and again:

Disce libens ...

... studium puerile fatiscit,

laeta nisi austeris varientur, festa profestis,[560]

yet there is an acquiescence in an almost savage system of control.

Surliness and brutality on the part of the master is accepted as one of

the ills that flesh is heir to. It was not always so, he says:

sic neque Peliaden terrebat Chiron Achillem:[561]

Chiron used to guide his pupils with gentle words (though Juvenal

represents Achilles as trembling before the rod).[562] But that state

of things belongs to a mythological age. The only thing to do in the

circumstances is to remember Vergil’s dictum: ‘Degeneres animos timor

arguit’, and face the master as a brave warrior would his enemy.[563]

He pictures to his grandson the cane, the birch, the strap, and the

excited bustle of the school-benches (a confession that even the most

rigorous system of force could not keep perfect order). These instruments

are ‘the pomp of the place’ and the elements in its scene of fear. But

the great consolation is that both his father and his mother went through

the same storm of blows in their childhood—an indication that the girls

were not more spared than the boys.[564]

The same assumption that flogging is the inevitable counterpart of

teaching is found in Sidonius.[565] ‘Ferulae lectionis Maronianae’

becomes a synonym for education at a grammar school, and the phrase

‘manum ferulae subducere’, in the sense of attending school, goes down

through the Middle Ages into modern times. Even at the universities

corporal punishment was the usual thing. Eusebius, professor of

philosophy at Lyons, moulds his pupils ‘castigatoria severitate’.[566]

There are signs that the finer spirits, in theory at any rate, felt that

there was something wrong with all this external rigour. Partly, no

doubt, they followed the lead of Quintilian, and partly, perhaps, there

was a slow evolution past the stage of mere militarism. Libanius boasts

ἑτέρους δὲ ἴσμεν μυρίας ῥάβδους ἀνηλωκότας,[567] but _he_ had no need to;

and experience has taught him that the desired end is not always reached

in this way. ‘Now I avoided correction by means of blows, for I saw that

this method often had the opposite of the intended effect.’ We gather

that the applause, which was usual in the rhetor’s school,[568] often

degenerated into rowdiness.[569] Yet we find that the relation between

master and pupil was often very hearty. Gregory of Nazianzus tells of the

farewell speeches, the laments, the tears, which used to mark the day of

parting.[570]

The opposition to the regular tradition is not so clearly formulated in

the West, but we find indications of a better ideal. In the letter to

his grandson, Ausonius does not praise existing conditions, but rather

accepts them as a necessary evil. Indeed, he describes his own teaching

in words which are so contrasted with his picture of the ordinary school

as to imply a direct criticism.

Mox pueros _molli_ monitu et formidine _leni_

pellexi.[571]

Paulinus of Pella has pleasant memories of his schooldays.[572] The

affection with which he writes to his teacher Ausonius[573] proves

that the professor’s statements about the mildness of his régime were

not unfounded. He had referred to his work with Paulinus as that of a

yoke-mate, and his pupil replies:

Love joins me to you. In this bond alone

Dare I to claim equality with you.

Sweet friendship binds me ever to your heart,

And ever we renew our equal love.[574]

Similarly, Sidonius speaks of his master Hoënius in a way which implies

at least some degree of familiarity,[575] while his general recollections

of his schooldays seem to have been distinctly pleasing.[576]

(b) _Play._

The Romans were not much interested in psychology, or in the full

development of personality. It is not surprising, therefore, to find

that practically all the child-games we know of in the ancient world

are Greek;[577] nor can we wonder that the Gallo-Romans have left us no

description of the sort of things the child mind does, the way in which

its personality develops, when freed from the guidance of what is called

education.

The subtler African mind of Augustine, however, has left us some record

of such games; and they are all so human and lifelike that they may very

well have been common not only to his country, but also to his age.

He mentions ‘nuts’, handball, and bird-catching (_nucibus et pilulis et

passeribus_).[578] Games of ball were, of course, common to the children

of all countries. We find Paulinus of Pella at the age of fifteen wishing

for a golden ball just arrived from Rome,[579] and Augustine describes

how desperately keen he was on beating a chum in the contest of the

ball.[580] As for the sparrows, ‘to capture a bird’, says Bertrand in his

_Life of St. Augustine_,[581] ‘that winged, light and brilliant thing, is

what all children long to do in every country on earth’. The same author

describes the game of nuts as it is played in modern Africa. ‘A step

of a staircase is used as a table by the players, or the pavement of a

courtyard. Three shells are laid on the stone and a dried pea. Then, with

rapid, baffling movements, hands, brown and alert, fly from one shell

to another, shuffle them, mix them up, juggle the dried pea sometimes

under this shell, sometimes under that, and the point is to guess which

shell the pea has got under. By means of certain astute methods an artful

player can make the pea stick to his fingers, or to the inside of the

shell, and the opponent loses every time....’

It may be, too, that there were battles in which they took sides as

Carthaginians and Romans or Greeks and Trojans.[582] Augustine loved

to listen to fairy tales and was passionately fond of watching plays

and performances (_curiositate magis magisque per oculos emicante in

spectacula, ludos maiorum_).[583] The spirit of adventure sometimes led

him (as it has led children of all ages) to break the laws of property,

as the incident of the pear-tree shows.[584]

Of the organized sport of youth and manhood we derive considerable

information from Sidonius, who frequently mentions indoor games such as

the _duodecim scripta_, a sort of backgammon,[585] _fritilli_[586] and

_pyrgus_[587] (in which dice [_tesserae_] were used), as well as outdoor

games. Paulinus of Pella tells us how he was taken ill with fever at the

age of fifteen, and his parents, thinking his health more important than

‘doctae instructio linguae’, followed the doctor’s advice and removed him

from his school at Bordeaux. Among the pleasures that were planned to

speed his recovery was hunting, which his father resumed for his son’s

sake.[588] The equipment of a well-to-do Gallic huntsman is described.

The young Paulinus wishes for a fine horse with extravagant saddle and

bridle adornments (_faleris ornatior_), a tall groom, a swift hound, and

a smart hawk. Fine clothes and scent from Arabia are also objects of his

desire.

The main details of the chase may easily be filled in from Sidonius. From

the description of Theodoric’s hunting skill, we gather that spears were

used as well as bows,[589] and that the unsportsmanlike Roman habit of

driving the game into nets was practised in fifth-century Gaul.[590] The

hawk was regarded as an indispensable item.[591] There is river and lake

fishing,[592] either with nets or with lines laid before nightfall,[593]

and we hear of boat-racing[594] on lakes.

The game of ball, which is so frequently mentioned in Sidonius, was

undoubtedly the most popular outdoor game. It was played by two

persons,[595] or four,[596] or more than four,[597] and we gather that

there was a good deal of running about. That is practically all we know

of its rules, so that it is, strictly speaking, an assumption to call it

‘tennis’.[598] There were professional ball-throwers or jugglers, and

there is an epitaph, found at Narbonne, to one Capito, a ‘pilarius’.[599]

The games of the circus were still popular. Majorian held them at

Arles,[600] and they are frequently mentioned in inscriptions, as in the

one at Arles in which some thousands of sesterces are given ‘from the

interest on which athletic or circus games are to be given yearly’.[601]

At St. Pierre (Narbonne) a well-preserved inscription was found to a

man who had been ‘flamen’ of Augustus and curator of the gladiatorial

games, and had been honoured ‘for his exceptional munificence in

providing games’.[602] A Massilian inscription mentions ‘agonothet(ae)

agoni(s)‘,[603] and it is not impossible that the tradition of public

games in Gaul received an initial impetus from the Greek city of the

south.

Against these athletic displays there seems to have been a good deal of

feeling. Pliny tells us that they were abolished at Vienne by Trebonius

Rufus, whose judgement, when appealed against, was upheld by Junius

Mauricus, who added ‘Vellem etiam Romae tolli posset’. The reason

given was a moral one. ‘Mores Viennensium infecerat, ut noster (agon)

hic (Romae) omnium’, says Pliny,[604] voicing the traditional Roman

opinion on the subject. For Ennius had maintained: ‘Flagiti principium

est nudare inter civis corpora’;[605] and Cicero had followed up the

objection with ridicule: ‘Iuventutis vero exercitatio quam absurda

in gymnasiis’.[606] Seneca[607] excludes gymnastics from his liberal

studies, the main reason being ‘that they do not make for virtue’.

Quintilian is more moderate. He has no objection to those who give them

some little attention—‘paulum etiam palaestricis vacaverunt’. But those

who overdo it, who spend part of their life in oil and part in wine,

and so cloud the intellect, he would keep at the greatest possible

distance.[608] There was a feeling that the ‘Graeculus magister’ who took

charge of the exercises, instead of the old Roman veteran, was largely

responsible for the degeneration.[609]

Now the question arises whether gymnastic exercises were part of

the school programme, as in Greece, and whether there was anything

corresponding to the State-governed training of the ‘ephebi’. There seems

to be considerable confusion of thought on this point.

Denk[610] writes of the school buildings of Autun that they ‘lay in

the shadow of trees, in the neighbourhood of murmuring fountains, the

water of which was utilized by means of canals for bathing and swimming

establishments, while the Gymnasium and the Palaestra provided for

physical training and fitness’. For this he quotes Bulaeus.[611] But

the reference is wrong. Elsewhere[612] this unreliable author vaguely

mentions a palaestra in connexion with Autun, but cites no authority for

his statement. Nor does Tacitus,[613] whom he quotes, refer to anything

of this kind at Autun.

On the other hand, there is the fact that neither Ausonius, who was

interested in education, nor Sidonius, who was interested in games, says

a word about gymnastics in schools.

It is true that Sidonius, in describing the pictures of his country

seat at Avitacum, refers to wrestling bouts and to the ‘virga

gymnasiarchorum’.[614] But he is writing about artistic representations,

the content of which were probably literary and without reference to

Gaul, and the ‘virga gymnasiarchorum’, if, like the description of the

misers who are practised in the palaestra of detraction and rub their

limbs with poison instead of oil,[615] it has a realistic and a local

ring, may refer with greater pertinence to the public performances such

as took place at the Ludi Circenses.

Nor need we depend on the dangerous argument from silence. The whole of

Roman traditional sentiment was against such an arrangement. Seneca, and

the influential Quintilian, definitely excluded it from their scheme of

studies. The most that Quintilian will concede is a master of deportment,

who will teach the art of gesticulation (_chironomia_, _lex gestus_),

which is important for the orator, and who will train in the pupil a

decorous grace of body. He will even go so far as to pass the war-dance

of the old Romans, with the qualification ‘nec ultra pueriles annos

retinebitur nec in his ipsis diu.’ But he clearly means to exclude the

gymnastic training as practised by the Greeks.[616]

It may be that the misconception of Denk partly lies in an unconscious

confusion of the word ‘gymnasium’. Early writers like Plautus use it in

the Greek sense of a school for gymnastic exercises, but where we find

it in later authors like Cicero and Juvenal, the meaning is ‘public

school or college’; and so it is that Sidonius uses it.[617] However that

may be, it seems clear that on the whole Cramer is right, when he says

that in the West gymnastics were never looked on as a part of public

education.[618]

In so far as they appeared at all in the Roman world, they were due to

original Greek influences, which, however, sometimes lasted surprisingly

long. We read, for example, that Augustus was a constant spectator of the

young men at their exercises, a considerable number of them (according

to ancient custom) still being found at Capreae[619]—which was under the

Greek influence of Naples. The inscriptions (as we have seen) point to

the existence of a _gymnasiarchia_ which superintended officially the

physical exercises of the youths and children at Massilia,[620] though

how late it persisted we cannot say. It is probable that even in the

Greek city of the South the practice was discontinued in the fourth and

fifth centuries, for Massilia’s glory was a thing of the past and her

specifically Greek character had all but disappeared.

(c) _Organization._

The Maeniana at Autun attracted so much attention that contemporary

writers have left us a fairly complete picture of its organization and

its structure, which may be taken as typical of the imperial schools in

the larger cities of Gaul.

Autun, as we gather from the _Panegyrici Latini_, was full of big

buildings—temples of Janus, Pluto, Jove, Apollo, Hercules, Venus,

Proserpine, and Minerva—and possessed an amphitheatre, a ‘naumachia’ or

artificial lake for mock naval battles, fountains, and aqueducts. To

these, by the generosity of Constantius Chlorus, there had been added at

the end of the third century the Maeniana, standing several stories high,

in the most important part of the town between the Capitol on the one

hand and the temples of Apollo and Herakles Musagetes on the other.[621]

The schoolroom was probably of the traditional type. The furniture

was very simple. There were no desks (as we may infer, e.g. from the

well-known fresco at Herculanum and the bas-relief at the Louvre)[622]

and the pupils wrote on their knees. The benches on which they sat were

arranged around the chair of the teacher. On the walls would be pictures

of great historical events and geographical maps[623] according to

Seneca’s principle ‘homines amplius oculis quam auribus credunt’.[624]

A gravestone relief discovered at Neumagen near Trèves shows a tutor in

a comfortable seat holding a roll of papyrus. On either side sit two

elder sons also reading from rolls, while a younger son stands on the

right with his wax tablets, furnished with a handle, waiting for his

writing lesson. The stone dates from the first centuries of the Christian

era, and probably represents a private school in the home of a wealthy

Gaul who wished to boast of the good education which he had given his

children.[625]

We do not hear much about private tuition, but the old Roman custom of

having a household slave to teach the rudiments must have persisted in

the wealthy families of Gaul. Paulinus of Pella gives the impression that

he had such training,[626] and Sidonius writes to Simplicius[627] that it

is his duty to admonish his sons who are spoiled and refuse to submit to

his assiduous care—which suggests, as Hodgkin remarks, that he was their

tutor.

In the schools a ‘chair’ (_cathedra_) was occupied by the teacher,

who was variously called ‘professor’, ‘praeceptor’, or, more rarely,

‘magister’, and a _schola_ meant the number of people grouped under one

_cathedra_, just as, in the official language of the time, it meant a

group of officials serving under one head—soldiers, servants of the

palace, and so forth.[628]

It is vain to look for any detailed scheme of arrangement in the

subjects of the schools. As we have seen, no definite compartments can

be distinguished in a subject like ‘Grammar’, nor were the same number

of subjects found in every school: Law, Philosophy, and Medicine being

taught in accordance with the traditions and the size of the place. We

are not even quite clear as to the relation of the various grades of

schools to one another when we try to look at Gaul in particular. For a

point that is left vague in one’s mind after reading the authorities for

Gaul, is whether a distinction was made between the elementary school

and the more advanced classes of the grammarian. Julius Capitolinus, in

his _Life of M. Antoninus_, the philosopher,[629] makes it quite clear

that a different master was used at Rome during the second century

for the two stages. ‘Usus est magistris ad prima elementa Euforione

litteratore ... usus est praeterea grammaticis, Graeco, Alexandro

Cotiaensi, Latinis, Trosio Apro et Pollione et Eutychio Proculo

Siccensi. Oratoribus usus est Graecis Aninio Macro ... Latino Frontone

Cornelio....’ Apuleius is just as clear. Drawn from the fountain of the

Muses, he says that the first goblet provides the instruction of the

elementary master, the second the teaching of the grammarian, while the

third provides the rhetor’s eloquence; and that this is as far as most

people go.[630] And in our period Augustine says that he was very fond of

Latin literature ‘non quas primi magistri sed quas docent qui grammatici

vocantur’.[631]

There is, therefore, a clear traditional distinction in the Roman world

between the _primus magister_ or _litterator_, the grammarian and the

rhetor, and perhaps we may see this division in the stages of his career

which Ausonius describes in the _Protrepticon_:[632]

(1) Multos lactantibus annis,

ipse alui gremioque fovens et murmura solvens.

(2) Mox pueros molli monitu et formidine leni

pellexi.

(3) Idem vesticipes, motu iam puberis aevi,

ad mores artesque bonas fandique vigorem

produxi.

But in the Gallic writers of our period the distinction between the

first two stages is not at all clear. Ausonius, for example, who never

directly mentions the elementary school, says that Macrinus was his

first master, but he puts him under the heading ‘grammaticus’;[633] and

in the Theodosian Code, while _grammatici_ and _rhetores_ are always

distinguished in the laws of the emperors about teachers’ salaries and

privileges, the elementary masters are never specially named. Probably

the work of the _primus magister_ was considerably diminished in the

schools by the fact that many families employed private tutors for the

initial stages of education; and whether a school had a separate master

for the lower classes depended, no doubt, on its size and circumstances.

The whole of ‘primary’ education was loosely considered the province

of the _grammaticus_,[634] who in most cases would have an assistant,

called by the less honourable name of _litterator_[635] or _primus

magister_. The _proscholus sive subdoctor_, mentioned by Ausonius,[636]

seems to have been an assistant grammarian, different from his chief

only in social position. For the _proscholus_ described seems to have

been as much above the ordinary grammarian in learning as the grammarian

was above the _litterator_. But his learning was in inverse ratio to

his pay, for Ausonius describes him as ‘Exili nostrae fucatus honore

cathedrae’.[637]

Of Minervius, Ausonius says that he supplied the forum with a thousand

of his pupils, and added two thousand to the number of the senate,[638]

and Jullian[639] doubles this number (three thousand) to get the total

number which Minervius taught (for he was rhetor at Constantinople and

Rome as well as at Bordeaux) and, dividing by thirty (the probable number

of his teaching years), allots to him two hundred students per annum.

But Ausonius’s style and character hardly admit of such mathematical

speculation. He was much too vague and careless about things to make a

calculation of this kind anything but extremely uncertain. The most we

can say is that Bordeaux, the most flourishing Gallic university of the

fourth century, must have had an exceptionally large number of students,

several hundred, perhaps, drawn from all parts of Gaul, just as the

professors sometimes came from Greece or Sicily.

Education was begun at an early age. Paulinus of Pella began when he was

five,[640] and Ausonius took charge of children in their infancy.[641]

At fourteen or fifteen the boy usually left the grammarian. Paulinus,

who was probably retarded by the difficulty he found with Latin, was

still in his grammarian’s school at fifteen.[642] If, as it appears,

the law-course lasted five years, law students who went to Rome from

Gaul would spend only a year or so in the school of the rhetor. For the

emperor forbade students to continue their studies at Rome after the age

of twenty, when they were removed by force if they omitted to return.

‘His sane qui sedulo operam professoribus navant, usque ad vicesimum

aetatis suae annum Romae liceat commorari. Post id vero tempus qui

neglexerit sponte remeare, sollicitudine praefecturae etiam invitus[643]

ad patriam revertatur.’[644] Such was the stringent enactment of

Valentinian in A.D. 370. We hear of students attached to the ‘Corpora’

who continued their studies at Rome after their twentieth year.[645] But

it appears that the general age for leaving the rhetor’s school was, at

any rate, before twenty.

Pueros ...

formasti rhetor metam prope puberis aevi,

says Ausonius to Exsuperius,[646] which means that fifteen was a common

age for boys to be at the rhetor’s school.

About school-hours we know very little. It does not seem likely that

the grammarian had so many hours per week for each of the seven liberal

arts. What he aimed at was extensive reading, primarily for philological

and literary knowledge, and only secondarily for such historical

and scientific facts as came under Capella’s various heads. ‘The

grammarian’, says Seneca, ‘attends to language, and, if he wishes to go

farther afield, to history, while the utmost limit of his activities is

poetry.’[647] ‘If he wishes to go farther afield’ is significant: the

system was an elastic one.

Of the total number of teaching hours there is only one indication.

Ausonius sends the teacher Ursulus six philippi, the usual New Year’s

gift from the emperor which Ursulus had not received, and says that they

are ‘As many as the men to whom the fates of the Romans and the Albans

were entrusted, and as many as his teaching hours at school and the hours

he sits at home’.[648]

Denk, therefore, seems to be wrong when he says of the teachers[649] that

they had no limitations of subject or method or time.

When this schoolday of six hours started in Gaul we do not know; but

it is probable that it began fairly early in the morning and went on

into the early afternoon. This was the case at Antioch in the fourth

century;[650] and Augustine says that the teacher is kept busy in the

hours before noon.[651]

With regard to examinations we find nothing definite, but there is a

passage in the famous law of 370[652] which points to the application

of some test. The emperor wants a report from the prefect of Rome, with

a view to imperial appointments, of all students who have completed

their course and are going back to the provinces. Moreover, such reports

(_breves_) must be lodged at the imperial office every year. ‘Similes

autem breves etiam ad scrinia mansuetudinis nostrae annis singulis

dirigantur, quo meritis singulorum institutionibusque conpertis, utrum

quandoque nobis sint necessarii iudicemus.’

From a few scattered hints it looks as if there was some sort of academic

dress. Domitius teaches Terence at Ameria, wrapped in a thick cloak

(_endromidatus_) though the weather is warm[653]—a picture which reminds

us of Augustine’s ‘paenulati magistri’.[654] At Antioch the rhetor wore

a philosopher’s mantle[655] (_tribon_), a costume which was not unknown

in Gaul, for Sidonius remarks that Claudianus, though a philosopher, wore

ordinary dress.[656]

That there were holidays at regular intervals is clear from Ausonius’s

letter to his grandson:

Sunt etiam musis sua ludicra: mixta camenis

otia sunt ...

set requie studiique vices _rata tempora servant_.[657]

And Sidonius invites Domitius to come and share the joys of the country

after his laborious teaching in the stuffy schoolroom.[658]

When exactly the vacations began and how long they lasted in Gaul we do

not know, but it is probable that the order and duration of the Roman

holidays were imitated. Ausonius’s verses in the ‘Thirty days hath

September’ style on the Feriae Romanae[659] indicate that the Roman

holidays existed at least in the memory of the schoolboy. Tertullian

implies that they existed also in his experience, though less splendid

in the provinces than at Rome (_minore cura per provincias pro minoribus

viribus administrantur_).[660] We hear of ‘Florales Ludi’, which were

different from the Roman Floralia, in connexion with the academy of

Toulouse. There were ‘Agones rhetorici et poetici quotannis celebrari

soliti, quique etiamnum hodie Kalendis Maii (_sic_) quotannis in domo

publica committuntur’.[661] It is doubtful when these games were first

introduced. Justinus mentions them in his description of the foundation

of Massilia. Tradition at Toulouse said they were instituted by a maiden

of literary tastes, Clementia Isaura; another version is that she merely

renewed them. She is mentioned in the _Agonisticon_ of one Petrus Faber

of Toulouse in the sixteenth century, and Papyrius Massonius wrote an

‘Elogium Clementiae Isaurae’. They set up a statue to her on which the

inscription ran: ‘Clementia Isaura ... forum frumentarium, vinarium,

piscarium et olitorium ... Capitolinis populoque Tolosano legavit, hac

lege ut quotannis ludos Florales in aedem publicam quam ipsa sua impensa

extruxit celebrent....’

On such occasions a child would be taken by his parent to see the

show, though he would not be allowed a seat (_non sedens propter

aetatem_),[662] and at festivals such as those of St. Just he would enjoy

a game of ball or dice.[663]

A calendar of about the middle of the fourth century would, Jullian[664]

supposes, taking the evidence of Ausonius’s poem ‘de Feriis’, the

calendar of Philocalus, and the Christian writers, show about eighty-nine

holidays, of which he considers six doubtful. In the meantime Christian

festivals were increasingly claiming recognition. Already in 321

we find Constantine prohibiting the exercise of certain trades on

Sunday,[665] and in 389 the Biblical conception of Sunday is definitely

recognized[666] (_solis die quem dominicum rite dixere maiores_) and a

general cessation of business is enjoined. In the same year the pagan

festivals were cut down; only the summer and autumn festivals (described,

even in the law, with the usual literary diffuseness of the time), the

New Year holidays, and the foundation-days of Rome and Constantinople

were to remain.[667] On the other hand, shows on Sunday were forbidden,

‘so that the sacred rites enjoined by the Christian law should not be

disturbed by any gathering of shows’[668] (A.D. 392), and at Easter

the business of the forum and of the law courts[669] was suspended.

In theory, therefore, there was a decrease in pagan and an increase

in Christian holidays. In practice, however, pagan festivals long

persisted,[670] and it is significant of the tenacity of paganism that

the Lupercalia was celebrated in the fifth century. Very often the church

kept the old festivals, merely changing their meaning.[671]

There can be no doubt that the pagan festivals were observed as school

holidays: the references in Horace and his contemporaries and the Roman

conception of _festus_, _fastus_, _feriae_, as indicating solemnity and

reverence,[672] point to this conclusion. Such was evidently the case in

the fourth-century Italian schools, for Augustine waits to resign his

professorship until the holidays of the ‘Vindemia’.[673]

Of the Christian festivals it is harder to judge, especially after the

revival of paganism under Julian at the beginning of our period. But it

is probable that while the earlier laws (e.g. those of Constantine) had

no widespread effect on the schools, the increasing emphasis laid on

Christian festivals, passing through the fourth and fifth centuries into

the Germanic period of Gaul, must have meant the recognition of Sundays

and such festivals as Easter in the school curriculum.

Besides the public festivals there was the long vacation, lasting

from the end of July till the beginning of October.[674] At Antioch,

similarly, classes were taken only in the winter and in the spring,[675]

the vacation lasting from midsummer till the beginning of winter. When

the vacation came, the Antioch rhetors used to go in for public speeches

and imperial panegyrics.[676]

Moreover, any special event produced a holiday. At Antioch any festive

occasions, funerals,[677] or civil commotions,[678] served to close the

schoolrooms. On the occasion of the marriage of Ricimer with the daughter

of Anthemius, the schools of Gaul enjoyed a holiday.[679] Apparently the

length of the holiday was not controlled by organized rules, and this

time it lasted so long that even Sidonius protested.[680] ‘_Tandem_’, he

says, ‘reditum est in publicam serietatem, quae rebus actitandis ianuam

campumque patefecit.’

It is interesting to find signs of a common life among the students,

the beginnings of a residential university. Aulus Gellius claims the

authority of Pythagoras for this mode of life. ‘Here is another point

we must not omit: all the students of Pythagoras, as soon as they had

been admitted into that “corps” of his, pooled all their possessions,

slaves, or money, and so a close and lasting society was formed.’[681]

Suetonius tells of one C. Albucius Silus of Novaria (Cisalpine Gaul)

who came to Rome and was received into the ‘contubernium’ of Plancus,

the orator, i.e. lived under the same roof, became a ‘convictor’ with

him.[682] ‘You can enjoy the possession of no good thing’, Seneca says,

‘without some one to share it.’ You will gain more by talking and living

with (_convictus_) people than from set speeches. Cleanthes could never

have interpreted the philosophy of Zeno if he had merely attended his

lectures. But he lived with him, examined his private life, and watched

him to see if he practised what he preached.[683] Similarly, Plato and

Aristotle and the rest learned more from the conduct than the words of

Socrates, and ‘Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus were made great not

by the school of Epicurus, but by living with him (_contubernium_).’

Gellius gives many examples of this sort of literary fellowship. While

master and students dined together, one of the servitors would read

some passage from a Greek or Latin author, and if a difficulty arose

the master explained. So at the table of Favorinus ‘servus assistens

mensae eius legere inceptabat....’ and a discussion was introduced by

the philosopher on the word ‘parcus’.[684] Literary criticism was the

favourite thing, as when the _Bucolics_ of Vergil and Theocritus were

read together at a dinner, and it was noticed that Vergil had left alone

passages which contained the peculiar Greek sweetness but could not and

should not be translated.[685]

We have no direct data for supposing that this system was followed in

Gaul in our period; but the Favorinus mentioned in Gellius came from

Arles, and there appear to have been ‘contubernia’ in Massilia.[686]

Moreover, the ‘Platonic clubs’ of Sidonius and the general social temper

of the Bordeaux professors make it likely that something of the kind was

found at the Gallic universities.

As to the payment of teachers, it is clear that before Vespasian it was

very unequal. Verrius Flaccus, who was tutor to the children of Augustus,

received a salary of 100,000 sesterces (£1,000).[687] Even the infamous

Palaemon, to whom parents were forbidden to send their children by

Tiberius and Claudius, got as much as 40,000 sesterces. Martial takes a

pessimistic view. In his advice to a friend on a career for his son he

counsels: Let him avoid grammarians and rhetoricians if he wants to make

money:

Artes discere vult pecuniosas?

fac, discat, citharoedus aut choraules.[688]

In Gaul, it appears, teachers were paid by the State before this was

the case at Rome; for Strabo remarks in the first century A.D. that

he found State-appointed teachers there.[689] But there must have been

great lack of organization and equality because State-payment meant, at

that time, payment by the municipal town, which could not always provide

proper security. Security, indeed, became more and more shaken, and the

improvement made by Vespasian when he fixed the teachers’ salaries was a

much-needed measure. In the famous decree of 376 Gratian and Valentinian

ratified this enactment.[690] Rhetoricians are to receive twenty-four

_annonae_[691] from the treasury, Greek and Latin grammarians, twelve.

The chief cities of the provinces are encouraged to elect professors who

are to be paid according to the standard fixed by the emperors. Trèves,

the imperial favourite, gets something more (_uberius aliquid_), thirty

annonae for a rhetor and twenty for a grammarian.

There can be no doubt that the emperors tried to monopolize education.

Julian’s decree[692] that the appointment of all teachers was to

be subject to the imperial approval, and the law of Theodosius and

Valentinian in the next century forbidding all public schools outside

the imperial academy, are illustrations of this tendency. Nevertheless,

there must have been a large number of private-school teachers who were

not paid by the State. The imperial legislation of the later empire could

not have done away entirely with so established and widespread a class

of men. They survived, especially in elementary education, and possibly

their number exceeded that of the officially State-paid teachers.

The law makes it quite clear that the State-paid school and university

teachers[693] were, at one time, dependent on their towns for pay;

and the frequent mandates of the emperors to the municipalities not

to neglect these salaries show that they were not always prompt in

paying. Symmachus, also, complains of the withholding of salaries;[694]

and it has been suggested in this connexion that the teachers were

unpopular because they were mostly pagans. It is more likely that their

unpopularity was due to the fact that their teaching did not touch the

mass of the population, who nevertheless had to support them. That the

municipal salary stopped when the imperial one came into existence seems

unlikely. Denk thinks that the imperial-paid ‘auditoria’ were distinct

from the lower municipal-paid schools,[695] but probably the individual

cities went on contributing part of the professors’ salaries, even after

the law of Gratian.[696] As to the amount received, the impression made

by the upper circle of the Bordeaux professors is certainly one of

material prosperity. Marcellus of Narbo,[697] Sedatus of Toulouse,[698]

and Exsuperius[699] did very well for themselves, and Eumenius considers

his salary of £5,000 as nothing extraordinary: ‘multo maiora et prius

et postea praemia contulerunt’ (_sc._ _principes_).[700] Even of the

grammarian Marcellus, Ausonius could say that riches came by teaching:

Mox schola ...

grammatici nomen divitiasque dedit.[701]

On the other hand the less distinguished seem to have had a

disproportionately small salary. The frequent application of the epithet

‘sterilis’ or ‘exilis’ to the chair of the grammarian is a feature of

Ausonius’s picture of them.

Besides the imperial and the municipal support there were the gifts from

the emperor,[702] and the possibility of presents from the family of the

pupils—a practice which is still very much in evidence in many country

centres. Finally, there were the fees from the pupils, part of which

seems to have been paid directly to the teacher.

The class fee (_merces_, _minerval_) seems to have been stipulated

for by the rhetors individually. Axius asks Merula in Varro’s _De Re

Rustica_,[703] ‘to be his master in the shepherd’s art’, and the reply

is, imitating the practice of the rhetors, ‘Yes, as soon as you promise

to pay my fee’ (_minerval_). Juvenal refers to the same practice:

Quantum vis stipulare, et protinus accipe quod do

ut toties illum pater audiat.[704]

Bulaeus says that the amount of the fee was sometimes left to the

generosity of the parents.[705] He can hardly be referring to a common

practice. The fourth century was far too business-like for this sort of

thing. Most of the teachers who were in a position to do so probably

demanded a large fee, like Exsuperius.[706] How far this bargaining went

on after the law of Gratian we cannot tell: but the fact that it went on

after Vespasian had fixed the salaries shows that it was not necessarily

stopped in 376. Much more liberal was the East. Lectures at Antioch

were open to all, even to pupils of other rhetors:[707] and sometimes

invitations to attend were sent round by the servant of the lecturer.[708]

As to the number of the professors appointed little is known. Probably

from what Ausonius says there were ten at Bordeaux, six ‘grammatici’ and

four ‘rhetores’—the highest number, Jullian thinks, that Bordeaux ever

reached. At Constantinople Theodosius appointed in 425 to his special

_auditorium_[709] three rhetors and ten grammarians for Latin, five

rhetors and ten grammarians for Greek, one professor of philosophy,

and two for law. But this is Eastern exuberance. Trèves, the imperial

favourite, had only two or three rhetoricians, one Latin grammarian, and

one Greek grammarian—a post which could not always be filled.[710]

Denk, in remarking that the number of teachers was thus definitely fixed,

adds that there is no trace of a principal who gave direction to the

work of the students.[711] Now it is true that there was no definite

organization, but it seems very probable that the emperors, when they

interested themselves in a school and appointed teachers, would have

some one at the head of the establishment to facilitate communication

between the imperial offices and the school. Moreover, it is a natural

and traditional thing the world over for a group of men more or less

permanently banded together to have a chief. The Druids had their

leader,[712] and among the Persian Magi there was an archimagus. Besides,

we have at least one ‘trace’ which Denk does not notice. Eumenius,

as head of the Maeniana, was called _moderator_, which looks like an

official title. And in the Christian schools it was a common thing to

have a head (_primicerius_), as will be shown later.

Jullian[713] notices as a praiseworthy feature of the fourth-century

educational system that the master passed on with his pupils as they

advanced from stage to stage. Our author reads into his idealized fourth

century a method which has long been practised by the Jesuits. But

perhaps the wish is father to the thought. For it is clear that this

could not, in the majority of cases, apply to the elementary master,

whose intellectual limitations would effectually prevent him from taking

the higher classes. Ausonius tells us as much.[714] Such teachers were

‘humili loco ac merito’. He mentions Romulus and Corinthius[715] as the

Greek grammarians who taught him ‘primis in annis’, and they do not

appear again in the list of his masters. When quite young he was put

under his uncle Arborius (_qui me lactantem, puerum iuvenemque virumque

| artibus ornasti_),[716] who may have been a kind of general tutor to

him at that time. When he was about ten years old he went to Toulouse

(_c._ A.D. 320) and was taught for eight years in the school of Arborius,

who in 328 was appointed tutor to one of the sons of Constantine at

Constantinople,[717] where he died. Ausonius then returned to Bordeaux

where he seems to have continued his studies in the rhetorical school,

studying under Minervius,[718] and Luciolus,[719] who was once his fellow

student, and probably under Alcimus[720] and Delphidius,[721] while

Staphylius took the place of Arborius[722] as general tutor:

Tu mihi quod genitor, quod avunculus, unus utrumque

alter ut Ausonius, alter ut Arborius.

All these later masters, like Minervius, are spoken of distinctly as

‘rhetor’ or ‘orator’, just as his early masters are distinguished as

‘grammatici’.[723]

Ausonius’s experience as pupil, therefore, seems to contradict the

statement that the master followed his students from class to class. But

it may be argued that the scheme was upset in Ausonius’s case by his

temporary removal to Toulouse, and his experience as master may be urged.

This is a plausible contention. For he tells us in the _Protrepticon_

of three stages in his career corresponding presumably to those of the

litterator, the grammarian, and the rhetor. Yet Jullian’s supposition

is not therefore true. Not every primary master was an Ausonius who

could rise to the top of his profession and become an imperial tutor.

Obviously there were a large number who found, as they left, the teaching

profession a poor and dreary task. The grammarians whom Ausonius

mentions,[724] except, perhaps, Nepotianus,[725] did not rise to the

higher position, and some, in their old age, even lost the little glory

they had achieved, as Anastasius did.[726] Moreover, Ausonius does not

say that his promotion kept pace with the advance of his students. The

terms he uses are quite vague (_mox_, _idem_). And even supposing the

master could in this way remain with his pupils, what happened when

they had reached the highest stage? Jullian maintains that he started

at the bottom again with a new class: ‘Le même homme était tour à tour

professeur de grammaire et rhéteur: il lui arrivait ainsi de suivre ses

élèves, de les accompagner de classe en classe.’[727]

Now this is reducing the matter to an absurdity. The fixity of the

distinction between grammarian and rhetor is so striking in all Latin

literature, and particularly in Ausonius, that the system, however

desirable, would have been impossible. It is quite clear that there was a

definite status attached to the positions,[728] and the Theodosian Code

prescribes different salaries. Is it conceivable (to mention no other

objections) that a man would be constantly changing his social standing

and his salary in order to accompany his class from stage to stage?

The most we can say is that the connexion between the lower and higher

forms of education was sufficiently close (as in France to-day) to

allow a man of merit to rise from the lowest to the highest. This is

proved by Ausonius’s case, and Denk is not stating the whole truth when

he says that the teachers were independent of one another.[729] There

was a certain amount of independence, no doubt, between grammarian

and grammarian, or rhetor and rhetor, but between the grammatical

school and that of the rhetorician there was a considerable degree of

interdependence.

C. OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL

(i) ADMINISTRATIVE AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS

Before we can understand the working of the school and see it in its

proper perspective, before we can grasp the inner meaning of the system

and appreciate its merits and demerits, something must be known about the

society in which the school flourished and of the imperial organization

which gave direction to that society. As Guizot said in his _History of

Civilization_, study must proceed from without to within.[730]

It is unnecessary to give a detailed account of a subject so well worn,

but a brief summary of such points as bear on education is necessary.

An outstanding feature in the development of the later empire is the

growth of civil power. The great military commands, so common previously,

become more and more impossible, owing to greater subdivision. The

imperial army was divided into one hundred and twenty[731] parts, as

against forty-five at the end of Trajan’s reign, and of these Gaul had

fifteen. The civil power was so far recognized that military and civil

offices were separated. The civil administrator of a province was called

‘proconsul’ or ‘consular’ (which did not necessarily mean ex-consul)

according to whether the province was reckoned as ‘old’ or not. Above him

were the four supreme civil authorities of the empire, the Praefectus

Praetorio (who had become a civil magistrate after the Praetorian Cohorts

had destroyed themselves by supporting Maxentius against Constantine),

the Praefectus Galliarum, the Praefectus Italiae, and the Praefectus

Illyrici et Orientis. It is well to bear in mind the status of these

officials, for it will help us to understand the meaning of the fact

that a schoolmaster like Ausonius became ‘praefectus Galliarum’. Each

praefecture was divided into ‘dioceses’ and at the head of each was a

‘Vicarius’. The tenants of the higher offices were divided, according

to the honour of their position, into ‘Illustres’, ‘Spectabiles’, and

‘Clarissimi’.

An important point in this system is that there was no continuous

official chain passing down from the emperor to the lowest official;

the emperor could interfere at any point (a particular in which the

Pope resembles the Roman emperors) and every official was regarded as

directly responsible to him, though he was controlled by his superior

official as well. Functionaries were made to change places rapidly, so

as to prevent a man from obtaining undue influence by long residence

in one place. Thus, though the growth of civil power was favourable to

the development of schools, the coercive spirit which is destructive

of true education remained. On the one hand, education was encouraged

by the various departments of the extensive[732] Civil Service—the

secretariat (_scrinium ab epistulis_), the Record Office (_a memoria_),

the office for legal documents (_a libellis_), and that for the emperor’s

engagements and arrangements (_scrinium dispositionum_); and on the other

hand, the controller of the civil service (_magister officiorum_) sent

forth his secret service men (_schola agentium in rebus_), who, beginning

their career by superintending the post service (_curiosi_), became a

pregnant source of corruption and oppression. Extraordinarily efficient

as the imperial civil service was, it had this important loophole of

corruption, while oppression was possible everywhere.

The centre of the bureaucracy was the ‘Consistorium’ or Privy

Council.[733] Certain high officials became ‘comites consistoriani’, and

special people were called in for particular points. The position of the

senate in this scheme of things is interesting from Ausonius’s statement

that Minervius added to it two thousand members.[734] The number of

members tended to grow enormously owing to the increasing use made by

the emperor of his ‘ius adlectionis et loco movendi’, and the ‘ordo

senatorius’ was still in existence. Ultimately, all who were ‘clarissimi’

belonged to the senate. But in practice only the higher officials, the

priests, and the ‘consulares’ actually took part in the proceedings,

which tended to become municipal rather than imperial. The position of

the senate, therefore, regarded as an imperial body, was merely nominal,

though it was of considerable local importance. Its chief function was to

provide ‘panem et circenses’, paid for by the holders of the consulship,

the praetorship, and the quaestorship, which alone survived from the old

‘cursus honorum’. At the head of the senate was the ‘praefectus urbi’,

whose powers were wide and undefined. Rome’s loss of dignity, with

the emperors frequently residing in Gaul and elsewhere, affected the

prestige of the senate, which still met in the ‘eternal city’. Yet as

the emperors became weaker we find the senate growing in importance, and

during the last twenty-five years of the Western Empire its activity is

remarkable.[735]

Society in Gaul during the fourth and fifth centuries may be divided into

four classes:[736] (1) the senators, (2) the curiales, (3) the common

people, and (4) the slaves.

The senators were exempt from municipal offices and from torture, and had

a right to be tried in a special court. These privileges were hereditary,

though subject to the emperor’s good pleasure, and were counterbalanced

by the heavy taxes, especially the senatorial ‘aurum oblaticium’.

Distinguished from this political aristocracy were the ‘curiales’ or

‘decuriones’, members of the ‘curia’ or municipal council of their town.

Entry into the class was by nomination, and could not be refused by

anybody who had the property qualification, and, once procured, it was

hereditary. It was a most unpopular honour,[737] because it involved the

collection of taxes, for which the ‘decurio’ was financially responsible.

In practice it was often a ruinous position, since no effective

jurisdiction was open to the collector. In the fourth century there

were about one hundred decurions in each town. The plebs comprised petty

landowners, tradesmen, and free artisans. Whereas under the republic

slaves worked for the family, and trade was domestic, free men now worked

for the State, and trade became public. Guilds had sprung up under the

republic, but, whereas they were then free, the empire more and more

destroyed their liberty. Augustus made them dependent on the will of

the prince and the senate, and in our period we find them regarded as

rendering compulsory services under the tutelage of the emperor. What is

more, the Theodosian Code proves that they had become _hereditary_.[738]

Finally, the slaves may be classified as domestic and rural, the latter

comprising many different grades, from serfs of the soil to comparatively

free labourers.

In spite of this rigid suppression of spontaneity and freedom, which is

seen also in Diocletian’s Edict fixing the prices throughout the empire,

there is a gain in other directions. The ‘societates publicanorum’ ceased

to exist, and the provincial was less exposed to capricious plunder,

which in some cases, however, was removed only to admit organized

robbery. Diocletian had levelled the inequality of taxation, but had not

made an equal oppression impossible. Yet there was the boon of peace,

and the genuine efforts to help provincials on the part of emperors like

Julian. He greatly reduced the land tax[739] and administered justice

in person, revising the decisions of judges, and summarily dismissing

corrupt officials. The supply of slaves had palpably decreased, for wars

of conquest had ceased, and the Germanic prisoners, having been found to

be unmanageable, had been granted a certain amount of independence. We

find that as much as two hundred ‘aurei’ was paid for a single slave;

and if we are forced to conclude that the slave in question must have

been of a very special kind, we must grant that even so the price had

risen enormously. This meant that people had to fall back on their own

resources more frequently: a local and provincial independence was

fostered, and we have something more nearly approaching ‘natural economy’.

Such was the system of which the fourth and fifth centuries witnessed

the failure. As time went on taxes continued to be oppressive,[740] the

bankruptcy that inevitably resulted from keeping an army continuously

on a war footing became more apparent, and the security afforded by the

empire became less and less. A weak ruler in a despotic state makes

room for all manner of corruption, and under the weak emperors of the

later empire this result is evident from ‘the frequent creation of new

offices whose object was to curb the corruption of the old’.[741] When

the imperial defence at length breaks down before the repeated waves of

barbarian invasion, we feel that the severance of Gaul from an imperial

government so rigid and so inelastic has merely been forestalled: it

would have come in any case.

The deadening effect of this system is evident. It left no room for life

and growth; spontaneity and genius were stifled, and progress checked.

Naturalness and truth were not at home in this age of officialdom

and adulation. The Theodosian Code bears witness to the elaborate

and involved etiquette which revelled in high-sounding names,—‘tua

sublimitas, tua excelsitas, tua magnificentia, praecelsa sinceritas

tua’,[742] &c.—to which even the emperors were bound by the enormous

stress which public opinion laid on these distinctions. Not that this

Byzantine etiquette was wholly evil. As a means of counteracting the

confusion which had previously reigned, of creating a respect for the

person of the emperor which meant better order and fewer rebellions, it

was a master-stroke on the part of Diocletian. But its evil effects in

the direction of artificiality in times when the emperors could, with

less justice, be called ‘divine’ is not to be denied.

But by the side of this mechanical pagan society there was growing up

at this time ‘another society, young, energetic, fruitful of results—the

ecclesiastical society. It was around this society that the people

rallied ... the senatorial and curial aristocracy was a mere phantom: the

clergy became the real aristocracy.’[743]

In this society lay the hope of the future.

(ii) CLASS DISTINCTION AND EDUCATION

The cast-iron rigidity of class distinctions is apparent even from the

slight foregoing sketch of social conditions. Yet it is worth while

dwelling on it a little longer in view of the statements that have been

made. Every man had his place allotted to him by the divine will of

the emperor, and there he must remain on pain of committing sacrilege.

Valentinianus (says the emperor in A.D. 384) has prescribed for every

rank its proper place and worth. If, therefore, any one occupies a

position not his own, let him not plead ignorance. He stands convicted of

sacrilege, for he has neglected the divine commands of the emperor.[744]

This was the general scheme of Roman society. Nor was it modified to any

great extent in Gaul by the admixture of the Visigoths, who had much

the same system.[745] How did its details affect education in Gaul?

Jullian maintains that practically every free-born child regularly

attended the schools, which were equally accessible, he thinks, to the

children of freedmen.[746] He does not deny that distinctions were rigid

and many: ‘le IVᵉ siècle est, comme le XIIIᵉ, un siècle de privilèges,

de distinctions et de hiérarchie’: but he thinks that all the classes

were equal in the matter of education and that rank disappeared in

the school.[747] In a similar strain Denk argues that the curials

must have had a considerable school training in order to fit them for

the management of municipal affairs. ‘In order to perform such duties

thoroughly they must have had the necessary knowledge: and this they must

have obtained from the school.’[748]

As for the free artisans and the slaves, Denk cites the education of

the old Roman slaves. Cato had demanded that household slaves should be

able to read and write, and Mommsen says[749] that the lower classes had

considerable knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Similarly,

Lavisse says[750] that the uneducated, on the whole, could not have been

too numerous, for even the humble sergeant had to be able to read the

word of command on the tablets, and there were schools for the sons of

veterans.

What authority Jullian has for saying that the distinction between

classes broke down in the matter of education he does not say; and an

examination of the Theodosian Code and of contemporary authorities makes

it entirely improbable.

First of all, it was only the upper class that could compete for the

higher grades of imperial office, which was regarded as the prize of

education. The pride which Ausonius took in his imperial honours is only

half concealed,[751] and he puts before his grandson the same goal of

studies.[752]

Sperabo tamen, nec vota fatiscent,

ut patris utque mei non immemor, ardua semper

praemia musarum cupias facundus, et olim

hac gradiare via, qua nos praecessimus et cui

proconsul genitor, praefectus avunculus instant.

This particular incentive to education was lacking in all but the

senatorial class, from which, Jullian confesses,[753] the greatest number

of pupils was drawn. Freedmen were definitely excluded by law. The

emperors of 426 forbade all of their station to stand for the higher

offices, or to be admitted as soldiers of the Imperial Guard.[754]

The laws which prevented the curial from leaving his class[755] were

many and stringent. Once a curial, always a curial, and not even flight

from his town could save him. The prize of five ‘aurei’ offered by the

government would be sure to find him a captor.

Denk’s argument that the curial must have had a school training to

manage municipal affairs does not go very far. The reading, writing,

and arithmetic taught by the ‘litterator’ he would certainly need,

but there is no reason for supposing that he went any further. The

respectable curial on his freehold farm probably had little incentive

to education, and found no inspiration in his forced work of somewhat

anxious tax-gathering. He would probably have considered the poetical

flourishes of the rhetor beside the point for his son. It would be much

more important for him to learn the practical wisdom which his father had

formulated as to the best methods of making people pay their taxes or of

managing the problems of agriculture.

Now it is true that a law of Constantius[756] enacts that no one shall

attain to the first rank in the ‘ordo decurialis’ unless he has passed

through a course of studies. But firstly, the law applies technically

only to the city of Rome, and its ‘decuriae’; secondly, the amount of

education required was not excessive: all the emperor wanted was that a

man of the first rank should be able to speak grammatically (_ita esse

litteris expolitum, ut citra offensam vitii ex eodem verba procedant_);

and finally, the regulation that this elementary knowledge was specially

laid down as a qualification for the first rank (_librarii_) suggests

that the other two (_fiscales et censuales_) were frequently held without

such proficiency.

If the law tended to stifle the curial’s interest in education, much more

was this so with those who belonged to a lower grade. The incentive

needed there was greater and the incentive given, less. The work of the

artisans belonging to the rigidly separated ‘collegia’ was harder, though

it varied with the trade. The bakers’ guild was not far removed from

slavery. Here, too, frequent flight from the class points to oppression.

The tendency to learn only the practical tricks necessary to make the

trade a paying one must have been even more accentuated. For where there

is no prospect except the drudgery of the trade in which he grew up, it

must be an exceptional man who will take an interest in education or

awaken it in his son. Even the school of the ‘litterator’ must have been

a mystery to many of these ‘corporati’. Moreover, intermarriage between

the classes was regarded with horror, and forbidden on the severest

penalties. Senators or men who ranked as ‘perfectissimi’, or ‘duumviri’,

or ‘quinquennales’, or ‘flamines’, or ‘sacerdotes’, suffered ‘infamia’ if

they married a freedwoman or the daughter of a freedwoman, an actress or

the daughter of an actress, a shopkeeper (_tabernarius_) or the daughter

of a shopkeeper, or any one of low standing.[757]

Whatever we may think of the wisdom of such a measure, one thing is

clear: the difficulty of imagining that all ranks were levelled, as

Jullian says, in the school, and that the son of a senator sat on the

same benches as the sons of freedmen.

Further, the tendency of the emperors to restrict people to the same

place must also have had an effect on education.[758] For the imperial

policy aimed at uniformity and immobility, and in attaining them it

lost life and progress. The discouragement of travel must have meant

a restriction of knowledge and a strangling of that wonder which is

stimulated by new scenes, and is, as Plato said, the beginning of

philosophy.

Again, the inspiration which comes from the feeling of citizenship,

the realization of being a living member of a group and helping to

further its ends, was crushed out by the mechanical fiscal system of the

empire. Men like Claudian and Sidonius might write with an enthusiasm

inspired by this feeling, but what chance was there for the anxious

curial or the fettered artisan to share this inspiration? For him the

round of daily duty was too narrow or too relentless, to allow much

room for ideals. ‘Municipal self-government, bereft of its political

significance, restricted to the sphere of local interests and ambitions,

is apt to degenerate into corrupt and spendthrift practices.’[759] To the

curial, as he carried out the commands of the emperor, it must have been

difficult to see any inspiring meaning in it all, when Gaul was day by

day being more abandoned to the barbaric invasions, while the burden of

taxation remained unalleviated. And yet it is where a meaning, an ideal,

is most clearly seen, that education has its truest incentive and its

most fruitful results.

Denk appeals to the fact that many Roman slaves could read and write,

to Cato’s requirements of a household slave, and to Mommsen’s statement

that there was much reading and writing among the lower classes. But

(as far as the artisans and free labourers are concerned) the reference

is to republican times when the guilds were free, and when a fiscal

imperial system had not yet enslaved the people and created the frightful

inter-class rigidity which culminated, to the detriment of education,

in the fourth century. That there were, however, even then, some

‘collegiati’ who attained to higher education is clear from the law of

370.[760] The emperor, in asking the Prefect of Rome for a report of

provincial students, makes an exception of those who are serving in the

public guilds. But we must remember that these ‘collegiati’ probably

belonged to the higher guilds, like that of the ‘navicularii’, in which

the higher classes had a share, and were probably picked men. Ritter,

in his commentary on the law, suggests that they were young men who had

voluntarily joined a ‘corpus’ and were allowed to stay longer than usual

because they were doing public work. However this may be, they were

certainly the exceptions. The impression derived from the Theodosian Code

is that the ‘collegiati’ who had the opportunity of higher education were

very much the fortunate few.

As for the slaves, it is true that there were some of them in the fourth

century who could read and write like Ausonius’s ‘notarius’, but slaves

_qua_ slaves received no education. It was found useful to make them

acquire a knack like shorthand, just as it is useful to break in a

horse. Their knack was their only virtue. But there was no provision for

them as a class, and no encouragement to extend their knowledge beyond

their narrow speciality. A glance at the laws of the Theodosian Code is

sufficient to show this. A ‘colonus’ is bound to the soil on which he is

born, and if he runs away from the place of his birth he is to be brought

back immediately, together with his family.[761] So says a law of A.D.

419. A law of Constantine had also enacted that ‘coloni’, who purposed

flight, should be reduced to slavery and put in chains, and with this

sentence upon them be compelled, as they deserve, to perform the tasks

of free men.[762] The law shows that the ‘coloni’ were still regarded as

belonging to the third rather than the fourth class. But their freedom

did not exist in more than name, and it seems most improbable that they

had any share in the education of the day.

Finally, the deduction of Lavisse that education was general from the

fact that the sergeants could read, and that the sons of veterans had

schools, is not altogether justified. For, again, the soldier would pick

up just the minimum of school knowledge to help him through (and this he

might conceivably have done even without going to a ‘litterator’) more

especially as the army by this time consisted largely of barbarians.

As for the veterans, they were a privileged class, as the thirteen

enactments of the Theodosian Code[763] regarding their status and

immunity from public burdens can prove.

Turning now to the contemporary writers, we can trace the effect of

the code on their methods and ideas. Sidonius clearly thinks of men in

‘ordines’. At the feast of St. Just, in which all classes participate,

there is not much trace of intermingling or exchange of greetings, and

when they scatter for relaxation the lines of demarcation are still

plain.[764] Eumenius, too, illustrates the value which men attached

to class privileges. He had been ‘magister sacrae memoriae’, and the

emperor, in appointing him to the school at Autun, assures him that his

‘dignitas’ will not be impaired by the change. The gratitude of Eumenius

for this boon, ‘ut salvo honoris mei privilegio doceam’,[765] is effusive

and significant.

But the important point is that the upper classes came to look on

education as their monopoly. Sidonius rebukes a friend who is absorbed

in the material concerns of his estate for neglecting his reading.[766]

It is a nobleman’s business, he finely says, to maintain a noble level

of culture. Think of the disgrace of being distanced in your old age

by one of humbler rank, and surpassed in honours by men whose worth is

that of a lower class—‘cum eos, _quos esset indignum si vestigia nostra

sequerentur_, videris dolens antecessisse’. The argument is that the

nobleman has to undertake administrative and other imperial offices;

they are his by right. Therefore he must keep up his education, which

is the road to office, and also peculiarly his prerogative.[767] And

so, when Ausonius says: ‘It isn’t right that I, a royal master, should

expound verses to the common herd’,[768] there is a background of fact

to his jocularity. At the end of the empire, when the social fabric was

tottering and the accustomed ranks and distinctions were vanishing away

(_iam remotis gradibus dignitatum_), Sidonius sees in literary knowledge

the only mark of nobility that will survive: ‘solum posthac nobilitatis

indicium litteras nosse.’[769]

In these circumstances it is hard to see how Jullian is justified in

calling the Roman society in Gaul during the fourth century ‘toute

intellectuelle’.[770] Yet there are two considerations which must modify

our conclusion. The first is that in practice the lines of demarcation

were not so rigid as in theory. As we have seen in the case of the

‘collegiati’, there was higher education where we should not have

expected it, and members of guilds were not always swallowed up in their

guild work. The second consideration is that their interest in education

was not always damped by discouraging surroundings. There was a strong

and almost passionate loyalty to letters among the upper classes which

must have spread lower down in society. The curial, no doubt, sometimes

cultivated his intellect as well as land and tax-collecting, even though

there was no material gain to be won. And it was felt, perhaps, that it

was the respectable thing to send one’s son to a grammar school.

We must, therefore, allow a certain margin for higher education among

the ‘curiales’ and the ‘corporati’, while we accept a very wide range

of mere literacy,[771] such as could be obtained from an elementary

school teacher. The enormous staff of scribes required for the imperial

‘scholae’ must have embraced many of a lower social standing. The need

for people who could read and write was great, and we may perhaps see

in the large[772] number of grammarians[773] (as compared with the

rhetoricians), which the emperors provided, an indication of this need.

But, as we go down the social scale, it is only the exceptions who go

beyond the grammarian, while the majority probably knew none but the

elementary master.

(iii) THE TEACHER IN SOCIETY

Libanius draws a picture of the rhetor lingering in the classroom after

the day’s work because of the unpleasantness of conjugal and family

difficulties at home;[774] and Ausonius roundly declares, emphasizing

another side of the teacher’s unfortunate lot, that a grammarian is _not_

happy and never was; that the very name of grammarian is incompatible

with happiness. If beyond destiny and fate there has existed one that

was happy, he must indeed have passed beyond the bounds of the mere

grammarian.[775]

Routine produced its usual discontent, and it was true of the fourth

century as of the first:

Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros.

Yet the striking thing about the Gallic teachers (if we may take Bordeaux

as typical of the province) was their sociability. Alethius is ‘comis’

and ‘liberalis’;[776] Luciolus is commended by the poet for his geniality

to his guests, his good temper to his clients, his gentleness with his

servants;[777] and to Minervius[778] he says: ‘No gall embitters your

heart; your wit is abundant; yet your jokes are never such as lead to

strife.’[779]

They loved their dinners and their jokes, and could jest without malice

and in gentleness of spirit. So Nepotianus is addressed as a man ‘old in

years yet witty and young in heart; a spirit unembittered and overflowing

with much sweetness’.[780]

Leontius earns the cognomen Lascivus,[781] and Jucundus, though condemned

for inefficiency, is admitted to the ‘numerus grammaticorum’ on account

of his social and personal pleasantness.[782] It may be noticed, too,

that Constantius, in appointing Eumenius to the head-mastership of the

Maeniana, stated as one of his qualifications ‘his pleasing ways’.[783]

Wine played a great part among them. Crispus, the old master of Ausonius,

was believed to have tippled occasionally.[784] To the reader Ausonius

says in his introduction to _Bissula_ that he is to be read only by those

who have dined and dined well:

Ieiunis nil scribo; meum post pocula si quis

legerit, hic sapiet.

About the futile _Griphus_ he declares that all serious judgement must

be suspended, for ‘iniurium est de poeta male sobrio lectorem abstemium

iudicare’,[785] and the convivial spirit is further illustrated by the

epistles to Paulus[786] and to Theon.[787] Moreover, a favourite ideal

among these professors was to marry an heiress. Like Dynamius, who found

fortune and a wife as a teacher,[788] the jovial Marcellus won the

goodwill and the daughter of a nobleman,[789] as did the rhetor Alethius

Minervius.[790] Even the Syracusan Citarius ‘soon attained to wedlock in

a rich and noble family’.[791]

The Theodosian Code clearly shows how eager the emperors of this time

were to increase the social status of the teacher. A law of 425, for

example,[792] raises certain ‘grammatici’ and ‘sofistae’ to the rank of

_comes_, and adds that all such teachers, if they behaved well and showed

skill in their profession, would enjoy the same privileges after twenty

years of diligent service.

In the social world, therefore, these teachers ranked high: in the

intellectual world their place was considerably lower. We find that there

was a certain standard set for a teacher:

Posset insertus numero ut videri

grammaticorum.

Jucundus[793] is reproached for not reaching this standard and being

unworthy of his profession. But there can be no doubt that the

requirements were fairly low and very irregularly fulfilled. Leontius

knew only the little that his poor position demanded,[794] and masters

like Ammonius and Anastasius were equally ignorant.[795] Ausonius twits

Auxilius on his defective pronunciation and addresses him as ‘inscite

magister’,[796] and Rufus, the rhetorician, had so little sense (_cor_)

that he used to write ‘reminis_co_’ in his verses. Moreover, he was very

like a statue in his lifelessness—only softer and more effeminate.[797]

Philomusus, again, had stuffed his library full of books, but this was

his only claim to knowledge.[798]

Jung[799] finds an illustration of the general tendency to superficiality

in the fact that many of the Bordeaux professors were at the same time

advocates, poets, and farmers.[800] But we feel that this is carping

criticism, and that such combinations of activity are no more anomalous

or indicative of shallowness than they are in many universities of to-day.

But, on the whole, we get the impression that Julian’s emphasis on the

preparation of teachers,[801] apart from its motive, was much needed

throughout this period, and that the level of the Gallic university was

probably not much above that of a modern high school.[802]

In the professional world the status of the teacher had steadily risen,

ever since Vespasian had given education the imperial blessing by

appointing Quintilian to the first State-paid chair. We find Constantius,

in his letter to Eumenius, deprecating the idea that the teachers’ task

is a lower form of imperial service;[803] and there can be no doubt that

Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries, all enthusiastic as she was for

literature and culture, honoured her teachers more than had previously

been the custom. With the full light of imperial favour upon them, they

were respected, not so much for what they were, but for all the golden

avenues of imperial office to which their profession could lead.

The picture which Ausonius gives of the Bordeaux professors suggests a

resemblance to Oxford. The division of studies between the grammarian and

the rhetor gives an ‘institutio’ which is the forerunner of the Oxonian

School of Classics. For the grammarian did ‘Mods.’ work, training the

pupil in a wide range of detailed facts, while the rhetorician aimed

(though in a poor way) at a philosophic combination of the facts into a

speech, and at grace and lucidity of style. And this is largely also the

aim of ‘Greats’.

Moreover, there is a similarity of social atmosphere. There is a bright

and genial contact of man with man, which implies a study of men as well

as of books, and there is that emotional content springing from such

intercourse, which, if kept within bounds, serves to keep thought fresh

and balanced, and prevents the letter from killing the spirit. That there

was also the danger, as at Oxford, of the social side looming too large,

is clear from a study of these professorial portraits.

(iv) IMPERIAL PROTECTION

A change had come over the administration of schools in the later part

of the empire. In early republican times there had been no public

interference with education: the ideal of men like Cato was ‘in gremio

matris educari’.[804] But even the spirit of Cato could not stop Crates

of Mallos from establishing the first school of grammar, after the

Punic Wars had opened the flood-gates of Greek influence; nor could

it prevent fathers from paying large sums for the services of these

public teachers. A transition stage came in the first century, when the

conflict between the old and the new reached a crisis. The censors grew

alarmed, and issued a decree in 92 B.C. prohibiting the teaching of the

Latin rhetoricians as being contrary to the ‘mos maiorum’.[805] They had

endured Greek rhetoricians, but when Romans began to adopt the ways of

these ‘Graeculi’ they thought it was time to interfere.[806] But public

schools were rapidly growing, and when Vespasian fixed the salaries of

teachers the old conservative Roman prejudice against public education

had practically died out. In the second century Hadrian opened his

Athenaeum—the first school for higher education. Alexander Severus gave

salaries to teachers ‘etiam in provinciis’.[807]

The goodwill and personal interest of the emperors in the schools is seen

in the letter of Constantius to Eumenius.[808] ‘Our loyal Gauls’, he

says, ‘who enjoy the benefits of civilization in Autun, deserve that we

should take thought for the development of their children’s talents. What

gift, then, more fitting than that which fortune can neither give nor

take away? Therefore, we appoint you to be head of this school; for we

have learned to know from your service under us, your eloquence and your

genial temper.’

Nor was this mere wordy benevolence. Public works, temples, schools had

been repaired.[809] Augustodunum had suffered badly from the inroads of

the barbarians, but so effective was the help given, that the restored

city, says the orator, possibly with some exaggeration, was greater and

grander than the old one (_ipsa moles restitutionis immanior_). Money was

given for private as well as public buildings, and not only money, but

artificers from over the sea, new inhabitants of high rank, and soldiers

to guard them during the winter.[810] All this had a very real bearing

on education. Like Britain, the city had gradually got rid of its

‘barbarism’, and had emerged into the light of Roman culture.[811] Amid

all the benefits of the emperors, says Eumenius, the greatest is their

zeal in fostering liberal studies. Though the cares of state are great

and engrossing, they find time to attend to education, and herein perhaps

the true future of Rome may lie—‘si non potentia, sed etiam eloquentia

Romana revirescat’.[812]

The Theodosian Code shows how Constantine continued and developed this

patronage of education. Gaul appeared prominently in this connexion with

the promulgation of the Law of Gratian and Valentinian in A.D. 376 for

the regulation of teachers’ salaries, addressed to the prefect of the

Gauls.

In this, as in many other laws, it is clear that the imperial policy

aimed at the spread of education. ‘In the most populous, powerful and

famous cities of every district entrusted to your Magnificence, let

all the best teachers be appointed for the education of the young: we

refer to Greek and Latin rhetoricians and grammarians.’[813] Similarly,

Valentinian and Valens had exhorted any one who was qualified, either to

open a new school or to revive an old one.[814] But the emperors were

not content with a general policy for education. They provided directly

for all the details of a student’s behaviour and discipline. Those

Gallic students who went to Rome for the study of law had to submit to

the enactment of 370,[815] which prescribed many regulations for their

studies and their conduct.

A different and a closer interest in the schools had been shown by

Julian—the interest of a philosopher. He had laid stress on the morals

and efficiency, and on the personal share he desired to have in the

appointment of teachers, probably with a view to ejecting Christians.

‘Masters and teachers must show excellence first, in character, and

then, in eloquence. But, since I cannot be present in person at every

city, I command that all who wish to teach should not rashly and hastily

leap into this profession, but only when their order has judged them fit

and the unanimous vote of the best citizens has gained them a decree of

the curials. This decree will be referred to me for consideration, so

that the teachers may approach their work of public education with the

higher honour of our approval.’[816] This moral emphasis is repeated in a

decree of Valentinian and Valens: ‘si qui erudiendis adulescentibus _vita

pariter et facundia idoneus erit_.’[817]

From pupil to teacher, from teacher to civil servant or imperial

dignitary, the emperor’s influence was paramount. He decreed when studies

must cease, and how they must be conducted; it was he who fostered

the schools, and from him needy children received financial support.

The institution of the ‘alimenta’ is said to be as old as Ptolemy,

the founder of the Alexandrian library;[818] and we read that Nerva,

like Augustus,[819] reared children at the public expense,[820] and

that Trajan (as is proved by two famous inscriptions)[821] and Hadrian

followed his example.[822] These ‘alimenta’, which had originally been

instituted as a measure against the decreasing birth-rate, were fully

organized in the early empire, but dwindled as financial difficulties

grew.[823] Yet we find Constantine passing laws about the support of

children which probably remained in force at least until the end of the

fourth century. ‘Officium tuum’ is his mandate to the Praetorian Prefect,

‘haec cura praestringat ut si quis parens adferat subolem, quam pro

paupertate educare non possit, nec in alimentis nec in veste impertienda

tardetur ... ad quam rem et fiscum nostrum et rem privatam indiscreta

iussimus praebere obsequia.’[824] Again, in 322, there is a similar law,

this time specially intended for provincials: ‘Quiquis igitur huiusmodi

reperietur qui nulla rei familiaris substantia fultus est, quique

liberos suos aegre ac difficile sustentet, per fiscum nostrum ... stipem

necessariam largiantur....’[825] As far as actual schooling is concerned,

this kind of imperial support, being intended for the relief of the lower

classes, applied only to elementary education.

The teacher was dependent on the emperor (as we have seen) for his

appointment. Sometimes a man would be directly appointed by the emperor,

as Eumenius was,[826] but generally in Gaul, as at Antioch,[827] he would

be nominated by his municipality, and his nomination would be subject

to the approval of the imperial patron,[828] to whom he looked for all

good things. The Gaul of Panegyric VI speaks of ‘privatorum studiorum

ignobiles curae’, and the suggestion is that it is the approving glance

of the emperor that makes them ‘nobiles’. Eumenius clearly brings out

this relation between the teachers and the emperors, who are praised

because they found time to appoint schoolmasters as well as masters of

the horse.[829]

And finally, both teacher and student depended on the emperor for

promotion. Imperial service was the conscious motive of education,

and the rhetor could count among the officials of the empire many a

former pupil. One of the panegyrists looks proudly and wistfully back

to those who left his school and rose high in the forum or the offices

of the palace, and fondly thinks of them as his children. ‘For many

and not ignoble are the streams that take their course from me,’ he

exclaims to the emperor, ‘many whom I guided have risen to govern thy

provinces.’[830] The reason why the emperors take so much care to

appoint efficient teachers is, ‘lest those who ought to be appointed

to the various forms of State service should be overtaken, as it were,

by a sudden cloud midway on the waves of youth, and steer their course

by doubtful stars of oratory.’[831] The service of the emperor is so

obviously the best, that anything else looks like partial shipwreck. The

imperial goal dominates everything. Ausonius served, like many of the

Bordeaux teachers, on the municipality of his town, and rose to be consul

and prefect. Even a man like Exsuperius, whom Ausonius criticizes as a

trivial talker,[832] could become governor of a province. So much was a

public career the fashion that Ausonius expresses surprise at Alcimus for

keeping out of the imperial service:

Quod laude clarus, quod operatus litteris,

omnem refugisti ambitum.[833]

All this finds its counterpart, of course, in the direct encouragement of

the emperors. If Constantine had merely said: ‘We allow teachers to stand

for office, if they wish, but do not compel them,’[834] Constantius,

with an enthusiasm for letters rarely paralleled among princes, could

promise that he would promote to higher rank him who by his studies

and eloquence seemed to be worthy of the first place. ‘For literature

must not be denied her rewards—literature which is _the greatest of all

virtues_.’[835]

One of the main features of the imperial policy towards the teachers

was the panegyric. The emperors had to mould public opinion, and, not

possessing newspapers, they fell back on the professor. And perhaps this

is the reason why, during the fourth century, they made such a special

point of residing in Gaul and expressing their fondness for her by

word and deed—Gaul the home of rhetoricians. However that may be, the

panegyric obtained a regular place among the teacher’s duties.

Ever since Pliny had set the fashion with his panegyric on Trajan, ‘there

had gradually grown up a custom, especially in the cities of Gaul, where

rhetorical studies were flourishing, a custom which became frequent in

the times of Diocletian and Maximian, and again under Constantine and

Constantius, of sending rhetors to the emperor to congratulate him on

successes and to thank him for benefits.’[836] The panegyric was one

of the accomplishments of the famous Minervius,[837] and among the

‘Panegyrici Latini’ it was a much-coveted honour to be allowed to air

this accomplishment. ‘Summam votorum meorum’[838] is the description

applied by the sixth panegyrist to his speech before the emperor. Nor

need we consider this mere flattery; for the rewards were many and

substantial. Sidonius’s panegyric on Avitus procured him a statue in

the forum of Trajan,[839] after his panegyric on Majorian (who had been

nominated by Avitus’s murderer Ricimer), he was admitted into the court

and became a count, and when he performed the same service for Anthemius

in 468 he was made prefect of Rome and president of the Senate; he tells

us himself that he obtained the praefecture ‘sub ope Christi, styli

occasione’.[840]

These were the rewards of the brilliant. But even the humblest grammarian

enjoyed the emperor’s favour as a potential panegyrist. Many laws

at different times protected him from taxes and military service.

Constantine had decreed this, and had added that they were also to be

free from prosecution and shielded from wrongdoing. The magistrates were

to exact a fine of £1,000 from any one who injured them, or themselves

bear the punishment.[841] In the case of a slave whipping was prescribed.

In 333 Constantine confirmed this law ‘to facilitate and extend the

teaching of liberal arts and studies’.[842] His example was followed in

414 by Honorius and Theodosius, who decreed that grammarians, orators,

and teachers of philosophy as well as certain court doctors, besides all

the privileges granted to them by the emperors in the past, should enjoy

freedom from the rearrangement, municipal or curial, of property which

had been put together from several sources in order to be divided equally

(_conlatio_), from the marking out of land for the senatorial or land tax

(_descriptio_), and from all office and public burdens. Nor were they to

have soldiers or judges billeted on them wherever they lived. Moreover,

all these privileges were to be shared by their sons and wives, so that

their children could not be forced to serve in the army.[843]

But the gratitude of the Gallic teachers to the emperor was based on

more than personal benefits. They realized very clearly (in the fourth

century, at any rate) that without the Roman military power education

could not have flourished. Eumenius tells how, after the confusion of

destroying barbarians, the trees flourish again and the corn-stalks

lift their heads when the frontier is made secure. The age of gold

has come again. ‘Adeo, ut res est, aurea illa saecula, quae non diu

quondam Saturno rege viguerunt, nunc aeternis auspiciis Iovis et

Herculis renascuntur.’[844] Panegyric inspires comforting pictures, but

in this case there is a basis of truth. There is a true ring about the

praises of the Aeduan who describes the evil condition of his country,

and pours out his thanks before the emperor,[845] even though he has a

tendency to hysterics.[846] There is a certain amount of real feeling

in his exclamation: ‘O divinam, imperator, tuam in sananda civitate

medicinam’;[847] and the Gallic orator of the sixth panegyric is not

very far wrong when he says: ‘Thence, O emperor, comes this peace which

we enjoy: not the waters of the Rhine, but the terror which thy name

inspires is the rampart that defends us.’

Valentinian I, ‘the frontier emperor’, restored the defences of the

West against the barbarians (367-8). Trouble was brewing among the

Persians,[848] says Ammianus, ‘but Valentinian, conceiving in his mind

great things and profitable’, fortified the whole of the Rhine from

Rhaetia to the sea, strengthened camps and forts, planted many towers in

suitable spots along the Gallic frontier, and sometimes even across the

river close to barbarian territory.[849] Zosimus remarks on his care for

the provinces and for the Celtic peoples.[850]

Even the usurper Constantine, ‘the vain deliverer of Gaul’, as Gibbon

calls him, in A.D. 407 ἐγκατέστησε ... καὶ τῷ Ῥήνῳ πᾶσαν ἀσφάλειαν, ἐκ

τῶν Ἰουλιανοῦ βασιλέως χρόνων ῥᾳθυμηθεῖσαν.[851]

One of the panegyrists[852] mentions ‘sapientia’ as a blessing of the

empire, ‘ipsa ... illa quae videtur rerum omnium domina esse’, and

this wisdom comes by experience of men and things, ‘perspectis hominum

moribus et exploratis rerum eventis’. By giving opportunities to the

Gauls for studying and mixing with different types from all parts of the

world, Roman rule contributed to the general culture of the country; and

the provincial orator is not guilty of his usual exaggeration when he

emphasizes the fact that in this way, too, the empire was a boon at this

time to the education of Gaul.

But against these real and undeniable advantages there may be set some

corresponding drawbacks. Elaborate centralization[853] may be good from

a purely military point of view, but it checks the progress of the human

spirit. The panegyrists show how excessive the expenditure of the central

court was, and how the interests of the empire were sacrificed to the

sovereign.[854] The accession of Julian was a boon, for ‘the provinces

were exhausted, partly by the plundering barbarians, partly by the greed,

destructive as it was disgraceful, of the provincial governors.’[855]

And of Julian the orator asks in a way which affirms the charge on the

part of his enemy Constantius: ‘Flagitiis administrantium non modo frena

laxaret, sed etiam stimulator accederet...?’

This over-centralization resulted in over-interference in education. ‘The

traditional liberty which had formed the foundation of Roman education

was seriously infringed by the appearance of imperial privileges....

All these benefactions were in reality an interference in the affairs

of education.... Thus from the second to the fourth centuries of our

era, the complete transformation of school organization was quietly

accomplished. It is the transition period between the ancient Roman

school and the formalism of the Middle Ages.’[856] This stiffening

of the imperial support into formalism and tyranny is seen in the

Theodosian Code. The personal liberty of the teacher becomes more and

more restricted. Theodosius and Valentinian decreed[857] in 425 that no

State teachers, on pain of being driven from the city with the stigma

of ‘infamia’, were to hold classes in public outside the prescribed

limits. Tutors in private families were permitted if they confined their

teaching to the inmates of the house. But all who taught in the emperor’s

Capitoline ‘auditorium’ were strictly forbidden to teach privately or

else they must lose all the privileges of their office.

It looks as if this prohibition of all public schools outside the

imperial academy was directed against the itinerant sophists. The law

was issued at Constantinople and it may have been a salutary measure in

some ways; but there is a suspicion that the emperor is rather abusing

his authority to favour his own particular college, and the principle of

vesting such unlimited powers over education in one man is a dangerous

one. The penalty imposed on those who disobey this injunction (_infamia_

and banishment) seems to be disproportionately severe. It smacks of that

rigidity which made the emperor forbid the masters of his academy (_intra

Capitolii auditorium_) to teach, even privately, elsewhere. And it is a

continuation of that coercive attitude on the part of the imperial patron

towards the schools, which we see increasing from the beginning of our

period when Julian enacted that every teacher must receive the imperial

approval before he was qualified to teach.[858] He was right in insisting

on efficiency, but his evident attempt to abolish private adventure

schools can hardly be justified.

Extreme centralization had also another and subtler influence. We feel,

as we read the words of Eumenius or Ausonius to the emperors, that there

was an unhealthy relation between them, one which tended to destroy the

individuality of the subject. The deification of the emperor looms very

large in the _Panegyrici_:[859] his favour was the summit of a man’s

ambitions, to him all ideas and ideals had to be accommodated. It is

quite pitiful to watch the hysterics of the panegyrists. It is no more a

case merely of the rules of rhetoric and the laws of the game; it is the

complete breakdown of all self-respect and individuality, an abasement

of body and soul before the temporal powers, springing partly from the

rhetorical tradition and partly from a real sense of dependence on the

emperor.

‘O that fortunate journey of mine!’ exclaims one of the panegyrists of

his visit to the emperor at Rome, ‘O labour excellently begun and ended!

What blessings do I taste of! With what joys am I furnished! What wonders

will I dispense when I return to the cities of the Gauls! What numbers

of thunderstruck people around me, what huge audiences will listen to me

when I say: “Rome I have seen, Theodosius I have seen, and both together

have I looked on. I have seen him, the father of the prince, I have seen

him, the prince’s avenger, him, the restorer of the prince.”’[860] Such

is the recurrent language of a distinguished man, Pacatus the Gaul, a

friend of Ausonius, who dedicated to him the _Ludus Septem Sapientum_

and the _Technopaegnion_, and said of him that none, save Vergil, was

better loved by the Muses.[861] Nazarius, who may be one of Ausonius’s

professors,[862] solemnly maintains that it is wicked to form an opinion

about the emperors, and reasons out his thin-spun absurdities thus: ‘Nam

et in vestibulo suo inquirentem repellit obiecta veneratio, et si qui

mentem propius adierunt, quod oculis in solem se contendentibus evenit,

praestricta acie, videndi facultate caruerunt.’[863] The splendour of

majesty (it is a golden glitter) affects the eyesight of the orator.

Ausonius had been asked by the emperor to write a poem. ‘I have no talent

for it: but Caesar has commanded: I will have. It isn’t _safe_ to refuse

a god.’[864] He speaks with great glee of his escape, in attaining to the

consulship, from all the usual methods of candidature: all was summed

up in Caesar ‘Romanus populus, Martius campus, equester ordo, rostra,

ovilia, senatus, curia—unus mihi omnia Gratianus’.[865] The ease implied

in the simplification of everything to the person of the emperor was no

doubt pleasant: but it was a mark of decadence. It meant a limitation

of ideas, a cramping of individuality, a slavishness of spirit which

must eventually reduce education to spiritless formalism. What perverted

results this militaristic control of education sometimes could produce is

well illustrated by the _Cento Nuptialis_. Ausonius had enough education

and taste to be half ashamed of his subject. ‘Piget enim Vergiliani

carminis dignitatem tam ioculari dehonestasse materia.’ Yet what was he

to do? ‘Iussum erat.’ Valentinian had commanded it: ‘sanctus imperator

... vir meo iudicio eruditus’. If we are to judge of this erudition by

such fruits as these, we cannot say much for its depth or taste. ‘Ridere,

nil ultra expeto’, says the poet. But there is more than one way of

laughing, as he very well knew. Here, then, we have imperial interference

making a man at the head of his profession, a man who would be imitated

by his pupils and by other teachers as he imitated the emperor, write

for the edification of the world the most asinine and disgusting verses

ever produced.

Not only the personal, but also the collective individuality, tended to

be impaired by over-centralization. The sense of citizenship, which it

is one of the duties of education to foster, was crushed in the great

mechanical organization of the Empire. Loyalty to Rome grew hollow for

lack of a subordinate and more immediate loyalty. Loyalty is in the first

place evoked by personal contact, and the emperor was sometimes very far

away. The subordinate official lost the full sense of partnership because

some mighty power from without imposed laws and made regulations, and

could interfere between him and his superior official at any moment.

Even in men like Ausonius, who could get into touch with the emperor and

feel genuine loyalty towards him by reason of a sense of partnership and

personal benefits, we find Rome appearing as the symbol of the Empire in

a very official capacity. In his description of noble cities he gives one

perfunctory line to Rome and forty to Bordeaux. ‘Bordeaux has my love,

Rome my respect’,[866] he says, and he gives the reason: ‘_here_ stood my

cradle, _there_ my chair of office.’ Officialdom may evoke respect, but

it can never call forth that spirit of love which is the basis of true

loyalty in every sphere. Paulinus of Pella, writing after the barbarian

invasions of the early fifth century, expresses himself in a similar way.

Rome is only cursorily mentioned[867] in conventional terms,[868] and

there is no point at which Rome touches him personally. Indeed, he has

rather bitter memories of her:

Romanumque nefas contra omnia iura licenter

in mea grassatum diverso tempore damna.[869]

Bordeaux, on the other hand, is described in the language of

affection.[870]

If Rome and her rule appeared so artificial even to the upper class of

society, much greater must have been the effect on the less privileged

and enlightened. There is evidence that the law providing immunity from

public burdens in the case of teachers was frequently abused. So little

public spirit and sense of citizenship was there that men falsely assumed

the philosopher’s cloak to escape serving their city. Against this a

law of Valentinian and Valens[871] (A.D. 369) protests. ‘Let every man

be returned to his country who is known to assume the philosopher’s

cloak illegitimately and insolently ... for it is disgraceful’ (does a

ripple of humour momentarily penetrate the rigid face of Roman law?),

‘it is disgraceful that he who professes ability to bear even the blows

of fortune, should shrink from the burdens of his country.’[872] The

general feeling of citizenship, when we look beneath the rhetorical

veneer, was unquestionably low; and it is only rarely that we find a

man like Eumenius who really had the ‘amor reipublicae’[873] which

issued in action, and the enthusiasm of a Sidonius for the Empire could

hardly have been shared by the less privileged classes who had had fewer

opportunities of enjoying Rome’s benefits, and had suffered so much more

from her failure to protect them against the barbarian or the corrupt

official.

Monroe, speaking of the imperial support of education, says: ‘This is

probably but another evidence of the general decline in virility and

morality, for it is in order to combat these tendencies that education is

encouraged.’[874]

Now there were elements of decline in the education of the day, but the

emperors did not see them. If they had, they would have changed, not

merely increased, the schools. If it was virility they wanted to restore,

they would not have encouraged the panegyrists; if morality, they would

hardly have expected teachers to write things like the _Cento Nuptialis_,

and there would have been more of them who, like Julian, mentioned such

an aim in their educational decrees. Much truer it would be to say

that the support of education was due partly to a real enthusiasm for

letters,[875] and partly to that policy which sought to gain the goodwill

of the provincial youth, at a time when the provinces were becoming

more and more important. And in education lay the key to the deeper

Romanization of Gaul.

About the general sincerity of the emperors in passing their educational

laws there can be no doubt. Jung thinks that these magnificent and

munificent decrees were not always sincerely meant or carried out, ‘et

multa interesse, ut Romani aiebant, inter os atque offam’.[876] But the

concrete fact of the help given to Autun, and the general correspondence

between the historical events and the school conditions as recorded

in Ausonius and elsewhere, suggest that the suspicion is on the whole

unjustified. The slackness in paying salaries, which he quotes, was one

of the abuses to which the emperors specially addressed themselves, and

Ausonius’s epigram about the happiness of the grammarian,[877] to which

he refers, is no proof whatsoever. For it does not imply broken promises,

and happiness may be impaired by causes independent of imperial laws.