SCHOOLS OF GAUL
IN THE LAST CENTURY OF
THE WESTERN EMPIRE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY

HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOLS OF GAUL

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

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

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
HUMPHREY MILFORD
1920

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

PREFACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Invictum deceat studiis servare vigorem’.

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

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

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

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

THEODORE HAARHOFF.

University of Cape Town.
October 23, 1919.

CONTENTS

PART I
INTRODUCTORY

1. The Limits of the Period

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Greek Influence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Celtic Influence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Germanic Influence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inter hails goticum, scap jah matjan jah drigkan

non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.

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

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

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

5. Romanization of Gaul

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

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

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

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

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

Te canimus semperque, sinent dum fata, canemus:

sospes nemo potest immemor esse tui,

obruerint citius scelerata oblivia solem,

quam tuus ex nostro corde recedat honos.[181]

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

Profuit invitis, te dominante, capi.

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

Ipsos crediderim sic habitare deos.[182]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART II
PAGAN EDUCATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tu caeli numeros et conscia sidera fati

callebas, studium dissimulanter agens.

non ignota tibi nostrae quoque formula vitae,

signatis quam tu condideras tabulis.[247]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aemula te Latiae decorat facundia linguae.[303]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B. INSIDE THE SCHOOL

(i) The Substance and Methods of Primary Education

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

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

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

Hic promens teretes pilas, trochosque,

hic talos crepitantibus fritillis.[326]

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

The eager love of parents dear, who knew

To temper study ever with delights

Of relaxation, care that understood

To make me good without severity,

And give advancement to my untrained thought.[329]

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

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

Unde labor puero, fateor, fuit hic mihi maior

eloquium librorum ignotae apprehendere linguae.[334]

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

Argolico pariter Latioque instante magistro.[336]

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

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

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

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

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

Alter rhetoricae Quintiliane togae;[353]

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

Quos praetextati celebris facundia ludi

contulit ad veteris praeconia Quintiliani.[354]

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

Et sic scribere non minus valentem

Marcus Quintilianus ut solebat;[357]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you with varied intonation read

A host of verses; let your words succeed

Each other with the accent and the stress

Your master taught you. Slurring will repress

The sense of what you’re reading; and a pause

Adds vigour to an overburdened clause.[376]

This was the framework of every lesson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(ii) The Substance and Methods of Secondary Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

εἷς οἰωνὸσ ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης

(Dulce et decorum est ...)

and

οὐδὲν ἀκιδνότερον γαῖα τρέφει ἀνθρώποιο.

(Of all things Man most wretched is on earth.)

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

χρὴ πενίην φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς μεγακήτεα πόντον

ῥίπτειν καὶ πετρῶν, Κύρνε, κατ’ ἠλιβάτων.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) Prooimion. Quality of subject to be praised.

(2) Class to which subject belongs: race, country, ancestors, parents.

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

(4) Achievements (main division):

(a) Qualities of soul: courage, prudence, &c.

(b) Qualities of body: beauty, strength, &c.

(c) Qualities of fortune: rank, friends, &c.

(5) Comparison—to the advantage of the subject.

(6) Epilogue, in the nature of a prayer.

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

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

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

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

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

Προσωποποιία—when both words and speaker are imagined.

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

The classes of Ethopoeia proper may be described as:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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