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....