and he speaks of the distinguished sons of Gaul as having been students under Quintilian’s system of education:
Even Jerome said that he owed part of his education to Quintilian,[355] and the affected Ennodius thought so much of him that he called him ‘eloquentissimum virum’, and thought that though against lesser men one might argue a fictitious case, it was still a question whether it was right to do so against Quintilian.[356] As an authority on style he was evidently much respected. Sidonius means to pay the very highest compliment when he says of the rhetor Severianus:
and Jerome tells us that Hilary of Poitiers imitated the style and the number of Quintilian’s twelve books.[358]
This being the position of Quintilian in the educational world of Gaul, we are not surprised to find traces of his influence everywhere. According to his precept,[359] the master still held the hand of the little one as he traced the letters on wax,[360] and afterwards on papyrus or parchment.[361] The children still went to school, no doubt, as Horace tells, carrying their tablets in their satchels (loculi, capsae), which were borne, in the case of wealthy parents, by a capsarius.[362]
There were special masters (librarii) to teach book-copying. A marble tablet found at Auch[363] bears an inscription to one Afranius Graphicus (skilled in writing), a teacher, and in particular a teacher of copying, who numbered among his accomplishments proficiency in the game of draughts, and Marquardt[364] quotes a number of instances from the Corpus. Very important among the various forms of writing for the fourth and fifth centuries—the age of bureaucratic officialdom—was stenography. Here, too, there were special masters (notarii) who at the same time practised it as their vocation. Again, the Corpus has frequent references.[365] Ausonius composed a poem on his shorthand writer, whose skill was evidently great,[366] and when Sidonius made his epigram on the towel there was a scribe at hand (apparently a notarius) who took down his words.[367] As far as the method of reading was concerned, Quintilian’s counsel no doubt still held good. He had advised learning the sound and the form of the letters simultaneously,[368] and the use of the synthetic method, passing from the letter to the syllable, from the syllable to the word, from the word to the sentence.
The last subject of the elementary school was Arithmetic, a favourite subject with the hard-headed Romans. Counting on the fingers was common in olden times, and as late as the seventh century we find Bede writing a work ‘de loquela per gestum digitorum et temporum ratione’,[369] which points to an elaborate system of computation on the fingers. There were special teachers (calculatores) for advanced pupils, and the instruments used were the abacus or tabula, a board marked with lines which signified tens, hundreds, thousands, &c., according as the counters (calculi) were put on them. Figures were sometimes drawn on a board sprinkled with sand.
When the boy had got beyond this elementary training, he entered upon the studies of the grammaticus. Now the school-training as a whole after the fourth century is said to have been based on the seven liberal arts of Martianus Capella, described in his marriage of Mercury and Philologia. This work had for its foundation Varro’s ‘IX libri disciplinarum’, and had an influence which went down through the Middle Ages. But in the department of the grammarian there were no neatly divided compartments for Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music, each with its special master. Grammarians specialized in one branch or another (as Victorius at Bordeaux in antiquarian research[370]), and the edicts of the emperors speak of special masters in shorthand, book-copying, arithmetic, architecture.[371] But there is no ground for thinking that these were to be found in the ordinary school: it is much more likely that they existed to train slaves or specialists for particular posts in the imperial offices. It is hardly conceivable that Ausonius should have dealt with some thirty Bordeaux teachers (of whom several were grammarians) without indicating such a division, had it existed.
The actual method of conducting the lesson is indicated by Eumenius. ‘Ibi’ (in the new schools of Autun) ‘adulescentes optimi discant, nobis quasi sollemne carmen praefantibus.’[372] The teacher would select a passage and read it out slowly to his pupils with proper attention to punctuation, pronunciation, expression, and metre.[373] Clearness and effectiveness of intonation were specially practised with a view to the later rhetorical declamations. But the reason for the universal stress on elocution in antiquity went deeper than the exigencies of practical life. The written words had a soul which the grammaticus by reading strove to revive. ‘The office of the art “Grammatikê” is so to deal with the Grammata as to recover from them all that can be recovered of that which they have saved from oblivion, to reinstate as far as possible the spoken word in its first impressiveness and musicalness.’[374] Such, as Professor Murray points out, is the doctrine of the official teachers. Dionysius Thrax (who was the first to write a τέχνη γραμματική), in enumerating the six parts of Grammatikê, mentions as the most essential reading aloud κατὰ προσῳδίαν, ‘with just the accent, the cadences, the expression, with which the words were originally spoken, before they were turned from λόγοι to γράμματα, from winged words to permanent letters’.[375] Ausonius makes a special point of it to his grandson:
This was the framework of every lesson.
The reading was followed by the exposition (enarratio), grammatical, historical, philosophical, scientific, artistic, or literary. The master would tell his class the substance of the passage, and require them to turn verse into prose.[377] Books were not always forthcoming, and then dictation (practised also for its own sake) would be resorted to. At this time it was, perhaps, less common than in Horace’s day[378] owing to the multiplication of books. Learning by heart and writing exercises (sententiae, chriae) such as were practised in the rhetor’s school were among the obvious methods employed.
Philology, of course, was in its infancy. It was based on Varro who had propounded such theories as ‘testamentum a testatione mentis’, ‘lucus a non lucendo’. There were two tendencies: that of the Romanists, who wished to derive everything from the Italian languages, and that of the Hellenists, who sought to prove that the origin of all words was Greek. There were also the ‘Anomalists’, who believed in the principle of change, and, like Horace, referred everything to custom, the controller and corrupter of words, and the ‘Analogists’, who believed in the principle of immobility, and proposed to subjugate custom to a fixed law of reason which operated by analogy.[379] How much in the dark even the best and soberest of grammarians were on the subject may be judged from Servius’s commentary on Vergil: on Georg. i. 17 ‘Maenala, mons Arcadiae, dictus ἀπὸ τῶν μήλων, id est ab ovibus’; on Georg. i. 57 ‘Sabaei populi ... dicti Sabaei ἀπὸ τοῦ σέβεσθαι’; on Aen. i. 17 ‘“thensa”[380] autem cum aspiratione scribitur ἀπὸ τοῦ θείου’.
Literary criticism, the κρίσις ποιημάτων of Dionysius Thrax,[381] also played a part. The discussions in Macrobius represent an advanced stage of the sort of thing which was begun in the schools. Servius[382] discusses whether Vergil wrote ‘Scopulo infixit’ or ‘Scopulo inflixit’, and in Aulus Gellius we have questions raised as to Vergil’s use of tris and tres, and Cicero’s use of peccatu and peccato, fretu and freto.[383] Again, Servius considers Probus’s doubts as to Vergil’s invocation to Jove as ‘hominum rerumque aeterna potestas’.[384] But, on the whole, such a critical attitude is rare. The commentator, and therefore the grammarian, is chiefly concerned with a mass of rather simple and diffuse exposition. The references are mainly to Lucretius, Horace, Pliny, Terence, Hesiod, and, most of all, to Homer. Grammatical notes, especially figures of speech, and geographical references are frequent and ample. Historical allusions, on the other hand, are rather slight. The critical faculty, then, was not very much alive. Indeed, one would hardly expect it to be from the general tone of the age, and from Servius’s own statement of the teacher’s duty. ‘In exponendis auctoribus haec consideranda sunt: poetae vita, titulus operis, qualitas carminis, scribentis intentio, numerus librorum, ordo librorum, explanatio.’[385] The grammarian thus moves on a fairly low plane. To him, ‘intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari, et Augustum laudare a parentibus’. The higher thought, the fundamental inspiration of the poem, ‘tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem’, is omitted altogether.
Of the text-books used, by far the most famous[386] was that of Donatus, who taught Jerome about the middle of the fourth century.[387] He was the model of succeeding writers and his name became a synonym for grammar. His work consisted of (1) an ars minor for the elementary school, containing the parts of speech; (2) an ars maior, divided into three parts (a) ‘de voce, de littera, de syllaba, de pedibus, de tonis, de posituris’ (punctuation); (b) another treatment of the parts of speech; (c) ‘de barbarismo, de solecismo, de ceteris vitiis, de metaplasmo (grammatical irregularity), de schematibus (figures of speech), de tropis’.[388] We hear of a ‘Donatus provincialis’[389] which was used in Gaul, and it may well be that Jerome’s influence in the provinces served to spread the popularity of Donatus, especially when supported by the Roman tradition, though his work must have obtained a footing in the schools even on its own merits.
Agroecius (fifth century), whose ‘disciplina’ is praised by Sidonius,[390] wrote a book on orthography,[391] which was intended to supplement a work on the same subject by Flavius Caper. And we hear of Dositheus’s Chrestomathia or collection of passages from literature, intended for Greek students and written in both languages,[392] as a common text-book of the later Empire. Jerome mentions Sinnius Capito as an authority on antiquities who was still read in his day,[393] and therefore, considering the universality of the rhetorical tradition, probably used in the schools of Gaul. Some of his fragments may be taken as typical of the scope and character of the grammarian’s teaching. ‘Docet (Sin. Capit.) “pluria” Latinum esse, “plura” barbarum. Pluria sive plura absolutum esse et simplex, non comparativum.’[394] A solecism is defined as ‘impar atque inconveniens compositura partium orationis’. He does not neglect derivation: ‘pacem a pactione condicionum putat dictam Sinnius Capito’,[395] and in his philology a place is given to phonetics. ‘De syllabis, “f” praeponitur liquidis, nulla alia de semivocalibus; nam praeponitur liquidis duabus sola “f”; praeponitur “l” litterae, si dicas Flavius ... est libellus de syllabis, legite illum ... Sinni est liber Capitonis.’[396]
Grammar, in the narrow sense, was naturally part of the grammarian’s work. ‘Nec coniunctionem grammatici fere dicunt esse disiunctivam, ut “nec legit nec scribit”, cum si diligentius inspiciatur, ut fecit Sinnius Capito, intelligi possit eam positam esse ab antiquis pro non ut et in XII est....’[397] His remarks on the verse of Lucilius,[398] ‘nequam aurum est’, &c., are an example of the ordinary exposition so plentifully illustrated in Servius, handed down from one generation of grammatici to another. His opinion is quoted also on historical questions: ‘Sardi venales (alius alio nequ)ior. Sinnius Capito ait Ti. Gracchum consulem, collegam P. Valeri Faltonis, Sardiniam Corsicamque subegisse, nec praedae quicquam aliud quam mancipia captum....’[399] Constitutional history interests him: ‘Tertia haec est interrogandi species, ut Sinnio Capitoni videtur, pertinens ad officium et consuetudinem senatoriam; quando enim aliquis sententiam loco suo iam dixerat, et alius postea interrogatus quaedam videbatur ita locutus....’[400]
Nor did he omit antiquarian tradition: ‘Sexagenarios (de ponte olim deiciebant): exploratissimum illud est causae quo tempore primum per pontem coeperunt comitiis suffragium ferre, iuniores conclamaverunt ut de ponte deicerentur sexagenarii qui iam nullo publico munere fungerentur ...’,[401] and he is invoked as an authority on traditional law: ‘Sinnius Capito ait cum civis necaretur, institutum fuisse ut Semoniae res sacra fieret vervece bidente....’[402] Such were the shapers of the material taught in the schools. They epitomized the learning Varro had left, and boiled down the Vergilian commentaries of Servius, Macrobius, and Fulgentius. And if we do not know their number and their works too precisely, we may be fairly sure of the trend of their teaching. We may therefore leave them, adding just a word about dictionaries. M. Verrius Flaccus, the head of the court library under Augustus, had written a work De Verborum Significatu in alphabetical order. Each letter took up several volumes. And in the middle of the second century, Pompeius Festus made an extract of this in twenty volumes, of which only a small part has been preserved, the original being wholly lost.[403] Verrius’s work was a standard one, as is shown by the frequent references to it in the grammarians.[404] It was frequently amplified and revised. ‘Scribonius Aphrodisius’, Suetonius tells us,[405] ‘was a teacher and a contemporary of Verrius, whose books on orthography he edited, criticizing his scholarship and his character.’ But it remained the foundation, and modifications of it must have been used by the teachers of the Gallic schools.
Two of the subjects over which the grammarian paused in his exposition may be noticed. Blümner remarks[406] that geography was not a school subject, and Bernhardy draws attention to the traditional weakness of the Romans in it.[407] Yet considerable and increasing attention must have been given to it with the extending operations of the Roman army and the growth of commerce with distant lands. Maps were in use even in early times. Varro[408] mentions a ‘picta Italia’ in the temple of Tellus, and Propertius testifies that he was compelled to learn by heart the countries of the world painted on the map.[409] The elder Pliny[410] mentions Pytheas, the famous Gaul, who lived probably at the time of Alexander the Great, and was a writer on geography, ‘praesertim Geographiae notitia illustris, commendatus ... ab omnibus gentibus’.[411] Aethicus Hister tells us in his Cosmographia of a measurement of the Roman world which was ordered by Julius Caesar and carried out by the ablest men of the day, and there were writers on geography like Poseidonius and Mela.[412] In our period we find the subject being used as part of the imperial policy. ‘Moreover’, says Eumenius, ‘let the young see in the porticoes of the new schools all countries and all seas and whatever of cities or races or tribes the invincible princes either restore or overcome by their valour or bind down by the fear they inspire.’[413] And again, since children learn better by eye than by ear,[414] ‘the situation, the extent and the distances of all places have been marked and the names given, the source and the mouth of every river, the bend of the coast-lines, the curves of the sea where it flows round the land or breaks into it.’[415] In Ausonius we are struck with the accuracy and extent of the author’s geographical knowledge, due, no doubt, to the fact that he had to practise it in his school. He refers directly to maps in the Gratiarum Actio.[416] He wants to put in a compact form all the emperor’s praises, as the geographers do with the earth (qui terrarum orbem unius tabulae ambitu circumscribunt). Such a ‘tabula’ Millin reports at Autun, on the site of the Maeniana, containing the outline of Italy with the boundaries of Gaul and towns like Bononia, Forum Gallorum, Mutina.[417]
Astronomy, in an elementary way, was quite popular among the ‘savants’ of Gaul. Ausonius’s grandfather, Arborius, dabbled in it,[418] and Sidonius mentions it frequently. It was one of the accomplishments of Claudianus Mamertus that he could wield the horoscope with Euphrates and explore the stars with Atlas.[419] When Sidonius describes Lampridius’s superstition in consulting astrologers (for superstition was intimately connected with the few scientific facts of the subject which had been ascertained), he mentions technical terms such as ‘climactericos’, ‘thema’, ‘diastemata zodiaca’, which indicate an organized body of astrological tradition, of which Julianus Vertacus and Fullonius Saturninus were the founders, according to Sidonius (matheseos peritissimos conditores).[420] He writes to his friend Leontius[421] of one Phoebus, the head of whose college can surpass in argument not only musicians, but also masters of geometry, arithmetic, and astrology. For no one knew more accurately than he the astrological significance of stars and planets in their varying positions. These references give us some idea of the extent of astronomical knowledge, which cannot have included much more than elementary facts about the zodiac, the solstices, the equinoxes, and the revolution of the planets. The more strictly astrological developments were, no doubt, confined to such as cared to make a hobby of them, but some knowledge of the stars was imparted in the schoolroom and considered necessary to the pupil for the understanding of poetry,[422] as it was for practical purposes, by no less an authority than Quintilian. For time was largely computed by direct reference to the sun and the stars.
From the grammarian the boy passed into the hands of the rhetor and studied ‘Rhetoric’. We must be careful in our interpretation of this term. Just as ‘Grammatikê’ covered a large number of subjects, so ‘Rhetorikê’ was not confined to the theory of speaking. ‘On apprenait des rhéteurs l’art de bien parler et de bien écrire, non pas seulement sur la littérature ou la poésie, mais aussi sur l’histoire, la morale, la science même.’[423] The characteristic thing about the rhetor’s school was discussion and declamation, and the end in view was oratory or oratorical composition; the characteristic thing about the grammarian’s school was exposition and interpretation, and the immediate end in view was encyclopedic knowledge. But the subjects treated in either case were very much the same; only, the emphasis was shifted. The grammarian used his knowledge to expand the text, the rhetor his imagination. The grammarian’s method was prosaic, the rhetor strove to be poetic.[424]
The rhetor chose some subject from imagination or from literature (from the books which the grammarian had been reading with his class) for his pupils to exercise their ingenuity upon. Three stages may be distinguished[425] in the schools of the later Empire. First, the Vergilian stage (locus Vergilianus), at which the students paraphrased some speech in the Aeneid. The point was to portray as closely as possible the emotions of the original speaker. ‘Proponebatur mihi negotium animae meae’ (says Augustine) ‘ut dicerem verba Iunonis irascentis et dolentis quod non posset Italia Teucrorum avertere regem.’[426] Next there came the Dictiones Ethicae—soliloquies which persons in history or mythology would have made on certain occasions: e.g. Juno’s words when she saw Antaeus matched with Hercules, or Thetis before the body of Achilles. Ennodius gives several examples of this type: ‘Verba Didonis cum abeuntem videret Aeneam,[427] Verba Menelai cum Troiam videret inustam,’[428] and so forth. Thirdly, there were the Controversiae, nearer to the oratory of public life, on some more general subject, e.g. against an ambassador who betrays his country, against one who refuses to support an aged father, against a tyrant who has honoured a parricide with a statue, ‘in eum qui in lupanari statuam Minervae locavit.’[429]
The influence of Vergil did not decline with the entry into the rhetor’s school. The rhetors of Ausonius’s day could hardly write a page without a Vergilian reminiscence. And Servius[430] tells us of the rhetors Titianus and Calvus that they chose all their subjects from Vergil, adapting them for rhetorical exercises. They gave as examples of the controversia the speeches of Venus and Juno in Aeneid x. 17 and x. 63. When Venus says to Juno: ‘A cause of peril hast thou been to these whom Fate has granted the land of Italy,’ she is using the ‘status absolutivus’. Juno, in her reply, uses the ‘status relativus’.
This passage gives a single instance of that intricate system of technical terminology which the study of rhetoric had elaborated. But in our period there is no writer who explains that system in any way. It had become traditional, covering a large space of time; it had become almost universal, covering a large part of the Roman Empire. The text-books we hear of belong to a previous time: Cicero’s Rhetorica, the anonymous Rhetoricorum ad Herennium libri quattuor, and Quintilian. The work of C. Chirius Fortunatianus,[431] it is true, dates from the fifth century, and that of Sulpicius Victor[432] from the fourth. But Fortunatianus drew mainly from Quintilian and Cicero, and Sulpicius Victor, in the fragments of his book that survive, professes his dependence on the traditional statement of the subject. ‘I have set in order’, he says, ‘the general rhetorical principles that have come down to us, and have been taught me by my masters. Yet I have reserved the right to pass over points as I thought fit, adhering in the main to the traditional substance and order, and inserting from other authors a number of points which I considered necessary.’[433] In fact, all the fourth- and fifth-century writers on rhetoric (in that age of summaries) are merely compilers or epitomizers. Solid and persistent is the body of tradition which runs through the centuries. The precepts and examples[434] which we find in Seneca, the rhetorician, are almost identical with those of Ennodius at the end of the fifth century; and Quintilian is found again in Hilary of Poitiers.
In these circumstances it need not distress us that there is no contemporary account of the activities of the rhetor’s school. We do not even possess the title of a declamation at Bordeaux, and the very silence is significant: the rhetorical system was too widespread and too well known to need special mention or explanation. Not only the Latin rhetoricians were bound together by this common tradition: the Greek of the East shared in it as well. Libanius is on familiar terms with Symmachus,[435] who loved pagan oratory next to pagan religion, and mentions the books of Favorinus who was a native of Arles, and lived in the time of Hadrian.[436] One of the Theodori to whom Libanius wrote, was, according to Ammianus, a Gaul,[437] and so was Rufinus, the ‘Praefectus praetorio’, of whose praises the letters are full. Intercourse between East and West was free and frequent. But the most convincing proof of the unity of the tradition is found in a comparison of the Greek rhetoricians with men like Quintilian or Seneca: there is hardly any difference of importance.[438] But the Rhetores Graeci give us a much more detailed and lively picture of means and methods than any other body of evidence.
In imparting his facts the grammarian had to work up to that educational consummation represented by the rhetorical school. ‘Ratio dicendi’ is quite distinctly laid down by Quintilian as one of his duties.[439] In giving his exercises, therefore, he would endeavour to give such information on technical and traditional points as would prepare the pupil for his course of study in the senior school. Sometimes the pupil went for further preparation to a special master.[440] Sometimes a whole course—the famous ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία—in which special stress was laid on music and geometry[441]—was put in between the grammarian’s and the rhetor’s schools. How far these practices were customary in Gaul we have no means of ascertaining; but it is certain that there must have been exercises preparatory to the rhetorical training, and it is these which are recorded by the Greek rhetoricians, and which give us a unique insight into the methods of that training. Προγυμνάσματα they are called by the rhetors, and defined by one of them as ἂ πρὸ τῆς ὑποθέσεως (i.e. before declaiming from a given subject) ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι εἰδέναι τε καὶ ἐπιεικῶς ἐγγυμνάζεσθαι.[442]
Aphthonius was a sophist of Antioch, a pupil of the great Libanius, and flourished during the second half of the fourth century. He is mentioned by Libanius[443] as a teacher of boys. Of his many works we possess only the Progymnasmata and the Fables. Closely associated with his name are those of Theon and Hermogenes. Hoppichler has demonstrated[444] how similar their works are. Theon is clearly the oldest,[445] and Aphthonius is younger than Hermogenes.[446] From a scholiast who says that after Aphthonius had published his work, that of Hermogenes came to be looked on as ἀσαφῆ πως καὶ δύσληπτα, it is equally clear that Aphthonius was the most recent of these writers. That he was also the best and most enduring is shown by the many commentaries and scholia on his work (which is often verbally quoted by later rhetoricians like Nicolaus), and by the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries his book was still used in schools and universities. Indeed, the form of school exercise which he suggests persists up to the present day.[447]
Aphthonius, then, may be taken as the best representative of the rhetorical school at Antioch.
His first chapter[448] deals with fables. They are widely and frequently used by teachers to point a lesson (ἐκ παραινέσεως), e.g. the story of the ants and the cicadas. He proceeds to expound the treatment of the subject, and deals first with narration (διήγημα), of which there are three kinds: (1) poetic (δραματικόν), which has to do with fictitious subjects; (2) historic, which has to do with the past; and (3) civil, dealing with controversial cases. In every narration, again, there are six elements: agent, act, time, place, manner, cause; and the four virtues of narration are: clearness, brevity, probability (πιθανότης), and purity of language (ἑλληνισμός). The example given, telling why the rose is red, has at least the virtues of brevity and clearness. It may be noticed that Quintilian assigns narrationes poeticas to the grammarian and narrationes historicas to the rhetor.[449]
Of the collection of fables made by Aphthonius some were apparently written by himself. These are rather less pointed than those of Aesop, and more directly applied to school conditions. Such is the story of the goose and the swan.
‘A rich man kept a goose and a swan, but not for the same purpose: for the former he kept for his table, and the latter for the sake of its singing. When the time came for the goose to be killed (which was his proper end), the man, not being able to distinguish the one from the other in the darkness of night, took the swan instead of the goose: but by singing the swan showed his nature, whereupon by the sweetness of his song he escaped death.’
The general moral is that music provides respite from death, and the particular application, that boys should love eloquence. Similarly, in the story of the provident ant it is pointed out that laziness in youth means distress in old age (οὕτως νεότης πονεῖν οὐκ ἐθέλονσα, παρὰ τὸ γῆρας κακοπραγεῖ).
Some very familiar fables are included in Aphthonius’s collection: the crow and the cheese, the ass and the lion’s skin, the sick lion, &c. These were taken over from Aesop and are found, polished and versified, in Avienus.
Aphthonius next defines the Chreia as a pointed saying, applied to some person or thing. It is so called because it is ‘useful’ for moral and intellectual lessons. There are three general classes: (1) the Word-Chreia, found only in speech; (2) the Act-Chreia (e.g. Pythagoras, on being asked how long a man’s life was, answered by appearing for a short time and then disappearing. A scholiast adds the example of Tarquin and the poppies); (3) the Mixed Chreia. The divisions of every Chreia are: (1) praise, (2) paraphrase, (3) cause, (4) the contrary (i.e. the pupil states what would happen if the opposite were true), (5) simile (the same sort of thing in other spheres), (6) example (instances of the same thing in recorded history—generally in the poets), (7) testimony of the ancients (appeal to similar teaching in older writers like Hesiod), (8) short epilogue (a summary of the argument). Then follows an example of the Word-Chreia, illustrating all the divisions. The saying of Isocrates that the roots of education are bitter, but its fruits sweet, is worked up into a little essay. The mediaeval scholiasts go copiously into all the minor points raised by the various Chreiae, and give biblical examples from Genesis and Ecclesiastes in which Juvenal, Hesiod, and Menander curiously intermingle.
Next comes Sententia (γνώμη), an aphoristic saying of a hortatory or enunciatory kind. Unlike the Chreia, it is found only in speech. Examples are:
and
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:
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: