CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS AND INFLUENCES
While we have looked at the actual curricula and surroundings of the
schools, it has been possible to treat Christian and pagan education
apart. But there remain certain questions which do not directly or
entirely belong to the schools, and yet are of importance for education
because of the general educational principles underlying them (as in the
case of history or the teaching of a strange language), or because of
the ideas by which they moulded the individuality of people (as in the
case of morality and art). Here the interplay of influences is such that,
in the brief treatment which we propose, a strict division had better
not be attempted. For not only would such a division be tedious within
so limited a compass, but the merging into one another of customs and
ideas makes it almost impossible. The questions we have indicated will
therefore be regarded as common to either side of society.
1. MORAL EDUCATION
To get an insight into the moral state of a bygone age is difficult for
two reasons. The first is that the subject is one on which people are
most tempted to be hypocrites in their own case, while they delight in
expatiating on the wickedness of others, and the second, that there is
an extraordinary tendency for particular cases to fill the horizon and
prevent us from taking a general view. In our period we have to reckon
with a special form of these difficulties: the preaching habit, which,
though it was essential to Christianity, was nevertheless as much open to
abuse as pagan rhetoric was, especially when it was a means of combating
paganism. ‘The world is wide’, said Stevenson in one of his essays,
‘and so are morals.’ But there is a standard—that of the Sermon on the
Mount—which presents an ideal, though it does not give the right to
condemn. In trying to follow this ideal the Christians saw pagan morality
in a lurid light. How far were they justified?
The traditional trait of impulsiveness in the Gallic character suggested
to many writers a proneness to immorality.[1130] Florus represents
Livy as saying that the Insubrian Gauls, though brutal in spirit and
abnormally large, were like their own Alpine snows: the glow of battle
dissolved them into sweat, and even slight exertion thawed them like
the sun. From this account Ammianus differs widely when he describes
the Gauls of the fourth century as excelling in vigour and endurance
irrespective of age.[1131] Yet he speaks of the ‘mollities’ of the
Aquitanians.[1132] Perhaps in his description of their hardiness he was
thinking chiefly of the northern Gauls, as opposed to their slacker
brothers in the south. For it is against the south and against Aquitaine
in particular that Salvian launches all the thunder of his denunciation.
The Aquitanians need the chastisement of the barbarian invasions to
kill off the worst among them and to reform the others.[1133] He rails
at length against the prevailing corruption. The theatres ‘are so
scandalous that no one can with modesty speak out about them’.[1134]
The performances consisted of farces, ‘cotidianae obscenitates’,[1135]
‘restes dégénérés et méconnaissables du théâtre antique’ as Fauriel calls
them.[1136] The Christian clergy lose no opportunity of condemning them.
In contrast to pagan immorality, Salvian describes the chastity of the
Goths. This he exaggerates for the sake of effect, but that there was a
considerable element of truth in his description is proved by the _Codex
Visigothorum_.[1137]
If the preacher gives a discouraging picture of the moral state of Gaul,
so does the writer of comedy. In the fourth-century _Querolus_ much of
the moral corruption pictured is due to imitation of Plautus, and we must
remember that it was a comedy. Yet we can detect a strain of satire which
is a criticism of existing conditions. Stealing, lying, adultery, perjury
are treated as exceedingly common peccadilloes which the household god
(Lar) is only too ready to pardon in a pleasing and jolly offender.
Between the Plautine conception of the relation of slaves to their
masters and that here portrayed we can detect no advance. On both sides
morality is simply non-existent.
But if we must discount the evidence both of the preacher and of the
comedy-writer, we may find a more impartial guide than either in the
Law. The Theodosian Code shows that the aspect of a crime changed with
the social status of the criminal. There was no consistent ethical
standard. If the wife of a tavern-keeper was taken in adultery, she could
be publicly accused; but if her servant girl was so taken, she might
be dismissed as too cheap to worry about (_pro vilitate_).[1138] If a
guardian corrupted his ward, he was punished by deportation and total
confiscation of his goods.[1139] But a woman who had committed adultery
with her slave was put to death, and the slave burned. So terrible did
this interference with class-distinction seem that even slaves were
allowed to give information.[1140] Again, in bringing a charge of treason
which he cannot prove, an ordinary man is subject to torture, but a slave
or a freedman is denied an audience and crucified.[1141] If a slave or
freedman brought an accusation against his master (except in the case of
treason), he was to be beheaded _before his charge was examined_. ‘Vocem
enim funestam intercidi oportet potius quam audiri.’[1142] Again, in
the law of extortion, judges who have been convicted lose the marks of
imperial favour, are stripped of their office, and ranked with the worst
and lowest class in the State.[1143]
In the opinion of the law, and therefore of the mass of the people, being
‘pessimus’ means belonging to the plebs, and the punishment of crime
comes to consist in loss of ‘caste’.[1144] That is to say, morality
becomes a matter of social position, and the corollary is that anything
may be done by those whose status is high, as long as they manage to
maintain that status, while those at the bottom, having no status to
lose, hardly care what they do. However much we may disregard particular
descriptions of moral degeneracy, the _Codex Theodosianus_ supplies a
very damning commentary on the ethical standards of the time. Nor did the
Christians effect any improvement in this legal respect of persons.
We have, of course, men like Paulinus of Pella who speak of the
‘sollers castorum cura parentum’[1145] which shielded him from every
evil influence, and the _Parentalia_ of Ausonius indicates happy
home-conditions. Lavisse notes this,[1146] and makes much of the domestic
felicity and the tender love reflected by these writers and by the
inscriptions.[1147] But, apart from the fact that Ausonius and Paulinus
were at the top of society, it is dangerous to presume too much from
epitaphs. Then, as now, convention played a great part, and the stock
phrase ‘Coniugi Karissimae’ may be as formal as the constantly recurring
‘memoriae aeternae’. It was the fashion to write epitaphs in which the
superlative was prominent.[1148] Besides, in most of these inscriptions
there is no clue as to the dates.
We must conclude, then, that there was much for the Christians to
educate, in society and in themselves, if they wanted to fulfil the
Christian code of morals.
Turning to the question how far an attempt was made in the pagan schools
to train the moral nature, we find that it is precisely this side of
pagan education that Juvenal and Tacitus criticized. The old Roman
tradition of strict moral education at home was impaired under the Empire
by the influx of foreign elements, and the decline is familiar from the
authors of the first century A.D. Seneca could see in the education of
his day no moral element,[1149] and his criticisms apply to the scholars
of Gaul as much as to those of Rome. How could there be (he argued), when
the masters were so utterly corrupt? ‘The grammarians’, he said, ‘taught
merely antiquarian stuff, not ethics. They asked whether Homer was older
than Hesiod, and inquired into the ages of Patroclus and Achilles, or
the wanderings of Ulysses.’ ‘Quid horum ad virtutem viam struit?’ The
geometricians teach how to survey estates, but ‘what does it profit me to
know how to divide a plot of land, if I do not know how to share with my
brother? You know what a straight line is. What good is it, if you do not
know what is straight in life? O man of learning, let us be content with
the simpler title: man of virtue.’[1150] The burden of the cry is for
perspective, for an ethical basis, without which education was seen to be
like an anchorless storm-tossed ship.[1151]
This need continues to be felt through the following centuries. We have
seen what stress Julian laid on the moral qualifications of the teacher.
His ideal was Hellenic purity. Before him, Eumenius, on whom the imperial
injunction was laid: ‘ut ... ad _vitae melioris_ studium adulescentium
excolas mentes’,[1152] proclaimed the ideal of practical morality
advocated by Cicero. Similarly, the emperor in his zeal for education
stressed the moral side as well as the intellectual (so at least his
panegyrist maintained), and realized that letters were the basis of
virtue.[1153] These virtues, he says, grow up in youth, and in manhood
form the strong support of all the various duties of citizenship, whether
in peace or war. And so letters are the cradle ‘of all diligence and all
praise’.
To a certain extent this demand for moral education was met in the pagan
schools. When Paulinus speaks of learning ‘dogmata Socratus’ at the age
of five, what he probably means is a selection of well-known sentences
chosen for their moral teaching.[1154] The didactic nature of the fables
and rhetorical exercises has been noticed, and we cannot doubt that they
played a considerable part in the moral theory of the pagan schools.
An inscription of Limoges, belonging probably to the second century,
contains the figure of a man with a scroll in his right hand, and the
following words:
‘Artis Grammatices Doctor Morumqꝫ Mag .. ter Blaesianus
Biturix’.[1155]
The inference is that the popular conception of the grammarian’s task
included moral training. We find that ‘Grammatica’ was regarded as the
nurse of the virtues. A training is obtained through it for practical
life. Not only the orator but the soldier was supposed to be thus
formed. It is the school of the grammarian that trains the soldier whom
the Campus Martius receives. ‘Grammar’ has fired him with imaginary
battles, taught him courage by accustoming him to the apparatus of war
even among the blandishments of peace, and so will make him obedient
to the actual trumpet call.[1156] All this is claimed for the school.
Such was the theory, but what sort of training was given in practice?
It was of little use that fables with moral tags were put before the
child if there was not at the same time the living example. And Seneca’s
objection to the character of the ‘grammatici’ seems to have held to
some extent in Gaul during our period. The disgusting picture of social
vice which Ausonius gives in the latter part of the _Epigrams_ applies
in part also to the teachers. Eunus, the pedagogue, figures prominently
in the list, and Ausonius himself speaks quite naturally about things
that directly contradict the Christian morality which he professed. There
was a hollowness in the teaching of the ‘grammaticus’ which logically
followed from the attempt to maintain the precept without the example.
The objections to the low ethical standard of the gods in Homer, which
were urged in the fifth century as in the time of Plato and Cicero,
were unheeded by the teachers, says Augustine, even when a man of their
own school (_ex eodem pulvere_) proclaimed that Homer had transferred
human qualities to the gods.[1157] A barbarism or a solecism was of
more account than a moral offence: to forget the _h_ in _homo_ was more
serious than to forget to love a fellow man.[1158]
‘Liberales Artes’, Seneca had said, ‘non perducunt animum ad virtutem,
sed expediunt.’[1159] We must be content if the school-training merely
creates a disposition of mind favourable to virtue. The Christian schools
went further. They insisted on correlating theory and practice, and
prescribed definite lines of action. As against the hollowness of the
pagan moral teaching (and here again we can detect a reaction), the
Christian teachers on the whole not only tried to practise what they
taught, but saw to it that their pupils carried out their commands.
They were exhorted to do so in the Canons of the Church. They put
before men a personal ideal, and, if their methods of striving after
it were sometimes crude and exaggerated, their sincerity can hardly be
doubted. So obsessed were they with the idea of working out their own
salvation that their teaching tended to become oppressively moral. The
long disquisitions of Jerome or Tertullian on the minute points of moral
behaviour are sometimes positively unhealthy. But we must remember that
they represented a reaction from an extreme. And in this reaction the
seeds of a higher ethical standard were being sown. Not as the lightning
lighteth the heavens, but as the growth of the mustard-tree, the stern
teaching of the monks who saw a higher vision and fled the world for its
sake penetrated and leavened the mass of society, whether that society
called itself Christian or not. Already in the fifth century a better
public opinion was being formed. We find Sidonius, half-pagan as he
was, commending his villa at Avitacum because of the absence of immoral
pictures and scenes—‘non hic per nudam pictorum corporum pulchritudinem
turpis prostat historia, quae sicut ornat artem sic devenustat
artificem.... Absunt lubrici tortuosique pugilatu et nexibus palaestritae
(wrestlers) quoram etiam viventum luctus, si involvantur obscenius casta
confestim gymnasiarchorum virga dissolvit.’[1160] So in his letter to his
son,[1161] he praises him for loving purity and adopts the tone of the
moral educator.
It is not suggested that the pagan efforts to advocate morality were
worth less than the Christian, or that there was a steady and abiding
advance in morals from this time onwards. Only, there are two facts to
bear in mind: the moral state of Gaul was bad, and paganism as a motive
to morality had failed. Where then was the incentive to come from?
Without claiming for the Church any special virtue, and realizing its
many grievous errors, we must answer that the moral inspiration for the
future came at this time through Christianity. And the Church and her
schools were the channels by which this inspiration reached the people.
Thus once more Christian education supplemented the work of the pagan
schools.
* * * * *
One of the ways in which Christianity exercised its moral influence
consisted in raising the status of women; and this was done, to a large
extent, by making education more general among them.
In answering the question whether girls attended the schools at Bordeaux,
Jullian[1162] says that this was probably the case. We may omit the
‘probably’. It would have been strange indeed if this had not been the
case, seeing that at Rome girls’ schools go back possibly to the time
of the unfortunate Virginia[1163] (449 B.C.), while in the Ciceronian
period Hortensia belonged to the orators, Lesbia wrote poetry, and
girls are mentioned as attending school with the boys by Martial[1164]
and Ovid.[1165] Moreover, Ausonius says quite plainly to his grandson,
referring to the ordinary school course:
Haec olim genitorque tuus _genetrixque_ secuti ...[1166] and tells us
that his aunt was a student of medicine, though he indicates that this
was not the usual thing (_more virum_ medicis artibus experiens).[1167]
Sometimes the mother taught her daughter literature:
Latios nec volvere libros (says Claudianus of the bride),[1168]
desinit aut Graios, ipsa genetrice magistra.
But such home-education was probably rare and confined to the upper
classes. We hear of no such instance in Gaul. Yet we know that there was
sufficient interest in the classics and in knowledge generally on the
part of the Gallic women to elicit a lament from Claudius Marius Victor.
For among the signs of corruption of his day he notes their preference
for pagan authors. Moreover, they show a knowledge of abstruse questions
and a desire to know which is truly monstrous:
Quae ... Deo tantum sunt nota, recondita cunctis,
scire volunt (heu grande nefas!) et scire videntur.
But it is all the fault of the men, he says (_sunt nostri crimina
sexus_). Without the example of the husband, the wife would never have
strayed into such ways of wickedness:
Sic exempla virum uxores accepta sequuntur.[1169]
Eulalia, the wife of Probus, was fond of reading the involved writings
of Sidonius,[1170] who does not think it too much to expect from a wife
that she will be interested in literature. For he reminds a friend that
marriage need not interfere with his studious habits: have not Marcia,
Terentia, Calpurnia, Pudentilla, Rusticiana, and many others ‘held the
light for those who read’?[1171] We may conclude, therefore, that while
a large number of girls received a home-education, chiefly in spinning
and household crafts,[1172] many of them attended the schools and became
interested in literature.[1173]
If there was an increasing liberalism about women’s education in pagan
circles (to take the references from Ausonius and Sidonius under this
head), the principle of a woman’s right to education assumed much wider
and more active proportions among the Christians.
The spread of monasticism naturally affected a large number of women.
Marcella was the first of the noble ladies at Rome to take the veil, and
set an example which was so extensively followed that by 412 Jerome could
boast ‘crebra virginum monasteria’.[1174] Avitus in 517 called together a
Church Council at Epao (a small village south of Vienne), which regulated
in one of its canons the admission to the ‘monasteria puellarum’,[1175]
and he refers elsewhere to the cloister founded by Leonianus where
Remilia was brought up (_sub regulari disciplina nutrita_).[1176] The
nuns learnt weaving and spinning,[1177] but the various ‘Regulae’, though
somewhat later than our period, make it probable that a portion of their
time, at least, was spent in reading and writing.
From these scattered data the point that emerges is that there was a
change of attitude towards the education and intellectual capacity of the
ordinary woman.
Jerome showed quite clearly that he had no contempt for the feminine
mind as such. He considers Paula and Eustochium competent judges of
his Latin translation of the Bible, and treats their suggestions as
coming from intellectual equals.[1178] The number of books dedicated to
them is remarkable, though not when we remember that they inspired the
translation.[1179] They, and many other women like Blaesilla, Felicitas,
and Fabiola were adepts in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and frequently
consulted Jerome on points of interpretation, as did women from all parts
of the Empire, including Gaul. For if the rhetorical tradition was one
and universal in the West, Christian teaching in the fifth century was
almost more so. ‘If Augustine from his retreat at Hippo dictated a new
treatise against the heresies of his time, all the churches of Italy, of
the Gauls and of Spain listened with attention. Thus, at first sight, we
can only discover one sole Latin Literature which, so to speak, began the
education of all the races of the West.’[1180]
Sedulius, who had taken the side of liberalism in the matter of pagan
literature, when discussing the dedication of his _Carmen Paschale_ makes
Macedonius mention many learned presbyters. ‘Nor need you be ashamed’,
he continues, ‘to follow the example of Jerome the interpreter of the
divine law, the student of the library of heaven (_caelestis bibliothecae
cultoris_), in submitting to women, high born and of known high
character, women in whose minds the passion for sacred reading has built
the sober home of wisdom, the documents of your inmost reasoning. Who
would not wish, would not be ambitious, to please the superb judgement
of a Syncletice...?’ And he goes on to describe Perpetua, whose wisdom
(_gemina resplendens lampade_) lends lustre to that of her sister.[1181]
Ennodius also testifies to the intellectual activity of women at the
close of the fifth century. In counselling his correspondents to leave
grammar and rhetoric, he recommends certain teachers. Among these he
mentions with enthusiasm ‘domna Barbara, Romani flos genii’. She seasons
her speech with a simplicity that is at once natural and artistic, and
her eloquence is enhanced by her clarity of thought. There is also
Stephania ‘splendidissimum catholicae lumen ecclesiae’.[1182] One of the
points that emerge in the _De Ordine_ of Augustine is that ‘Monica is not
to be kept from discussing philosophy because of her sex’.[1183]
On the whole, we must say that though there had been an Aspasia in
the time of Pericles, and though Hypatia taught at Alexandria at the
beginning of the fifth century, there had never been such a general
interest in education on the part of women as in the Christian circles
of the Western Empire at this time. The references to educated women
in pagan authors is slight when compared with those in the Church
Fathers. Of all Symmachus’s letters not one is addressed to a woman, and
neither Ausonius nor Sidonius (except for one letter to his wife) had a
female correspondent; whereas not only Jerome, but Augustine, Cyprian,
Tertullian, Ambrose, all followed Christ’s example when he taught the
woman of Samaria. Yet when all is said, we feel that the extent of female
education is still small, and that Ovid’s words still apply:
Sunt tamen et doctae, _rarissima turba_, puellae.
But we also feel that there is an interest which contains a promise for
the future:
Altera non doctae turba, _sed esse volunt_.[1184]
2. HISTORY
If a consideration of the state of moral education is necessary to show
how far teaching had an ethical basis, we may find in an inquiry into
the position and purpose of history in the schools an indication of the
political basis of education. We have seen that in the pagan schools
education as a whole was directed by, and aimed at the fulfilment
of, the imperial policy. In considering the sort of value attached to
historical study, we may see in greater detail how far the scientific
attitude of mind was entertained, and how far it was abused for the sake
of politics. For there is no subject which illustrates more clearly these
two possibilities.
The general outlook of history in our period was not very encouraging.
There were no historians except Ammianus. It was a time when a writer
like Suetonius was taken as a model. There were, however, numerous
compilations. Eutropius, for example, wrote an abbreviated history of
Rome towards the close of the fourth century. Chronography was a science
started by Sextus Julius Africanus early in the third century, and his
example was widely followed. Eusebius, and his translator and expander
Jerome, carried on the tradition. Prosper of Aquitaine took up the record
where Eusebius had left off, and Prosper’s work was continued by Idatius.
Sulpicius Severus illustrated the same tendency, while Rufinus, the
adversary of Jerome, did important work in translating and continuing
the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius. Dry and formless as these
chronographies were, they had the merit of giving a truer perspective of
history by introducing the cold lucidity of dates.
Corresponding to this activity there had appeared on the Christian
side the records of the _Acta Martyrum_. Many of these Acta were of a
legendary character, and though they were useful for their local colour,
they are certainly less valuable from a scientific point of view than the
bare chronicles.
This was the general position of history. Its position in the Gallic
schools was not more satisfactory. Throughout the ancient educational
tradition, from the ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, of Posidonius to the ‘seven
liberal arts’, there had been no place for the study of history. From
Dionysius Thrax to Quintilian it is consistently treated as a side
issue.[1185] Blümner says that when Quintilian assigned ‘historias
exponere’ as one of the tasks of the grammarian, it only meant that the
teacher commented on such historical facts as turned up in the course of
his reading, since history was not a school-subject.[1186] Yet this is
not always true.[1187] For from what Ausonius says in the _Protrepticon_,
it appears that at Bordeaux, at any rate, history determined the course
of the reading and not vice versa, and that it was a school-subject to
this extent that definite books were included in the course for its
sake. For Ausonius prescribes for his grandson certain periods of Roman
history: the conspiracy of Catiline, the twelve years after the events
connected with Lepidus and Catulus, the Sertorian war.[1188] Among the
encyclopaedic attainments of Staphylius, the Bordeaux teacher, is a
knowledge of Livy and Herodotus.[1189] In the library of Ausonius there
are
ὀκτὼ Θουκυδίδου, ἐννέα Ἡροδότου,
and in his invitations to Paulinus he advises him to leave behind
Historiam, mimos, carmina....[1190]
We must, however, be careful how we interpret ‘historia’. It was an
elastic term. In the _Technopaegnion_, for example, Ausonius has a
piece ‘de historiis’,[1191] but the subject-matter is almost entirely
in the shadowy realm of mythology—the ‘history’ of Narcissus, Juno, and
Philomela; and when the grammarians Crispus and Urbicus are said to be
‘callentes mython plasmata et historiam’, we feel that the juxtaposition
of the two subjects is significant. ‘History’, Quintilian had said,
‘is akin to the poets, a sort of prose poetry.’[1192] The interest in
the actual facts of history and their meaning is small. A teacher
like Ausonius takes very little notice of contemporary events. He
refers vaguely to ‘tempora tyrannica’,[1193] and to the residence of
Constantine’s brothers at Toulouse.[1194] But of all those contemporary
events which we should have expected a man in Ausonius’s position to
mention, the declaration as emperor in Gaul of the German Magnentius
(350), the campaigns of Julian against the invading Franks (357-8), the
crossing of Maximus to Gaul after having been declared emperor in Britain
(383), and the affair of Arbogast and Eugenius (392)—these and many other
contemporary events of importance do not appear in the pages of Ausonius.
If mythology was a danger for history on the one side, there was
antiquity on the other. In the former the tendency was to wander
away from facts altogether, in the latter there was a temptation to
concentrate on bare facts too much. The historical facts which Sidonius
sometimes enumerates sound very much like an inventory.[1195] Staphylius,
who is noted for his knowledge of history, was steeped in the six
hundred volumes of Varro,[1196] and the antiquarian Victorius dug deep
into the musty documents of antiquity, spending on unexplored fields a
keen intellect and a tenacious memory.[1197] Ausonius remarks that this
meticulous encyclopaedism had made Staphylius neglect Cicero and Vergil,
et quidquid Latia conditur historia.[1198]
Victorius had the scientific spirit, but no use can be made of it
for history, which, to Ausonius, means something much nearer to the
brilliance of the rhetor than to the patient study of a Victorius or a
Staphylius, whom he regards with an airy smile of contempt. The ‘prompta
studia’ of the ordinary teacher who glibly talked the traditional stuff
are separated with an air of respectability from the work of such cranks
as indulge in dusty research.[1199] Rocafort rightly suspects that
these students ‘irrisioni, sicut Ausonio, ita cunctis Burdigalensibus
fuisse’.[1200] A practical sign of this is the low position which
Victorius held: he was not even a grammarian but merely an assistant
(_subdoctor sive proscholus_),[1201] poorly paid, ‘exili nostrae fucatus
honore cathedrae’. The subsidiary position of history is indicated by
Augustine when he says that it was an accessory to ‘Grammar’, and its
mythological and artificial character is criticized in the remark that it
was more worked at by grammarians than actual historians.[1202]
It is quite clear that history was studied in a very haphazard way.
Even a teacher of sufficient prominence to deliver several[1203]
panegyrics before the emperor, such as the Gallic author of the speech
to Constantius, talks in a very vague way about some of the best-known
statements of Herodotus. ‘Xerxes, _ut audio_, _Persarum rex potissimus_,
pedicas iecit aureas in profundum....’ Unfamiliarity with Greek history
is implied both on the part of the speaker and on the part of the
audience. When Ausonius tells us that he wrote a Roman History for his
son (_ignota aeternae ne sint tibi tempora Romae_[1204]), we get the
impression that he did it largely because his name appeared in the list
of consuls, and to urge his son to follow his footsteps.
Scire cupis qui sim? titulum qui quartus ab uno est
quaere: leges nomen consulis Ausonii.
And,
Exemplum iam patris habes, ut protinus et te
adgreget Ausoniis purpura consulibus;[1205]
and again, to Proculus:
Mille annos centumque et bis fluxisse novenos
consulis Ausonii nomen ad usque leges.[1206]
It is a pity that the main part of the work is lost, but probably its
author merely followed the tendency of the age to epitomize, as he did in
the summary of Suetonius’s lives of the Caesars. The study of history,
in fact, was merely ancillary: ‘ut aliquid nitoris et copiae orationi
afferrent (_sc._ _historiae studia_) et aliquid materiae carmini.’[1207]
The models followed by the historians are chosen chiefly for their
literary brilliance. Sallust is the most famous, and he plays a large
part in Ausonius’s syllabus. Orosius was greatly influenced by Tacitus,
and Arnobius by Lucretius.
The truth is that the ancients always regarded history more as an art
than as a science. The books of Herodotus came to be called by the names
of the Muses, Sallust and Tacitus strove predominantly after stylistic
effectiveness, and even Thucydides gave oratorical technique a much
more important place than would now be accorded to it. Rhetoric had
cast her spell over the historians as over all the other intellectuals.
Polybius alone resisted, and suffered, in consequence, at the hands of
the critics. ‘The only ancient historian’, Norden writes of him,[1208]
‘who opposed with all his might the influence of rhetoric on the
writing of history, and who, therefore, is most closely related to the
modern point of view, belongs, according to the judgement of Dionysius
of Halicarnassus ... to those dull authors whom nobody can bear to
read through.’ So far had rhetoric asserted its sway over history,
that Cicero, to whom we look for the sane and balanced conception of
rhetorical education, could say that it was permissible for a rhetor
to falsify history for the sake of style,[1209] and could describe the
function of the historian as essentially rhetorical (_unum ... oratorium
maxime_).[1210] A custom that gave special scope to this view of history
was the insertion of imaginary speeches such as we find in Herodotus,
Thucydides, Sallust, and Tacitus. And not only speeches, but letters and
documents were set down in a fictitious form. Against this practice
Quintilian, like Polybius, had warned. The orator’s task, he maintained,
was different from that of the historian. ‘Id quoque vitandum, in
quo magna pars errat, ne in oratione poetas nobis et historicos, in
illis operibus oratores aut declamatores imitandos putemus. Sua cuique
proposita lex, suus cuique decor est.’[1211] But the warning was in vain.
The historians were still trained in the rhetor’s school, and the rhetor
frequently used historical subjects. When Ammianus wrote his history, he
stood in the great tradition of Asiatic rhetoric. Thus history continued
to wear the fetters of oratory.
As time went on these fetters became more and more galling. Just as the
Athenians ceased to produce genuine history when their day of national
greatness passed with the failing Empire and the inefficient democracy,
leaving their learning and their civilization to be overgrown by the
weeds of rhetoric and sophistic, so now the Gauls of the transition
choked whatever history there was with an abundant growth of words. When
the panegyric becomes fashionable in Gaul, we see how history develops
into an instrument of imperial policy. Not merely beauty of form and the
following of traditional rules, but the narrower purpose of praising the
emperor becomes the goal. The facts of history are loosely and wildly
used.[1212] Alexander the Great (with the old argument that he conquered
merely ‘imbelles Asiaticos’), Hannibal, Augustus, are great names for
these Epigoni to juggle with and to mingle promiscuously with the incense
of adulation. Of Caesar it is said: ‘ille Graeculos homines adortus est,
tu (Constantine) Subalpinos’.[1213] So far did the travesty of history go.
‘There’, said Eumenius of the Maeniana, ‘let the flower of our youth
learn ... to praise the deeds of the mighty emperors—_quis enim melior
usus eloquentiae?_’[1214] The school must teach them the proofs, varying
with the different places, that establish the exploits of the prince;
and as the news of victory comes hotly in from time to time, the teacher
must point out the land concerned on the map—the double river of Persia,
the parching fields of Libya, the curving ‘horns’ of the Rhine, the
many-flowing mouths of the Nile. All these several exploits must mould
the mind of youth to a sense of imperial greatness, while he envisages
the Pax Romana throughout the erstwhile troubled world, ‘for now, now at
length we may look at the map of the world with joy, seeing in it naught
that is foreign’.[1215]
This imperialistic use of history made men afraid to tamper with it,
lest indiscretion should mar their fortunes. In the fifth century there
was no longer a Domitian to put historians to death, but there was a
tradition to bind and intimidate. When Leo, the minister of Euric,
advised Sidonius to occupy himself with history during his banishment,
the reply was: ‘turpiter falsa, periculose vera dicuntur’.[1216] In this
sort of work, says Sidonius, the mention of the good wins scant credit,
the mention of the great, unbounded enmity. ‘The writing of history’,
he maintains, ‘seems to be the last thing a man of my class ought to
undertake, for to begin it means envy, to continue it, trouble, and the
end of it is hatred.’ The attitude of mind which made men write to order
was spreading: Ausonius is an outstanding example. At the same time the
rhetorical tradition in history was persisting. Sidonius wants Leo to
undertake a history and the argument for his fitness refers merely to
style: ‘nemo te celsius scripserit’.[1217]
The all-pervading imperial atmosphere, therefore, was not encouraging for
the historian. We hear of histories begun but never finished. Symmachus
tells of one Protadius, a nobleman, who set about writing a domestic
history.[1218] Sidonius had been asked by Bishop Prosper to write a
history of the war with Attila, and actually set to work on it but gave
it up.[1219] It was not only on the tax-payer that the Empire weighed
heavily.
It may be, too, that the emperors interfered with the selection of the
material for the historical course, such as it was. In the list given
by Ausonius (Jung remarks) much stress was laid on the history of
insurrections, and this was done by way of an object-lesson to the Gauls
‘quo magis rebellionem audientes detestarentur’.[1220] Whether this was
actually the case, or whether the remark is a mere scholastic refinement,
we cannot with certainty say. The imperial authorities were quite capable
of such an act, but, on the other hand, the evidence is not conclusive.
We are inclined to give the emperors the benefit of the doubt.
With the reaction against the superfluities of rhetoric in the Christian
schools, there followed important results for history. Christian writers,
as we have seen, reinforced and developed, especially in Gaul, the
tendency towards chronography. This was part of the reaction against
the domination of Form in historical writing, and it proved to be a
valuable antidote from the historian’s point of view. But another and a
greater service resulted. The Christian reaction, as we saw, affected
thought as well as style, and the Christian historians, with their
renewed interest in theology and philosophy, began to look for first
principles in the series of events. The universality of the Christian
religion made them look not only to single nationalities (though the
Church fostered nationalism),[1221] but to the whole world. They tried to
see all things in relation to their conception of the divine. Thus they
tended to produce a philosophy of history, which, though often distorted
and biased, set history on a much more markedly philosophic basis than
before. As instances we may remember Augustine’s _City of God_, which
was written to justify the fall of Rome, and the universal history of
Orosius (who wrote with far less balance than his master Augustine),
which attempted to prove that ‘there’s a Divinity that shapes our ends’.
Filled with the same note, and poignantly real, are the _de Providentia
Dei_ and the _ad Uxorem_, written in Gaul after the great invasion at
the beginning of the fifth century had forced men to reconsider their
philosophy of life.
We can hardly claim, however, that the Christian elementary schools
were much affected by these contributions of Christianity. History was
still very much of a subsidiary subject and its standard was low. Yet
its extent was widened by the addition of Bible-history, which often,
no doubt, ousted pagan history altogether; but the interest of men like
Augustine in secular history, and the use they made of it to reinforce
Christianity, would have prevented its disappearance from the more
advanced Christian schools. Bible-history had the advantage, moreover,
of not having an imperial policy behind it, and the greater simplicity
and sincerity of the Christian ideal must have produced something nearer
to historic truth (the absence of which Augustine deplores in the pagan
schools) than the frills and draperies of rhetoric would generally allow.
Bias and misrepresentation, born of the fervour of conversion, were
responsible for a great many distortions, and the growing formlessness
did much damage to the artistic side of history; but it cannot be denied
that there was a greater desire for truth in the eager questions of the
early Christian than in the smug complacence of the glib rhetorician.
History, in the hands of a skilful master, may become one of the
very finest instruments of education. It has a legitimate use in
inspiring patriotism. The deeds of a man’s ancestors become part of his
individuality, and may be a source of high and noble action. Similarly,
in proportion as a man realizes his national unity with his people,
their history may become a motive and a driving force in his life. Now
the Roman Empire set before the schoolboys of Africa and Italy and Gaul
the events of the Roman republic and the deeds of the emperors. But the
area was too wide. The Gallic schoolboy could not feel the value and the
force of things so far distant, different from his own conditions, and so
slightly connected with them. He could not feel that he was a responsible
member of an Empire which could not defend him. Moreover at this time
nationality was coming to be more and more clearly realized under the
influence of the Church:[1222] each province sought to uphold the
specific doctrines of its leaders, and bishops waged fierce controversial
warfare for the traditions of their country,[1223] especially in Africa.
There is a dim individuality to be seen in Spain,[1224] and Salvian’s
attacks on the Empire had an aspect which pointed to the beginning of
Gallic nationality. The Roman Empire was beginning to feel the strain of
national individuality. In these circumstances, history, being hedged in
as we have seen by imperial persons and questions, must have become more
and more artificial. The lack of citizenship which was so prevalent at
this time increased for lack of an inspiring national or international
ideal. And such an ideal might have come partly through a method by which
history would have become more vivid and real to the children in the
schools.
Another possibility that was missed was that of using history to see
the logical and psychological connexion between events. With the narrow
conception of the subject that was entertained at the time this was
impossible. The only sort of causal chain that the student was induced to
see was that, if you did not please the emperor, so much the worse for
you. Not only the reason, but also the critical faculty, was thus left
undeveloped in this age of adulation and prescription.
In the same way the moral significance of history was overlooked, and
here again the cause was restriction. For in order to realize the
influence of character on the march of events, a wide, and, if possible,
a comparative study of the subject must be undertaken, and the values
attached must not depend on a gilded imperial figure, but on ethical
truth. Again, it was impossible to judge of the various aims and theories
of men in the past age, to form some sort of opinion of the development
of political theory, to be interested in truth and progress, as long as
rhetoric, the handmaid of a rigid Imperialism, reigned supreme.
3. THE POSITION OF GREEK
When Ephorus called the Celts philhellenes,[1225] he was doubtless
thinking of the Greek influence which Massilia (as we have seen) so
effectively spread in Gaul. This influence survived in the south as late
as the seventh century and even later,[1226] but Massilia’s influence
had long been waning. During the fourth and fifth centuries Latin had
more and more become the language of the upper classes,[1227] so that
the impetus to Greek studies from this quarter was becoming almost
negligible. But tradition still counted for something. The Aquitanians,
who boasted of the legend which connected their origin with Greece and
Bordeaux, kept up commercial relations with Greece[1228] during the
fourth century. It is they who are the most faithful to Greek and among
whom we find most traces of Hellenism.
Now Julian had created a sort of contrast between Greek learning and
Christianity. Hellenism came to be identified with paganism, and so
tended to fall into disrepute as Christianity gained ground in the fifth
century. The inscriptions show remarkably few traces of Greek. Where they
occur they are usually very short, as in the case of the one found in the
Alps near Vienne and belonging probably to the fourth century:
Εὔστοχι (vocat. case) ζήσαις,[1229]
or else they refer to some foreigner, as the one at Trèves Οὺρσίκινος
ἀνατολικός[1230] (i.e. from the land of the rising sun, eastern), who was
probably one of those traders called in a general way ‘Syrians’.[1231]
Conrad Celtes speaks of Greek inscriptions in Gaul which he had seen
there in the fifteenth century:
Graecis vidi epitaphiis
inscripta busta,
but these could not have been very many. Altogether we have only nine
Greek Christian inscriptions in Gaul.[1232] Nor are the Greek remains
on the pagan side more numerous. That Greek was declining is abundantly
evident from other sources too. The Greek of Autun in the north shows
signs of decadence even at the end of the third century. But it needed
less than a century for the neglect to spread even to the Grecized south.
Eumenius found it necessary in a formal and imperial speech to explain
the word ‘Musagetes’ to his audience.[1233] He himself, of course, and
many of his fellow teachers were familiar with Greek. Greek forms like
‘Heraclen’, ‘Pythiados’ are often used, and the orator of Oration VI,
who was a Gaul, could quote Homer.[1234] Ausonius says in his quaint
mythological style of Harmonius, professor of Greek at Trèves, that he
was the only one who mingled Greek wine with Italian.[1235] But the
subject was fast becoming a schoolmaster’s acquisition. By A.D. 376 it
was not even that; for the emperors, in speaking of the appointment of
a Greek rhetor, add dubiously ‘if any one worthy of the post can be
found’.[1236] It was partly this neglect of Greek, no doubt, that made
Julian refer so often to ἡ τῶν Κέλτων άγροικία.[1237]
As the grandfather of Eumenius was an Attic Greek,[1238] we cannot
suppose that it was the un-Greek atmosphere of his surroundings, but
rather personal disinclination or disability that allowed Greek to
dwindle in the schools. Ausonius says that his father’s Latin was halting:
Sermone impromptus Latio, verum Attica lingua
suffecit culti vocibus eloquii,[1239]
and the verses are a commentary on the swiftness of the decline.
Ausonius himself, in spite of his confession that he neglected Greek at
school,[1240] is quite familiar with the language, and loves to display
his knowledge of it—‘magnopere sibi videtur placere graecissando’.[1241]
He drags it in pedantically in his epistles and the capers he cuts with
it are merely annoying.[1242] But whenever he addresses the general
public he finds it necessary to translate even the simplest words
and phrases, as in the _Ludus septem sapientum_ when the pantomime
player (_ludius_) speaks.[1243] And he admits that Greek was not very
successfully taught, though the Greek grammarians were industrious
enough.[1244] There was not much enthusiasm for the language and its
literature, as there had been in past times. To Citarius, the Sicilian
teacher of Greek, Ausonius says that he would have gained as much glory
for learning as Aristarchus or Zenodotus among the Greeks were it not
that the scale of values had changed.[1245]
Still lower did Greek sink in monastic education. There was opportunity
in the south for learning Greek, but it was exceptional to do so. About
the middle of the fifth century Eugendus came as a scholar to the
monastery at Condat on the Jura mountains, and the record says of him
that he learned the Greek authors as well as the Latin, _such was his
enthusiasm for study_.[1246] But a certain elementary knowledge of Greek
was necessary. The ‘Litterae formatae’, letters of commendation given to
travelling priests by their bishops, according to the councils of Nicea
(325), Laodicea (366), and Milevis (402), were sometimes drawn up in
Greek. The decrees of the bishops were marked with certain Greek letters
to indicate their authenticity. The work of Dositheus (Ἑρμηνευμάτων
libri III), a sort of motley lexicon interspersed with extracts and
dialogues, chiefly of a juridical character, was used by those who, like
the Northern Gauls, found Greek difficult. We have referred to the low
standard of the Books of Instruction written by Eucherius for his son
Salonius, who was neither very young (about twenty) nor very stupid (he
was made bishop, and could, as we have seen, ask profound theological
questions). As far as the study of language is concerned, we need to
remember that philology is a comparatively modern science: but such
exposition (consisting mostly of mere translation) as that of talentum,
obol, drachma, Theos, Christus, Hagios, Angelus, &c., under the heading
‘Quaestiones difficiliores’, must point to a surprising ignorance of
Greek even among the intellectuals of the day.
It was not only in Gaul that schoolboys of that age found Greek
difficult. Augustine had the same trouble in Africa, and his complaint
in the _Confessions_ is well known.[1247] He was by nature romantic, and
instinctively hated drudgery. The hateful repetition of the elementary
school ‘unum et unum duo, duo et duo quattuor’ bored him beyond words.
What he liked was to read about the wanderings of Aeneas and the distress
of Dido. But this was not the whole reason for his difficulty with
Greek. The prevailing conception of discipline made things unpleasant.
He was urged ‘saevis terroribus ac poenis’. Yet this does not explain
the matter, for it applied to Latin as well. He himself could hardly
understand what was wrong. Why should he have hated Greek so much? ‘Quid
autem erat causae cur Graecas litteras oderam quibus puerulus imbuebar,
nec nunc quidem exploratum est’;[1248] and again ‘Cur ergo Graecam ...
grammaticam oderam?’[1249] The difference between Greek and Latin could
not lie in the different material of the books read, because they were
Vergil and Homer; and if he liked Aeneas why did he not like Odysseus?
Rocafort,[1250] in his study of the life of Paulinus of Pella, is struck
with the extent of Greek in the curriculum of the Bordeaux schools. ‘Here
too we must note how great a place was given to Greek literature in that
scheme of studies. For from the Greek poets, orators, and philosophers
the children learnt poetry, eloquence, and philosophy at one and the same
time as from the Latin; or rather, they learnt from the Greek first.
To such an extent had the conquered captured the conqueror.... Of the
public schools in Gaul, not a single one neglected Greek (_publicarum
scholarum, quae in illa provincia_ (Gallia) _erant, non fuit una in qua
Graecae litterae neglectae fuerint_). The schoolboys of that time, he
argues, must have been well versed in Greek ‘because in the schooldays
of Ausonius there were those who could compare the Greek verses of the
schoolmaster Citarius with those of Simonides, and the Greek speeches of
Urbicus, also a schoolmaster, with those of Ulysses and Nestor’.[1251]
But the author forgets that the official acceptance of a tradition, the
mere inclusion of Greek-texts in the syllabus, the mere following out
of the traditional order, does not indicate thoroughness or efficiency.
Paulinus talks of studying ‘dogmata Socratus’ at the age of five, but
this does not mean that the wealth of Greek philosophy was opened up for
the scholar. Indeed, we have evidence that the reverse was the case.
And where we learn from both scholars and teachers (as we do) that the
results of Greek study were barren and fruitless, it is surely wrong to
draw from the prominence of Greek books in the school the inference that
Greek studies were in a flourishing state. Moreover, if Paulinus seems
to have appreciated his Greek, we must remember that he was born at
Pella, and that when he came to Gaul the household servants habitually
spoke Greek to him.[1252] He is therefore a special case in the sense
that Greek was his mother-tongue. The fact that the literary products of
Citarius and Urbicus were compared to those of great men need not mean
anything. We have seen with what elaborate and artificial courtesy the
‘litterati’ of Gaul treated one another at this time. They called one
another Ciceros and Vergils on the slightest provocation.[1253] As for
the argument that Greek was taught first, it may appear that this was to
its detriment rather than in its interest. The quite abnormal difficulty
which Augustine found in learning the new language (he compares it to
gall embittering the sweetness of the poem) is not explained.
Nor can we very well account for Augustine’s distaste for the language by
reference to national antipathies. ‘He detested the Greeks by instinct’,
says M. Bertrand.[1254] ‘According to Western prejudice, these men of
the East were all rascals or amusers. Augustin, as a practical African,
always regarded the Greeks as vain, discoursing wits.... The entirely
local patriotism of the classical Greek authors further annoyed this
Roman citizen, who was used to regard the world as his country: he
thought them very narrow-minded to take so much interest in the history
of some little town.... It must be remembered that in the second half
of the fourth century the Greek attitude ... set itself more and more
against Latinism, above all, politically.’ This may be all very well for
the educated citizen who could appreciate the considerations of politics
and cosmopolitanism, but it hardly applies to the time of life at which
we find the complaints against Greek, namely childhood. What we should
expect from this thesis is that in later life, with a fuller realization
of these things, the men of the West would have shunned Greek. Yet
we know that it was precisely then that Ausonius took to Greek, and
Augustine, judging from his frequent references to Greek authors, must
have done the same.
We need some other explanation, and we begin to find one when we realize
that it was not so much the intrinsic difficulty of Greek as the way of
teaching the _second language_ that was the real problem. The relation of
the one to the other is pronounced unsatisfactory by Paulinus of Pella,
who was educated at Bordeaux. He complains that this ‘double learning’
is all very well for the more powerful minds to whom it gives a ‘double
glory’, but in the case of the duller boy like himself this scheme is too
difficult.[1255]
A proof of this unsatisfactory training we find in the verses he writes.
There are many _anacolutha_, and, as his editor Brandes remarks,
‘metricae artis ita expertem se praestiterit ut nullam paginam foedis
maculis non conspergeret’,[1256] though much of this must be attributed
to the illness which put a stop to his studies at fifteen,[1257] just
when he was beginning to make good progress.[1258]
What, then, exactly was wrong with the teaching of the second language?
Partly it undoubtedly was (as has been indicated) that stupid
concentration on the dry bones of grammar which persists up to the
present day in the teaching of a strange language. The assumption is that
learning a language must necessarily be a synthetic process in which you
pass from the details to the whole, instead of being rather analytic, a
process in which you pass from an appreciation of the general rhythm and
sense and structure to the details of construction, which only have a
meaning in so far as they are related to the larger thing. But there was
a deeper cause. Augustine gets the root of the matter when he says that
it was _unnaturalness_. The reason why Latin was not to him the drudgery
that Greek was lay in the fact that it came to him naturally and easily
and pleasantly, ‘inter blandimenta nutricum et ioca arridentium et
laetitias alludentium’. He learnt with an interest that was natural and
delightful ‘not from lessons but from conversations with those in whose
ears I longed to pour out all I felt’. It is interest and not force that
produces the best results. ‘Hinc satis elucet’, he says, ‘maiorem habere
vim ad discenda ista liberam curiositatem quam meticulosam necessitatem.’
Now naturalness means giving scope to the individuality, and developing
that sane curiosity which can be elicited by proper methods from every
child. Its practice in education, therefore, must mean a protest against
the militaristic disciplinarian, and as such Augustine mainly intended
it. But it contains, also, a reproof for the thoughtless and unscientific
teacher who regards the child as a receptacle for external and ready-made
ideas, a protest against the spiritual militarist who does not start with
what there is in the child’s mind, but begins by introducing alien matter
and perverting the natural resources.
This was exactly what Roman education had always done. It had taken the
Latin-speaking child, and, instead of starting with his knowledge of
Latin, it began as a rule by cramming in a foreign language, Greek. When
Augustine speaks of the Greek studies ‘quibus puerulus imbuebar’,[1259]
he is merely affirming that his school followed the ordinary Roman
tendency to put Greek first. Greek influence had early captured the
Roman schools, and had been widely spread at various times by Scipio and
his circle,[1260] by Hadrian,[1261] and by Julian. That easy acceptance
of the Greek example, especially in matters of culture, which Plutarch
notices,[1262] called for the strong protest of patriots like Cicero on
more than one occasion.[1263] But here, as in the matter of rhetoric,
the protest was unavailing. We can trace the hellenizing influence as
the Empire goes on. Pliny is quite ready to admit the charge of ‘egestas
patrii sermonis’ which Cicero is always denying,[1264] and Seneca writes
at length on the subject (_Quanta verborum nobis paupertas_).[1265] To
a certain extent, of course, this was true, but it is the spirit of the
writer that is significant. Whereas Cicero tried to coin philosophical
terms[1266] to enrich his language, the later writers merely criticize,
or advocate the substitution of Greek. Suetonius quotes Cicero’s letter
to Titinius: ‘I remember how, in our boyhood, a certain Plotius was the
first to teach Latin. He obtained numbers of pupils ... and I grieved
that I could not go too. But I was restrained by the opinion of the
experts who thought that the intellect could be better nourished by a
Greek training.’[1267] How far national pride had declined is indicated
by a comparison of Cicero’s _Dream of Scipio_ which Macrobius has
preserved for us, and the notes of the commentator. In Cicero’s text the
heaven depicted is pre-eminently for patriots; in Macrobius’s commentary
entry into public life is a hindrance rather than a help.[1268] And the
failure of patriotism meant increased readiness to adopt and ape the
foreign thing simply because it was foreign. It meant that education came
to be identified with a knowledge of Greek.
Pliny, in spite of his leaning to Hellenism, complained that in the legal
profession young men begin with the civil suits of the centumviral court,
just as in the schools they begin with Homer,[1269] and his comment is in
the nature of a criticism: ‘For here, as there, they start with what is
most difficult.’ Suetonius[1270] indicates the Greek tradition in Roman
education when he says that grammar at first made no great progress,
since the first teachers, who were at once poets and semi-Greeks,
explained none but Greek authors to their pupils, merely reading out to
them an occasional Latin composition of their own. And Julius Capitolinus
in the life of Maximinus Junior[1271] mentions the Greek training and
the Greek grammarian in such a way as to indicate that Greek was taught
first. This is distinctly maintained by Petronius:
Det primos versibus annos
Maeoniumque bibat felici pectore fontem.
mox et Socratico plenus grege mutet habenas
liber et ingentis quatiat Demosthenis arma.
_hinc_ Romana manus circumfluat, et modo Graio
exonerata sono mutet suffusa saporem.[1272]
Homer and Socrates and Demosthenes come first: then Latin literature
adds the final flavour. Finally, it was Quintilian’s injunction that the
orator must begin his education with Homer.[1273] Jung thinks that Latin
and Greek were probably taught together; but he bases his argument on the
slender proof that Crispus and Urbicus are called ‘Grammatici Latini et
Graeci’.[1274]
This strong tradition was adopted in Gaul, largely, no doubt, on
the authority of Quintilian. Paulinus, who went through the regular
school-course at Bordeaux, started with ‘dogmata Socratus (Σωκράτους) et
bellica plasmata Homeri’.[1275] In Ausonius’s scheme of studies for his
grandson, Homer and Menander came first.[1276] And Jerome advises this
order for the education of Laeta’s little daughter: ‘ediscat Graecorum
versuum (of the Bible) numerum: sequatur statim Latina eruditio.’[1277]
‘L’Hellénisme’, says Jullian[1278] of the Bordeaux schools, ‘est la
sauvegarde des esprits et le salut des âmes. C’est l’idéal de l’École,’
and again, ‘les œuvres d’Homère étaient les premières livres qu’on
mettait aux mains d’un enfant, qu’il fût Grec ou Romain.’
This is the point, ‘Greek _or_ Roman’. Educational experience has shown
that a school-system must be elastic and accommodate itself to the
psychology and the needs of the child. Wherever there have been bilingual
countries the problem has arisen. What is educationally the soundest
principle of manipulating the language question? At first it was thought
that the language of the higher culture should be enforced on all. It
would save time and expense and trouble; moreover (so men argued), it
would be in the interest of the child whose mother-tongue was thus
disregarded, for he would have so much more time to learn the language
of the ‘superior culture’. Your own language, they told the other party,
you know already and your children need not spend time on it at school.
Better, therefore, to have a uniform language throughout.
Now such a course (looking at it from the educational point of view)
has been proved over and over again to be utterly unsound. The verdict
of history has been to uphold, even at the cost of money and time and
trouble, the principle of mother-tongue instruction. You must, as
Augustine implied, start with what is natural to the child. If you begin
with what is strange and has no connexion with his thoughts and speech,
you are merely delaying his progress. You will, no doubt, develop his
memory, but his thought will remain untouched. Inspectors in the schools
of South Africa have reported repeatedly the case of Dutch children
who have been started on English, that they read and spell perfectly,
but are quite unable to explain the meaning of an English sentence.
The consequence is that they take twice as long to pass the elementary
standards as they normally would. The same has been found in Quebec and
in India and Burma. Teachers and missionaries everywhere have discovered
that the mother-tongue principle is the only fruitful one. They have
found that where it is applied progress follows in an unexpected way.
Once the child has learned to use, to analyse, to understand his own
language, once his thought has been set going, he will learn the second
language more quickly than the child who started with the second
language. He is therefore ahead in three respects: his thought has been
stimulated, he has learned his own language, he has learned another
language, whereas the other has not been induced to think, knows his own
language superficially and the second language imperfectly. This can be
substantiated by many cases from the experience of teachers in bilingual
countries.
May we not, then, find the ultimate cause of the failure of Greek in
the schools of our period, in this mistaken policy of starting with the
second language? At a time when Latin was becoming more and more the
household tongue of Gaul, and Greek proportionately strange, the effect
of beginning with the latter could not but lead to sterile results.
There seems to have been an idea, which we find also in Jung,[1279] that
they should clear the second language out of the way first, ‘quo postea
linguam suam plenius ac melius ... ediscerent’. They seem to have thought
that whatever you learn last has the strongest influence, and therefore,
if you _must_ learn Greek, do so first, lest it mar your Latin. How far
this peculiarly Roman and unpsychological attitude failed is a question
which needs no further comment.
4. ART
In a survey of Gallic education art must be mentioned, but the space
given to it must of necessity be very limited. Only in its possible
effect on education can it be briefly touched on, and even then not as a
school-subject, but rather as an influence behind official teaching.
The Gauls were by nature fond of art. That eager curiosity and
excitability which Caesar noticed[1280] in them were the basis of an
artistic temperament. Ausonius, in his epigrams, refers frequently to
works of art,[1281] and his enthusiasm over the sculptured calf of Myron
is remarkable.[1282] He maintains the advanced doctrine that art is
greater than nature. Of Myron’s heifer he says:
Fingere nam similem vivae, quam vivere, plus est;
nec sunt facta dei mira, sed artificis.[1283]
In the ‘poems added by Thaddaeus Ugoletus to the epigrams of Ausonius’
the same statue is referred to in three epigrams,[1284] and we have one
‘on the marble statue of Niobe’, expressing a certain amount of artistic
appreciation. We hear of one of Sidonius’s friends who was a student of
Vitruvius,[1285] and Patiens was much interested in the adornment of the
churches of Lyons.
But there were two considerations that affected this natural love of art
in the Gauls: the Roman element in them, and the fact that art, like
literature, was becoming a matter of form. Just as beauty of style had
once been a living and inspiring thing to the Greeks, but became in our
period a juggling with phrase and rule, so art had lost its true and
inner meaning. And just as the Greek influence of Massilia had encouraged
the artistic instinct of the Gauls, so the harder Roman spirit proved an
impediment. Sidonius illustrates this fact admirably. Surrounded by all
the luxury of his time, he felt bound to include art products among his
possessions, and liked to talk about them, with the comfortable assurance
that it was a respectable and cultured thing to do. But he shows little
real appreciation. Purgold has shown[1286] that most of the descriptions
in his poems referring to art are borrowed from Claudian and other Roman
poets. In his account of the castle of Pontius Leontius we have a list
of artistic productions[1287] in the usual Roman encyclopaedic style,
and similarly his acquaintance with sculpture is merely conventional.
He knows the stock attitudes that sculptors give to philosophers,[1288]
and this is the order of his artistic attainments. In describing the
churches of Patiens at Lyons[1289] and of Perpetuus at Tours,[1290] he
is much more interested in the inscriptions[1291] he wrote for them
than in the architecture. And this in spite of the fact that Perpetuus
had employed a style in rebuilding the church at Tours in 470 which was
new to Gaul, and had introduced a form of choir which was the point of
departure from which the ‘chevet’ of French, Romanesque, and Gothic
architecture developed.[1292] This lack of appreciation was part of the
general decline in art at this time. In the triumphal arch of Constantine
(early fourth century) part of the design is inserted from the arch of
Trajan, and has, therefore, little original artistic value, while the
other part, which is contemporary, illustrates the decay of aesthetic
taste. Similarly, the contemporary part of the discus of Theodosius is
merely profuse and conventional.[1293]
Art in Gaul, as at Rome, was largely produced by foreigners. The great
statue of Mercury of Auvergne, the only Gallic piece of sculpture we
know, was executed by the Greek Zenodorus, who sold his work for 400,000
sesterces, and was then called to Rome to make a statue of Nero. Of the
statues found at Martres, near Toulouse, the oldest belonged to the first
century, the more recent to the third and fourth. Why is it that so many
were found in the same place? Lavisse thinks that the Christians, in the
height of their anti-pagan fury, collected, mutilated, and threw them
together in some out-of-the-way spot. Now it is commonly held, as we have
seen,[1294] that the sort of marble of which they were made is the same
as that of the neighbouring quarries, especially that of Saint-Béat on
the Upper Garonne. It is therefore probable that they were produced in
the neighbourhood, and the thought is suggested that perhaps, for all
we know, they may represent some school of sculptors which flourished
during our period. Of Gallic sculpture and its relation to Greek art,
the influence of Alexandria, the centre of Hellenistic art in the first
century, the industrial art of Gaul and its relation to Greece, a sound
and recent summary will be found in Lavisse.[1295]
The splendour of public buildings both at Trèves and at Autun is
often expatiated on by the panegyrists.[1296] The descriptions show
considerable interest in architecture, and this interest when presented
externally in a building like the Maeniana must have had an educative
value for those who attended the institution. But it was Christianity
that accomplished most in this field. When Christian art began to develop
it took for its first church model the basilica which was already seen in
the chapels of the catacombs. We hear of bishops of Gaul who got workmen
to come over from Italy in order to build churches after this style.
The basilicas of Constantine and Theodosius, the sepulchral bas-reliefs
at Rome, Ravenna, and Arles, and at many other places, are well known.
‘Before the fall of the Empire’, says Ozanam, ‘there was to be seen
that Romanesque and Byzantine architecture which was soon to cover with
monuments the shores of the Loire, Seine and Rhine, and which, from the
broken arch of its vault, was to produce all the beauties of the pointed
Gothic.’[1297] That the interest which Sidonius and his friends showed
(though superficially) in architecture did not die with them is proved
by the letter of Cassiodorus (at the beginning of the sixth century)
to the prefect of Rome.[1298] He is anxious to have a competent man in
charge of the public architecture. ‘Romanae fabricae decus convenit
peritum habere custodem’, who must be an expert and a student: ‘Det
operam libris antiquorum, instructionibus vacet.’ There were within the
church a large number of narrow and uneducated zealots, who, like Martin
of Tours, banished all art. ‘Ars ibi’, says Sulpicius Severus of Martin’s
monastery, ‘exceptis scriptoribus, nulla habebatur.’[1299] Even the books
were assigned only to the younger brethren: ‘maiores orationi vacabant’.
In his theory of education Augustine allows pictures and statues and
such-like to be used for instruction. But, except for strictly scientific
purposes, they must be looked on as otiose: ‘hoc totum genus inter
superflua hominum instituta numerandum est, nisi cum interest quid eorum,
qua de causa, et ubi et quando et cuius auctoritate fiat.’ Cassiodorus
expresses the view of the more liberal and enlightened Christian teachers
when he sees that art may be used to improve the works of the ancients
by avoiding their mistakes, to clothe the new in the glory of the
old.[1300] Similarly in Paulinus of Nola we find the motto of ‘Spoiling
the Egyptians’ in regard to art, and the note of ‘Soli Deo gloria’. To
art conceived in this way he has no objection; rather, he seeks it out
with enthusiastic eagerness. ‘Videamus autem aedificantes quid de nostra
fragili terrenaque substantia dignum divino fundamento superaedificare
possimus, ut ipso principali lapide unificati lapides in fabricam templi
caelestis optemur.’[1301] Thus, while there was much in the conception of
Christianity at the time which made for a philistinism in art, there were
also encouraging elements.
In the catacombs, too, we find traces of other artistic developments.
Ignorant and untrained as those early Christians were, they had within
them a strong emotion based on sincere conviction, and this emotion found
an outlet in verse and painting, sculpture and mosaic, which, though
often of the most rudimentary order, represented the beginnings of new
artistic movements. A glass patera found at Cologne has gold figures on
a white background, representing the vision of Ezekiel, and it belongs
to the first few centuries of our era.[1302] Gilt glasses, frequently
produced at Cologne, and decorated with the heads of Christ and the
apostles, have come down to us from the early Christian centuries. There
are also finely wrought and figured lamps and linens. But most striking
are the ivories, of which a large number is now in the British museums.
They are extremely beautiful and belong to a school of the fourth and
fifth centuries. Pilate washing his hands, Peter’s denial, Judas hanging
himself, Christ bearing the Cross—such are the themes portrayed on them,
possibly by Eastern carvers.[1303] At Arles there is a large collection
of paintings which show that the passage of the Red Sea was a favourite
subject. And Paulinus of Nola, in his long letter to Severus,[1304] shows
clearly that it was a common thing to have paintings in the churches. He
describes the prominent picture of Martin, ‘qui etiam in splendoribus
sanctorum conspicua claritate praefulget’, and mentions another of
himself on an adjoining wall. Numerous verses are addressed to Severus on
the subjects of his pictures, and his skill is praised as worthy of his
themes:
Digna sacramentis gemina sub imagine pinxit.
He describes various church pictures representing the Trinity, the Good
Shepherd, the Baptism of Christ, the Crucifixion,[1305] and so on, in
the church of Nola. Similarly the pictures in the church of Fundana are
described. The elaboration of the scene strikes us as a harbinger of
mediaeval art. In a single picture we have the themes of God in paradise,
Christ and the Cross, the Spirit and the Father crowning Him, and the Day
of Judgement.[1306]
This elaboration is found, too, in the architecture and in the general
adornment of the churches. Paulinus describes arches, chambers, fonts,
&c., in detail, as, for instance, those of the church at Nola.[1307]
Similarly the church at Fundana is described.[1308] Now the church was
the place where the mass of the people met, and if we must recognize it
at this time as the religious, the moral, and the intellectual teacher of
the people, we must also recognize in its training, to some extent, an
element of artistic education.
But the form of art that was most commonly cultivated by the men of
this time was music. There is an epitaph of Vienne to one Nicias a
citharoedus,[1309] and another of Nemausum to Avidius Secundus, a maker
of musical instruments (_musicarius_).[1310] Gaul had inherited all the
musical devices and appliances of Rome, and like Rome had used them
chiefly for frivolous pleasures. But Sidonius notes that Theodoric II
cared only for serious music. Hydraulic organs and dancing girls he
dispensed with.[1311] Still more did the Christians dispense with such
things. But if they would not and could not develop the instrumental
side, they certainly made a speciality of singing. There is a doubtful
but interesting legend which says that when the Empress Justina
threatened to deliver the basilica of Milan to the Arians, Ambrose and
his congregation spent a day and a night in the building. To pass the
time he introduced hymn-tunes, already adopted by the Eastern Church.
Augustine testifies to the impression which these hymns made on him at
Milan. They were the means of bringing the truth home to him. ‘Quantum
flevi in hymnis et cantibus tuis, suave sonantis ecclesiae tuae vocibus
commotus acriter! Voces illae influebant auribus meis et eliquabatur
veritas in cor meum, et exaestuabat inde affectus pietatis, et currebant
lacrimae, et bene mihi erat cum eis.’[1312] He had doubts at first as to
the propriety of such sense-seducing music, but his scruples did not long
survive. He himself showed considerable interest in the art and wrote six
books _De Musica_ in a didactic strain.
Nor was the interest confined to him. Everywhere in the Christian schools
choristers were trained. Jerome speaks of hymn-singing or chants in the
schools, where the little ones sing of Pharaoh’s disaster in the Red Sea
and the triumph of the just.[1313] Claudianus Mamertus trained a choir
for his brother, the Bishop of Vienne[1314] (_instructas docuit sonare
classes_). Antiphonal singing (i.e. the older practice of the alternate
singing of psalms) is often mentioned. Sidonius speaks of the monks and
priests who chant psalms with alternating sweetness,[1315] and we have
seen how Caesarius, when he became bishop, made his congregation sing in
this way. In the clerical training singing came to be very important. It
was forbidden by Gregory to take orders without it. Columban complains of
the harsh discipline which accompanied it.[1316]
The beginnings of hymn-singing in this period have a particular interest
for Gaul because they are connected with Hilary of Poitiers. We have
Jerome’s statement ‘Hilarius in hymnorum carmine Gallos indociles
vocat’,[1317] which seems to mean more than the remark he makes
elsewhere[1318] that among the works of Hilary was _Liber hymnorum et
mysteriorum_. For it suggests that Hilary tried to introduce hymn-singing
into Gaul and did not meet with great success. This is supported by the
definite statement of Isidore of Seville ‘Hymnorum carmine (Hilarius)
floruit _primus_’.[1319] With Ambrose, Hilary shares the distinction of
being a pioneer in this department. So important was their work that the
Fourth Council of Toledo (633) in its Thirteenth Canon referred to their
hymns (‘quos beatissimi doctores Hilarius atque Ambrosius ediderunt’).
These hymns were regarded as having a sort of direct spiritual influence
which effected the routing of a personal devil[1320]—a conception which
appears throughout the Middle Ages and in _Faust_. But they had their
value for literature as well. Apart from the beauty of some of Ambrose’s
hymns, the metres which they popularized formed a point from which the
development of specifically modern metres can be traced. The influence of
these hymns which the mass of the people, unprejudiced by an elaborate
training in classical metres, daily heard and sang, must have been
enormous in forming a public opinion on the technique of poetry. For
there are few things that grip the popular imagination more than tunes of
this kind.
Bulaeus[1321] states that Nicetius, Bishop of Lyons in the latter half
of the sixth century, was the first to introduce hymn-singing into the
church at Lyons. He refers to the epitaph which we find in the Bollandist
records:[1322]
Psallere praecepit, normamque tenere canendi
_primus_ et alterutrum tendere voce chorum.
But the reference of Sidonius, quoted above,[1323] to the choir-singing
in the church of Lyons in the fifth century, makes it probable that what
is here referred to is either a revival of the old part-singing which had
become usual in Hilary’s time, or else some specialized form of chant
which was slightly different from the ordinary style. In any case we may
safely conclude that Gaul played no unimportant part in the development
of church-singing during the fourth century.