Chapter II: Roman Education Under the Empire

Connexion of Roman Education with Literature—Evolution through
three periods—Emergence of three grades in education—Some
problems of elementary education—Suitable nurses and
reading-books—“Secondary” training under _grammatici_—Province
of “grammar”—Exercises prescribed—Authors taught by
_grammatici_—The higher training in rhetoric—Exercises
preliminary to declamation—The _suasoria_—The
_controuersia_—Ingenuity and unreality combined—The broad
basis of sound oratory—Subjects included in Roman schemes
of education—Spread of the traditional system in imperial
times—Decay of Greek in the West—Growth of governmental
interest in education—Attitude of emperors towards provincial
academies and the later fortunes of the old education.

The main clue to the literary qualities of Silver Latin is to be found in education, and particularly in rhetorical education. No social or political factor exercised so determining an influence upon the literature of imperial Rome. It cannot be too clearly realized how potent must have been the effect of a training which was undergone by the writers, speakers and civil servants of each generation, and which had for its cardinal aims, first, to secure a thoroughly appreciative acquaintance with the best poetry in the literatures of Greece and Rome, and, next, to equip students with the power of effective and persuasive speech. A connected account of the education in vogue is, therefore, a fitting prelude to the evidence for the rhetorical system which may be drawn from such sources as the _Controuersiae et Suasoriae_ collected by the elder Seneca, Quintilian’s _Institutio Oratoria_, Tacitus’s _Dialogus de Oratoribus_ and the notes by Suetonius _De Grammaticis_ and _De Rhetoribus_.

* * * * *

Roman education, viewed in its continuity, underwent certain well-defined processes of evolution.[22] Its history from first to last, from simple to complex, possesses the interest of showing how the primitive domestic discipline made way for a cosmopolitan culture imparted in great measure by skilful foreigners, and how the ancient training of what we should call a primary type came to be amplified by a “secondary” curriculum, and still further by advanced courses of a “University” character. Interesting, however, as is the whole of this development, it is with definite phases and periods that we are here concerned. One may, in fact, conveniently think of Roman education as falling broadly into three ages, ending, each in its turn, with the Punic Wars, the reign of Hadrian (_circ._ A.D. 120), and the close of the Western Empire. Here we are mainly concentrating attention on the earlier generations of the Christian era; and what we find, as regards education, is that, before the opening of our period, scholastic training at Rome had gone through its most progressive stage, and, in range of subjects and interest, had left far behind the ancient parental instruction. That old type of instruction is best exemplified by the rigid, unromantic and severely practical method according to which the elder Cato brought up his son,[23] and which, despite limitations, was well adapted to the mind, body and estate of the older Romans. It was a grounding in the elements of reading, writing and arithmetic, coupled with sound physical and moral instruction, and had been entrusted by custom largely to those agents of education in the home whom Seneca happily calls the “domestic magistrates.”[24] In those early times which the younger Pliny[25] recalls with admiring regret, it was possible that every parent should be an instructor and that the intimate companionship between father and son should be relied upon to guarantee not only proficiency in the barest essentials of intellectual education, but also ability to serve in the army, knowledge of the laws and of religious rites, propriety of conduct and experience helpful in advising or controlling men.

As the ages passed, however, increased complexity of social conditions, together with the influx of Greeks whether bond or free, tended inevitably to relegate the work of equipping youthful minds to cultured slaves under parental supervision, and, at a later stage, very often to grammarians, rhetoricians and philosophers who settled in Rome eager to convey knowledge. Besides, the Romans, as conquest brought them nearer to world-dominion, were shrewd enough to recognize that a training which had suited the burgher of a city-state stood in need of generous extension, if it were to mould the citizens of a governing power charged with imperial responsibilities. The momentous agent of expansion in Roman education was the influence of Greece.[26] The expansion itself may be fairly gauged from the acquaintance with the principles of Greek rhetoric common among the upper classes at Rome by the middle of the second century B.C., and from the establishment of three several grades of education controlled respectively by the _litterator_, the _grammaticus_ and the _rhetor_. These correspond roughly to the elementary, secondary and University standards of modern days.[27] While, however, literary and rhetorical education had reached a high pitch of proficiency long before our period opens and ceased to alter much in method, there are, on the other hand, before our period closes, signs of a changed attitude towards education on the part of the imperial authorities—signs, in fact, indicating some amount of endowment and control by municipalities and by the Emperor.

Allusion has been made to the emergence of three grades of education. Of these, the “secondary” and “University” grades possessed under the Empire the deepest significance for their effects upon literature because of the attention bestowed upon the grammatical and aesthetic study of authors, upon rhetoric and upon philosophy. But while the bearing on literature is necessarily closer at these second and third stages in the educational fabric, still one cannot ignore the “primary” training, which contained features of fundamental importance for thought and literary production. It is not germane here to consider, as Quintilian does in the first book of his treatise, the methods of conveying to children the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic,[28] or to comment on the awkwardness of the Roman numerals.[29] Perhaps, in passing, it may be worth remark that the proportion of illiterates in ancient Rome was less than many might be disposed to guess; for elementary education must have been fairly extensive by the time of Polybius to admit of the circulation of military orders in writing; and the scribblings on walls in Pompeii argue a widespread ability to read and write in the first century A.D. But two problems in the most elementary education are not to be passed over, for they appeared to ancient thinkers to be vital in their influence upon character and taste. These were the choice of a nurse, and, at a subsequent stage, the choice of books from which reading should be taught. To Quintilian both were matters of serious consideration. Although primitive custom preferred, and learned authors[30] argued, that mothers should suckle their own infants, and although the devoted care of a mother remained up to imperial times an appreciable and appreciated factor in shaping youthful lives,[31] still there is evidence for the employment, at an early period in Rome, of both foster-mothers and dry nurses. At a later period the large number of household nurses may be inferred from inscriptions.[32] Their province, it was recognized, was not confined to sound alimentation; they helped to form character for better or worse, and to eliminate bad habits, mischievous notions and incorrect pronunciations. Hence the emphasis laid upon the selection of suitable nurses in Quintilian and in the treatise _De Educatione_ ascribed to Plutarch.

The other matter in the elementary education which bears on literary equipment is the choice of reading-books. The scarcity of literary texts in Latin, which stimulated Livius Andronicus in the third century B.C. to translate the _Odyssey_, had long since ceased to trouble teachers; the difficulty came to lie rather in the embarrassing wealth of available material. Quintilian is emphatic in his counsel that for the earliest lessons good authors should be selected; and his preference is for Greek.[33] He believed in the stimulus obtainable from great literature, even where the pupils are too young to appreciate its full meaning and beauty. In any case there were simple fables and extracts from standard authors in abundance to serve as convenient lesson-books.

The second and third stages of education were entrusted to a _grammaticus_ and a _rhetor_ respectively; here the methods and subjects produced manifest effects upon literary men in Rome. Age-limits for the different grades of study varied considerably owing to individual capabilities and the overlapping of which Quintilian complained; but commonly a pupil passed from elementary instruction to the “grammar school” at about twelve or thirteen, and then to the school of rhetoric at about sixteen. The function of “grammar” was to train pupils in the intelligent and effective reading of standard authors both Greek and Latin; and the teachers themselves were of diverse origin and rank. Most of the series of _grammatici_ mentioned by Suetonius were Greeks, and many were freedmen;[34] but there were native Romans quick enough to adopt the principles of criticism illustrated by Crates in his lectures upon Greek literature about 165 B.C., and to transfer them to their own poets, with the result that Naevius, Ennius and Lucilius speedily became school authors.[35] Though instances occurred of Roman knights taking up such work, still, as a rule, a profession of meagre returns and meagre repute attracted only a motley concourse of strange fellows—the retired apparitor, the unsuccessful pantomime-actor or the ex-boxer.[36] But that the demand for instruction was considerable is plain from the mention by Suetonius of the time when there were twenty flourishing grammar schools in the capital.[37] Many Greek _grammatici_ in Rome towards the end of the Republic added to their duties the teaching of Latin; thus, the freedman Ateius Philologus, a native of Athens, was called by Asinius Pollio _nobilis grammaticus Latinus_,[38] and Gnipho who taught Cicero was _non minus Graece quam Latine doctus_.[39] Specialism, however, in the one or the other literature was usual in the schools of the Empire, and the testimony of inscriptions proves the existence of separate masters for Greek and for Latin.[40]

The implications and functions of ‘Grammar’ were wider than with us. Its two main concerns, as we shall find in Quintilian, were the correct employment of language (_recte loquendi scientia_) and the appreciative criticism of poetry (_poetarum enarratio_).[41] The former comprised study of the parts of speech, accidence, metres, and faulty usages in word, idiom, pronunciation or spelling. The latter involved much more than knowledge of literature; for, since its aim was the elucidation of a poet’s complete value and meaning, it demanded acquaintance with subsidiary subjects like music, geometry, astronomy, physics and philosophy.[42] One feature in the training which had lasting effects upon literature and which coloured diction under the Empire, is the signal preference for lecturing on poets rather than on prose-writers: this was an old tendency, for Cicero had raised his voice against the comparative neglect of history.[43] It is also of interest to recollect the attraction which even the drier and more detailed aspects of Grammar possessed for many great Romans, for scholars like Varro, leaders of men like Caesar, and emperors like Claudius. Keil’s _Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum_ may be said to establish the study as one of the monuments of the Roman genius; and such representative commentators upon Virgil as Macrobius and Servius are good examples of the mode in which capable grammarians were expected to annotate a classic.

The main exercises prove the attention given to composition. They included the re-telling of Aesop’s fables by word of mouth or in writing, paraphrases, training in moral maxims (_sententiae_), extracts of ethical import (_chriae_), sketches of character (_ethologiae_), brief stories (_narratiunculae_) of a poetic order where the momentous thing was information rather than style.[44] The treatment of literature—on which ancient “grammar” laid very great stress—embraced expressive reading (_lectio_) free from sing-song and provincialisms;[45] the elaborate explanation (_enarratio_) of subject-matter; textual criticism (_emendatio_); and literary criticism (_iudicium_).

The authors taught by the professor of grammar were largely the same as those taught subsequently by the professor of rhetoric. The tenth book of Quintilian, therefore, gives a representative list, subject to the qualification that rhetoric required more prose than grammar did. The difference lay not so much in the authors as in the mode of treatment: the _grammaticus_ taught literature, the _rhetor_ taught oratorical effect. In Greek it was traditional to start with Homer, as in Latin, under the Empire, with Virgil. Other usual Greek authors were Hesiod, who was valued for his practical maxims; the lyric poets, in excerpts “bowdlerised” to minimize the erotic element; the masters of Attic tragedy; and the comic writers, particularly Menander, in selections. Among Latin authors, Livius Andronicus’s translation of the _Odyssey_ into saturnians still held its ground when Horace went to school; and generations of schoolboys were reared on the older epic poets Naevius and Ennius, and on the dramatists Plautus, Caecilius, Terence, Pacuvius, Accius, Afranius. Virgil was introduced into the course by Caecilius Epirota, the freedman of Cicero’s friend Atticus, and soon took a premier position. Horace, too, speedily realized his own alarmed anticipation of becoming a text-book; and a passion for novelty, combined with a revulsion from the archaic, helped to bring about lectures on the works of Lucan, Statius and Nero himself, while the authors were still alive. Reaction was a recurrent feature in Roman literary taste as in education. It was a protest against the predominance of the moderns in the second century A.D. that actuated the revived enthusiasm for ante-Augustan poetry. The poets, then, on the whole, played rather too oppressive a part at this stage of education; and it was inevitable that the rhetorician should adjust the balance, for his pupils were to be concerned mainly with prose as their medium. Cicero had become a model in his own day, and Quintilian regards him as a fine exemplar from the outset (_iucundus incipientibus quoque et apertus_). Of the historians, Quintilian prefers Livy to Sallust because the latter, he considers, demands a more advanced intelligence. Here it is but right to say he has in view especially the needs of students of declamation.

If we class philosophy, especially when pursued by Romans abroad, as a kind of “post-graduate” study, we may regard the formal education in Rome as culminating in rhetoric. The training under the _rhetor_ was designed to equip pupils for the vocations of public life—for deliberative and forensic oratory; and, despite obvious faults, it undoubtedly furnished in the best days of the Empire a constant supply of men of affairs, magistrates and lawyers, wielding speech with a standard of efficiency beyond the prevalent attainments of civil servants in modern times. The Roman, inheriting a native turn for oratory, had been easily drawn to the study of Greek rhetoric, which was based upon prolonged theorizing and practice in Sicily, Athens and Asia Minor. So insistent appeared to be the demands of rhetoric that teachers were constantly tempted to initiate their pupils into it too soon,[46] when they ought to have been continuing grammar; and this overlapping was the natural occurrence in the old days before any line of professional demarcation had been drawn between the provinces of grammar and rhetoric.[47] But even much later, it often remained a point of honour with grammarians to give boys at the grammar school practice in rhetoric so that they might do themselves and their masters credit when they joined the rhetorical academy.[48] The training in rhetoric at Rome had been in touch with Greek methods from the second century B.C.; but education was profoundly affected by the introduction early in the first century B.C.[49] of the composition declaimed on a purely imaginary theme; and in time the Latin term _declamatio_, which had signified the forcible delivery of a speech, came to be applied to the academical exercise in rhetoric on an invented subject. Thenceforward declamation was the supreme test and crowning exercise in rhetoric, success in which was the ambition of pupils and the pride of parents.[50] Practice in it spread from Italy to the schools of the west, in Gaul and Spain.

Before students were matured for declamation, they had to pass through a prescribed series of preliminary exercises.[51] These included narratives less poetic in cast than those of the “grammar school,” investigation of debateable questions in history, panegyric and invective, examination of good and bad laws, comparison of character, moral studies or “common places,” (_communes loci_) serviceable for attacking vices, questions of a general type for debate (_theses_, _e.g._ “Is town life preferable to country life?” “Is forensic or military renown the greater?”), and questions involving reasons for particular facts (_coniecturales causae_, which Quintilian recollected from his student days as entertaining exercises, and which he illustrates by the example, “Why is Cupid winged and furnished with arrows and torch?”)[52] Lectures on great masters in oratory and history were also requisite; and here models like Cicero and Livy might be studied with the maximum of profit. Quintilian maintained that the student should memorize passages from the masterpieces of standard authors instead of wasting energy on “cold cabbage heated up”—the _crambe repetita_ of the pupil’s own show-pieces.[53]

The two most advanced exercises were the _suasoria_ and the harder _controuersia_—the former intended to prepare for deliberative oratory, the latter for pleading in the law-courts.[54] Ample illustrations of their nature are furnished by the seven _suasoriae_ and five books of _controuersiae_ which have come down, along with excerpts from five lost books, out of the collection of the elder Seneca. Quintilian cites examples of stock themes, and there exist also the declamations of the pseudo-Quintilian and excerpts from Calpurnius Flaccus. The _suasoria_ was an imagined consideration of the action suitable at a historical crisis: sometimes it was a supposed soliloquy, _e.g._ “Alexander deliberates whether he shall cross the ocean,” “Agamemnon deliberates if he should sacrifice Iphigeneia,” “Cicero deliberates whether he should burn his works to secure his safety from Antony”;[55] sometimes it was a supposed joint deliberation, _e.g._ “The three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae consider whether they ought to retreat,” “The Conscript Fathers discuss the propriety of surrendering the Fabii to the Gauls”;[56] at other times it was a supposed address conveying counsel of the kind which Juvenal remembered offering to the dictator Sulla by way of exercise in the academy where he suffered the cane.[57] Similarly, many a junior aspirant after eloquence composed an advisory speech to Hannibal urging him to advance straight upon Rome after Cannae.[58] Seneca[59] records some interesting facts concerning Ovid’s attitude to this exercise. After commenting on the influence of the schools upon Ovid’s poetry and on the young poet’s reputation as a declaimer, he tells us that Ovid rarely declaimed _controuersiae_, and in any case only those of a psychological nature (_non nisi ethicas_): his preference was for the _suasoria_, and he found arguing irksome.[60] These illuminating remarks explain both the aspect of Ovid’s genius exhibited in the _Heroides_, and his failure to carry out his father’s wish that he should become a lawyer. For entire success, it should be noted, this hortatory declamation required historical knowledge, psychological insight, some dramatic power, and distinct gifts of imagination and style.

In the _controuersia_ one has passed from monologue to a debate which professed to represent the pleadings in an imaginary suit or criminal trial, where, as Addison’s Sir Roger would have it, “much might be said on both sides.” The students virtually acted an invented case in a sham court. They argued for or against—sometimes, to gain additional readiness and thoroughness, they argued first on one side, then on the other. Though there was a semblance of observing legal forms, yet the circumstances, the laws assumed to be applicable, and the standing characters were largely drawn from a realm of imagination which undeniably evoked marvellous ingenuity in argument, but merited the strictures in Petronius and Quintilian because of its divorce from actual life. Magicians, pirate chiefs, and their susceptible daughters, preternaturally hard-hearted fathers, and unconscionably cruel tyrants appear and reappear. Suetonius[61] cites two specimens of the less extravagant _controuersiae_. The first concerns the disputed ownership of a treasure which happens to be dragged up in a fishing-net after certain youths have, by way of speculation, purchased in advance that particular cast from the fishermen—are the purchasers entitled to the fish plus the gold, or to the fish only? The other concerns the disputed freedom of a slave from the East so valuable that the dealer disguised him and falsely declared him as a free man at Brindisi to escape the duty exigible by the Customs officers—has the slave been legally emancipated in virtue of his owner’s declaration before witnesses?[62] In Seneca the situations are often more unreal. Take his very first case:—One of two brothers who were at variance had a son; when his uncle fell into poverty, the kind-hearted nephew helped him, but was disinherited by his father for so doing: he was, however, adopted by his uncle, who luckily had a great estate left to him: meanwhile the young man’s father came to want, and though forbidden by his uncle, the lad now insisted on helping his father: in consequence, he is disinherited by his uncle—the question is, can he successfully impugn his uncle’s decision?[63]

Such exercises, incredible though the situations might be, imparted, through the mental gymnastics involved, a nimbleness of mind, a quickness in propounding or refuting arguments, a versatility in treatment, and a finish of speech which again and again fell little short of the amazing. The adept could equip himself with skilful mastery from the whole armoury of rhetoric. Yet, whatever merits may be claimed for rhetoric here or in the chapter on the elder Seneca, the training had obvious drawbacks. For its range was narrow and unreal: it handled things and persons such as never were on land or sea: and these same unreal cases were handled an infinite number of times, so that the depressing round of declamation, as pupil after pupil rose from the bench, was calculated, Juvenal says, to bore luckless professors to death![64] Any ambitious pupil had to take refuge in innovations upon the threadbare theme; and his most promising chance lay in suggesting some _colour_, some ingenious line of defence undreamt of by any predecessor. Hence the far-fetched absurdities with which the pleadings teem. At any cost, old material had to receive a new dress, bedizened with all the frippery of rhetoric; and this compulsion produced an inordinate concentration upon tricks of expression to the detriment of matter and sense. A frequent result was an inartistic phantasmagoria of artificialities, conceits, antitheses and quibbles. Nor was the effect upon morals always better than upon aesthetics, for such a system was at times apt to engender a heedlessness of truth or falsity in fact, and callousness to the justice or injustice of a plea, provided only it could be made telling. Another dangerous fruit was pretentious glibness of speech of the kind which the staid author of the _De Educatione Liberorum_ repeatedly denounced as obnoxious;[65] and—most far-reaching of all the consequences—the rhetorical declamations were largely accountable for the unreal pose and mannerisms of the Latin literature of the Silver Age.

For such artificiality the best cure lay in extended knowledge. No sound critic ever based oratory on mere tricks of speech. Practised judges like Quintilian and Tacitus complained that true eloquence had deteriorated owing to the extravagance and ignorance of declaimers. Agreeing with Cicero, Quintilian views ideal oratory as founded upon a strong moral and intellectual basis; for to Quintilian, as to Cato generations earlier, the effective orator was the good man skilled in speaking (_uir bonus dicendi peritus_).[66] Mere plausibility or claptrap is ruled out by his insistence upon the orator’s knowledge of the subject on which he is to speak. Put this way (_mihi satis est eius esse oratorem rei de qua dicet non inscium_), Quintilian’s requirements seem more moderate than Cicero’s sweeping demand for wide knowledge of all great subjects (_omnium rerum magnarum atque artium scientiam_),[67] yet Quintilian too believes in the study of subjects outside the professional training in rhetoric, especially ethics, physics and dialectic, law, and history.[68]

At a much earlier period, indeed, Romans of the better class had been expected to cover a wide field of knowledge. Cato, for instance, included in his scheme oratory, agriculture, law, war and medicine. A century later, Varro’s nine departments of education were grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine and architecture. In the first three of these one recognizes the “trivium” and in the next four the “quadrivium” of the medieval education, while Cato’s subjects of agriculture, law and war have come to be regarded as professional. Medicine would tend to be more and more superficially studied, by reason of the number of Greek practitioners who came to Rome. The inclusion of architecture in the list is a testimony to the interest taken in the principles of a fine art which constituted an integral portion of Roman civilization, and reminds one of the broad education which Vitruvius believes should go to the training of an architect. But one may assume that architecture was in practice a special profession, and that an encyclopaedic education became less and less attainable, as knowledge deepened, although, under the Empire, writers like Celsus and Pliny still made an encyclopaedic appeal, at least to mature readers. It was, indeed, largely in philosophy that the abler youths followed “post-graduate” courses, either at Rome itself, where Epicurean, Academic and Stoic thought had long been represented, or abroad, especially at Athens, as the time-honoured fountain-head of the schools. Under the later Republic, the custom of seeking breadth in education is well exemplified by the studies which famous authors had pursued. Thus Virgil, besides his literary reading, worked at rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, medicine and law; and study at a “foreign University,” which became common under the Empire, is illustrated in the careers of Caesar, Cicero and his son, Horace and Ovid.

Our present concern, however, is not with philosophy under the Empire but with grammar and rhetoric; and this for two reasons—firstly, grammar and rhetoric affected literary style more than philosophy ever did, deep though the influence of Stoicism was in imperial days; secondly, it was the time-honoured curriculum in grammar and rhetoric which was most widely diffused in the Roman world, and which was, especially at many Western seats of learning, taught to the absolute exclusion of philosophy. In the Greek portions of the Empire, the so-called “Second Sophistic” was represented in the second century A.D. by itinerant rhetoricians presenting their displays of eloquence before audiences whose powers of criticism proved the continuance and diffusion of the ancient education.[69] In the Western portions, it is interesting to note that the ancient system of grammar and rhetoric came to be preserved particularly at Carthage in Africa and in the academies of Gaul. Marseilles, Autun, Lyons, Bordeaux, and, later, Toulouse, Narbonne and Trèves were typical centres of instruction. The educational movement was of old standing in Gaul, where Marseilles had long exercised a magnetic attraction. Memories of the sound education which he had enjoyed at Marseilles doubtless weighed with Agricola when, about A.D. 80, he established schools in Britain for the sons of chieftains;[70] and there was in Britain doubtless a serious enthusiasm for Roman culture, although Juvenal makes game of it by his jesting allusions to the influence of Gallic eloquence on British advocates and to the talk in the “Farthest North” about establishing a chair of rhetoric.[71] Later in the second century, the regular three grades with some amplifications are illustrated in the studies of Marcus Aurelius; his early lessons from the _litterator_ were varied by others from an actor and a tutor who taught both music and mathematics; next, he worked under professors of grammar, one of Greek and three of Latin; and at the later stage he had three Greek masters of rhetoric, among whom was Herodes Atticus, and one Latin master, who was Fronto. He studied philosophy under many teachers, and devoted much attention to law. Public declamation also had an attraction for him.[72] The firm hold obtained by such courses as we have described is plainly seen for many generations beyond our period. Alexander Severus early in the third century passed through just such a course as Marcus Aurelius had done.[73] The instruction which many of the Christian Fathers underwent in youth was on the old pagan lines, and the _Confessiones_ of St. Augustine are typical from this standpoint, because they are the vivid reminiscences of one who had been a student of rhetoric at Carthage and a professor at Milan. The conditions of education in Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries are best known from the writings of Ausonius and Sidonius Apollinaris.[74] Christians and non-Christians then found a bond of union in the literary studies familiar during their “college days”; so that some measure of vitality was left to the old training despite the degeneration consequent upon its bondage to unreal and conventional dexterities.

One life-giving element of our period, however, gradually vanished out of the Western schools. That was Greek. Whereas Seneca includes Greek arguments in his _Controuersiae_, and whereas, in the days of Apuleius and Tertullian, scholars knew Greek as well as Latin, yet by the fourth century both in Africa and in Gaul it was little taught. St. Augustine, for instance, had no liking for or proficiency in Greek, and read Plato mainly in Latin translations.[75] This severance of the two literatures was prophetic of the approaching division of the Empire and of the usual Latin curriculum in the Middle Ages.

A highly interesting feature in education during imperial times is the closer _rapprochement_ of the government therewith. This was a growing, though a slowly growing, tendency. The state had shown solicitude over morality by enacting sumptuary laws and encouraging marriage, but had been reluctant to patronize education directly. The Caesars had, however, foreshadowed a new policy. Julius paid respect to erudition by granting citizenship to _peregrini_ who settled in Rome as medical men or teachers of the liberal arts.[76] Augustus exempted teachers from an edict banishing foreigners, and he transferred Verrius Flaccus with his school to the Palatium at a handsome salary, so that he might instruct the imperial grandchildren.[77] Tiberius and Claudius were personally interested in grammatical studies; but the next practical step towards imperial patronage consisted in the fixing by Vespasian of an annual stipend of 100,000 sesterces for Greek and Latin rhetors. Whether Vespasian’s decree was intended to apply beyond the walls of the capital, and how soon it actually came into force inside the walls is not quite clear; at any rate, Jerome says Quintilian was the first professor at Rome to receive payment from the _fiscus_, and he sets this down to a year in Domitian’s reign.[78] Trajan, recognizing the value of education as a means of training the future citizens of a state, decided to secure public instruction for five thousand poor boys.[79]

But it was left for Hadrian to take that new departure which constitutes his reign an epoch in educational history. Versed in literature, a skilled musician and painter, fond of declamation, the emperor had a taste for keeping learned men at Court, and fellow-feeling made him kind to them. Upon teachers who had grown too old for duty he conferred a retiring allowance.[80] At Rome he housed rhetoric handsomely in his famous Athenaeum, and in the provinces he founded schools, awarded them subventions, and made appointments of teachers to them. It is worth while to trace the tendency beyond the limits of our period. Hadrian’s active policy of generous interest was continued by Antoninus Pius, who improved the status and income of professors of rhetoric and philosophy all over the Empire.[81] Furthermore, he exempted from certain state-imposts rhetors, philosophers, grammarians and physicians, defining the number of teachers entitled to such immunity in different towns—thus, the minimum _personnel_ for the smallest place touched by his edict consisted of five physicians, three sophists and three grammarians.[82] This imperial measure bears witness to the connexion of both central and municipal authorities with a local educational staff. In fact, the burden of maintaining local academies fell on the municipalities, and what an emperor did was by special benefits to stimulate local educational policy. It seems, therefore, natural that Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 176 should have devoted money towards the establishment of professorial chairs at Athens.[83] Beyond his reign it must suffice to indicate only the most significant symptoms.[84] Alexander Severus in the third century introduced a bursary system for deserving lads.[85] In the next century, repeated edicts exhibit emperors in the light of protectors of underpaid or irregularly paid teachers against the penurious economies and dilatory finance of local bodies. Beneficence had established rights of control: hence, at the end of the third century, when Constantius Chlorus nominated Eumenius as principal of the reorganized school at Autun, the town accepted the emperor’s action as a matter of course. Julian in 362 explicitly claimed the prerogative of appointing professors to chairs, and, although he entrusted the sifting of candidates to the municipalities, he subjected them to the first definite restriction imposed by an emperor on local liberty of selection, when he forbade the teaching of literature by any Christian. Gratian’s edict—which is of interest as showing the hand of his adviser and old tutor, the poet Ausonius—fixed the emoluments for different grades of teachers; thus, a rhetor was to be paid twice as much as a grammarian. Virtually in this way, although the Government did not make direct grants, yet money for educational salaries was earmarked in the municipal budgets. So the chronicle of the imperial organization of public instruction proceeds; and, if it did little to affect the methods in vogue, still the patronage was of value in keeping learning alive. The last great event in this connexion was the establishment by Theodosius II at Constantinople of a University staff consisting of thirty-one professors. Little over a century later came the dissolution by Justinian.

LITERATURE UNDER TIBERIUS, CALIGULA AND CLAUDIUS

A.D. 14–A.D. 54