How can one write poetry, exclaims Sidonius, among people who put rancid oil on their hair? ‘The Muse of the six-foot metre has scorned her task, since the appearance of patrons seven feet high.’[157] And to Philagrius he confesses: ‘barbaros vitas quia mali putentur: ego etiamsi boni’.[158]
How sensitive men of Sidonius’s class were to the charge of barbarism we may see from Avitus’s letter to Viventiolus.[159] Rumour whispers that in one of his sermons he has slipped into a ‘barbarism’, and his friends are openly criticizing. ‘I confess’, says the bishop with wounded pride, ‘that such a thing may have happened to me. Any learning I may have had in more youthful years is now the spoil of age, “omnia fert aetas”’—a Virgilian quotation to indicate that, in spite of his profession to his friend, his ‘studia litterarum’ still remain to mark his culture. The barbarism at issue is the quantity of the middle syllable of ‘potitur’, to which he devotes most of the letter.
Thus to the nobleman of the fifth century, even if he was a churchman and might, therefore, be expected to take the wider Christian view, culture meant something essentially Roman. By the side of this Roman culture Germanic influence must seem small, and yet, when we remember the attitude of men like Paulinus of Pella to the Goths, and allow a margin for Sidonius’s prejudice, it cannot seem unimportant in the civilization of Gaul.
Having glanced at the negative side of Gallic Romanization, it is important to look a little closer at the positive side, in order to form an idea of the extent of Gallo-Roman education.
How mighty the Roman impress was is seen in the many Roman roads, the amphitheatres, the inscriptions where Gauls very often appear as priests of Rome and Augustus, in the famous altar at Lyons, mentioned by Juvenal,[160] on which the sixty peoples of Gallia Comata inscribed their names after the pacification of the country by Drusus in 12 B.C., and which formed the common sanctuary for the province, and was the scene of regular rhetorical contests in Latin and in Greek.[161] And the speech of Claudius to the Senate[162] shows how eager the emperors were to speed on the rapidly advancing Romanization of Gaul.
Traditionally, Aquitaine was the first to be Romanized. Ammianus remarks that the shores of the Aquitanians were easily accessible to merchants, and that their characters were soon degraded to effeminacy, so that they easily passed under Roman domination.[163] But Lyons was the real centre of systematic Romanization. Thence Latin spread widely among the Gauls, who have left us no record of their Gallic Latin.[164] By the fifth century the victory of Latin was complete. It was the language of civilization, of government, of society. Slaves brought from all parts of the world made a common language between master and servant a necessity. Soldiers settled in Gaul spread its influence. Finally, it was the official language of the Church and (a fact which was most important for its propagation) of the School.[165]
It is a tribute to the thoroughness of Caesar’s work that when Classicus rebelled in A.D. 70[166] his associates were two Julii, one of whom tried to pass himself off as a descendant of the Dictator, while the other assumed the insignia of the Roman Emperor. So mighty was the Roman name that even its enemies in attacking it desired a part of its glory. ‘Between Classicus and the first Buonaparte’, says Freeman,[167] ‘no man again dreamed of an Empire of the Gauls.’ And Strabo had some justification when he spoke of the Gauls as δεδουλωμένοι καὶ ζῶντες κατὰ τὰ προστάγματα τῶν ἑλόντων αὐτοὺς Ῥωμαίων.[168]
Not that the feeling against Rome entirely disappeared. The Gauls objected to the luxury of the Roman emperors,[169] and we have such incidents as the Treveri shutting their gates to Decentius, brother of Magnentius.[170] Lampridius speaks of ‘Gallicanae mentes ... durae ac pertorridae, et saepe imperatoribus graves’.[171] Zosimus tells us that after the fall of the usurper Constantine[172] in A.D. 411 the whole of the Armorican land cast out its Roman rulers. But in the main the Roman machine worked efficiently enough by keeping the border tribes busy with feuds among themselves, and the mass of the people with oppressive exactions. There are many references to the loyalty of Gaul, from the exulting cry of Cicero in the Philippics[173] to the enthusiasm of Rutilius Namatianus. Pliny[174] calls Narbonensis ‘Italia verius quam provincia’. Claudian represents the whole of Gaul as fighting for Stilicho,[175] Gaul which supplies the Empire with soldiers.[176] Before him the panegyrists of the emperors—the majority of whom were Gauls—had been loud in their testimonies of Gaul’s loyalty. The orator of Autun[177] boasts (A.D. 311) that his city, rejoicing then in the imperial title of ‘Flavia Aeduorum’, had been the only one to join the Romans of its own free will—though Caesar records the subjugation of the Aedui in much the same way as that of the other tribes. Of purer fidelity than Massilia or Saguntum, the Aedui are ‘ingenua et simplici caritate fratres populi Romani’. The hollowness of the speaker’s rhetoric deceives no one; but it shows that there was at least a large part of Gaul which considered such speeches ‘the correct thing’, and that confidence in Rome’s destiny was widely felt: the fate-appointed eternal city, whose menacing enemies had all been rooted out.[178] Much more genuine is Rutilius. He feels that Gaul is his native country,[179] but the enthusiasm he shows for Rome is more than the mere official utterance of a Praefect of the City. There is real inspiration in his lines, in spite of Gibbon’s opinion that he was only an ‘ingenious traveller’.[180]
Even if conquered peoples chafe under the yoke of Rome at first, Rutilius is confident that it is all for their good:
The great achievement of the Empire is that it made a city of the world: ‘urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat’. Rome, he maintains, is greater than her deeds: ‘Quod regnas minus est quam quod regnare mereris’. And as her buildings dazzle his sight, he exclaims in admiration:
The whole of Gaul was not equally loyal. While the South remained predominantly Roman to the end, the North, ‘audax Germania’, Claudian calls it,[183] was less friendly, and its hostility increased as time went on.
The Aeduan panegyrist, who implores help for the future from the Emperor Constantine, while he thanks him for the benefits of the past, shows the bearing of physical features upon this difference between North and South.[184] In contrast with the cultivated fields of the South, its ‘viae faciles’, its ‘navigera flumina’, we find in Belgica ‘vasta omnia, inculta squalentia, multa tenebrosa, etiam militaris vias ita confragosas et alternis montibus arduas atque praecipites, ut vix semiplena carpenta, interdum vacua, transmittant’. The roads are very bad (regionum nostrarum aditum atque aspectum tam foedum tamque asperum), and even an ardent panegyrist must admit that loyalty is damped, when, in addition to an exiguous harvest, you must experience difficulties of transport. It is remarkable how important a part the road plays in the Roman Empire, one way or another. Here, barbarism on the one hand and bad roads on the other proved a formidable combination against civilization. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that as we go north traces of Gallo-Roman schools become fewer, inscriptions bearing on education almost non-existent, and Greek almost unknown.
But the testimony of literature to the Romanization of Gaul is far less eloquent than that of the extant remains. The modern traveller in Provence might well be tempted to exclaim with Pliny ‘Italia verius quam provincia’. The theatres and amphitheatres at Fréjus and Arles, the arch and theatre at Orange, the temple of Augustus and Livia at Vienne, and above all the Maison Carrée, the Porta Augusta and the Thermae at Nîmes, and the neighbouring Pont du Gard, challenge comparison with the great buildings of Italy and even of Rome herself. And these are but the most notable examples of evidence which may be found in less degree in almost every village of Provence.
Outside the ‘old province’, though the evidence is naturally less impressive in bulk and less widely spread in area, yet the walls and gates of Autun, the amphitheatre at Paris, the Porte de Mars at Reims, the arch at Langres, the Porte Noire and amphitheatre at Besançon, and the theatre at remote Lillebonne, tell the tale of Roman influence on the Tres Galliae; and to these must be added the great buildings of Trèves which, as an imperial capital, occupies a place apart.
And what is writ large on these great monuments is written no less unmistakably in the contents of the French museums. That of the world-famous statues of Venus three come from Narbonensis is significant of the taste of Gallic connoisseurs. These great masterpieces were of course imported, but the discoveries at Martres Tolosanes attest the existence of local schools of sculpture.[185] Even if the reliefs of Gallic tombstones in the north and centre diverge somewhat sharply from the Roman convention in preferring the naturalistic to the allegorical in their choice of subject, yet the form is predominantly classical. And the readiness of Gaul to learn the industrial arts of Italy is strikingly proved by its pottery. The manufacture of the red ‘Arretine’ ware or ‘terra sigillata’ was already flourishing among the Ruteni in the first century A.D., and met with such success that it was actually exported to Italy, and finally displaced the home product.[186] In this useful if humble art, Gaul, like Greece, took captive her captor.
The causes of this all but complete Romanization are not far to seek. The sword of Caesar was mighty and its argument efficient. Part of this argument the Romans always retained, but as time went on they mingled diplomacy with their militarism. The altar at Lyons had its persuasive side, though the spirit that moved the orator’s tongue was no doubt quickened by the scourge and the river in the background. Yet imperial policy is as clearly seen here as in the utterances of the panegyrists, who are regularly employed to publish the prince’s praises. Caracalla’s extension of the citizenship to provincials is part of the same policy (A.D. 212).
Not to exterminate the barbarian tribes, but to bring them within the Empire as cultivators and soldiers, was the aim of the later emperors[187]—an aim which they sometimes followed with ruthless cruelty.[188] Of Constantine the panegyrist says that he entirely cleared Batavia of the Franks who had occupied it, and made them live among Romans, so that they might lose not only their arms but also their savage temper.[189] He brought the barbarous Franks from their original homes in the distant North to till the soil and to fill the armies of the Roman Empire.[190]
Moreover, as Glover[191] remarks, the schoolmaster of the West was the ally of the Empire. The elaborate system of imperial protection in the schools had in view the important object of Romanizing the growing generation. Besides, by increasing lines of communication, by rendering news and books accessible, by making intercourse secure, the emperors helped forward Roman influence. The security which the provincial felt in the protection of the Eternal City was one of the strongest pillars of loyalty. The effect of Alaric’s success upon minds like those of Jerome and Augustine, critical as they were of Pagan Rome, is some measure of the confidence which people felt in her power. Yet even after Rome had deserted the Gauls in the great invasions of the fifth century, we have the picture of Sidonius’s passionate ardour for the Roman name and his bitter grief when he ceased to be a Roman citizen in 475.
‘Birth in the Gallic provinces during the fourth century brought with it no sense of provincial inferiority. Society was thoroughly Roman, and education and literature more vigorous, so far as we can judge, than in any other part of the West.’[192] While we agree with this in the main, it may be questioned whether the Roman did not sometimes tend to look on the Gaul as a mere provincial. In the first century we find Pliny saying that he is pleased to hear that his books are being sold at Lyons, where he evidently does not expect so civilized a thing as a book-shop.[193] Symmachus, in the fourth century, writes[194] to a friend in Gaul ‘rusticari te asseris ... non hoc litterae tuae sapiunt’, and adds sarcastically ‘nisi forte Gallia tua dedux Heliconis’. And Cassiodorus (sixth century) implies that there were some who thought that Latin literature should be confined to Rome. ‘You have found Roman eloquence’ he writes to a friend, ‘not in its native place, and you have learned oratory from your Cicero in the country of the Celts. What are we to think of those who maintain that Latin must be learnt at Rome and Rome only? Liguria too sends forth her Ciceros.’[195] A protest of this kind as late as the sixth century suggests that the idea of provincialism was pretty strong. One of the panegyrists,[196] a Gaul[197] of uncertain name,[198] illustrates this same tendency. And though his words are probably as insincere as his praise of the Emperor, yet they imply a tradition which he found it expedient to recognize.
‘Full well I know how much we provincials lack of Roman intelligence. For, indeed, to speak correctly and eloquently is the Roman’s birthright ... our speech must ever flow from their fountain.’[199]
The extent of Romanization in Gaul gives us a general idea of the influence of Roman civilization in that country; for wherever the Roman went he spread his culture. It remains to investigate very briefly the traces of actual schools and teachers in the times that lead up to the fourth and fifth centuries.
As early as the first century B.C. we hear of Gaul in connexion with education. ‘In provincias quoque’, says Suetonius, ‘Grammatica penetraverat, ac nonnulli de notissimis doctoribus peregre docuerunt, maxime in Gallia Togata.’[200] Tacitus made all the speakers in his dialogue on Famous Orators Gauls,[201] except Vipstanus Messalla, and Suetonius tells of many Gallic teachers: Marcus Antonius Gnipho, who taught in the house of Julius Caesar and is said to have had Cicero among his pupils;[202] Valerius Cato (first century B.C.), a Gallic freedman, known as ‘the Latin siren’, who wrote a book called Indignatio, and taught many youths of high rank, being especially famous as a teacher of poetry;[203] and Claudius Quirinalis of Arles,[204] who taught with great success in the first century A.D.
Schools were widely spread. ‘Il n’y a pas lieu de douter’, says Bouquet,[205] ‘qu’il n’y eût dès lors (first century A.D.) autant d’écoles publiques qu’il y avait de villes principales.’ Narbonne, stirred by the culture of the neighbouring Massilia,[206] Arles, Vienne, Toulouse, Autun, Lyons, the scene of Caligula’s famous rhetorical contests and the imperial seat before Trèves and Arles, Trèves, Nîmes, Bordeaux, and a large number of other towns, ‘cultivated learning and produced great men’. Jullian thinks that Bourges was probably a scholastic centre of some importance.[207] Claudius, the Emperor, remarked: ‘insignes viros e Gallia Narbonensi transivisse’.[208] Tradition says that Toulouse was called Palladia on account of its love of letters,[209] and Martial rejoices that his poems are so widely read at Vienne.[210] It may not be mere rhetoric when Tacitus says that Roman education came to Britain from Gaul, and that Agricola, in his attempt to Romanize the Britanni, took a particular interest in their education.[211] ‘Iam vero principum filios liberalibus artibus erudire, et ingenia Britannorum studiis Gallorum anteferre,[212] ut qui modo linguam Romanam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent.’ Thus the educational influence of Gaul was early great.
During the second century education continued to flourish. Lucian[213] introduces a Gaul οὐκ ἀπαίδευτος τὰ ἡμέτερα ... ἀκριβῶς Ἑλλάδα φωνὴν ἀφιείς, φιλόσοφος, ὡς οἶμαι, τὰ ἐπιχώρια, who discourses in learned fashion on the question whether Mercury or Hercules should be the patron god of the art of speaking. It was the time of the wandering rhetor—‘die zweite Sophistik’—and Greek flourished under the patronage of the philhellenic Hadrian. Aulus Gellius has left us a picture of the pupils escorting the sophist from place to place. ‘Nos ergo familiares eius circumfusi undique eum prosequebamur domum’;[214] and in the case of Favorinus at Rome they went about with him ‘spellbound, as it were, by his eloquence’.[215] Intercourse was quite free and easy and not always serious: ‘in litteris amoenioribus et in voluptatibus pudicis honestisque agitabamus.’[216] These literary clubs set the fashion for the rhetorical schools and perpetuated the distinctive methods of the Greek- and Latin-speaking sophist-rhetorician—‘rhetoricus sophista, utriusque linguae callens’.[217]
Almost all records of the Gallic rhetors during this interesting period have been lost. The letters of Valerius Paulinus, of Geminus, of Trebonius Rufinus to the younger Pliny, the orations of the lawyers, the books of the famous philosopher Favorinus, the poems of Sentius Augurinus, have all perished. Only the work of L. Annaeus Florus has come down to us.[218] Yet the general trend of education may be discerned. If one great feature of this century was the wandering sophist, another was the power of the Christian religion, whose influence went forth from Lyons in particular, where Irenaeus was predominant. ‘Christi religio novam admovit oratorum ingenio facem.’[219] This influence has been exaggerated, especially by eighteenth-century writers. One of them lays stress on the revival of the finer accomplishments as a result of this influence, and on the dignity and polish of language in which the Christian writers agreed with the ancients.[220] This is manifestly an overstatement: the Church on the whole had neither the time nor the inclination to pay much attention to ‘elegantiora studia’; its attention was directed to the search for truth and it is hence that its real inspiration to education came.
We find imperial interest in education during this period beginning to take a more definite form. Antoninus Pius gives teachers’ salaries and honours,[221] and fixes the number of rhetors in each town. No doubt the influence of M. Cornelius Fronto, the famous tutor of Marcus Aurelius, the model of succeeding generations of orators, told in this direction. In a fragment of this teacher we have a reference which seems to point to schools in the North during the second century. He speaks of Reims (Durocortorum) as ‘illae vestrae Athenae’[222], and it would not be surprising if the imperial policy had selected this important frontier town as a centre of Romanization, just as it afterwards patronized Trèves for the same purpose.
In the third century a large number of churches sprang up, whose educational value among the people must have been important.[223] Pagan letters, on the other hand, had been showing signs of decline since the end of the second century. Under Caracalla, who in his hatred for literature put to death many men of education,[224] culture sank still lower. It is true that Alexander Severus was a patron of literature[225] and founded schools[226] and fixed salaries, but the general trend of education was one of decline. Barbarian invasions and civil unrest increased this tendency.[227] And so Gaul was disorganized, and amid her disorder education grew feeble. But when in 292 Gaul passed under the government of Constantius Chlorus, interest in culture revived and grew strong. Constantius fixed his abode at Trèves and actively set himself to aid the cause of education. The school of Massilia was declining, but, on the whole, Gallic education grew and gained individuality. Eumenius has told us at length how much the Gallic youth owed to his interest and protection (incredibilem erga iuventutem Galliarum suarum sollicitudinem atque indulgentiam), and how thankful he is to the Emperor who transferred him ‘from the secrets of the imperial chambers (he had been Magister Memoriae) to the private shrines of the Muses’.[228]
Autun is mentioned by Tacitus[229] as a centre of education in the time of Tiberius: ‘nobilissimam Galliarum subolem, liberalibus studiis ibi operatam’. It flourished until the last quarter of the third century, when it was destroyed by the plundering Bagaudae.[230] Eumenius pleads earnestly with the Emperor for the restoration of the famous Maeniana,[231] ‘vetustissima post Massiliam bonarum artium sedes,’[232] the university of the North even, perhaps, in pre-Roman[233] days, just as Massilia was of the South—the Latin university of Gaul as Massilia was the Greek. Of all the Gallic towns, except Lyons, Autun was the soonest Romanized, though no Roman colony had been sent there.[234] It had the Aeduan tradition of voluntary friendship with Rome. Its Gallic nobles had renounced Celtic connexions in favour of Roman civilization. There was a current legend that Autun had been founded by Hercules; like the Romans, the Aeduans wanted to establish an ancestry for themselves which did not smack of barbarism. If Lyons in these days was the political centre, the intellectual centre was certainly Autun.[235]