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:
Et tua nunc suboles morem sectata parentis,
Narbonem ac Romam nobilitat studiis.[1327]
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:
Memoriae A. Vitelli Valeri
hic annorum X in studiis
Romae de(cessit) parentes
Nymphi(us) et Tyche
uni(co) et carissimo fil(io).[1335]
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.