1. Gallic Students Abroad

We have traced the main branches of study that were pursued in Gaul, and the question naturally arises: ‘How far did the Gauls give and receive education outside the boundaries of their country?’

Modern parallels suggest, at first sight, that a liberal education would not have been considered complete in the provinces unless the student had attended the imperial universities. But Gaul at this time held so prominent a position in the educational and political world that the analogy fails. The professors appointed, both in Gaul and elsewhere, were frequently men who had had all their education in that province. There is no trace that Ausonius ever studied at Rome or Constantinople: he came into contact with the imperial house while studying at Toulouse, where Constantine’s brothers were staying.[1324] Minervius[1325] was a popular teacher at Rome and at Constantinople, where Arborius also was famous as a rhetor.[1326] The son of Sedatus, rhetor at Toulouse, taught at Rome:

Even the poor Victorius went to Sicily and to Cumae, presumably to study and to teach,[1328] while Dynamius became a rhetor in Spain.[1329] To some extent that wandering and eclectic spirit of learning which broke out anew in the movement that has been called ‘Die zweite Sophistik’, and which appears in the professors and students of Philostratus, Lucian, and Apuleius, was still operative. But more important was the prominence of Gallic studies which not only created a demand for the teachers of Gaul in Rome and Constantinople, but drew men from Sicily[1330] for the comparatively unimportant position of grammarian.

Yet there was a certain number of Gallic students who went to study at Rome, chiefly in jurisprudence. It was there that Ambrose, born in all probability at Trèves about 340, studied law.

Of the conditions under which he and students like him studied the Theodosian Code has much to say. The decree of Valens and Gratian in 370[1331] prescribed that any provincial student who wanted to take a course at Rome must apply for leave to the provincial judges, and must, on his arrival in Rome, show his letter of permission, which mentioned the town to which the student belonged, his relations, and connexions, to the Master of the Census. The regulation about getting special permission from the governors of the provinces is an instance of the usual coercion of the individual in the Roman Empire; but it is also based on the rigid economic system of the emperors, and it may have had its good side in preventing students from coming over too young. Of a piece with it, and illustrating the utilitarianism of the Roman mind, is the rule that no one may remain in Rome as a student after the age of twenty, for no one must escape the public burdens longer than that (‘ne diutius his patria defraudetur, muneraque adeo publica declinent’).[1332]

During the student’s residence in the imperial city he stood under strict supervision and drastic discipline. He must state clearly what his special subject is so as to waste no time, and the Censuales must know where he lives and keep an eye on his studies. His public conduct and associations are carefully watched. Shows, theatres, and late banquets are specially mentioned as snares and delusions in the path of youth. Any one who behaves in unseemly fashion is to be publicly whipped and shipped home to his province. So far did the coercive Roman spirit in education go. For the Romans always looked on education as a discipline which must serve some external end, and not (like the Greeks) as a development of the human spirit valuable for its own sake.

But while we cannot justify this drastic interference with individual development, we must remember that the strictness of the moral discipline was probably wholesome and necessary. The state of Rome, which Ammianus twice in his history describes with considerable care,[1333] and the account which Augustine gives of the ‘eversores’, or bands of rowdy students,[1334] in the contemporary African schools of rhetoric warrant such a supposition. We must reflect, moreover, that the custom and temptations of life in a metropolis were probably new to most of the provincial students and apt to have disconcerting results.

There is a curious inscription of Lyons which bears on the question of Gallic students abroad. It reads as follows:

It is evident that the translation must be something like this: ‘To the memory of Aulus Vitellius Valerius. He died at the age of ten while studying at Rome. His parents Nymphius and Tyche (set up this stone) to their beloved and only son.’ But how a boy of Lyons could reasonably be a student in Rome at the age of ten is less clear. We may arrive at an explanation by supposing that ‘X’ is wrong; more especially as the editors quarrel over it, some omitting it altogether, while others find a variant reading. On this assumption the only way of making it fit in with the facts known about Gallic students at Rome is to read ‘XX’. The student would then have come over at the usual age, and have been in the last year of his studies at the time of his death. If the reading ‘X’ is adhered to, on the grounds that it is much the clearest, we suggest that ‘in studiis’ here means in the office of the imperial secretary ‘a studiis’, who did researches for the emperor when he had a difficult rescript to compose involving historical or legal research, and that the boy was a sort of Bodleian boy employed in fetching and carrying books.[1336] It is not inconceivable, however, that he may merely have been sent to a grammarian at Rome as a sort of junior boarder.

2. The Invaders

But in spite of the extent and the fame of Gallic studies there come to us, every now and then, hints of decadence in education. The fourth-century Ammianus says that even the few homes in which the studious atmosphere of earlier days had survived were in his day given over to vanity. All they abound in is the trifling of sluggish idleness, while they resound with voices and the wind-borne tinkling of the lute. The singer replaces the philosopher, and instead of the orator they summon the actor to give them amusement.[1337] In the fifth century we find Sidonius frequently referring to the decline of culture,[1338] and Paulinus of Pella says of his former studies that they have all ceased to flourish, because, as all know, they have fallen on evil days.[1339] Claudianus Mamertus, in the letter to the learned Sapaudus, after a eulogy on Greece as ‘Disciplinarum omnium atque artium magistra’, uses strong language about the failing culture of his age: ‘Bonarum artium ... facta iactura, et animi cultum despuens’, ‘deliciis et divitiis serviens et ignaviae et inscitiae famula’, ‘pessum dedit cum doctrina virtutem’.[1340] There is no progress and creative genius: hardly any one wants to learn. It cannot be, he reflects, that the nature of the human mind changes: history testifies to the contrary. No, the truth is that there is no enthusiasm or application. ‘Nostro saeculo non ingenia deesse, sed studia.’ A mark of decadence is the barbarization of the Latin language.[1341] Barbarism and solecism are the tyrants that reign. Rhetoric (conceived in the Ciceronian sense) is too big for the petty compass of these present-day Epigoni. Music, geometry, and arithmetic call forth only their violent hate, and philosophy is utterly despised. The emphasis laid on oratory makes us suspect that the truth of some of his statements rather suffers from that ‘declamationum suavitas’ which he finds in Sapaudus.[1342] But in the main he was undoubtedly right. No matter how enthusiastic the fifth-century ‘litterati’ were about letters, the stern march of economic and political events inevitably made for a decline. At the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century the Salian Franks, who were destined to conquer Gaul, were established in Toxandria in the north; and in ceasing to recognize the supremacy of Rome they slipped away from Roman civilization and from Christianity.[1343] In the south the Goths were settled in the second Aquitaine and Toulouse under their own king in 419, and the step was significant of the decentralization of the Empire. More and more the Teutonic element encroached. ‘The process of history in the Western Empire during the period which lies between the death of Alaric (410) and the fall of Romulus Augustulus (476) is toward the establishment of Teutonic Kingdoms.’[1344] However imperialistic Gaul might be, the Goths in the south-west, the Franks in the north, the Burgundians in Savoy, the Alemanni on the upper Rhine, and the Alani at Valence and Orleans in the middle years of the fifth century proved an effective barrier to the direct advance of Roman civilization. This civilization might advance, ultimately, through the barbarians: but meantime there was a transition period in which the shock of nations produced confusion and darkness. Euric aspired to dominion over Gaul, and by 476 he had attained his desire.

But more direct in their effect upon education than these large political movements, and swifter than the ‘barbarization’ of Latin as it passed into the Romance languages, were the invasions. Pagan and Christian alike testify to their horror. Rutilius Namatianus gives us a description of Gaul, piteously defaced by long wars, when he returned thither in 416 after having been prefect at Rome.

So terrible were the injuries inflicted that dumb objects seemed to urge him on when the violence of his lament abated:

This is the description of the spectator after the event. More poignant are the words of those who actually suffered:

The invasions are like some immense tidal wave that sweeps all before it:

All strongholds have given out against the barbarian arms—‘ultima pertulimus’. The author of the ad Uxorem writes in the same strain:

What is the good of the winding, gushing river, the woods which outlive the ages, the flowery meads which the season renews?

‘Respice’, says Orientius, referring to the same invasions,

Added to these troubles from without was the internal commotion caused by robber bands like the notorious Bagaudae, who, in spite of periodical repressions,[1352] continued to exist.[1353] So formidable were they that in 407 Sarus, the general of Honorius, was obliged to buy from them his passage into Italy with a rich portion of spoil.[1354] The oppression of officials swelled their ranks,[1355] and in the middle of the fifth century they established a commonwealth which took a prominent part in the fighting in Spain at that time. Thus they were a constant source of disturbance, and the prolongation of this unrest is mirrored in the pages of Sidonius. In a letter to Lupus,[1356] he tells of a woman who has been carried away by bandits, the local Vargi who were the spiritual descendants of the Bagaudae. The attacks of the Goths towards the end of the fifth century made travelling dangerous, and Sidonius postpones writing to Eutropius on this account.[1357] He sends his messenger only after he hears that ‘the treaty-breaking race’ (foedifragam gentem) has returned within its borders. We hear of a man who had fled with his family into the diocese of Bishop Censorius ‘depredationis Gothicae turbinem vitans’. Sidonius asks Censorius to treat him indulgently and to remit the glebe-dues in his case, so that he may have the whole harvest for himself.[1358] And so it went on. There were constant disputes,[1359] and whenever there was an invasion the Arvernians suffered: ‘huic semper irruptioni nos miseri Arverni ianua sumus.’[1360]

We can hardly wonder that this constant unrest made men despair of final peace. Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, writes to Aurelian in a pessimistic strain.[1361] The evils of the time, he thinks, are not really healed. At best they cannot be said to be more than kept within bounds, so that the peace which coyly appears is fictitious. The mind is lulled to rest with a false security only until there comes the recrudescence of a worse fear and the faltering sobs of grief. ‘Wherefore, my good friend, cease to hope for the end of our evils in the midst of fiery ills, and when a change comes and the storm has abated and the face of ever so small a calm shows itself, do not delight in the altered events; make use of them.’

The effect of this upon the social fabric, and so on education, is obvious. Even if, as Freeman thinks, the youth of Gaul were not much concerned in the defence of their country, which was left mainly to such allies as the Franks,[1362] education must have shared in the general disorganization of society. The material means of instruction was frequently removed by the impoverishment of families.

The roads, which had promoted education by linking up towns and spreading civilization, were now (as we have seen) uncertain and unsafe. Centres, consequently, which had previously teemed with life, now became isolated, torpid, despairing. Schools and books were neglected.

The sum total of education was decreased materially by the slaughter of children:

Yet there is the spark which kept alive the flickering torch of learning in the dark ages, the interest in literature surviving material ruin. For, in spite of the crash of circumstances and although times are sad, there is a feeling that the mind, even when oppressed by misfortune, should keep unconquered its interest in education:

There is much of rude and rushing violence in this ‘barbarization’ of Gaul. One of the writers likened it to a flood, and as far as the time at which he wrote is concerned he was right. But, regarded as a whole, the process was gradual and persistent. Gaul became de-Romanized ‘not as a valley is ravaged by a torrent, but as the most solid substance is disorganized by the continual infiltration of a foreign substance’.[1366] So Rutilius says of Rome, referring to Stilicho’s German followers:

But subtler still than gradual infiltration of foreigners in producing the decline of culture were the ideas and ideals that lay at the root of the imperial and the rhetorical systems. While on the one hand the Empire made the schools of Gaul its proper care, it was, by its economic system, calling into life the subversive power of Bagaudae bands.[1368]

While the schools were fostering education and creating a love of learning, they were at the same time killing the true spirit of education by the methods they employed. It was a matter of ends and ideals, and these we must now briefly consider.

3. Ideals

The rhetorical system of education, much praised and universally accepted, had many points in its favour. It seemed to be the only method, backed as it was by a great tradition. It was regular and well organized and stable by reason of its imperial support. It had produced many great men in the past and had the blessing of mighty names. That was enough for the fourth-century Gaul, who did not trouble to make distinctions. For the voices of protest had long died down, and this was the time of ‘Rhetorica triumphans’.

It was also undoubtedly a necessary means of training men for public speaking, popular because the emperor so substantially encouraged the imperial orator. The service of the State was a laudable aspiration. Moreover, the rhetorical exercises produced ingenuity and nimbleness of wit. They were very laudable, also, for creating lucidity of thought, by insisting-on clear-cut arrangement in every theme. The ‘Panegyrici Latini’ are an example of this. To themselves they could have applied the saying of Voltaire: ‘nous sommes comme les petits ruisseaux: sommes clairs parce que nous sommes peu profonds’.[1369] They have neither the formlessness of the Fathers nor the complexity of Sidonius. Further, there was a good side to all the concentration on form that is so prominent in this period. It kept the language pure at a time when it was feared that Latin would be utterly barbarized.[1370] It preserved the grammar, and did much to preserve the form. When we find Rome tenaciously keeping for herself the teaching of law, and standardizing education by connecting the teachers directly with the emperor, it is because she realizes that the Latin language is the medium through which she rules, and that uniform obedience depends on her subjects uniformly understanding her commands.

There was also a physical aspect. Proper exercise of the organs of speech is regarded by medical opinion as comparable to walking and swimming. In modern times we lay stress on the exercise of all parts of the body, but tend to neglect the proper cultivation of elocution. If we developed it more we might hear less of such prevalent things as ‘minister’s’ and ‘schoolmaster’s’ sore throat. Medical evidence goes to show that better exercise of the vocal organs is far more effective than surgical remedies.

More important was the aesthetic side. We to-day have largely lost the sense of beauty in speech. Language has become to us for the most part a matter of the written word. We have ceased to feel as vividly as Isocrates did in his letter to Philip[1371] the need of the living voice to express the soul of which the letters are the body. The artistic joy which is found in the form and arrangement of words, in the sound given to them by a dramatic speaker, in the gestures of an accomplished orator—this joy has largely disappeared. Yet we feel that it was there in the Latin panegyrists. We may say that theirs is ‘a tale of little meaning’, but we must admit that ‘the words are strong’—strong and beautiful. To read their productions is like looking on a piece of mediaeval art, a stained-glass window, where the figures are grotesque and the fable futile, but the richly blended colours bind us by their beauty. They knew and lived for the inner loveliness of words. And perhaps they would say to us: ‘You who read so widely and know so much, you think you understand. But in order really to understand you must hear the word pronounced so that its sound as well as its form calls up a picture to the mind. It is only when you conceive of the study of a language as artistic both in sound and in form that it becomes the key to poetry. Do you not sometimes neglect the sound in your studies?’

They might also have said that there was an inarticulateness in modern times which led to misunderstanding: that if men had been taught to express their thoughts better there would be less strife and less dumb agony. And to a certain extent they would have been right.

But against them we can urge serious charges. The simplest and most fundamental objection to the rhetorical system is that it neglected the search for truth. It thought too much of means and too little of ends. Lessing stated in his Laocoon the eternal aim of science. ‘The ultimate object of the sciences is truth. Truth is necessary to the soul, and in the satisfaction of this essential need it is tyranny to employ even the slightest check.’[1372] The words apply to the education of our period. For the teachers of that time did not make truth their chief end, and how much tyranny there resulted for the soul of man we have had some opportunity of seeing.

The ancients felt this themselves. They recognized the force of Seneca’s dictum: ‘Scholae non vitae discimus’. Tacitus had criticized the system in his Dialogue, and Petronius is very outspoken in his condemnation. He considers that the school produces in its pupils not wisdom but folly, seeing that what they hear or see there has no bearing on practical life. ‘It is for ever pirates standing in chains on the beach, tyrants writing edicts in which they order sons to cut off their fathers’ heads, oracles to avert a pestilence demanding the sacrifice of three or more virgins, verbal honey-balls, all words and acts sprinkled, as it were, with poppy seed and sesame. Children brought up in these surroundings can no more be sensible than those who live in a kitchen can be fragrant.’[1373]

The school-exercises which Aphthonius prescribed clearly illustrate these objections. The artificiality of obeying all the rules at all times for a certain type of subject is apparent even in the models. In a little essay on ‘Poverty’, introduced by two verses of Theognis, the poet, under the heading ἐγκωμιαστικόν, is praised at length for seeing what an exaggerated emphasis poets lay on myths, and turning to serious moral teaching.[1374] He is also praised for observing metrical rules, which is at any rate less harmful than the sentiment expressed in the text that it is better to die than to be poor. Under the heading ‘cause’ it is alleged that poverty is incompatible with virtue. Those who are rid of poverty grow up fine men and do glorious deeds and entertain the poor. Look at Irus, the beggar (under the heading παραδείγματα)—he was so poor that he had even to change his name: for formerly he was called Arnaeus. And think of all the woes of Ulysses himself when he came home in the disguise of a beggar. How terrible it is to be poor! For all this a verse must be found from some poet (under the heading μαρτυρία παλαιῶν) in order to give the seal of respectability. This quotation is generally chosen quite irrespective of the main theme, Euripides being quoted on this occasion to the effect that poverty cannot change nobility of birth.

Truth is made to consist in the nature of the charge brought, and not sought in the human facts of the case. Thus, in the stock example of a speech against a tyrant,[1375] we have a ‘conjectural attack on the man’s past life’, and an ‘exclusion of pity’ worked up with the utmost artificiality. Ingenuity, not truth, is the object. And the same can be said of the ‘Encomium’, in which we find the germ of the panegyric. Of all these exercises those which fall under the heading of ‘Description’[1376] are the only ones which possess any kind of naturalness.

The reflection of this unnaturalness is abundantly seen in the literature of the day. Almost any work of Ausonius could be taken as an illustration. He consciously opposes grace to strength, and the result is disappointing. ‘Si qua tibi in his versiculis videbuntur ... fucatius concinnata quam verius, et plus coloris quam suci habere, ipse sciens fluere permisi, venustula ut essent magis quam forticula.’[1377] He takes nineteen lines to express the number six,[1378] and fourteen lines to say that there were thirty oysters.[1379] Such a ‘numerum doctis involutum ambagibus’ seems to have been a common way of expending ‘poetic’ energy. Then, as if this were not enough, he goes on to expound the ‘doctae ambages’ in the baldest possible way (Septenis quater adde et unum et unum, etc.) in twelve more lines. Similar examples could be indefinitely multiplied. Nor were they just the whim of an idle humour. We meet them everywhere. Bishop Sidonius at the age of fifty says, in a serious estimate of a man’s poetic abilities, that he was good at ‘echoing’ and ‘recurrent’ verses, and at ‘anadiplosis’[1380] (i.e. resuming a verse with the end phrase of the previous one). Asked by a correspondent as to recurrent verses, he gives a stock example (antiquum), which shows that the literary practice was of some standing. The point of such a verse was that it could be read backwards letter for letter without altering the sense:

while in a ‘versus echoicus’ the first part of the first verse was the same as the second part of the second. He adds another kind which he had composed while delayed by a swollen river, and here the merit was that the words could be read backwards retaining the order of the letters in each word, without prejudice to the sense:

His appreciation of Remigius’s declamations show the same emphasis on formal and external merits.[1382] The point is not so much that responsible poets went in for writing verses of the kind quoted, but that they attached so much importance to them.

It is striking how many of Ausonius’s poems have to do with the dead[1383] or the unreal.[1384] Even his letters are full of artificialities. In the same way Sidonius and Avitus of Vienne are always writing epitaphs. Their interest is with the past, of which they are the conscious imitators;[1385] and if Ausonius was genuinely interested in the living present when he wrote the Mosella, that is his one poem which has commended itself to readers of every age. In general, we may say that the ‘litterati’ of this time imitated the past in style and language to a degree that destroyed individuality. Though Sidonius criticizes Titianus for copying people not of his age,[1386] his own writings abound in archaisms.[1387] He praises Claudianus Mamertus[1388] and Leo, the minister of Euric,[1389] for their imitation of antiquity. Claudianus Mamertus recommends as models of style Naevius, Plautus, Cato, Varro, Gracchus, and ‘Chryssiphus’, Fronto and Cicero, adding that even the modern writers of note did not read the moderns: attention must therefore be concentrated on the ancients, for they are the source of modern merit.[1390] Nor was this merely theoretical advice. How extensive the worship of the ancients was, from the scrupulous imitation of Cicero in Eumenius and the panegyrists[1391] to the plagiarism of Vergil by everybody, has been fully demonstrated by the various editors.[1392] All this meant a turning away from the living language, the creation of a scholastic tongue, the intellectualization of education. So, when Greek literature lost its vitality, we find a rigid and senseless Atticism appearing in Dionysius of Halicarnassus during the first century B.C.; the dual was brought up from the underworld; and language, instead of developing its resources, was stretched on the Procrustes-bed of a standard that had ceased to be natural.[1393] So, too, when the living genius of Petrarch and Dante arose, it broke away from the half-dead Latin and turned to Italian. The problem here involved arises to-day in many countries. In Holland the growing Flemish Movement headed by Stijn Streuvels and others has compelled recognition; in Norway there is a similar movement; and in South Africa the Education Department is increasingly recognizing the use of Afrikaans in the schools. For the more education disregards the form of the language that lives in the hearts of the people, the less will it understand and be able to teach them effectively. In other words, an undue archaism means artificiality, means a wandering from the truth.

The result was (as we may judge from the complaints of the critics) that the product of the rhetorical system often found himself in the position of a fire-brigade without a fire. He had all the machinery, and had used it all in mock alarms, but had missed that contact with reality which makes for understanding. He had come to look on facility of speech (to which the Gauls were particularly prone)[1394] as an end in itself. He had been taught to think that everything was a matter of rule,[1395] and often found too late that life demanded a different and a deeper method.

Why was it that the rhetorical system, with all its virtues, failed in this way? To put it quite shortly, we should say that it failed because it did not aim at the best. Ennodius indicates its aims in two brief sentences. ‘Nos vitae maculas tergimus artis ope’[1396]—polish, style, external refinement; ‘Qui nostris servit studiis, mox imperat orbi’—imperial service. These were the two main objects, both of them good and desirable in themselves, but not the highest. And it was because the abuse of these two aims led to a conflict between them and the highest aim, truth, because the rhetorical system was content with a second best[1397] which could not remain uncorrupted except in connexion with the best, it was for this reason that, ultimately, failure inevitably ensued. Other and more material causes may easily be argued, but this is the inherent and fundamental cause.

How far did the Christian ideal prove a truer inspiration to education? It has been remarked that paganism had no idea of progress. The note of pessimism in Roman literature is typified in such passages as Horace’s:

But with the Gospels, when the watchword of ‘Estote perfecti’ turned men’s backward glances forward to the light, the doctrine of progress began to establish itself more firmly.[1398]

Now progress depends on the truth and the vividness of the ideal in view, and there can be no doubt that the Christians of our period felt their ideal as a much more living and constant inspiration than the pagans felt theirs. Paulinus of Pella illustrates this. His poem is alive with sincere devotion, and the usual dryness of the author draws a vigour and an inspiration from religious emotion which makes the work, in spite of its lack of literary formalities, compare favourably with the Panegyrists or the semi-Christian writers.[1399] His ardour and singleness of purpose[1400] are also seen in the De Providentia and the Ad Uxorem. In spite of all the sufferings of the ten-years’ slaughter (caedes decennis), there is the clear-eyed calmness of one who sees an ideal whose brightness and steadiness are undimmed by the storm.