Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire _ A study of pagan and Christian education in the last century of the Western empire T. J. Haarhoff 930 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Schools of Gaul in the last
century of the Western Empire
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire
A study of pagan and Christian education in the last century of
the Western empire

Author: T. J. Haarhoff

Release date: July 8, 2023 [eBook #71150]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1920

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71150

Credits: Tim Lindell, Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCHOOLS OF
GAUL IN THE LAST CENTURY OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE ***

SCHOOLS OF GAUL
IN THE LAST CENTURY OF
THE WESTERN EMPIRE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY

HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOLS OF GAUL

A STUDY
OF
PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN
EDUCATION
IN THE LAST CENTURY
OF THE
WESTERN EMPIRE

BY
THEODORE HAARHOFF
LECTURER IN LATIN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
HUMPHREY MILFORD
1920

MATRI MEAE

CVIVS VITA

SCHOLASTICAE LICET DOCTRINAE EXPERS
VERIOR TAMEN MIHI EDVCATIO
QVAM PRAECEPTA PROFESSORVM OMNIA
HOC OPVSCVLVM REVERENTER
DICAVI

PREFACE
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 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. 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,

‘Invictum deceat studiis servare vigorem’.

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 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.
THEODORE HAARHOFF.
University of Cape Town.
October 23, 1919.

CONTENTS
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

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

PART I
INTRODUCTORY

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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
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 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:

Inter hails goticum, scap jah matjan jah drigkan
non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.

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 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 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 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]

Te canimus semperque, sinent dum fata, canemus:
sospes nemo potest immemor esse tui,
obruerint citius scelerata oblivia solem,
quam tuus ex nostro corde recedat honos.[181]

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

Profuit invitis, te dominante, capi.

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:

Ipsos crediderim sic habitare deos.[182]

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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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] 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]

PART II
PAGAN EDUCATION

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 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.

Tu caeli numeros et conscia sidera fati
callebas, studium dissimulanter agens.
non ignota tibi nostrae quoque formula vitae,
signatis quam tu condideras tabulis.[247]

His aunt Aemilia lived a single life devoted to the study of 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
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 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]

‘(Infel)icissima (qu)ae ... quem vice fili educavit et studiis
liberalibus produxit, sed [iniqua stella et genesis mala!] qui se (i.e.
vita matura) non est frunitus, nec quod illi destinatum erat; sed quod
potuit mulier infelix et sibi viva cum eo posuit et sub ascia
dedic(avit).’

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 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.
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:

Aemula te Latiae decorat facundia linguae.[303]

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 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 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 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 (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 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:

Hic promens teretes pilas, trochosque,
hic talos crepitantibus fritillis.[326]

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 eager love of parents dear, who knew
To temper study ever with delights
Of relaxation, care that understood
To make me good without severity,
And give advancement to my untrained thought.[329]

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 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.

Unde labor puero, fateor, fuit hic mihi maior
eloquium librorum ignotae apprehendere linguae.[334]

At fifteen[335] we find him still at the school of the grammarian:

Argolico pariter Latioque instante magistro.[336]

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 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, 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. Ausonius addresses the most
famous of the Bordeaux professors, Minervius, as

Alter rhetoricae Quintiliane togae;[353]

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

Quos praetextati celebris facundia ludi
contulit ad veteris praeconia Quintiliani.[354]

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:

Et sic scribere non minus valentem
Marcus Quintilianus ut solebat;[357]

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. 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 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 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:

Do you with varied intonation read
A host of verses; let your words succeed
Each other with the accent and the stress
Your master taught you. Slurring will repress
The sense of what you’re reading; and a pause
Adds vigour to an overburdened clause.[376]

This was the framework of every lesson.
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 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
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 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 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] 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 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 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
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 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), 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 ‘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:

εἷς οἰωνὸσ ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης
(Dulce et decorum est ...)

and

οὐδὲν ἀκιδνότερον γαῖα τρέφει ἀνθρώποιο.
(Of all things Man most wretched is on earth.)

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:

χρὴ πενίην φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς μεγακήτεα πόντον
ῥίπτειν καὶ πετρῶν, Κύρνε, κατ’ ἠλιβάτων.

There follows a chapter on Refutation (ἀνασκευή). The first step is to
attack your opponent (τὴν τῶν φησάντων διαβολήν), 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 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:
(1) Prooimion. Quality of subject to be praised.
(2) Class to which subject belongs: race, country, ancestors, parents.
(3) Education of subject: training, art and laws of his environment and
education.
(4) Achievements (main division):
(a) Qualities of soul: courage, prudence, &c.
(b) Qualities of body: beauty, strength, &c.
(c) Qualities of fortune: rank, friends, &c.
(5) Comparison—to the advantage of the subject.
(6) Epilogue, in the nature of a prayer.
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.)
Προσωποποιία—when both words and speaker are imagined.
Ἠθοποιία proper—when the person is known from literature, and words are
put into his mouth to illustrate his character.
The classes of Ethopoeia proper may be described as:
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 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
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 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 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] 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:

Facundus iuvenis Gallorum nuper ab arvis
missus Romani discere iura fori.[488]

And we are told that St. Germanus who, according to the life 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 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 (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 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 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 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
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:

Primus Romanas ordiris, Iane, Kalendas,
Februa vicino mense Numa instituit, &c.

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 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 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] 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,

Et satis est puero memori legisse libenter,
et cessare licet....

and again:

Disce libens ...
... studium puerile fatiscit,
laeta nisi austeris varientur, festa profestis,[560]

yet there is an acquiescence in an almost savage system of 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:

sic neque Peliaden terrebat Chiron Achillem:[561]

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 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.

Mox pueros molli monitu et formidine leni
pellexi.[571]

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:

Love joins me to you. In this bond alone
Dare I to claim equality with you.
Sweet friendship binds me ever to your heart,
And ever we renew our equal love.[574]

Similarly, Sidonius speaks of his master Hoënius in a way 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 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 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 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, 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.

(c) Organization.

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 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 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]

(1) Multos lactantibus annis,
ipse alui gremioque fovens et murmura solvens.

(2) Mox pueros molli monitu et formidine leni
pellexi.

(3) Idem vesticipes, motu iam puberis aevi,
ad mores artesque bonas fandique vigorem
produxi.

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 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.

Pueros ...
formasti rhetor metam prope puberis aevi,

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 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 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:

Sunt etiam musis sua ludicra: mixta camenis
otia sunt ...
set requie studiique vices rata tempora servant.[657]

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:
‘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 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 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).’ 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:

Artes discere vult pecuniosas?
fac, discat, citharoedus aut choraules.[688]

In Gaul, it appears, teachers were paid by the State before this was the
case at Rome; for Strabo remarks in the first 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 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:

Mox schola ...
grammatici nomen divitiasque dedit.[701]

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 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:

Quantum vis stipulare, et protinus accipe quod do
ut toties illum pater audiat.[704]

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 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 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:

Tu mihi quod genitor, quod avunculus, unus utrumque
alter ut Ausonius, alter ut Arborius.

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,
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, 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. 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 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 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]
In this society lay the hope of the future.

(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 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]

Sperabo tamen, nec vota fatiscent,
ut patris utque mei non immemor, ardua semper
praemia musarum cupias facundus, et olim
hac gradiare via, qua nos praecessimus et cui
proconsul genitor, praefectus avunculus instant.

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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:

Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros.

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:

Ieiunis nil scribo; meum post pocula si quis
legerit, hic sapiet.

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 ‘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:

Posset insertus numero ut videri
grammaticorum.

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 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 ‘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 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 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 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:

Quod laude clarus, quod operatus litteris,
omnem refugisti ambitum.[833]

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 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 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. ‘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 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 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 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 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:

Romanumque nefas contra omnia iura licenter
in mea grassatum diverso tempore damna.[869]

Bordeaux, on the other hand, is described in the language of affection.[870]
If Rome and her rule appeared so artificial even to the upper class of
society, much greater must have been the effect on the 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 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.

PART III
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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]
D.M.

Memoriae aeternae
Socchiae Enneanis
Dulcissim. et. super. ae
tatem. ingenio. nobi
lissimo. qui vixit. an
... Menses VII. D. XXIIII
L. Boconius. Pho(t)inus Pa
ter et Alpia Castina ma
ter. Parentes infelicis
simi repentina huius. a
missione orbati filio
Karissimo unico prae
cl.... p.... s.... sibi erepto (praeclaro pro sua aetate)
et sibi vivi posteris que
suis Po(s) et sub Ascia (posuit)
dedicaverunt.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

Qui corda falsis atque vanis imbuunt
tantumque linguas instruunt;

nihil adferentes ut salutem conferant,
quod veritatem detegat.[987]
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 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.

Squalet lucifugis insula plena viris,

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

Munera fortunae metuunt, dum damna verentur.[995]

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 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 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. 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 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 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
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 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 ‘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 D̅ I̅ 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, 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 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 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 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.

Praefuerat studiis puerilibus, et grege multo
saeptus magister litterarum sederat.
verba notis brevibus comprendere multa peritus
raptimque punctis dicta praecipitibus sequi.

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 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:

Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo,

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.

‘Quod si te, sacerdos Dei, quicumque es, Martianus noster septem
disciplinis erudiit, id est si te in grammaticis docuit legere, in
dialecticis altercationes propositiones advertere, in rhetoricis genera
metrorum agnoscere, in geometris terrarum linearumque mensuras
colligere ... si in his omnibus ita fueris exercitatus ut tibi stylus
noster sit rusticus, nec sic quoque deprecor ut avellas quae scripsi
sed si tibi in his quiddam placuerit, salvo opere nostro, te scribere
versu non abnuo.’[1093]

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.’
‘Si Deus hominem immortalem fecerit, quemadmodum potuit mori?’
‘Quomodo accipiendum est quod legimus Regnum Dei intra vos est?’
‘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 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:

‘Abstuta passiens dulcissema apta’,
‘Abstutus argus dulcissimus artus’,

‘Abstuti passiens dulcissimi aptu’,
‘Abstutus passiius dulcissernus aptus’,
all for ‘Astutus largus patiens dulcissimus aptus’. And there are many
variations of the lines inscribed by Jerome on Paula’s tomb:

Aspicis augustum praecisa in rupe sepulcrum,
hospitium Paulae est caelestia regna tenentis,

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 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’ 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 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 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 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 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]

‘Der auf Unkenntniss gegründete Hochmuth moderner Bildung
glaubt freilich mit dem einen Worte “Scholastik” über die Arbeit
dieser Mönche hinweggehen zu können, als über eine Summe
nutzloser Versuche ... allein schon die eine Beobachtung, dass in den
wichtigsten Fragen schon damals dieselben Gegensätze
aufeinanderplatzten, welche heute die Geister trennen, schon diese
Beobachtung zeigt dass die kirchlichen Fesseln das geistige Leben
nicht erstarren liessen.’

PART IV
CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCES

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 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 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 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 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] 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:

‘Artis Grammatices Doctor Morumqꝫ Mag .. ter Blaesianus
Biturix’.[1155]

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 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 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 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:

Latios nec volvere libros (says Claudianus of the bride),[1168]
desinit aut Graios, ipsa genetrice magistra.

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:

Quae ... Deo tantum sunt nota, recondita cunctis,
scire volunt (heu grande nefas!) et scire videntur.

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:

Sic exempla virum uxores accepta sequuntur.[1169]

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:

Sunt tamen et doctae, rarissima turba, puellae.

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

Altera non doctae turba, sed esse volunt.[1184]

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 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 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

ὀκτὼ Θουκυδίδου, ἐννέα Ἡροδότου,

and in his invitations to Paulinus he advises him to leave behind

Historiam, mimos, carmina....[1190]

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 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,

et quidquid Latia conditur historia.[1198]

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 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.

Scire cupis qui sim? titulum qui quartus ab uno est
quaere: leges nomen consulis Ausonii.

And,

Exemplum iam patris habes, ut protinus et te
adgreget Ausoniis purpura consulibus;[1205]

and again, to Proculus:

Mille annos centumque et bis fluxisse novenos

consulis Ausonii nomen ad usque leges.[1206]
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 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 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 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 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 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:

Εὔστοχι (vocat. case) ζήσαις,[1229]

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 in Gaul which he had seen there in the
fifteenth century:

Graecis vidi epitaphiis
inscripta busta,

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 allowed Greek to dwindle in the
schools. Ausonius says that his father’s Latin was halting:

Sermone impromptus Latio, verum Attica lingua
suffecit culti vocibus eloquii,[1239]

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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
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:

Det primos versibus annos
Maeoniumque bibat felici pectore fontem.
mox et Socratico plenus grege mutet habenas
liber et ingentis quatiat Demosthenis arma.
hinc Romana manus circumfluat, et modo Graio
exonerata sono mutet suffusa saporem.[1272]

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 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. 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 doctrine that art is greater than nature. Of
Myron’s heifer he says:

Fingere nam similem vivae, quam vivere, plus est;
nec sunt facta dei mira, sed artificis.[1283]

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. 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 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 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 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:

Digna sacramentis gemina sub imagine pinxit.

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 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 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]

Psallere praecepit, normamque tenere canendi
primus et alterutrum tendere voce chorum.

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.

PART V
THE DECLINE OF EDUCATION

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:

Et tua nunc suboles morem sectata parentis,
Narbonem ac Romam nobilitat studiis.[1327]

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 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 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:

Memoriae A. Vitelli Valeri
hic annorum X in studiis
Romae de(cessit) parentes
Nymphi(us) et Tyche
uni(co) et carissimo fil(io).[1335]

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 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 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 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.

Illa (Gallica rura) quidem longis nimium deformia bellis,
sed quam grata minus, tam miseranda magis.[1345]
...
iam tempus laceris post saeva incendia fundis
vel pastorales aedificare casas.[1346]

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

Ipsi quin etiam fontes si mittere vocem
ipsaque si possent arbuta nostra loqui,
cessantem iustis poterant urgere querellis.[1346]

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

Nos autem tanta sub tempestate malorum
invalidi passim caedimur et cadimus,
cumque animum patriae subiit fumantis imago
et stetit ante oculos quidquid ubique perit,
frangimur, immodicis et fletibus ora rigamus.[1347]

The invasions are like some immense tidal wave that sweeps all before it:

Si totus Gallos sese effudisset in agros
Oceanus, vastis plus superesset aquis.[1348]

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

Ferro peste fame vinclis algore calore,
mille modis miseros mors rapit una homines
... pax abiit terris, ultima quaeque vides.[1349]

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

Ista manent, nostri sed non mansere parentes;
exigui vitam temporis hospes ago.[1350]

‘Respice’, says Orientius, referring to the same invasions,

Respice quam raptim totum mors presserit orbem,
quantos vis belli perculerit populos,
non densi nemoris, celsi non aspera montis
flumina non rapidis fortia gurgitibus,
non castella locis, non tutae moenibus urbes....[1351]

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 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.

Qui centum quondam terram vertebat aratris,
aestuat ut geminos possit habere boves.
vectus magnificas carpentis saepe per urbes,
rus vacuum fessis aeger adit pedibus.
ille decem celsis sulcans maria ante carinis
nunc lembum exiguum scandit et ipse regit.[1363]

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.

Maxima pars lapsis abiit iam mensibus anni
quo scripta est versu pagina nulla tuo.[1364]

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

Quid pueri insontes? Quid commisere puellae
nulla quibus dederat crimina vita brevis?[1365]

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:

Invictum deceat studiis servare vigorem.

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:

Ipsa satellitibus pellitis Roma patebat,
et captiva prius quam caperetur erat.[1367]

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

Ἐν οὐρανᾥ ἴσως παράδειγμα ἀνάκειται τῷ βουλομένῳ ὁρᾶν, καὶ
ὁρῶντι ἑαυτὸν κατοικίζειν.
Plato, Republic 592 b.

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 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 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 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 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:

Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor,

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 retaining the order of the letters in each
word, without prejudice to the sense:

Praecipiti modo quod decurrit tramite flumen
tempore consumptum iam cito deficiet.[1381]

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 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] 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:

Aetas parentum peior avis tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem vitiosiorem.

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 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.

Iniusti tumeant, et tuta pace suorum
laetentur scelerum; nonque illos vinea fallat,
non ager: et noceant illaesi, et crimine crescant:
nos quibus in Christo sunt omnia non capiant res
occiduae.[1401]

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

Sed si quis superest animi vigor, excutiamus
peccati servile iugum, ruptisque catenis,
in libertatem et patriae redeamus honorem;[1402]

and again

Nec quia procidimus fusi certamine primo,
stare et conflictum vereamur inire secundum;[1403]

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

... omnem
vincendi nobis vim de victore petamus
... sine quo non stant qui stare videntur.

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

Semper agam grates Christo, dabo semper honorem:
laus Domini semper vivet in ore meo.[1404]

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

sincerum vivo de fonte liquorem.

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 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

Heavy as frost, and deep, almost, as life.

Vigilantius in Gaul criticizes the rites of the Church and 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:

Incipe divinis tantum dare pectora rebus.

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 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.