Chapter V: Part II: Pagan Education (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

εἷς οἰωνὸσ ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης
(Dulce et decorum est ...)

and

οὐδὲν ἀκιδνότερον γαῖα τρέφει ἀνθρώποιο.
(Of all things Man most wretched is on earth.)

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

χρὴ πενίην φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς μεγακήτεα πόντον
ῥίπτειν καὶ πετρῶν, Κύρνε, κατ’ ἠλιβάτων.

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

Under the head of the _Impossible_, he contends: ‘But granted that Daphne was the daughter of Terra and Ladon—who brought her up? That’s a poser! If you say her father, well, human beings just _don’t_ live in rivers: he would unwittingly have drowned her. If you say her mother, it means that she lived under the earth: therefore, her charms would be hidden, and she would have no admirers.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(4) Achievements (main division):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Προσωποποιία—when both words and speaker are imagined.

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

The classes of Ethopoeia proper may be described as:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the fifth century there are indications of considerable interest. And this is what we should expect. For the publication of the Theodosian Code in 438 made the study of law more accessible, and tended to eliminate the superstitious and the sacramental element in it. So Fauriel says that jurisprudence attracted more men of distinction then than in previous centuries.[478] Sidonius mentions particularly the learned Leo of Narbonne who was more learned in the Twelve Tables than Appius Claudius himself,[479] and he calls Marcellinus ‘skilled in laws’.[480]

Arles, the seat of the prefect of the Gauls and of the emperor, naturally became a centre for the study of Roman law. It was there that Petronius[481] practised his profession.

It appears, however, that while the Gauls were famed for legal knowledge and ability, Rome was still regarded as the school of jurisprudence. It is not mere rhetoric when Symmachus calls Rome ‘Latiaris facundiae domicilium’,[482] and Sidonius ‘Domicilium legum’.[483] Rutilius extols Rome with unaffected enthusiasm for her law: ‘Thou hast also embraced the world with thy law-bringing triumphs and makest all to live by a common bond.’[484]

The belief in Rome’s eternal sway[485] is for him connected chiefly with her law. ‘Stretch forth thy laws that are destined to live into the Roman ages, and do thou alone unafraid regard the distaff of the Fates,’[486] and poetic vision is aided by the lawyer’s foresight.[487] He tells of a Gaul, Palladius, who went to study law at Rome:

Facundus iuvenis Gallorum nuper ab arvis
missus Romani discere iura fori.[488]

And we are told that St. Germanus who, according to the life claimed to be by his pupil Constantius, was born at Auxerre towards the end of the fourth century, had a similar training. To set the crown upon his literary education in Gaul he went to study law at Rome.[489] Rome, in fact, maintained her supremacy in this branch longer than in any other, and her professors attracted students from all parts of the Empire.[490]

The connexion between jurisprudence and imperial matters is clear. For a study of Rome’s great contribution to the world could not but stimulate admiration for the imperial city. By examining the law, the provincial realized more clearly the advantage of the _pax Romana_. One of the panegyrists[491] declared to Maximian in 293 ‘iustitia cognitione iuris addiscitur’,[492] and it is clear that his appreciation of the moral benefits of Roman order is more than mere rhetoric. Perhaps Rome’s rulers perceived this, and made it their policy (as Jung[493] suggests) to attract students of law to Rome, that they might see things from Rome’s point of view, and facilitate the government of the provinces by applying the law according to the Roman tradition. For as the Empire had grown and its administration increased, there had arisen a need for officials who would carry out the law with ability and uniformity; and complete uniformity could only be attained by a knowledge of law seen as the Roman saw it.[494]

Justinian, in the preface to the _Digest_ which he addresses to the teachers of law in the Empire, reviews the study of jurisprudence in the past. It was hopelessly deficient. Only six books were studied and those intricate, confused, and partly obsolete (_iura utilia in se perraro habentes_). Among the six books were the _Institutes_ of Gaius, but they were not consecutively studied, many parts being omitted as superfluous. The teaching, in fact, was entirely haphazard; Gaius was given to the first-year students, ‘passim et quasi per saturam collectum et utile cum inutilibus mixtum’. Only in their second year did they learn the first part of the _Institutes_, and it was an unheard of thing to go into details. They also learnt certain ‘tituli’, and more of these in their third year, when they were initiated into the ‘responsa’ of the great Papinianus (_ad sublimissimum Papinianum eiusque responsa iter eis aperiebatur_). But here, too, their training was imperfect, as they only read eight books. The students read the ‘Pauliana responsa’ for themselves in a slipshod fashion (_per imperfectum, et iam quodammodo male consuetum inconsequentiae cursum_). This was the end of their theoretical training throughout ancient times. Justinian is resolved that there shall be an improvement and proceeds to outline a scheme by which the youth of the future may be better instructed. This syllabus, however, lies beyond the limits of our period.

The emperor is at pains to kindle enthusiasm for jurisprudence. He exhorts the students to exert all diligence, so that on the completion of their studies the glorious hope of governing the Empire may be theirs.[495] For, as Gibbon remarks, ‘all the civil magistrates were drawn from the profession of the law.’[496] _Antecessores_[497] or lecturing lawyers were appointed throughout the Empire, and the places where they taught were called ‘stationes’.[498] The course, at any rate in the time of Justinian, lasted five years (_Constitution_, ‘Omnem Reipublicae’, § 5). Learned lawyers like Antistius Labeo under Augustus lectured for six months and devoted six months to writing.[499] When the students dispersed themselves through the provinces there was no lack of opportunity to practise their profession. The court of the Praetorian prefect of the East alone required the services of one hundred and fifty advocates,[500] and the rewards so liberally promised by Justinian for the ‘laudabile vitaeque hominum necessarium advocationis officium’[501] must have created a vast interest in the study of law.

Whether it was the fault of the teachers or of the pupils or of the social conditions, it is clear that lawyers had a bad name in the fourth as well as in the fifth century. The vivid and caustic description of Ammianus is well known.[502] He is suspicious of legal cunning and has the soldier’s impatience of rhetoric. We must therefore allow something for his prejudices. But his analysis cannot be wholly false. We may discount his language when he describes the profession as consisting of ‘violenta et rapacissima genera hominum’, but when he enumerates these classes and gives each its special characteristics, we feel that he may exaggerate but that he does not invent. The first class consists of mischief-makers and robbers, ‘odia struentes infesta’. Their oratory is empty and artificial: ‘eloquentiam inanis quaedam imitatur fluentia loquendi’. The second class consists of fraudulent people who make a superstition and a mystery of the law, increasing its entanglements, ‘velut fata natalicia praemonstrantes’, in order to enhance their own importance. Thirdly, there are the unscrupulous advocates who are always ready to sacrifice truth to money or fame. Finally, we have ‘a shameless race, perverse and ignorant—men who, having run away from school too young, scurry about in the nooks and corners of various states’.[503] Cicero is the ideal—‘excellentissimus omnium Cicero’—and Ammianus regards the practice of his day as erring from the good of the past.

Confirmation of the point in this criticism which most nearly touches education comes from an unexpected source. Sidonius, the rhetorical, the obscure, the vendor of subtle argument, associates ‘obscurity’ with the lawyers as a special characteristic.[504] Nor does he seem to think them particularly helpful. He sends a man, who has a case about a will, to Bishop Leontius, and begs him to see that justice is done, using his episcopal authority, if the lawyers will not help the client.[505]

Finally, there is medicine. When Denk maintains[506] that there was no faculty of medicine in the provinces, he cannot mean to exclude medical study as a subject of secondary education. There was probably no separate school of medicine,[507] but Ausonius definitely mentions the ‘medica ars’ as one of the Bordeaux professors’ titles to fame.[508] In former days Massilia had given to Gaul the medical tradition of the Greeks, just as Greece had given it to Rome. A certain Crinas, who lived in the reign of Nero, is said (though apparently only by Bulaeus) to have been the first to advance the study of medicine at Massilia, and we gather from Pliny that he introduced astrology into his medicine and gained an immense name and fortune.[509] Galen twice mentions Claudius Abascantus[510] of Lyons, who probably flourished under Augustus, as a doctor of prominence, and Eutropius of Bordeaux appears among the writers on medicine in the fourth century.[511] Julius Ausonius, the father of the poet, was the court physician of Valentinian I. At the beginning of the fifth century we find Marcellus Empiricus[512] of Bordeaux composing a book of prescriptions, ‘compositiones medicamentorum’. He gives many Celtic plant-names, Druidical beliefs, and a large number of ἅπαξ εἰρημένα and provincialisms.[513] As in the case of astrology, superstition plays a large part: certain herbs are to be picked with the left hand, or while muttering some magic formula like ‘rica, rica, soro’.[514] It is partly for this reason that Ausonius refers to the ‘libros medicinae’ as books closed to the vulgar, and that his eccentric aunt took up the study of medicine.[515] There seems to have been no organized system of medical study, and we do not even possess any details of the procedure in a particular case. It seems reasonable to suppose that the practical part of the profession was acquired by apprenticeship, while the rhetor confronted the student with such parts of the medical theory as could be found in the writings of Galen (who was the central authority) and his successors.

The frequent grouping of the doctors with the teachers in the Theodosian Code suggests that the public State-paid physicians taught as well as practised their art. Reinach[516] warns against certainty on this point, but it is at least probable. The wording of Constantine’s law[517] of September 27, 333, confirms the supposition. Doctors and teachers are proclaimed exempt from military service and public burdens so that they may have leisure to train others in their art—‘quo facilius studiis liberalibus et memoratis artibus multos instituant’. Of the original five classes of _archiatri_ paid by the State—those of the court, those belonging to the municipalities, the heads of the medicine guilds, those in charge of the public gymnasia, and those who attended the Vestals—it was probably the second, the municipal doctors, who were the teachers of their profession.

If this is so, it proves that Rome was not the only place where doctors could be trained, as Denk seems to think.[518] Indeed, the provinces were more interested in medicine than Rome herself. Pliny[519] said in a broad and general way that for six hundred years Rome had got on without doctors, and it is well known that the Roman doctors made no important contribution to the science. Egyptians, Greeks, Gauls—these were the physicians of Rome. Pliny writes to Trajan asking him to give the citizenship to a doctor from whom he had derived benefit: ‘est enim peregrinae condicionis, manumissus a peregrina’.[520] The doctor who attends Hadrian on his death-bed is a foreigner.[521] Ammianus describes the growing fame of the Alexandrian school of medicine during the fourth century, as such, that a man, even if his actual work turned out badly, need only say that he had been trained at Alexandria in order to gain commendation.[522]

Then, as now, it was a lucrative profession, according to the proverb ‘Galenus dat opes’;[523] nor did the benefit to the sick always correspond to the doctor’s gain.[524]

A word may perhaps be added on the _agrimensores_, who represent the department of science among the Romans that was most scientifically employed, though all their mathematics came from Hiero of Alexandria.[525] Their work was partly military (the marking out of camps and locating of positions for the army) and partly civil (the surveying of colonies and provinces for revenue purposes). In cases of ‘controversia de loco’, the Theodosian Code appoints them judges.[526] At first they were free to practise where and when they could, but in our period they were attached to guilds, and stood under a ‘primicerius mensorum’.[527] This organization of the ‘agrimensores’ implies a certain amount of training and a professional test of proficiency.[528]

Their connexion with Gaul is not very clearly attested, but can hardly be doubted. Frontinus in his _De Controversiis Agrorum_, speaking of the well-known question as to the ownership of the old bed of a river which has flowed out of its course into another man’s land, says ‘Hae quaestiones maxime in Gallia togata moventur’.[529] Again, in speaking of certain technical surveyor’s terms, he says ‘Hae vocabula in lege quae est in agro Uritano, in Gallia ... adhuc permanere dicuntur’,[530] which shows that surveying had long been connected with Cisalpine Gaul. In view of the laws of the Theodosian Code of our period about surveyors, it seems possible that in Transalpine Gaul there may have been schools for the training of _agrimensores_.

* * * * *

A question that comes into one’s mind on reading Ausonius is whether, in the methods of the Gallic master, mnemonics did not play an important part.

We find in the _Eclogues_ verses which, on the face of them, suggest special composition for school use. The ‘Monosticha de Mensibus’[531] inevitably remind one of school rhymes:

Primus Romanas ordiris, Iane, Kalendas,
Februa vicino mense Numa instituit, &c.

So the verses giving the number of days in each month[532] (‘Thirty days hath September’), or the days on which the Nones and the Ides fall in the various months,[533] or the intervals between the Ides of the one month and the Kalends of the next,[534] or the order of the seasons,[535] or the names and places of the Greek games,[536] or the labours of Hercules,[537] all suggest a similar purpose.

Again, in his metrical summary of the Caesars of Suetonius, written for his son, we find ‘monosticha de ordine imperatorum’,[538] ‘de aetate imperii eorum monosticha’,[539] ‘de obitu singulorum monosticha’,[540] all of which look very much like mnemonics.

First of all, their style is such as is suitable to school children—simple, clear, and terse, and the absence of rhetoric and affectation is not less striking than the dullness of the lines.

Secondly, it was a tradition handed down by the last great writer on education, that the memory should be trained by various devices. And the fourth century was prone to be tradition-bound.

Cicero says that Simonides of Ceos was the founder of the ‘ars memoriae’,[541] i.e. the ‘techne’, the system for developing the memory, a statement which Quintilian repeats before expounding his views on the subject. This he does with care, feeling the importance of memory—as ‘thesaurus eloquentiae’.[542] Only the man who remembers well, he says, in effect (and his words have a modern ring), can ever hope to become an orator.[543] There was always a tendency among the Romans towards encyclopaedic learning, which was the main feature of the grammarian’s school. We notice it also in the ostentatious lists of authors given by Sidonius.[544]

Nor can we wonder at this. The whole educational system was calculated to produce a good memory. The grammarian’s school supplied facts which had to be remembered in declamations, and the rhetor introduced a host of technicalities which had also to be kept in memory. The declaimer had to fit into his speech as many quotations as he could possibly remember,[545] and in Ausonius’s letter to his grandson the ‘good boy’ is the one with the long memory.[546]

Bearing this in mind, Quintilian recommended that boys should learn as much as possible by heart, going over the same ground again and again (_quasi eundem cibum remandendi_, _sc._ _opus_). They must, therefore, begin with the poets, before going on to prose which is harder to remember.[547] Memory is a matter of pigeon-holes. What is to be remembered must be imagined in certain places, so that the order of the places will recall the order of the things to be remembered. We shall then use the ‘places’ instead of tablets, and the images associated with them as letters (_ut locis pro cera, simulacris pro litteris uteremur_).[548] To cultivate the memory various tricks may be tried. We learn a large subject by remembering parts of it in order; or we may take a sign to stand for the thing to be remembered, e.g. an anchor for ‘sailing’, or a weapon for ‘campaign’. Like Cicero, he lays stress on ‘loca’, imagined or actual, and on ‘simulacra vel imagines’. In the case of a long speech it is best to divide it into parts which should not be too small. Division is important. ‘Qui recte diviserit, nunquam poterit in rerum ordine errare.’ He also recommends marking a difficult passage (_aliquas apponere notas_).[549]

Thirdly, we may note the fruits of this training, as far as memory is concerned. Ausonius, by writing the _Cento Nuptialis_, proved only one good thing: that he knew the whole of Vergil by heart. Minervius[550] was noted for his memory. Ausonius spends ten lines in describing it, and clearly indicates how highly it was prized. Nepotianus, too, is specially commended for possessing this gift.[551]

In view of all this, we may not unfairly conclude that mnemonics played a considerable part in the schools of Gaul. In the history of the human race, as in that of the individual,[552] the memorizing stage comes before the development of thought. And the less advanced systems of education all over the world are characterized by their almost exclusive emphasis on learning things by heart.

(iii) CONTROL AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE SCHOOL

(a) _Discipline in primary and secondary schools._

The rhetorical tradition brought with it certain traditional methods, and one of them was the excessive use of corporal punishment. In the East, Libanius testifies to the frequent employment of this method. We have seen that the _paedagogus_ appealed as a matter of course to the ‘argumentum ad baculum’; we find in Libanius that the rhetor, the university teacher, did likewise.

The general prospect of a schoolday may be described in terms of the rod: ἔσονται δ’ ἐνεργοὶ μὲν ἱμάντες, ἐνεργοὶ δὲ ῥάβδοι. He has a feeling that it is the only method of curing idleness. Writing to a father whose son has complained to him about a beating he had received, Libanius maintains that it is absolutely necessary to treat slothfulness in that way.[553]

In the West we have the pathetic reminiscences of Augustine.[554] No trouble was taken to explain to him the use or object of lessons; all he knew was that if he did not learn he was beaten. His prayer was to escape the rod, and very earnestly he prayed (_rogabam Te parvus non parvo affectu_), for his blows were to him ‘magnum tunc et grave malum’. He speaks bitterly of the lack of sympathy, which his sensitive nature felt more than the rest. He is galled by the unfairness of a system which punished faults in boys that were excused in men. ‘Maiorum nugae negotia vocabantur, puerorum autem talia cum sint, puniuntur a maioribus.’ No proper balance was kept between lessons and play.

On the other hand, he confesses that he was often disobedient through love of play, and admits ‘non enim discerem, nisi cogerer’.[555] Moreover, when he puts his punishments in the same category as ‘temptationes martyrum’, we are inclined to think him a sentimental prig. But there can be no doubt about the excessive severity which was prevalent, and the fact that it impressed Augustine’s mind to such an extent[556] is a measure of its wrongness. The worst feature of the system was not so much the general acquiescence in force as a scholastic panacea, but in the rigidity which made no distinctions or allowances.

Gaul was no exception to the general tradition. We find in Ausonius a fine gentleness of spirit and an elaborate courtesy; he shows an almost un-Roman sympathy with Bissula, the barbarian maid, and is fond of animals,[557] yet he is by no means thoroughly converted from the old Roman harshness. The gladiatorial games went on, and were significant of a prevalent disregard for human life and personality. The old spirit flashes forth under the veneer of culture; as when Ausonius surprises us by saying blandly to his secretary, who had been branded for running away: ‘on your branded face then, Pergamus, you have borne the marks; letters which your hand neglected are inflicted on your forehead.’[558]

When he writes a letter of exhortation to his grandson we feel that though there is something of the Greek spirit of pleasure in education, and though he says[559] that the Muses, too, must play,

Et satis est puero memori legisse libenter,
et cessare licet....

and again:

Disce libens ...
... studium puerile fatiscit,
laeta nisi austeris varientur, festa profestis,[560]

yet there is an acquiescence in an almost savage system of control. Surliness and brutality on the part of the master is accepted as one of the ills that flesh is heir to. It was not always so, he says:

sic neque Peliaden terrebat Chiron Achillem:[561]

Chiron used to guide his pupils with gentle words (though Juvenal represents Achilles as trembling before the rod).[562] But that state of things belongs to a mythological age. The only thing to do in the circumstances is to remember Vergil’s dictum: ‘Degeneres animos timor arguit’, and face the master as a brave warrior would his enemy.[563]

He pictures to his grandson the cane, the birch, the strap, and the excited bustle of the school-benches (a confession that even the most rigorous system of force could not keep perfect order). These instruments are ‘the pomp of the place’ and the elements in its scene of fear. But the great consolation is that both his father and his mother went through the same storm of blows in their childhood—an indication that the girls were not more spared than the boys.[564]

The same assumption that flogging is the inevitable counterpart of teaching is found in Sidonius.[565] ‘Ferulae lectionis Maronianae’ becomes a synonym for education at a grammar school, and the phrase ‘manum ferulae subducere’, in the sense of attending school, goes down through the Middle Ages into modern times. Even at the universities corporal punishment was the usual thing. Eusebius, professor of philosophy at Lyons, moulds his pupils ‘castigatoria severitate’.[566]

There are signs that the finer spirits, in theory at any rate, felt that there was something wrong with all this external rigour. Partly, no doubt, they followed the lead of Quintilian, and partly, perhaps, there was a slow evolution past the stage of mere militarism. Libanius boasts ἑτέρους δὲ ἴσμεν μυρίας ῥάβδους ἀνηλωκότας,[567] but _he_ had no need to; and experience has taught him that the desired end is not always reached in this way. ‘Now I avoided correction by means of blows, for I saw that this method often had the opposite of the intended effect.’ We gather that the applause, which was usual in the rhetor’s school,[568] often degenerated into rowdiness.[569] Yet we find that the relation between master and pupil was often very hearty. Gregory of Nazianzus tells of the farewell speeches, the laments, the tears, which used to mark the day of parting.[570]

The opposition to the regular tradition is not so clearly formulated in the West, but we find indications of a better ideal. In the letter to his grandson, Ausonius does not praise existing conditions, but rather accepts them as a necessary evil. Indeed, he describes his own teaching in words which are so contrasted with his picture of the ordinary school as to imply a direct criticism.

Mox pueros _molli_ monitu et formidine _leni_
pellexi.[571]

Paulinus of Pella has pleasant memories of his schooldays.[572] The affection with which he writes to his teacher Ausonius[573] proves that the professor’s statements about the mildness of his régime were not unfounded. He had referred to his work with Paulinus as that of a yoke-mate, and his pupil replies:

Love joins me to you. In this bond alone
Dare I to claim equality with you.
Sweet friendship binds me ever to your heart,
And ever we renew our equal love.[574]

Similarly, Sidonius speaks of his master Hoënius in a way which implies at least some degree of familiarity,[575] while his general recollections of his schooldays seem to have been distinctly pleasing.[576]

(b) _Play._

The Romans were not much interested in psychology, or in the full development of personality. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that practically all the child-games we know of in the ancient world are Greek;[577] nor can we wonder that the Gallo-Romans have left us no description of the sort of things the child mind does, the way in which its personality develops, when freed from the guidance of what is called education.

The subtler African mind of Augustine, however, has left us some record of such games; and they are all so human and lifelike that they may very well have been common not only to his country, but also to his age.

He mentions ‘nuts’, handball, and bird-catching (_nucibus et pilulis et passeribus_).[578] Games of ball were, of course, common to the children of all countries. We find Paulinus of Pella at the age of fifteen wishing for a golden ball just arrived from Rome,[579] and Augustine describes how desperately keen he was on beating a chum in the contest of the ball.[580] As for the sparrows, ‘to capture a bird’, says Bertrand in his _Life of St. Augustine_,[581] ‘that winged, light and brilliant thing, is what all children long to do in every country on earth’. The same author describes the game of nuts as it is played in modern Africa. ‘A step of a staircase is used as a table by the players, or the pavement of a courtyard. Three shells are laid on the stone and a dried pea. Then, with rapid, baffling movements, hands, brown and alert, fly from one shell to another, shuffle them, mix them up, juggle the dried pea sometimes under this shell, sometimes under that, and the point is to guess which shell the pea has got under. By means of certain astute methods an artful player can make the pea stick to his fingers, or to the inside of the shell, and the opponent loses every time....’

It may be, too, that there were battles in which they took sides as Carthaginians and Romans or Greeks and Trojans.[582] Augustine loved to listen to fairy tales and was passionately fond of watching plays and performances (_curiositate magis magisque per oculos emicante in spectacula, ludos maiorum_).[583] The spirit of adventure sometimes led him (as it has led children of all ages) to break the laws of property, as the incident of the pear-tree shows.[584]

Of the organized sport of youth and manhood we derive considerable information from Sidonius, who frequently mentions indoor games such as the _duodecim scripta_, a sort of backgammon,[585] _fritilli_[586] and _pyrgus_[587] (in which dice [_tesserae_] were used), as well as outdoor games. Paulinus of Pella tells us how he was taken ill with fever at the age of fifteen, and his parents, thinking his health more important than ‘doctae instructio linguae’, followed the doctor’s advice and removed him from his school at Bordeaux. Among the pleasures that were planned to speed his recovery was hunting, which his father resumed for his son’s sake.[588] The equipment of a well-to-do Gallic huntsman is described. The young Paulinus wishes for a fine horse with extravagant saddle and bridle adornments (_faleris ornatior_), a tall groom, a swift hound, and a smart hawk. Fine clothes and scent from Arabia are also objects of his desire.

The main details of the chase may easily be filled in from Sidonius. From the description of Theodoric’s hunting skill, we gather that spears were used as well as bows,[589] and that the unsportsmanlike Roman habit of driving the game into nets was practised in fifth-century Gaul.[590] The hawk was regarded as an indispensable item.[591] There is river and lake fishing,[592] either with nets or with lines laid before nightfall,[593] and we hear of boat-racing[594] on lakes.

The game of ball, which is so frequently mentioned in Sidonius, was undoubtedly the most popular outdoor game. It was played by two persons,[595] or four,[596] or more than four,[597] and we gather that there was a good deal of running about. That is practically all we know of its rules, so that it is, strictly speaking, an assumption to call it ‘tennis’.[598] There were professional ball-throwers or jugglers, and there is an epitaph, found at Narbonne, to one Capito, a ‘pilarius’.[599]

The games of the circus were still popular. Majorian held them at Arles,[600] and they are frequently mentioned in inscriptions, as in the one at Arles in which some thousands of sesterces are given ‘from the interest on which athletic or circus games are to be given yearly’.[601] At St. Pierre (Narbonne) a well-preserved inscription was found to a man who had been ‘flamen’ of Augustus and curator of the gladiatorial games, and had been honoured ‘for his exceptional munificence in providing games’.[602] A Massilian inscription mentions ‘agonothet(ae) agoni(s)‘,[603] and it is not impossible that the tradition of public games in Gaul received an initial impetus from the Greek city of the south.