protrep. 70.

[572] Eucharisticon, 55 ff.

[573] Auson. Ep. xxx. 30 ff.

[574] Ibid. 39. Cf. the rest of the poem.

[575] Carm. ix. 312.

[576] Ep. iii. 1. 1.

[577] See Grasberger, Erziehung und Unterricht im klass. Alterthum, i. 28-163.

[578] Confess. i. 19.

[579] Euchar. 145.

[580] Confess. i. 9.

[581] Saint Augustin, transl., p. 39.

[582] Bertrand, op. cit., p. 42.

[583] Confess, i. 10.

[584] Confess. ii. 9.

[585] Ep. i. 2.

[586] Ep. ii. 9. 4.

[587] Ep. iii. 2. 3.

[588] Euchar. 122-34.

[589] Ep. i. 2. 5.

[590] viii. 6. 12.

[591] Ep. iii. 3. 2.

[592] Ep. ii. 2. 12; ii. 12. 1.

[593] Carm. xxi.

[594] Ep. ii. 2. 19.

[595] Ep. ii. 2. 15.

[596] Ep. ii. 9. 4.

[597] Ep. v. 17. 7.

[598] On the various forms of ball games, as far as they are known, see Grasberger, op. cit., i. 89-96.

[599] C. I. L. xii. 4501.

[600] Sid. Ep. i. 11. 10.

[601] ‘(Ex quorum usur)is omnibus annis ... (ludi) athletar(um) aut circen(ses ederen)tur’, C. I. L. xii. 670.

[602] C. I. L. xii. 1585.

[603] C. I. L. xii. 410.

[604] Ep. iv. 22.

[605] Cic. Tusc. iv. 33 (70).

[606] Rep. iv. 4. Cf. Plutarch, Cato, xx. 7.

[607] Ep. lxxxviii. 18 ‘luctatores et totam oleo ac luto constantem scientiam expello ex his studiis liberalibus’.

[608] Instit. i. 11. 15.

[609] Pliny, Pan. 13.

[610] Gallo-fränk. ... Bildungswesen, p. 93.

[611] Hist. Univ. Par. i. 29.

[612] Ibid. p. 25. He says of Autun before the Romans came: ‘Ibi etiam nobiles adulescentes cum schola coniunctam palaestram habebant’.

[613] Ann. iii. 43.

[614] Ep. ii. 2. 6.

[615] Ep. viii. 7. 2.

[616] Instit. i. 11. 15 ff.

[617] Ep. i. 5. 10, i. 6. 2.

[618] Gesch. der Erziehung, i. 481.

[619] ‘Spectavit assidue exercentes ephebos, quorum aliqua adhuc copia ex vetere instituto Capreis erat’, Suet. Aug. 98.

[620] Cf. Cramer, l.c.

[621] Eumen. Pro Instaur. Scholis, 7. For a detailed discussion of the site see Bulaeus’s Hist. Univ. Par. i. 33. Cf. Denk, Gallo-fränk. Unterricht, p. 91.

[622] Wissowa, Röm. Mittheilungen, v. 1890; i. p. 3.

[623] Eumen., op. cit., 21.

[624] Sen. Ep. i. 6.

[625] Blümner, Röm. Privatalterthümer, p. 320. Cf. Hettner, Führer durch d. Provincialmuseum zu Trier, p. 21.

[626] Euchar. 65 ff.

[627] Ep. v. 4.

[628] Jullian, op. cit., p. 30. Cf. Cod. Theod., passim.

[629] Scriptt. Hist. Aug. iv. 2.

[630] Prima creterra litteratoris rudimento excitat, secunda grammatici doctrina instruit, tertia rhetoris eloquentia armat. Hactenus a plerisque potatur’, Florida, 20 (ed. Helm).

[631] Confess. i. 13.

[632] verses 63 ff.

[633] Prof. x.

[634] Cf. Prof. x. 5-10.

[635] Cf. Glover, Life and Letters in Fourth Century, 106, who quotes Suet. Gram. 4; Gell. xvi. 6; Macrob. Sat. v. 19, 31.

[636] Prof. xxii. Cf. Cic. ad Fam. ix. 18 ‘Sella tibi erit in ludo tamquam hypodidascalo proxima’. Aug. Confess. viii. 6 ‘Nebridius autem amicitiae nostrae cesserat ut ... verecundo ... grammatico subdoceret’.

[637] Prof. xxii. 17.

[638] Prof. i.

[639] Revue intern. de l’Enseignement, 1893, pp. 31 ff.

[640] Euchar. 72.

[641] Protrep., l.c., ‘lactantibus annis’.

[642] Euchar. 121.

[643] MSS. have invitus, impurius. Cole (Later Roman Education, 1909) conjectures imperitus, which certainly gives much better sense.

[644] Cod. Theod., ed. Mommsen and Meyer, xiv. 9. 1.

[645] Ritter, ad Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 1.

[646] Prof. xvii.

[647] ‘Grammaticus circa curam sermonis versatur, et, si latius evagari vult, circa historias, iam ut longissime fines suos proferat, circa carmina (i.e. metrical studies: “Versuum lex ac modificatio”)’, Sen. Ep. xiii. 3. 3.

[648]

Quot commissa viris Romana Albanaque fata,

quotque doces horis quotque domi resides.—Ep. xviii. 9. 10.

[649] ‘Jeder trieb was er wollte, wie er wollte, in vielen oder wenigen Stunden’, op. cit., p. 122.

[650] Sievers, Libanios, p. 23.

[651] ‘Antemeridianas horas discipuli occupant’, Confess. vi. 11.

[652] Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 1.

[653] Sidon. Ep. ii. 2.

[654] Confess. i. 16.

[655] Liban. Ep. 304.

[656] Ep. iv. 11. 1.

[657] Protrep. 1 ff.

[658] Ep. ii. 2.

[659] Eclog. xxiv.

[660] De Spectac. 7.

[661] Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Par. i. 41 ff.

[662] Sid. Ep. viii. 6. 5.

[663] Ep. v. 17. 6.

[664] Daremberg-Saglio, s.v. Feriae.

[665] Cod. Theod. ii. 8. 1.

[666] Cod. Theod. ii. 8. 18.

[667] ‘Illos tantum manere feriarum dies fas erit quos geminis mensibus ad requiem laboris indulgentior annus accepit, aestivis fervoribus mitigandis aut autumnis fetibus decerpendis. Kalendarum quoque Ianuariarum consuetos dies otio mancipamus. His adicimus natalicios dies urbium maximarum Romae atque Constantinopolis....’, Cod. Theod. ii. 8. 19.

[668] Cod. Theod. ii. 18. 20. Cf. Cod. Theod. ii. 8. 23, 25 (A.D. 409).

[669] Cod. Theod. ii. 2. 21; ii. 18. 19.

[670] Cf. the Christian Calendar 448, C. I. L. i, p. 335. Dedicated by Polemius Silvius to Eucherius. It shows nineteen pagan festivals.

[671] Cf. Aug. Confess. vi. 2. Monnica still practises pagan rites.

[672] Cf. the marks ‘N’ (nefastus), ‘NP’ (= N. F. P., Nefas, feriae publicae), put opposite the festival days in the calendar.

[673] Aug. Confess. ix. 2. Jullian includes the Vindemia in his calendar for the fourth century. Gothofredus (ad Cod. Theod. ii. 8. 18) notes that these holidays were movable. ‘Statae hae feriae non fuerunt verum ex consuetudine cuiusque loci praesides provinciarum has ferias statuebant.’

[674] Martial, x. 62.

[675] Liban. Or. i. 199; Ep. 382.

[676] Liban. Ep. 394; Sievers, op. cit., pp. 26 ff.

[677] Liban. Or. ii. 277. It was regarded as part of the boy’s education to learn how to behave at funerals.

[678] Liban. Or. ii. 271.

[679] Sidon. Ep. i. 5. 10.

[680] Ep. i. 9. 1.

[681] Aul. Gell. N. A. i. 9. 12. Bulaeus’s reference to a law of Charondas in this connexion rests on a false interpretation of Diodor. xii. 13.

[682] Rhetor. 6.

[683] ‘Nullius boni sine socio iucunda possessio est ... plus ... tibi et viva vox et convictus quam oratio proderit.... Zenonem Cleanthes non expressisset si tantummodo audisset: vitae eius interfuit, secreta perspexit, observavit illum, an ex formula sua viveret’, Ep. i. 6. 4.

[684] Gell. N. A. iii. 19.

[685] ‘Sicuti nuperrime aput mensam cum legerentur utraque simul Bucolica Theocriti et Vergilii, animadvertimus reliquisse Vergilium quod Graecum quidem mire quam suave est, verti autem neque debuit neque potuit’, Gell. ib. ix. 9.

[686] Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Par. i. 77.

[687] Suet. Gram. 17.

[688] Epigr. v. 56.

[689] Strabo, iv. 181. Cf. Jung, De Scholis Romanis in Gallia Comata, p. 20.

[690] ‘Oratoribus viginti quattuor annonarum e fisco emolumenta donentur, grammaticis Latino vel Graeco duodecim annonarum, deductior paulo numerus ex more, praestetur, ut singulis urbibus quae metropoles nuncupantur nobilium professorum electio celebretur, nec vero iudicamus liberum ut sit cuique civitati suos doctores et magistros placito sibi iuvare compendio’, Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 11.

[691] Annona, a day’s ration, ἡμερήσιον. A common way of reckoning salaries. Cf. Ammian. xxii. 4 ‘Tonsor quidam interrogans quid haberet in arte compendii, vicenas diurnas respondit annonas’.

[692] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 5.

[693] These are treated together here because they always appear together in the Theodosian Code.

[694] Ep. i. 79, v. 35 (Seeck) ‘Romanae iuventutis magistris subsidia detracta’, Cassiodor. Var. ix. 21.

[695] Op. cit., p. 122.

[696] Cf. Cassiodor. Var. ix. 21 ‘Cognovimus ... aliquorum nundinatione fieri ut scholarum magistris deputata summa videatur imminui’.

[697] Prof. xviii.

[698] Prof. xix.

[699] Prof. xvii.

[700] Pro Instaur. Schol. 11.

[701] Prof. xvii. 7.

[702] Cf. the Strenae to Ursulus, supra.

[703] iii. 2. 18. Referred to by Bulaeus, op. cit., i. 72.

[704] vii. 165.

[705] Op. cit., i. 72.

[706] Prof. xvii:

Pueros grandi mercede docendi

formasti rhetor.

[707] Liban. Or. ii, p. 279.

[708] Ibid. i. 199; Sievers, Liban., p. 26.

[709] Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 3.

[710] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 11.

[711] ‘Dagegen findet man nirgends eine Spur von einem Schuldirektor unter dessen Leitung die Lehrer ein bestimmtes Ziel in gemeinsamer Arbeit verfolgt hätten’, op. cit., p. 122.

[712] Caesar, B. G. vi. 13 ‘His autem omnibus Druidibus praeest unus’.

[713] Op. cit., p. 43.

[714] Prof. x. 11.

[715] Prof. viii. 10.

[716] Parent. iii. 9, 10. Cf. verse 19 ‘postquam primis placui tibi traditus annis’.

[717] Parent. iii. 15; Prof. xvi. 15, 17.

[718] Prof. i. 11, 25, 38.

[719] Prof. iii. 1.

[720] Prof. ii. 28 ‘amoris hoc crimen tui est’.

[721] Prof. v. 3.

[722] Prof. xx. 5.

[723] Except his tutor Arborius.

[724] Prof. vii-xiii, xviii, xxi, xxii, xxiv.

[725] Prof. xv.

[726] Prof. x. 51 ‘gloriolam exilem ... perdidit in senio’.

[727] Op. cit.

[728] Cf. Prof. xxiv. 6 ‘meque dehinc facto rhetore,’ etc.

[729] Op. cit., p. 122.

[730] Trans. Hazlitt, i. 291.

[731] Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 30.

[732] As the Notitia Imperii Romani shows.

[733] Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 48.

[734] Prof. i.

[735] For instances see Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 396.

[736] Guizot, op. cit., i. 301 ff. Cf. Denk, op. cit., p. 164.

[737] Cf. the frequent flight of curiales, and the laws in the Cod. Theod. about it. Also the harsh personal restrictions. A curial could not sell slaves or land except by permission of the governor of the province, Cod. Theod. xii. 3. 1. He could not bequeath his fortune to a man in another curia except by payment of a heavy duty to his original curia, Cod. Theod. xii. 1. 107. Emperors condemn miscreants, e.g. men who have rendered themselves unfit for military service by chopping off their thumbs, to enrolment in a curia, Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 555.

[738] Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 547; cf. p. 51, ‘Egress from inherited membership was inhibited by the Government except in rare instances’.

[739] Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 70.

[740] Cf. the description of Seronatus who descends on the pale country folk ‘ceu draco e specu’, Sidon. Ep. v. 13. Even the rich have officials and taxes on the brain. At the feast of St. Just it is specially mentioned as a blessing (beatissimum) that there was no talk ‘de potestatibus aut de tributis’, Sid. Ep. v. 17. 5.

[741] Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 51.

[742] Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 1.

[743] Guizot, op. cit., i. 315. Cf. Vinogradoff in Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 567.

[744] ‘Singulis quibusque dignitatibus certum locum meritumque praescribsit (sic). Si quis igitur indebitum sibi locum usurpaverit, nulla se ignoratione defendat, sitque plane sacrilegii reus, qui divina praecepta neglexerit’, Cod. Theod. vi. 5. 2.

[745] Leges Visigothorum, ed. Zeumer, e.g. v. 4. 11, 7. 10, 7. 17.

[746] Jullian, op. cit., pp. 33 ff.

[747] ‘Toutes les classes se retrouvaient égales quand il s’agissait d’apprendre ou d’enseigner; les rangs se nivelaient à l’école’, ibid.

[748] Denk, Gallo-fränk. Unterrichts- u. Bildungswesen, p. 165.

[749] Röm. Gesch. i. 892.

[750] Hist. de France, i. 3. 391.

[751] Aus. Ep. xiv. 95.

[752] Protrep. 40.

[753] l.c. The students at Autun are ‘frequentia honestissimae iuventutis’, Pro Instaur. Schol. 5.

[754] ‘Libertinae condicionis homines, numquam ad honores vel palatinam adspirare militiam permittemus’, Cod. Theod. iv. 10. 3.

[755] e.g. Cod. Theod. xii. 19. 3. The heads of the classes (ordines) are warned not to let fugitives from the ‘curiae’ or ‘collegia’ hang about.

[756] Cod. Theod. xiv. 1. 1.

[757] Cod. Theod. iv. 6. 3, A.D. 336. For an illustration of these marriage laws in practice see the instance in Sidon. Ep. v. 19. The most heinous offence, of course, was the marriage between a slave and his mistress, the penalty being death (Cod. Theod. ix. 9. 1). Cf. the marriage laws in the Southern States of America.

[758] Special privileges are given to those who remain thirty years without a break in one place. ‘Eum, qui curiae vel collegio vel burgis ceterisque corporibus per triginta annos sine interpellatione servierit res dominica (imperial) vel intentio privata non inquietabit ... sed in curia vel corpore in quo servierit remaneat’, Justin. xi. 66. 6. Cod. Theod. xii. 19. 2, to the prefect of the Gauls, A.D. 400. Cf. xii. 19. 3, also to the prefect of the Gauls. For the ‘coloni’ see Cod. Theod. v. 17 and 18.

[759] Vinogradoff in Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 553.

[760] Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 1 ‘his dumtaxat exceptis qui corporatorum sunt oneribus adiuncti’.

[761] ‘Si quis originarius intra hos triginta annos (i.e. within a period of thirty years before the passing of the law) de possessione discessit, sive per fugam labsus seu sponte seu sollicitatione transductus, ... eum, contradictione submota, loco cui natus est cum origine (family) iubemus sine dilatione restitui’, Cod. Theod. v. 18. 1.

[762] ‘Ipsos etiam colonos qui fugam meditantur, in servilem condicionem ferro ligari conveniet, ut officia quae liberis congruunt merito servilis condemnationis compellantur implere’, Cod. Theod. v. 17. 1.

[763] Cod. Theod. vi. 20.

[764] Sidon. Ep. v. 17 ‘Cum passim varia ordinum corpora dispergerentur’.

[765] Pro Instaur. Scholis. 15 (ad fin.) and 16.

[766] Ep. i. 6. 4.

[767] Cf. the studious Hesperius, who, from his friends, must have been a nobleman, and is contrasted with the ‘turba imperitorum’, Ep. ii. 10. 6.

[768] ‘Plebeiam numeros docere pulpam’, Ep. xiv. 95. Cf. Introd. of Griphus dedicated to Symmachus. The author omits all antiquarian treatment of his subject ‘et quidquid profanum vulgus ignorat’.

[769] Ep. viii. 2. 2.

[770] Op. cit., p. 48.

[771] Cf. the instance of the workman at Silchester who scratched the word ‘satis’ on his work at the end of the day. ‘Casual scratchings on tiles or pots, which can often be assigned to the lower classes, prove that Latin was both read and spoken easily in Silchester and Caerwent’ (fourth century). Haverfield, Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 375.

[772] Large, but hardly disproportionate. In England to-day the number of elementary teachers compared with post-elementary is about ten to one.

[773] Cf. Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 3. Eight ‘rhetores’ and twenty ‘grammatici’. This, however, was at Constantinople. At Trèves the numbers were about equal, Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 11.

[774] Sievers, Liban., p. 39.

[775] Italorum Epigram. xv.

[776] Prof. ii. 15.

[777]

Comis convivis, nunquam inclamare clientes,

ad famulos nunquam tristia verba loqui.—Prof. iii. 11.

[778] Prof. i. 31.

[779]

Nullo felle tibi mens livida, tum sale multo

lingua dicax blandis et sine lite iocis.—Prof. i. 31.

Patera is ‘Salibus modestus felle nullo perlitis’, Prof. iv. 19.

[780]

Facete comis animo iuvenali senex

cui felle nullo, melle multo mens madens.—Prof. xv. 1.

[781] Prof. vii.

[782] Prof. ix.

[783] Pro Instaur. Schol. 14 ‘gratitatem morum’.

[784] Prof. xxi. 7 ‘creditus olim fervere mero’.

[785] p. 198 (ed. Peiper).

[786] Ep. vi.

[787] Ep. xvi.

[788] ‘Quem locupletavit coniunx Hispana latentem’, Prof. xxiii. 5.

[789] Ibid.

[790] Prof. vi. 35 ‘connubium nobile’.

[791] Prof. xiii.

[792] Cod. Theod. vi. 21. 1 ‘si laudabilem in se probis moribus vitam esse monstraverint, si docendi peritiam ... se habere patefecerint, hi quoque cum ad viginti annos observatione iugi ac sedulo docendi labore pervenerint, iisdem ... dignitatibus perfruantur’.

[793] Prof. ix:

Et te, quem cathedram temere usurpasse locuntur

nomen grammatici nec meruisse putant.

[794] Prof. vii. 9.

[795] Prof. x. 35 ff., 42 ff., ‘doctrina exiguus’, ‘tenuem ... grammaticum’.

[796] Epigram. vi.

[797] Ibid. viii ff.

[798] Ibid. vii.

[799] De Scholis Romanis, p. 16.

[800] Like Glabrio, Prof. xxiv; Alcimus, Prof. ii; Delphidius, &c.

[801] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 5.

[802] Cf. Jullian, op. cit., p. 36.

[803] Pro Instaur. Scholis. 14.

[804] Cf. Tac. Agr. 4.

[805] Suet. Rhet. 1.

[806] Cf. Lucius Apuleius, Apologia iv ‘accusamus apud te philosophum formosum et tam graece quam latine—pro nefas—disertissimum’.

[807] Lampridius, Life of Alex. Sever. xliv. 4. Cf. Scriptt. Hist. Aug. i. 16. 8, on Hadrian’s patronage of professors.

[808] Pan. Lat. ix; Pro Instaur. Scholis, 14.

[809] Ibid. 3.

[810] Ibid. 4 ff.

[811] Ibid. 18. 3 ‘ad conspectum Romanae lucis emersit’.

[812] Ibid. 19.

[813] ‘Per omnem dioecesim commissam magnificentiae tuae, frequentissimis in civitatibus, quae pollent et eminent claritudine, praeceptorum optimi quique erudiendae praesideant iuventuti: rhetores loquimur et grammaticos Atticae Romanaeque doctrinae’, Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 11.

[814] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 6.

[815] Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 1.

[816] ‘Magistros studiorum doctoresque excellere oportet moribus primum, deinde facundia. Sed quia singulis civitatibus adesse ipse non possum, iubeo, quisque docere vult, non repente nec temere prosiliat ad hoc munus, sed iudicio ordinis probatus, decretum curialium mereatur, optimorum conspirante consensu. Hoc enim decretum ad me tractandum referetur, ut altiore quodam honore nostro iudicio studiis civitatum accedant’, Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 5.

[817] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 6.

[818] Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Par. i. 77.

[819] Suet. Aug. 46. Cf. C. I. L. x. 50, 56.

[820] Aurel. Victor, Ep. 12.

[821] C. I. L. ix. 1455; xi. 1147.

[822] Ael. Spart. Hadrian, § 7. Cf. Plin. Pan. 26-8; Ep. vii. 18.

[823] Pertinax could not pay all the ‘alimenta’ standing over from the reign of Commodus, Scriptt. Hist. Aug. Pertin. 9. 3.

[824] Cod. Theod. xi. 27. 1, A.D. 315.

[825] Cod. Theod. xi. 27. 2.

[826] Pro Instaur. Schol. 6. 4. ‘divina illa mens Caesaris, quae tanto studio praeceptorem huic conventui iuventutis elegit’.

[827] Liban. Or. i. 54. 120.

[828] e.g. Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 5.

[829] ‘Litterarum quoque habuere dilectum, neque aliter quam si equestri turmae vel cohorti praetoriae consulendum foret, quem fortissimum praeficerent, sui arbitrii esse duxerunt ...’, Pro Instaur. Scholis. 5.

[830] Pan. Lat. vi. 23. Cf. Symmachus, Ep. i. 20 ‘Iter ad capessendos magistratus saepe litteris promovetur.’

[831] Pro Instaur. Scholis, 5. 4 ‘ne ... veluti repentino nubilo ... deprehensi incerta dicendi signa sequerentur’.

[832] Prof. xvii. 4.

[833] Prof. ii. 13.

[834] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 1.

[835] ‘Ne autem litteraturae, quae omnium virtutum maxima est, praemia denegentur, eum qui studiis et eloquio dignus primo loco videbitur honestiore faciet nostra provisio sublimitate’, Cod. Theod. xiv. 1. 1. Cf. Napoleon’s scheme of education for the service of the State.

[836] Heynius. Opusc. Acad. vi. 91.

[837]

‘Sive panegyricis placeat contendere libris,

in Panathenaicis tu memorandus erit.’—Prof. i. 13.

[838] Pan. Lat. vi. 23.

[839] Ep. ix. 16; Carm. viii. 8.

[840] Ep. i. 9. 8.

[841] ‘In ius etiam vocari vel pati iniuriam prohibemus, ita ut, si quis eos vexaverit, centum milia nummorum aerario inferat, a magistratibus vel quinquennalibus exactus, ne ipsi hanc poenam sustineant: servus eis si iniuriam fecerit, flagellis debeat a suo domino verberari ...’, Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 1.

[842] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 3. Cf. xiii. 3. 7.

[843] ‘Grammaticos, oratores adque philosophiae praeceptores, nec non etiam medicos, praeter haec quae retro latarum sanctionum auctoritate consecuti sunt privilegia immunitatesque, frui hac praerogativa praecipimus, ut universi qui in sacro palatio inter archiatros militarunt cum comitiva primi ordinis vel secundi, nulla municipali, nulla curialium conlatione, nulla senatoria vel glebali describtione vexentur, ... sint ab omni functione omnibusque muneribus publicis immunes, nec eorum domus ubicumque positae militem seu iudicem suscipiant hospitandum. Quae omnia filiis etiam eorum et coniugibus inlibata praecipimus custodiri, ita ut nec ad militiam liberi memoratorum trahantur inviti. Haec autem et professoribus memoratis eorumque liberis deferenda mandamus’, Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 16. Confirmed by xiii. 3. 18.

[844] Pro Instaur. Scholis, 18. Cf. Pan. Lat. iv. 38 ‘Omnia foris placida, domi prospera annonae ubertate ... exornatae mirandum in modum ac prope de integro conditae urbes’, &c., &c.

[845] Pan. Lat. v. 5 ff.

[846] Ibid. § 9.

[847] Ibid. § 11.

[848] xxviii. 1.

[849] ‘At Valentinianus, magna animo concipiens et utilia, Rhenum omnem a Rhaetiarum exordio ad usque fretalem Oceanum magnis molibus communiebat, castra extollens altius et castella turresque adsiduas per habiles locos et opportunos, qua Galliarum extenditur longitudo: nonnunquam etiam ultra flumen aedificiis positis subradens barbaros fines’, ibid. 2.

[850] Ὠιήθη δεῖν καὶ τῆς εἰς τὸ μελλον ἀσφαλείας τῶν Κελτικῶν ἐθνῶν ποιήσασθαι προνοίαν, iv. 12 (ed. Mendelssohn).

[851] Ibid. vi. 3.

[852] Pan. Lat. xi. 19. He was probably a Gaul, § 9. Maximian, to whom the speech was addressed, frequently stayed there.

[853] Cf. Pichon, Études sur l’Hist. de la Litt. lat. dans les Gaules, i. 123, ‘L’Empire romain ... souffre d’une hypertrophie de l’organe central’, and ‘la cour absorbe tout sans rien distribuer’.

[854] Cf. esp. Mamertinus, Grat. Act. Iuliano.

[855] Grat. Act. Iuliano, i. ‘non minus exitialibus quam pudendis praesidentum rapinis’.

[856] Pottier in Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, s.v. Education.

[857] ‘Universos, qui usurpantes sibi nomina magistrorum in publicis magistrationibus cellulisque collectos undecumque discipulos circumferre consuerunt, ab ostentatione vulgari praecipimus amoveri, ita ut, si qui eorum post emissos divinae sanctionis adfatus, quae prohibemus adque damnamus iterum forte temptaverit, non solum eius quam meretur infamiae notam subeat, verum etiam pellendum se ex ipsa ubi versatur inlicite urbe cognoscat. Illos vero, qui intra plurimorum domus eadem exercere privatim studia consuerunt, si ipsis tantum modo discipulis vacare maluerint, quos intra parietes domesticos docent, nulla huiusmodi interminatione prohibemus. Sin autem ex eorum numero fuerint, qui videntur intra Capitolii auditorium constituti, ii omnibus modis privatorum aedium studia sibi interdicta esse cognoscant, scituri quod, si adversum caelestia statuta facientes fuerint deprehensi, nihil penitus ex illis privilegiis consequentur, quae his, qui in Capitolio tantum docere praecepti sunt, merito deferuntur’, Cod. Theod. xiv. 9. 3.

[858] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 5.

[859] e.g. Pan. Lat. xii. 19, 20, 25, 26. Cf. the scene in heaven, vi. 7. Cf. Pro Instaur. Scholis, 6. 2. ‘caelestia verba et divina sensa principum’, &c.

[860] Pan. Lat. ii, ad fin. Cf. xi. 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, &c.

[861]

Quem pluris faciunt novem sorores

quam cunctos alios, Marone dempto.—Dedication of the Eclogues.

[862] Prof. xiv.

[863] Pan. Lat. iv. 5.

[864]

Non habeo ingenium: Caesar sed iussit: habebo.

...

Non tutum renuisse deo.—Praefat. iv. 11.

[865] Grat. Act. iii.

[866]

Diligo Burdigalam, Romam colo....

... cunae hic, ibi sella curulis.—Ordo urb. nob. xx. 39.

[867] Euchar. 37.

[868] Ibid. 70, 145.

[869] Ibid. 424.

[870] Ibid. 44.

[871] ‘Reddatur unusquisque patriae suae, qui habitum philosophiae indebite et insolenter usurpare cognoscitur ... turpe enim est ut patriae functiones ferre non possit, qui etiam fortunae vim se ferre profitetur’, Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 7.

[872] Cf. Ammianus, xiv. 9. 5 ‘Epigonus ... amictu tenus philosophus’. Symm. Ep. i. 28 mentions his contemporary Barachus among those ‘qui philosophiam fastu et habitu metiuntur’.

[873] Pro Instaur. Scholis, 16. Cf. ‘Equidem ipsos patriae deos testor, tanto me civitatis istius amore flagrare, ut quocunque oculos circumtuli, ad restitutionem operum singulorum ita gaudio ferar ut spiritum identidem meum pro illorum salute devoveam, quorum iussu opibusque reparantur’. There is more than rhetoric in his words.

[874] Source book of the Hist. of Education, p. 395.

[875] Cf. Cod. Theod. xiv. 1. 1.

[876] De Scholis Roman., p. 13.

[877] Epigr. xv.

[878] Cf. Guizot, Hist. of Civilization, i. 320 ff.; Montalembert, Monks of the West, i. 187 ff.

[879] Cod. Theod. xvi. 2. 4 ‘Habeat unus quisque licentiam sanctissimo catholicae (sc. ecclesiae) venerabilique concilio decedens bonorum quod optavit relinquere’. So in 434 Theodosius and Valentinian enacted that the intestate property of a Church official should go to his church or monastery, Cod. Theod. v. 3. 1.

[880] ‘Qui religiosa mente in ecclesiae gremio servulis suis meritam concesserint libertatem, eandem eodem iure donasse videantur quo civitas Romana solemnitatibus decursis dari consuevit’, Cod. Theod. iv. 7. 1, A.D. 321.

[881] ‘Qui divino cultui ministeria religionis impendunt ... ab omnibus omnino muneribus excusentur’, Cod. Theod. xvi. 2. 2 et passim.

[882] Cod. Theod. xvi. 2. 41.

[883] Ambrose and Augustine complain of their heavy judicial duties; cf. Camb. Med. Hist. i. 566.

[884] Sidon. Ep. vii. 7; so Lupus had successfully negotiated with Attila for Troyes; see Lavisse, Hist. de Gaule, ii. 1. 1, pp. 21 ff., L’Épiscopat en Gaule au IVᵉ et au Vᵉ Siècle. Cf. Rambaud, Histoire de la civilisation française, i. 74, and the whole of Bk. I, chap. iv (Gaule chrétienne) for a useful summary of the activities and relations of the Gallic Church at this time.

[885] Cf. St. Martin’s opposition to Avitianus and Valentinian. Hilary of Arles declared the prefect unworthy of the sacrament, and he had to retire.

[886] e.g. Epictetus and the Stoics, who taught the equality of mankind.

[887] Cod. Theod. iv. 8. 5.

[888] Cod. Theod. iv. 8. 6; iv. 8. 9; iv. 9. 1.

[889] Cod. Theod. ii. 25. 1.

[890] Cappadocia was practically the only place where slaves were still bred for export to Rome.

[891] Cod. Theod. xv. 5 ‘de spectaculis’, A.D. 425.

[892] Cod. Theod. xv. 5. 7.

[893] Cod. Theod. xv. 7. 4, A.D. 380.

[894] ‘Scaenici et scaenicae, qui in ultimo vitae ac necessitate cogente interitus imminentis, ad dei summi sacramenta properarunt ... nulla posthac in theatralis spectaculi conventione revocentur’, Cod. Theod. xv. 7. 1, A.D. 371.

[895] Cod. Theod. xv. 12. 1.

[896] Cod. Theod. xv. 12. 2, A.D. 357.

[897] Cod. Theod. ix. 40. 8, A.D. 365.

[898] Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. v. 26.

[899] Glover, Life and Letters, p. 161. Cf. Sym. Ep. iv. 12, ix. 126.

[900] Cf. Sidon. Ep. vi. 12. 1, 5.

[901] Cod. Iust. xi. 26. Cf. Cod. Theod. xiv. 18. 1.

[902] It is true that pagan philosophers like Epicurus had women among their intimates, but their recognition was as much of an anomaly in the ancient world as they themselves were. With Christianity the recognition claimed a more general acceptance, though the claim was subsequently disregarded and never fully admitted.

[903] Cf. Camb. Med. Hist. i. 168.

[904] ‘Indecens visum. Repudiatis fiscalibus, propriis cum sumptibus vivere maluerunt’, Sulpic. Sever. Chron. ii. 41.

[905] Sid. Ep. vi. 1, viii. 11, ix. 11.

[906] Sid. Ep. iv. 17.

[907] Ep. iv. 17. 3 ‘Lupus ... Auspicius quorum doctrinae abundanti eventilandae nec consultatio tua sufficit’.

[908] Ep. vi. 12; ii. 10. 2; iv. 25. 5.

[909] Ep. ix. 3.

[910] Ep. vii. 1; iv. 9. 6; v. 14. 2.

[911] Ep. vi. 8; vii. 2. 7, 11; ix. 4.

[912] Ep. vii. 9; iv. 18.

[913] Montalembert, Monks of the West (transl.), i. 205.

[914] Antidosis, 231. See Hubbell, The Influence of Isocrates on Cicero, Dionysius, and Aristides.

[915] Ibid. 276. The subjects must be καλὰς καὶ φιλανθρώπους καὶ περὶ τῶν κοινῶν πραγμάτων.

[916] Pichon, Études sur l’histoire de la litt. lat. i. 42, is too severe on Isocrates’ theoretical and unpractical judgement.

[917] Gilbert Murray, Ancient Greek Literature, p. 344.

[918] Ὅσῳ περ ἄν τις ἐρρωμενεστέρως ἐπιθνμῇ πείθειν τοὺς ἀκούοντας, τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον ἀσκήσει καλὸς κἀγαθὸς εἶναι, καὶ παρὰ τοῖς πολίταις εὐδοκιμεῖν, Antidosis, 278 (ed. Blass).

[919] Antidosis, 253.

[920] ‘Illa vis autem eloquentiae tanta est, ut omnium rerum virtutum officiorum omnisque naturae quae mores hominum, quae animos quae vitam continet, originem vim mutationesque teneat, eadem mores leges iura describat, rem publicam regat, omniaque ad quamcumque rem pertineant ornate copioseque dicat’, De Oratore, iii. 20. 76.

[921] Ibid. iii. 15. 57. In Homeric days ‘neque diiuncti doctores, sed idem erant vivendi praeceptores atque dicendi’. Cf. 59 ‘ancipitem quae non potest esse seiuncta, faciendi dicendique sapientiam’.

[922] Ibid. i. 6. 20.

[923] Ibid. iii. 23. 87, 89.

[924] Boissier, in blaming Quintilian for this change in rhetoric, seems somewhat unfair (La fin du paganisme, i. 219 ff.). He says Quintilian regarded the grammarian as an intruder, but Quintilian is merely protesting against the assumption of the rhetor’s duties by the grammarian (ii. 1. 2-6) and is quite willing to give him his due (ii. 1. 13). However, he does seem to attach an exaggerated importance to rhetoric (e.g. ii. 20) as opposed to general knowledge.

[925] § 3 ἕλκει ἐκ τῶν ὤτων ἄπαντας δεδεμένους.

[926] ‘Neque ego unquam facundiam exercui, et populus Romanus virtutem armis adfirmavit: sed quoniam apud vos verba plurimum valent....’, Tac. Hist. iv. 73. Cf. the commentator Pithoeus, In Quintil. Declam., p. 415, ‘etiam infelicissimis temporibus superfuisse Galliae oratores suos, cum urbi ipsi deessent’.

[927] Comment. on Ep. to Galatians, ii; Migne, xxvi. 355.

[928] C. I. L. xii. 1941. Cf. ibid. 1949, 2039, 2058; xiii. 1. 1. 128 (a fifth-century stone with twenty-four lines of poetry); xiii. 1. 1. 2395, 2397.

[929] Jerome, Ep. 125. 6; Migne, xxii. 1075 ‘ubertatem Gallici nitoremque sermonis’.

[930] Ep. 372 (ed. J. C. Wolf, Amsterdam, 1738).

[931] Ibid.

[932] Ep. iv. 17. 1.

[933] ‘Heiden von hervorragender Stellung werden seit 450 in Gallien nicht mehr erwähnt, und unter den Christen gewann die strenge Mönchspartei einen immer grössern Einfluss und verdammte die Studien der Rhetoren’, Kloster- u. Rhetorenschulen, p. 31.

[934] De Idol. x.

[935] Ep. 21; Migne, xxii. 386.

[936] ‘Ambrosio et Beato’ (Corp. Scriptt. Eccl. Lat. vi. 406) ‘ante scipiones et trabeas est pomposa recitatio’.

[937] Ibid.; Euchar., p. 395.

[938] ‘Ego illa quae vel commuto si sunt facta vel facio: quantisvis actionum tenebris involuto lux sufficit, quam legendo contulero. Ego sum per quam expectant homines reatum de turbida et innocentiam de serena ... ad meum compendium ubicumque est Romanus invigilat: fasces divitias honores si non ornamus, abiecta sunt: nos regna regimus’, ibid. ‘Ambrosio et Beato’, p. 407.

[939] Antidosis, 253.

[940] Ibid. 255 τοὺς κακοὺς ἐξελέγχομεν καὶ τοὺς ἀγαθοὺς ἐγκωμιάζομεν.

[941] De Orat. ii. 9. 35 ‘vituperare improbos ... laudare bonos’.

[942] ‘Quid quod declamationum nostrarum oblectatio vincit universa quae sapiunt, et opinionem quam conciliamus (perhaps a Vergilian reminiscence of urbem quam statuo) aeterna est?... De virorum fortium factis quod volumus creditur; actum nemo aestimat quod silemus. Poetica, iuris peritia, dialectica, arithmetica, cum me utantur quasi genetrice, me tamen adserente sunt pretio’, Ennod. l.c. Cf. Dictio XII. Rhetoric is the mainspring of literature.

[943] ‘Istae (virtutes) tamen prae foribus quasi nutricem ceterarum anteponunt Grammaticen, quae adulescentium mentes sapore artificis et planae locutionis inliciat, et ad Tullianum calorem scintillis praefigurati vaporis adducat’, ibid., p. 405.

[944] Ibid., p. 401.

[945] Ibid., p. 305.

[946] Euchar., p. 395. Cf. p. 396 ‘Sic dum me concinnationis superfluae in rhetoricis et poeticis campis lepos agitaret, a vera sapientia mentitam secutus abscesseram, nihil cupiens nisi auris vanae laudationis adsurgere’.

[947] Migne, x. 577.

[948] Cf. Watson, Hilary of Poitiers, Intro. xxviii (Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers).

[949] Cf. Constant. 11 ‘At nunc fructus operum tuorum, lupe rapax, audi ... Levius te putas, sceleste, Iudaeorum impietate peccasse?’ § 25 ‘O tu sceleste, qui ludibrium de Ecclesia facis’, &c.

[950] Cf. e.g. § 12 de Seleuciae Synodo.

[951] Vita Hilarii (by Honoratus), Migne, Pat. Lat. l. 1231.

[952] Ibid. ‘non doctrinam, non eloquentiam, sed nescio quid super homines consecutum’.

[953] Chronologia Lerinensis, i. 33.

[954] Hom. I.

[955] Hom. XX.

[956] Hom. XIII.

[957] Hom. XIII.

[958] Hom. XIV.

[959] de Idol. x.

[960] Matt. xii. 34-7; Mark xiii. 11. Cf. Glover, The Jesus of History, p. 83.

[961] 1 Cor. i. 17.

[962] Cf. Salvian, De Gubern. Dei, praef. 3 ‘rerum magis quam verborum amatores’. Cassian, Instit., praef. 3 ‘me quoque elinguem et pauperem sermone et scientia ... quamvis imperito digeram stilo’. Vita Caesar., praef. 2 ‘quod stylus noster videtur pompa verborum et cautela artis grammaticae destitutus’.

[963] Ep. vii. 2. 1.

[964] Ep. viii. 16. 3.

[965] Cf. Sym. Ep. vii. 9 ‘ingeniorum varietas in familiaribus scriptis neglegentiam quandam debet imitari’.

[966] Institut. Divin. i. 1. 10.

[967] e.g. Ep. ii. 8; vii. 17. Cf. Le Blant, Nouveau recueil, No. 311 (fifth cent.) and 441.

[968] Le Blant, Inscrip. chrét. de la Gaule, No. 215. Cf. No. 256.

[969] ‘Sanctus Hilarius Gallico cothurno attollitur et quum Graeciae floribus adornetur longis interdum periodis involvitur, et lectione simplicium fratrum procul est’, Migne, Pat. Lat. xxii. 585; Ep. 58. Cf. ibid. 395 ‘Nulla est in hoc libello adulatio ... nulla erit rhetorici pompa sermonis’; and ibid. 459 ‘Sint alii diserti ... mihi sufficit sic loqui ut intelligar’.

[970] De vita contempl. xxiii.

[971] Ep. 52. 8; Migne, Pat. Lat. xxii. 534.

[972] Dialog. i. 27.

[973] Appendix, Augustine, Serm. 10; Migne, xxxix. Cf. Aug. in Psalm. 36. Serm. 3. 6 ‘melius in barbarismo nostro vos intellegitis quam in nostra disertitudine vos diserti estis’.

[974] Cf. Sid. Ep. iv. 16; v. 15; Carm. xi.

[975] Ruric. i. 4.

[976] ii. 18.

[977] ii. 38.

[978] Jerome, Ep. xxii (Migne, Pat. Lat. xxii. 416) ‘Si quando ... prophetas legere coepissem, sermo horrebat incultus’.

[979] Vita Martini, i.

[980] Ibid.

[981] Cf. Ozanam, Hist. of Civilization, i. 88 ff.

[982] Ep. 22, § 30 ‘Quae enim communicatio lucis ad tenebras? Quid facit cum psalterio Horatius? Cum Evangeliis Maro? Cum Apostolis Cicero?’ His struggles with his passionate love for pagan letters, and the story of the angel in his dream who told him he was a Ciceronian and not a Christian (Migne, xxii. 416) are well known.

[983] Hilar. Pict., Migne, ix. 502.

[984] Aug. Confess. i. 16; Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxiii. 685.

[985]

Non vitium nostrum est? Paulo et Salamone relicto

quod Maro cantatur Phoenissae et Naso Corinnae,

quod plausum accipiunt lyra Flacci aut scena Terenti?

nos horum, nos causa sumus: nos turpiter istis

nutrimenta damus flammis.—Migne, lxi. 970.

[986]

Nunc alia mentem vis agit, maior deus

...

vacare vanis, otio aut negotio,

et fabulosis litteris

vetat....—Ep. xxxi. 29 ff.

[987] Ibid. 37 ff.

[988] See Ozanam, op. cit., i. 87 ff.

[989] Pacatus, Pan. on Theod., § 42, A.D. 389.

[990] Cf. vii. 13; vi. 3, 9; v. 13; ix. 10, 16, 20, &c.

[991] Pro Saltatoribus, 18, Libanius, ed. Foerster.

[992] Cf. Keil, Gram. Lat., passim. The authority, not the truth, of a dogma is the main point to the grammarian.

[993] e.g. Macrobius’s Saturnalia is an example of what a youth’s education should be. All kinds of subjects are treated, but Christianity is not once mentioned. Symmachus and Capella, both representative of culture in their day, are silent about Christianity. There was always the suspicion, even between two contending Christians, that the other might not have had the rhetorical or philosophical training necessary for argument. Cf. Jerome to Vigilantius: ‘Scilicet et gloriari cupis ... me non potuisse respondere eloquentiae tuae et acumen in te Chrysippi formidasse’ (Migne, xxii. 604).

[994] De Reditu, i. 440.

[995] Ibid. 443.

[996] Ibid. 521.

[997] Ep. lxi. 3; Ep. 1. 2.

[998] Ep. lii. 9. Cf. Ep. lvii. 12 ‘qui sermone se dicit imitari apostolos, prius imitetur in vita’.

[999] ‘Sancta rusticitas solum sibi prodest et, quantum aedificat ex vitae merito ecclesiam Christi, tantum nocet si destruentibus non resistat’, Ep. liii. 3.

[1000] Rocafort, De Paul. Pell. vita et carm., p. 75. Cf. Ozanam, Hist. of Civilization in Fifth Cent., i. 233.

[1001] Sedul. Carm. Pasch., Dedicatio, Migne, xix. 538.

[1002] Socrates, Hist. Eccles. iii. 16; Migne, Pat. Graeca, lxvii. 418; Sozomen, v. 18; Migne, Pat. Graeca, lxvii. 1270.

[1003] De Gallorum oratorio ingenio, 93.

[1004] Ep. xxxi. 22 ff.

[1005] ‘Cumque in primis partibus vincas alios, in penultimis te ipsum superas ... et cum Tulliana luceat (sc. genus eloquii) puritate, crebrum est in sententiis’, Ep. lviii, Migne xxii. 584.

[1006] e.g. Jerome made his monks copy Cicero.

[1007] Ozanam, op. cit., i. 27. Cf. his plea for using the pagan writings, Ep. lxx, Migne xxii. 665 ‘Quis enim ignorat et in Moyse et in Prophetarum voluminibus quaedam assumpta de Gentilium libris’.

[1008] Cf. the fifth-century compilation ‘collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum’.

[1009] Kloster- u. Rhetorenschulen, p. 54.

[1010] Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum, vol. viii, p. 840. Homiliae, 20 ‘negociatores, qui cum litteras non noverint, requirunt sibi mercenarios litteratos’.

[1011] Sid. Ep. iv. 25.

[1012] Ep. vii. 9.

[1013] Ep. vi. 12.

[1014] Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v. 10. (Migne, Pat. Gr. xx. 456.)

[1015] Acts xix. 9. The school of Tyrannus.

[1016] Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. i. 3.

[1017] Suidas, s.v. Λουκιανὸς ὁ μάρτυς.

[1018] Cf. Ozanam, op. cit., i. 30, ‘Gaul—the peculiar land for the cenobitic life’.

[1019] Gennad. Vir. ill. xix.

[1020] Ep. vii. 16.

[1021] e.g. Jerome against Vigilantius.

[1022] Sulpic. Sev. Dial. i. 23. Cf. Jerome’s constant answers to inquirers on theological questions (the women of Gaul, Ep. 120, 121) and Eucherius’s answers to his son.

[1023] Vita Hilarii, Migne, li. 1229.

[1024] Vita Caes. i. 5, Migne, Pat. Lat. lxvii. 1020 ‘In disserendis autem Scripturis’, &c.

[1025] Vita Caes., Migne, Pat. Lat. lxvii. 1004.

[1026] Cf. Ennod. Ep. ii. 6.

[1027] Hist. litt. de la France, ii. 245.

[1028] Cf. Paulin. Pell. Euchar. 521.

[1029] Cassian, Instit. ix. 18.

[1030] Gennad. de Script. Eccles. 65.

[1031] Cf. Sidon. Ep. ix. 9.

[1032] Sid. Ep. vi. 1.

[1033] Hist. mérid. de la Gaule, i. 403.

[1034] ‘(Deus) per orbem uberes palmites ampliavit, multiplicatisque eius tentoriis, fecit suos funiculos prae caeteris monasteriis longiores’, i. 22.

[1035] Carm. xvi. 109 ff. ‘quantos illa insula plana miserit in caelum montes’. Cf. Ep. vii. 7. 3; viii. 14. 2; ix. 3. 4.

[1036] Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France, i. 93.

[1037] ii. 130.

[1038] Salvian, Ep. i.

[1039] Bolland, Acta Sanctorum, Jan. 6, i. 328, § 2. Cf. Kaufmann, Kloster- u. Rhetorenschulen, 75.

[1040] Migne, Pat. Lat. lxvii. 1109 ‘Omnes litteras discant: omni tempore duabus horis lectioni vacent’. A brother of Sidonius was educated by Faustus (Carm. xvi. 72), but whether at Lérins or afterwards at Riez is doubtful.

[1041] Migne, Pat. Lat. l. 773 eloquentia and sapientia are mentioned among the subjects.

[1042] Chron. Ler. i. 321.

[1043] Denk, op. cit., p. 187.

[1044] For a full treatment see Seidl, Die Gottverlobung der Kinder oder de pueris oblatis.

[1045] Ennodius, Vita Epiphan., Corp. Scriptt. Eccl. Lat., p. 332.

[1046] Ep. iv. 25.

[1047] Caesarius, Regula ad Virgines, Migne, Pat. Lat. lxvii. 1107.

[1048] Bulaeus, Hist. Univ. Par. i. 82.

[1049] ‘Quicunque in clero puberes aut adulescentes existunt omnes in uno conclavi atrii commorentur ut ... in disciplinis ecclesiasticis agant, deputati probatissimo seniori, quem et magistrum doctrinae et testem vitae habeant’, Hefele, Conciliengesch. iii. 82.

[1050] Remig. Ep. 4; Migne, Pat. Lat. lxv. 969.

[1051] Cf. C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1, 2385.

[1052] Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. iv. 15; Migne, Pat. Gr. lxxxii. 1157.

[1053] ‘Fiant ei litterae vel buxeae vel eburneae et suis nominibus appellentur: ludat in eis, ut et lusus eius eruditio est’, Ep. cvii. 4.

[1054] Inst. i. 1-26.

[1055] Ep. i. 6.

[1056] Cf. Eumen. Pro Instaur. Schol. 20, § 3.

[1057] Ep. cxxviii. 1.

[1058] Inst. i. 1. 30. He protests against a hurried introduction of reading or writing.

[1059] ‘Qui autem ad huiusmodi provehitur gradum, iste erit doctrina et libris imbutus, sensuumque ac verborum scientia perornatus’, De Eccl. Offic. ii. 11. 2; Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxiii. 791.

[1060] ‘Lector cum ordinatur, faciat de illo verbum episcopus ad plebem, indicans eius fidem ac vitam atque ingenium. Post haec, spectante plebe, tradat ei codicem de quo lecturus est, dicens ad eum: Accipe, et esto verbi Dei relator, habiturus, si fideliter et utiliter impleveris officium, partem cum eis qui verbum Dei ministraverunt’, Migne, op. cit. lxxxiv. 201.

[1061] De Felice, iv. 108.

[1062] Boissieu, Inscrip. de Lyon, p. 584.

[1063] Instit. i. 1. 27.

[1064] Ep. cvii. 4.

[1065] Denk, op. cit., quotes Mabillon, An. i. 352.

[1066] Life of Martin, x.

[1067] Ibid.

[1068] Regula ad Virgines, Migne, lxvii. 1109.

[1069] Bolland, Acta Sanctorum, August. 11, p. 657.

[1070] These acta were originally acta proconsularia, i.e. the official record of proceedings at the trials of Christian martyrs. Sometimes the Christians themselves would make notes on the trial, sometimes they would purchase from the clerks copies of the official report. Having obtained an account in either of these ways they usually embroidered the facts with mystic and visionary embellishments. For two examples of the original official protocols see Hardy, Studies in Roman History, p. 151.

[1071] Cf. Watson, Hilary of Poitiers, Intro. xl. Origen is a case in point.

[1072] Adopting the emendation of Salinas.

[1073] Vita Hilarii, Migne, l. 1232.

[1074] ‘Apposito notario, cogebat (sc. me Ausonius) loqui quae velociter edita velox consequeretur manus ...’, Ep. cxviii.

[1075] Ep. cxviii.

[1076] Peristeph. Hymn. ix. 21-4; Migne, lx. 434.

[1077] Ep. v. 15.

[1078] Ep. ix. 7. 1.

[1079] Cassian, Inst. iv. 17; Caesarius, ad Monachos 49, ad Virgines 16.

[1080] ‘De loquela per gestum digitorum et temporum ratione’. Cf. p. 59.

[1081] De artibus Donati, 4.

[1082] Cantor, Ueber die Gesch. der Mathematik, i. 450.

[1083] Alcuin, Ep. 103, De comparatione numerorum Veteris et Novi Testamenti; Migne, Pat. Lat. c. 476. An example of the strained way in which the comparison was worked out is the following: ‘Quatuor eunt elementa quibus mundi ornatus maxime constat. Quatuor sunt virtutes quibus minor mundus, id est, homo ornari debet.’

[1084] Cf., besides the case already quoted, ii. 135, ‘viguit in Grammaticae artis disciplinis rationalibus ac dialecticorum praedicamentorum argumentis exilibus et Aristotelicis definitionibus, nec non Rhetoricorum protelationibus’, and ii. 328. Aygulpus is instructed at Blesium in ‘Grammatica, Rhetorica, Dialectica omniumque scientiarum genere’.

[1085] Le Blant, Épigraphie chrétienne en Gaule, p. 73.

[1086] Le Blant, Nouveau Recueil, No. 331.

[1087] Aus. Epist. xxxi.

[1088] Ep. cxviii ad fin. (Migne, xxii. 966).

[1089] For a discussion of his date see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v.

[1090] They were prescribed by the statutes of all the leading mediaeval schools in England, and among their numerous editors were Brinsley (1612) and Hoole (1659). They dealt with Stoic morals, enmity and friendship, adversity and prosperity, avarice and adulation, &c., and were obviously unsuited to young children. Watson, English Grammar Schools to 1660, p. 122, quotes the following as a favourable specimen:

Cum te quis laudet, iudex tuus esse memento;

plus aliis de te, quam tu tibi, credere noli.

officium alterius multis narrare memento;

atqui aliis cum tu benefeceris, ipse sileto.

[1091] Ep. x. 3 ‘Eius scripta summam quandam litterarum Gallicarum eo saeculo continent’. He may be the same as the Agricius or Argicius of Ausonius, Prof. xvi. 6.

[1092] e.g. in Cassian’s Instituta divin. et secular. litterarum and Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae.

[1093] Migne, lxxi. 572.

[1094] ‘Die Zeitgenossen sprechen von dem Kloster als einer schola; von den Mönchen als den discipuli; sie bezeichnen damit die religiös-sittliche Erziehung’, op. cit., p. 62.

[1095] Migne, Liber Instructionum, l. 728.

[1096] Cf. Migne, l.c., l. 775 ff. and 730 ff.

[1097] Migne, l. 775 ff.

[1098] ‘Properantes ad se de disciplinis saecularibus salutis opifex non refutat, sed ire ad illas quemquam de suo nitore non patitur. Iam si eum mundo subtraxeras, mundi in eo schemata non requiras: erubesco ecclesiastica profitentem ornamentis saecularibus expolire’, Ep. ix. 9. (Corp. Scriptt. Eccles. Lat. vi. 234.)

[1099] Ad Salonium Prolog. Migne, l. 773.

[1100] Le Blant, Épigraphie chrétienne, p. 70.

[1101] Harnack says that it was introduced into the West under the cloak of church-doctrine and through the medium of Augustine, Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 568.

[1102] Cod. Theod. ix. 16. 7 (A.D. 364); 16. 8 ‘cesset mathematicorum tractatus’. Learning and teaching the subject are forbidden on pain of death (370). As late as 409 we find such a law (16. 12).

[1103] Praef. Formulae.

[1104] Ep. xiv. l. 17.

[1105] Hist. of Civilization, i. 402.

[1106] Cf. ‘quin hoc idem senserint scriptoque prodiderint Arcippus ... et omnes Pythagorae posteri, quorum videlicet nominum ne dicam sententiarum multitudine, si eadem prodita velim, volumen efficerem’. He had evidently made a special study of the Pythagoreans.

[1107] Fauriel, Hist. de la Gaule, i. 412.

[1108] ‘Anima inditur corpori per numerum et immortalem eandemque incorporalem convenientiam’, De Statu animae, ii. 7.

[1109] Ep. iv. 11.

[1110] Ep. ix. 9. 13.

[1111] Cf. Ep. iv. 1. 3 ‘inter Aristotelicas categorias’; and Ep. iv. 3. 6; ix. 9. 14; Carm. ii. 174.

[1112]

Cum pusillis et iocamur inter ipsa dogmata

nam iubet rigor magister ne per omne terreas,

‘Ambrosio et Beato’, p. 406, Corp. Scriptt. Eccl. Lat. vi.

[1113] Ep. iv. The authorship of this letter has been questioned.

[1114] Ep. xxxii. 33 ‘Ergo frustra tanto tempore studuimus et saepe manum ferulae subduximus’. Cf. c. Rufin. iii. 6 ‘Nec tibi, ut dicis, ferulas adhibeo neque athenogeronta (Senem discipulum) meum scutica et plagis litteras docere contendo’.

[1115] Sidon. Ep. vi. 1.

[1116] ‘Bene in omnibus causis timor obtemperat disciplinae: qui pro hoc ipso, quod imminentes periculorum causas aut iras iudicum cavere novit, potestatem conservandae salutis obtinuit.... Omnia sub metu disciplinae vitia iacent’, Hom. I, La Bigne, Patrologia Patrum, vol. viii.

[1117] Acta SS. Ordin. Benedict., Praef., lix. ff.

[1118] Isidor. Regula, 6; Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxiii. 874.

[1119] Vita Caesarii, i. 9; Migne, lxvii. 1003.

[1120] Instit. x. 14.

[1121] Ibid. 17, 18; Ephesians iv. 28.

[1122] Cassian, Instit. 21; Proverbs xxviii. 19.

[1123] Cassian, Instit. 22.

[1124] Ibid. 24.

[1125] Migne, l. 718.

[1126] De Statu animae, ii. 9. Erasmus praised the purity of his style in his dedicatory letter to the works of Eucherius (1531).

[1127] Gen., ch. 70, ed. Herdingius.

[1128] Ch. 65. Cf. Ebert, Gesch. der christ. lat. Literatur, iii. 18.

[1129] Op. cit., p. 85.

[1130] ‘Alpina corpora umente caelo educata habent quiddam simile nivibus suis’, Florus, Epitome de Tito Livio, i. 20, ed. Halm; Caesar, B. G. iii. 19. Cf. Dio Cass. Excerpta, τῆς Γαλατίας τὸ κοῦφον καὶ τὸ δειλὸν καὶ τὸ θρασύ, and Livy vii. 12. 11.

[1131] ‘Ad militandum omnis aetas aptissima, et pari pectoris robore senex ad procinctum ducitur et adultus, gelu duratis artubus et labore assiduo multa contemptura et formidanda’, xv. 12.

[1132] xv. 11. 5.

[1133] De Gub. Dei, vii. 12.

[1134] Ibid. vi. 3.

[1135] Ibid.

[1136] Histoire de la Gaule, i. 438.

[1137] The laws against rape are many and severe. A man who abused a girl was delivered over to her as a slave with all his goods after receiving two hundred blows, Cod. Vis. iii. 3. 1. If a woman marries her paramour both are put to death, iii. 3. 2. An instance of their sense of honesty is the Goth who sent Paulinus, living in poverty and banishment at Marseilles, the price for his captured property, Euchar. 570 ff.

[1138] Cod. Theod. ix. 7. 1 (A.D. 326).

[1139] ‘Deportatione plectatur adque universae eius facultates fisci viribus vindicentur’, Cod. Theod. ix. 8. 1.

[1140] Ibid. ix. 9. 1.

[1141] ‘Denegata audientia patibulo adfigatur’, ibid. ix. 5 (A.D. 314).

[1142] Ibid. ix. 6. 3 (A.D. 397).

[1143] ‘Iudices qui se furtis et sceleribus fuerint maculasse convicti, ablatis codicillorum insignibus et honore exuti inter pessimos quosque et plebeios habeantur’, ix. 27. 1.

[1144] Cf. ix. 19. 1. A Curial is to lose his social status as a punishment.

[1145] Euchar. 87.

[1146] Hist. de France, i. 3. 421.

[1147] C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1, 1862, 2200, 2205; xii. 2039, &c.

[1148] Cf. those of Sidonius and Ausonius.

[1149] Ep. 88.

[1150] Ep. 88 ‘Quid mihi prodest scire agellum dividere ... simus hoc titulo rusticiore contenti: O virum bonum’.

[1151] Cf. the modern controversy about religious education, and the criticism that the dry facts are brought out in scriptural teaching rather than the spirit of the Bible.

[1152] Pro Instaur. Scholis, 14.

[1153] ‘Credo igitur, tali Caesar ... instinctu, tanto studium litterarum favore prosequitur, ut non minus ad providentiam numinis sui existimet pertinere bene dicendi quam recte faciendi disciplinas, et pro divina illa intelligentia mentis aeternae, sentiat litteras omnium fundamenta esse virtutum, utpote continentiae, modestiae, vigilantiae, patientiae magistras’, Pro Instaur. Scholis, 8. Cicero’s actual words in de Orat. iii. 15. 57 ‘illa doctrina ... et recte faciendi et bene dicendi magistra’.

[1154] Cf. Horace, Ars Poet. 310 ff.

[1155] C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1. 393.

[1156] ‘Fabricatum Martius Campus militem suscipit, quem simulacrum mentitae dimicationis animavit nec pedem retorquet a classicis cui bucinarum clangor et ministeria belli inter pacis blandimenta crepuerunt. Usu enim virtus nutrita grandescit et de institutione nascitur periculorum tolerantia’, Ennodius, ‘Ambrosio et Beato’ (Corp. Scriptt. Eccles. Lat. vi. 405).

[1157] Confess. i. 16.

[1158] Ibid. i. 18.

[1159] Ep. 88, § 20.

[1160] Ep. ii. 2. 6.

[1161] Ep. iii. 13. 1.

[1162] Op. cit., p. 35.

[1163] Liv. iii. 44.

[1164] Epigr. viii. 3.

[1165] Trist. ii. 369.

[1166] Protrep. 33.

[1167] Parent. vi.

[1168] De nuptiis Honor. 232.

[1169] Victor, rhetorician at Marseilles towards the end of the fifth century. De perversis aetatis moribus ad Salmonem epistola, Migne, lxi. 970.

[1170] So he says, Carm. xxiv. 95.

[1171] Ep. ii. 10. 5.

[1172] Ep. ii. 2. 9 ‘frons triclinii matronalis’. Carm. xv. 144 ‘Hoc opus (of a work of embroidery) virgineae posuere manus’.

[1173] Sidonius mentions the place set apart for the women in the library, Ep. ii. 9. 4.

[1174] Ep. 127.

[1175] Mon. Germ. Hist. vi. 2, p. 173, Canon 36.

[1176] Ibid., p. 182.

[1177] Aug. de Mor. Eccles. Cath. i. 70.

[1178] e.g. in the second Preface to his translation of the Psalms, Migne, xxix. 118.

[1179] Daniel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Isaiah, Psalms, Esther, Samuel and Kings, and to Eustochium alone (after Paula’s death) Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.

[1180] Ozanam, Hist. of Civilization in the Fifth Century, i. 246. Cf. for Jerome’s connexion with Gaul, Ep. v. 2; Ep. 117, 120, 121. Adv. Iovianum, ii. 7 (acquaintance with Hilary). For Augustine, Holmes, Christian Church in Gaul, pp. 383 ff. For Ambrose, E. W. Watson, Hilary of Poitiers, p. xi.

[1181] Migne, xix. 542.

[1182] ‘Ambrosio et Beato’ (Corp. Scriptt. Eccl. Lat. vi. 409).

[1183] De Ord. i. 11; Migne. xxxii. 992.

[1184] Ars Amat. ii. 281.

[1185] Wilamowitz, On Greek Historical Writing (trans. G. Murray), p. 16, ‘The Greeks and Romans had no education in history’; p. 18, ‘No man in antiquity ever gave lectures on history’. Chassang remarks that there was no separate ‘chair’ for history, Le Roman dans l’antiquité, p. 98. Glover, Life and Letters, p. 106.

[1186] Röm. Privatalt., p. 328, note 3.

[1187] Aus. Prof. xxvi. 3:

Historia si quos vel poeticus stylus,

Forumve fecit nobiles.

This seems to indicate that history was conceived of as a separate subject.

[1188] Protrep. 61.

[1189] Prof. xx. 8 ‘Historiam callens Livii et Herodoti’.

[1190] Aus. Ep. x. 32. 22.

[1191] Tech. x.

[1192] Instit. x. l. 31 ‘Historia est proxima poetis et quodam modo carmen solutum’. Cf. Wilamowitz’ Oxford lecture on Greek historical writing (trans. G. Murray, p. 4). ‘The ancients were even further from a genuine science of history than from a genuine science of nature.... The method of historical research which we regard as an imperative duty is scarcely a century old.... And yet ... the first thing is to recognise that all our historical writing rests on foundations laid by the Greeks, as absolutely as does all our natural science.’

[1193] Ep. xx. (title).

[1194] Prof. xvi. 11.

[1195] Carm. ix. 240 ff.

[1196] Prof. xx. 9.

[1197]

Memor, celer, ignoratis

adsidue in libris, nec nisi operta legens,

exesas tineisque opicasque evolvere chartas

maior quam promptis cura tibi in studiis.—Prof. xxii. 1.

[1198] Prof. xxii. 14.

[1199] Ibid. 3, 4.

[1200] De Paul. Pell. vita et carmine, p. 33.

[1201] Cf. Dill, Rom. Soc., p. 424.

[1202] De Ordine, ii. 12; Migne, xxxii. 1012 ‘huic disciplinae (Grammaticae) accessit historia ... non tam ipsis historicis quam grammaticis laboriosa’.

[1203] Pan. Lat. viii. 1.

[1204] Libri de Fastis, iii. 3 (p. 194, Peiper’s ed.).

[1205] Ibid. i. 8.

[1206] Ibid. iv. 3.

[1207] Puech. De Paulini ... Ausoniique epistolarum commercio, p. 11.

[1208] Antike Kunstprosa, p. 81.

[1209] ‘Concessum est rhetoribus ementiri in historiis, ut aliquid dicere possint argutius’, Brut. 42.

[1210] De leg. i. 5 (quoted Norden).

[1211] Inst. x. 2. 21.

[1212] e.g. Pan. Lat. xi. 10.

[1213] Ibid. xii. 5.

[1214] Pro Instaur. Schol. 10.

[1215] ‘Ibi (in the school), fortissimorum imperatorum pulcherrimae res gestae per diversa regionum argumenta, recolantur, dum calentibus semperque venientibus victoriarum nuntiis, revisuntur gemina Persidos flumina et Libyae arva sitientia, et convexa Rheni cornua et Nili ora multifida, dumque sibi ad haec singula intuentium animus adfingit, aut sub tua, Diocletiane Auguste, clementia, Aegyptum, furore posito, quiescentem, aut te Maximiane invicte, perculsa Maurorum agmina fulminantem.... Nunc enim, nunc demum, iuvat orbem spectare depictum, cum in illo nihil videmus alienum’, Ibid. 21.

[1216] Ep. iv. 22. 5.

[1217] Ibid.

[1218] Symm. Ep. iv. 32. Cf. iv. 18; Symmachus refuses the request that he should write a history.

[1219] Ep. viii. 15. 1.

[1220] De Scholis Rom. in Gallia Comata, p. 29.

[1221] See Woodward, Christianity and Nationalism in the later Roman Empire, p. 5. Cf. the saying of Donatus ‘quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?’

[1222] Cf. Woodward, Christianity and Nationalism in the later Roman Empire (1916).

[1223] Ibid., p. 5.

[1224] Orosius, v. 2. 1 (quoted Dill, op. cit., p. 315).

[1225] Strabo, iv. 4.

[1226] See p. 9. Lucian in the second century found a Gallic philosopher, ἀκριβῶς Ἑλλάδα φωνὴν ἀφιείς, Herak. iv.

[1227] Cf. Fauriel, Hist. de la Gaule, i. 432.

[1228] Jullian, Revue internat. de l’Enseignement, p. 37 (1893). Cf. Jullian, Histoire de Bordeaux, pp. 27, 28.

[1229] Le Blant, Nouveau Recueil, No. 150. Cf. No. 326 (Narbonne) νιψάμενος προσεύχου and the Christian signs; the labarum, with α and ω.

[1230] Ibid., No. 374.

[1231] Cf. Jerome, Ep. 130 ‘negotiatoribus et avidissimis mortalium Syris’, and Eumen. Pro Instaur. Schol. 12 ‘Syrus mercator’.

[1232] Le Blant, Épigraphie chrétienne, p. 43.

[1233] Pro Instaur. Schol. 7.

[1234] ‘Genitor ille deorum oceanus’ = Iliad Ξ 201 of which 178 appears in ‘Iovi et Iunoni recubantibus novos flores terra submisit’. Cf. Brandt, Eumenios von Augustodunum, 20.

[1235]

Cecropiae commune decus Latiaeque camenae

solus qui Chium miscet et Ammineum.—Ep. xxxi. 31.

[1236] Cod. Theod. xiii. 3. 11.

[1237] e.g. Misopogon, 342 (see Hertlein). One of the boasts of Favorinus of Arles (second century) was that, though a Gaul, he could write and speak Greek, Philostratus, Vita Soph. i. 206 (ed. Kayser).

[1238] Pro Instaur. Schol. 17.

[1239] Domest. iv. 9.

[1240] Prof. viii:

Obstitit nostrae, quia, credo, mentis

tardior sensus, neque disciplinis

adpulit Graecis puerilis aevi

noxius error.

The credo seems to be ironical, and more a criticism of the masters than of himself.

[1241] Stahl, De Ausonianis studiis poetarum Graecorum, ad init.

[1242] e.g. Ep. viii ‘πολύ cantica τέκνα’, etc.; ‘nunquam ipse torquet αὔλακα’ Ep. vi. 10.

[1243] e.g.

οἱ πλεῖστοι κακοί

quod est Latinum: plures hominum sunt mali.

[1244]

Sedulum cunctis studium docendi,

fructus exilis tenuisque sermo.—Prof. viii. 5.

[1245]

Esset Aristarchi tibi gloria Zenodotique

Graiorum, antiquus si sequeretur honos.—Prof. xiii. 3.

[1246] Bolland, i, Jan., p. 50, vita Eugendi ‘Lectioni namque se in tantum die noctuque ... dedit et intendit ut praeter Latinis voluminibus etiam Graeca facundia redderetur instructus’.

[1247] i. 13. Cf. Contra Petilianum, i. 91 ‘Graecae linguae perperam assecutus sum et proprie nihil’.

[1248] Confess., l.c.

[1249] Ibid. 14.

[1250] De Paul. Pell. vita et carmine, p. 34.

[1251] Ibid. 35.

[1252] Euchar. 77.

[1253] Cf. Auson. to Drepanius, Eclog. i. 11:

Quem pluris faciunt novem sorores,

quam cunctos alios Marone dempto.

[1254] Saint Augustin, p. 57 (transl.).

[1255]

Quae doctrina duplex (i.e. the study of the two languages) sicut est potioribus apta

ingeniis, geminoque ornat splendore peritos,

sic sterilis nimium nostri, ut modo sentio, cordis

exilem facile exhausit divisio (of the languages) venam.—Euchar. 81.

Cf. 117 ‘Argolico pariter Latioque instante magistro’.

[1256] Corp. Scriptt. Eccl. Lat. xvi. 1. 277.

[1257] Euchar. 119-21.

[1258] Ibid. 115-18.

[1259] Confess. i. 14.

[1260] Cf. Frank, Roman Imperialism, 186 ff., also 149, 191, 220.

[1261] Cf. Giles, Roman Civilization, p. 11.

[1262] Aemil. Paul. 6, 7. Cf. Ussing, Erziehung bei den Griechen und Römern, p. 123.

[1263] De Fin. i. 3, ‘hoc tam insolens domesticarum rerum fastidium’. Cf. Tusc. ii. 15; iii. 5, 8, 10; Pro Caecina, 18; Sen. Ep. 58. Cicero’s repeated and emphatic protests show how strong the hellenizing tendency was in his day.

[1264] Plin. Ep. iv. 18.

[1265] Seneca, Ep. lvii. 1.

[1266] e.g. De Fin. i. 6.

[1267] De Rhet., § 2.

[1268] Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, p. 188.

[1269] ‘Sic in foro pueros a centumviralibus causis auspicari ut ab Homero in scholis’, Ep. ii. 14.

[1270] ‘Initium quoque eius (Grammaticae) mediocre exstitit, siquidem antiquissimi doctorum qui iidem et poetae et semigraeci erant ... nihil amplius quam Graecos interpretabantur aut si quid ipsi Latine composuissent praelegebant’, De Grammaticis, § 1.

[1271] Scriptt. Hist. Aug. xix. 27 (2).

[1272] Satyr. 5.

[1273] Instit. x. 1. 46.

[1274] Prof. xxi; Jung, De Scholis Rom. in Gallia Comata, p. 25.

[1275] Euchar. 72.

[1276] Protrep. 45.

[1277] Ep. cvii. 9.

[1278] Revue internat. de l’Enseignement, 1893, p. 38.

[1279] Op. cit., p. 24.

[1280] B. G. lv. 5.

[1281] Epigr. lxvii and the eight following epigrams.

[1282] Epigr. lxxi. It must be remembered, however, that such enthusiasm was very often conventional. The work was very famous in literature (cf. Pliny, N. H. xxxiv. 57 ‘Myronem ... bucula maxime nobilitavit celebratis versibus laudata’) and Ausonius’s appreciation may be worth little more than that of the thirty-six epigrams on Myron’s heifer preserved in the Greek Anthology. That the appreciation of an epigram, however, need not necessarily be artificial is proved, e.g. by iv. 54 of the Anthology of Planudes.

[1283] p. 433, Peiper’s ed. Cf. Petron. 88 ‘Myron, qui paene hominum animas ferarumque aere comprehenderat’.

[1284]

Habet sepulcrum non id intus mortuum,

habet nec ipse mortuus bustum super;

sibi sed est ipse hic sepulcrum et mortuus.

(Carmina a Thaddaeo Ugoleto Ausoni Epigrammaton libro inserta.)

[1285] Ep. viii. 6. 10 ‘cultor aliquis e primis architectusque’. Cf. Ep. vi. 12. 3.

[1286] Claudianus und Sidonius; Dalton, Introd. to Sidonius, p. 101.

[1287] Carm. xxii.

[1288] Ep. ix. 14.

[1289] Ep. ii. 10.

[1290] Ep. iv. 18.

[1291] Ibid.

[1292] Dehio, Die kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes, i. 21; Dalton, ii. 233.

[1293] See for example Reinach’s collection of sculptures.

[1294] Cf., however, p. 31, note. The excellence of the Gauls in pottery has been referred to, ibid.

[1295] Histoire de France, i. 3. 407.

[1296] e.g. Pan. Lat. vi. 21.

[1297] Hist. of Civilization in the Fifth Century, i. 70 ff.

[1298] Variarum lib. vii. 15 ‘Formula ad praefectum urbis de architecto publicorum’.

[1299] Vita S. Martini, 10.

[1300] ‘Ut et facta veterum, exclusis defectibus, innovemus et nova vetustatis gloria vestiamus’, Var. vii. 15.

[1301] Ep. xxxii. 24.

[1302] Le Blant, Nouveau Recueil, No. 87.

[1303] Cf. Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 604 ff.

[1304] Ep. xxxii. 2 (Corp. Scriptt. Eccl. Lat. xxix. 257 ff.).

[1305] Ibid., § 10:

Pleno coruscat Trinitas mysterio;

stat Christus agno, vox patris caelo tonat

et per columbam Spiritus Sanctus fluit.

[1306] Ibid., § 17 ff.

[1307] ‘Totum vero extra concham basilicae spatium alto et lacunato culmine geminis utrimque porticibus dilatatur, quibus duplex per singulos arcus columnarum ordo dirigitur. Cubicula intra porticus quaterna longis basilicae lateribus inserta, secretis orantium ... accommodatos ad pacis aeternae requiem locos praebent. Omne cubiculum binis per liminium frontibus versibus praenotatur ..., ibid., § 12.

[1308] Ibid., § 17.

[1309] C. I. L. xii. 1923.

[1310] C. I. L. xii. 3344.

[1311] Ep. i. 2. 9.

[1312] Confess. ix. 6.

[1313] ‘In mari rubro transisse iustos, et Pharaonem cum suo exercitu demersum, etiam in scholis cantant parvuli’, Migne, xxiii; Adv. Iovianum, ii. 22.

[1314] Sid. Ep. iv. 11. 6.

[1315] ‘Alternante mulcedine monachi clericique psalmicines’, Ep. v. 17. 3.

[1316] Regula, Migne, lxxx. 213.

[1317] Comm. in Ep. ad Galat. ii, praef.

[1318] Vir. Illust., ch. 100. The common reference to this passage to prove that Hilary was the first to introduce hymns into Gaul is therefore not quite correct.

[1319] Vide Dreves, Lat. Hymnendichter des Mittelalters, p. 3.

[1320] Hilary, Homily on Psalms, 65, § 1; cf. Watson, Hilary of Poitiers, p. xlvi.

[1321] Hist. Univ. Par. i. 64. He was a teacher of boys. ‘Studebat ut omnes pueros ... statim litteras doceret ac psalmis imbueret’, Greg. Tur. Vitae Patrum, 8. 2; Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxi, 1042.

[1322] April 2, p. 95.

[1323] Ep. v. 17. 3.

[1324] Prof. xvii. 10.

[1325] Prof. i. 4.

[1326] Prof. xvi. 14 ff.

[1327] Prof. xix. 11.

[1328] Prof. xxii. 19.

[1329] Prof. xxiii. 6.

[1330] Prof. xiii.

[1331] Cod. Theod. xiii. 9. 1.

[1332] Ritter, Comment. on Cod. Theod. xiii. 9. 1.

[1333] xiv. 6: xxviii. 4.

[1334] Cf. Confess. v. 8 (14) ‘Apud Carthaginem foeda est et intemperans licentia scholasticorum: inrumpunt inpudenter et prope furiosa fronte perturbant ordinem, quem quisque discipulis ad proficiendum instituerit. Multai niuriosa faciunt mira hebetudine et punienda legibus....’ He complains that Carthage is much worse than Rome. The tradition of colonial rowdiness seems to have lasted to our own time.

[1335] C. I. L. xiii. 1. 1. 2040.

[1336] I owe this suggestion to the late Mr. H. J. Cunningham of Worcester College.

[1337] ‘Paucae domus studiorum seriis cultibus antea celebratae, nunc ludibriis ignaviae torpentis exundant, vocali sonu, perflabili tinnitu fidium resultantes. Denique pro philosopho cantor, et in locum oratoris doctor artium ludicrarum accitur’, xiv. 6. 18.

[1338] Ep. ii. 10; iv. 18; viii. 2.

[1339]

Quarum iamdudum nullus vigeat licet usus

disciplinarum, vitiato scilicet aevo.—Euchar. 68.

[1340] Epist. posterior doctissimo viro Sapaudo (Corp. Scriptt. Eccles. Lat. x. 203).

[1341] ‘Video enim os Romanum non modo neglegentiae sed pudori esse Romanis’, ibid.

[1342] Cf. the criticisms of education in Juvenal and Seneca (Ep. Mor. xv. 3. 23; Ep. lxxvi. 4; Ep. cviii. 6). To rant about education has been a temptation in all ages.

[1343] Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 296.

[1344] Ibid. 392.

[1345] De Reditu, i. 21.

[1346] Ibid. i. 29 ff.

[1347] Carmen de Providentia Dei, 13; Migne, Pat. Lat. li. 618.

[1348] Ibid. 27.

[1349] Migne, li. 611, vs. 25.

[1350] Ibid., vs. 37 ff.

[1351] Commonitorii ii. 165 (Corp. Scriptt. Eccles. Lat. xvi. 234).

[1352] e.g. by Maximin towards the end of the third century, Pan. Lat. iii. 5.

[1353] Ammianus, xxviii. 2, 10.

[1354] Zosimus, vi. 2.

[1355] Salvian, De Gub. v. 6, 24.

[1356] Ep. vi. 4. 1, A.D. 472.

[1357] Ep. vi. 6. 1, A.D. 472. Cf. Ep. vii. 10. 2, A.D. 474 ‘Si commeandi libertas pace revocetur’, and Ep. vii. 11. 1.

[1358] Ep. vi. 10. 1, A.D. 473.

[1359] Ep. ix. 3. 2. Cf. Ep. ix. 5. 1.

[1360] Ep. vii. 1.

[1361] ‘Nam idcirco tantum incommodis calamitatum circumecribendis potius quam sanandis pax quaedam videtur adludere, ut mentes fallaci securitate laxatas, instaurato gravius metu succiduus gemitus adficiat’, Ep. ad Diversos, xxxvii, ed. Peiper.

[1362] Hist. of Europe in the Fifth Century, p. 27.

[1363] Ad Uxorem, 7; Migne, li. 611.

[1364] De Prov. Dei, Migne, li. 618.

[1365] Ibid.

[1366] Guizot, Hist. of Civilization (trans. Hazlitt), i. 439.

[1367] De Reditu, ii. 49.

[1368] Salvian, De Gub. v. 24 ‘De Bagaudis nunc mihi sermo est qui per malos iudices et cruentos spoliati afflicti necati, postquam ius Romanae libertatis omiserant, etiam honorem Romani nominis perdiderunt ... vocamus rebelles, vocamus perditos quos esse compulimus criminosos’. Salvian was a preacher and loved vividness. But, as Hodgkin remarks (I. i. 2, pp. 920 ff.), he was a truthful man, and had an enthusiasm for justice, and as such he saw that there was much to be said on the anti-Roman side. Cf. ‘... inciperent esse quasi barbari, quia non permittebantur esse Romani’.

[1369] Pichon, Études sur la Litt. lat. i. 55.

[1370] Sidon. Ep. ii. 10. 1; iv. 17. 2.

[1371] Letter to Philip, 5, 10; Murray, Religio Grammatici, p. 18.

[1372] ‘Der Endzweck der Wissenschaften ist Wahrheit. Wahrheit ist der Seele nothwendig, und es wird Tyrannei, ihr in Befriedigung dieses wesentlichen Bedürfnisses den geringsten Zwang anzuthun.’

[1373] ‘Et ideo ego adolescentulos existimo in scholis stultissimos fieri, quia nihil ex iis quae in usu habemus aut audiunt aut vident’, Satyr. i. 1 and 2.

[1374] Aphthon. Progym. 4. 10.

[1375] Ibid. 7.

[1376] Ibid. 12.

[1377] Ep. xxii.

[1378] Ep. xiii. 6 ff.

[1379] Ep. xv. 24 ff. Cf. his trifling with Greek words, Ep. viii.

[1380] Ep. viii. 11. 5.

[1381] Ep. ix. 14. 4.

[1382] Ep. ix. 7. 2.

[1383] Professores, Epitaphia, Ludus, Caesares, Periochae, &c.

[1384] Eclogae, Cupido, Technopaegnion, Griphus, Cento, &c.

[1385] Cf. Sid. Ep. iv. 22. 2 ‘et ego Plinio discipulus assurgo’.

[1386] Ep. i. 1. 2.

[1387] Cf. Baret’s ed., p. 115.

[1388] Ep. iv. 3. 3.

[1389] Ep. iv. 22. 6.

[1390] ‘Quisquis enim recentiorum aliquid dignum memoria scriptitavit, non et ipse novitios legit. Illi ergo reventilandi memoriaeque mandandi sunt de quibus isti potuere proficere quos miramur’, Ep. Posterior (Corp. Scriptt. Eccles. Lat., vol. x, p. 206).

[1391] See especially Brandt, Eumenius von Augustodunum, pp. 18, 19. Cf. Pichon, Études sur la Litt. lat. i. 36 ff.

[1392] It must be remembered, however, that the ‘litterati’ of the day very often posed as familiar with authors whom they only knew from extracts or anthologies. The rarer authors here prescribed were known, probably, only in this superficial way.

[1393] Cf. Wackernagel in Kultur der Gegenwart, i. 8. 389.

[1394] Jer. Ep. 125. 6.

[1395] Sidonius gives as the special mark of the grammarian his love of rule (regulare), Ep. iv. 1. 2.

[1396] ‘Ambrosio et Beato’ (Corp. Scriptt. Eccles. Lat., vol. vi, p. 408).

[1397] Cf. Aulus Gellius, N. A. i. 6. 4 ‘Rhetori concessum est sententiis uti falsis, audacibus, versutis, subdolis, captiosis, si veri modo similes sint....’

[1398] Ozanam, Hist. of Civil. in the Fifth Century, i. 3.

[1399] Cf. Rocafort, Paulin de Pella, p. xl; Ebert, Geschichte der Litteratur des Mittelalters, p. 409.

[1400] Praef. § 1 ‘me scilicet totam vitam meam deo debere’; Euchar. 590 ff. ‘hoc unum ipse bonum statuens, hoc esse tenendum conscius, hoc toto cupiens adquirere corde.... Te praefando loqui, Te meminisse silendo’.

[1401] De Prov. 935; Migne, li. 618.

[1402] Ibid. 941.

[1403] Ibid. 958.

[1404] Migne, li. 611.

[1405] Ep. vii. 13.

[1406] Ep. 60; Migne, xxii. 600 ‘Orbis Romanus ruit et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur’.

[1407] De Doctrina.

[1408] Ibid. iv. 2.

[1409] Confess. iii. 6.

[1410] ‘Ne ulterius pueri meditantes ... insanias mendaces et bella forensia mercarentur ex ore meo arma furori suo’, ibid. ix. 2.

[1411] Prin. Rhet. i.; Migne, xxxii. 1439 ‘Oratoris officium est ... primum ipsam (quaestionem) intellegere’. Cf. De Ordine, ii. 17, talking of barbarisms and solecisms of which he confesses he himself may be guilty, he says to his mother: ‘sed tu, contemptis istis vel puerilibus rebus vel ad te non pertinentibus, ita grammaticae divinam fere vim naturamque cognoscis ut eius animam tenuisse, corpus reliquisse disertis videaris’.

[1412] Ibid., ch. 2. Cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymol. ii. 1 ‘Rhetorica est scientia ... ad persuadenda iusta et bona’. Migne, lxxxii. 125.

[1413] ‘Hic est ordo studiorum sapientiae per quem fit quisque idoneus ad intelligendum ordinem rerum, id est, ad dignoscendos duos mundos et ipsum parentem Universitatis’, De Ord. ii. 18. Cf. i. 9; ii. 16.

[1414] De Schol. Rom., p. 43.

[1415] Chron. Ler. ii. 57; Migne, l. 718.

[1416] Phaedo, 66 C.

	PAGE
PART I. INTRODUCTORY
1. The Limits of the Period	1
2. Greek Influence	4
3. Celtic Influence	10
4. Germanic Influence	19
5. Romanization of Gaul	26
6. Roman Education in Gaul before the Fourth Century A.D.	33
PART II. PAGAN EDUCATION
A. The General Prosperity of the Schools in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries	39
B. Inside the School	52
(i) The Substance and Methods of Primary Education	52
(ii) The Substance and Methods of Secondary Education	68
(iii) Control and Arrangement of the School	93
(a) Discipline in Primary and Secondary Schools	93
(b) Play	97
(c) Organization	102
C. Outside the School	119
(i) Administrative and Social Conditions	119
(ii) Class Distinction and Education	124
(iii) The Teacher in Society	132
(iv) Imperial Protection	135
PART III. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
1. Introductory: Church and State	151
2. The Persistence of Rhetoric: Tradition and Reaction	157
3. The Rise of Christian Schools in Gaul	175
4. The Practice of Christian Education	180[xii]
PART IV. CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCES
1. Moral Education	198
2. History	209
3. The Position of Greek	220
4. Art	231
PART V. THE DECLINE OF EDUCATION
1. Gallic Students Abroad	240
2. The Invaders	243
3. Ideals	249
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY	262
INDEX	265

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire

SCHOOLS OF GAUL IN THE LAST CENTURY OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

PREFACE

CONTENTS

PART I INTRODUCTORY

1. The Limits of the Period

2. Greek Influence

3. Celtic Influence

4. Germanic Influence

5. Romanization of Gaul

6. Roman Education in Gaul before the Fourth Century A.D.

PART II PAGAN EDUCATION

A. THE GENERAL PROSPERITY OF THE SCHOOLS IN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES

B. INSIDE THE SCHOOL

(i) The Substance and Methods of Primary Education

(ii) The Substance and Methods of Secondary Education

(iii) Control and Arrangement of the School

(a) Discipline in primary and secondary schools.

(b) Play.

(c) Organization.

C. OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL

(i) Administrative and Social Conditions

(ii) Class Distinction and Education

(iii) The Teacher in Society

(iv) Imperial Protection

PART III CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

1. Introductory: Church and State

2. The Persistence of Rhetoric: Tradition and Reaction

3. The Rise of Christian Schools in Gaul

4. The Practice of Christian Education

Methods and Masters.

PART IV CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCES

1. Moral Education

2. History

3. The Position of Greek

4. Art

PART V THE DECLINE OF EDUCATION

1. Gallic Students Abroad

2. The Invaders

3. Ideals

FOOTNOTES

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Authorities.

(a) Pagan.

(b) Christian.

(c) Inscriptions.

II. Modern Authorities.

(a) Works of Reference.

(b) Other Works.

INDEX

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

SCHOOLS OF GAUL
IN THE LAST CENTURY OF
THE WESTERN EMPIRE

PART I
INTRODUCTORY

PART II
PAGAN EDUCATION

PART III
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

PART IV
CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCES

PART V
THE DECLINE OF EDUCATION