2. History
If a consideration of the state of moral education is necessary to show how far teaching had an ethical basis, we may find in an inquiry into the position and purpose of history in the schools an indication of the political basis of education. We have seen that in the pagan schools education as a whole was directed by, and aimed at the fulfilment of, the imperial policy. In considering the sort of value attached to historical study, we may see in greater detail how far the scientific attitude of mind was entertained, and how far it was abused for the sake of politics. For there is no subject which illustrates more clearly these two possibilities.
The general outlook of history in our period was not very encouraging. There were no historians except Ammianus. It was a time when a writer like Suetonius was taken as a model. There were, however, numerous compilations. Eutropius, for example, wrote an abbreviated history of Rome towards the close of the fourth century. Chronography was a science started by Sextus Julius Africanus early in the third century, and his example was widely followed. Eusebius, and his translator and expander Jerome, carried on the tradition. Prosper of Aquitaine took up the record where Eusebius had left off, and Prosper’s work was continued by Idatius. Sulpicius Severus illustrated the same tendency, while Rufinus, the adversary of Jerome, did important work in translating and continuing the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius. Dry and formless as these chronographies were, they had the merit of giving a truer perspective of history by introducing the cold lucidity of dates.
Corresponding to this activity there had appeared on the Christian side the records of the Acta Martyrum. Many of these Acta were of a legendary character, and though they were useful for their local colour, they are certainly less valuable from a scientific point of view than the bare chronicles.
This was the general position of history. Its position in the Gallic schools was not more satisfactory. Throughout the ancient educational tradition, from the ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, of Posidonius to the ‘seven liberal arts’, there had been no place for the study of history. From Dionysius Thrax to Quintilian it is consistently treated as a side issue.[1185] Blümner says that when Quintilian assigned ‘historias exponere’ as one of the tasks of the grammarian, it only meant that the teacher commented on such historical facts as turned up in the course of his reading, since history was not a school-subject.[1186] Yet this is not always true.[1187] For from what Ausonius says in the Protrepticon, it appears that at Bordeaux, at any rate, history determined the course of the reading and not vice versa, and that it was a school-subject to this extent that definite books were included in the course for its sake. For Ausonius prescribes for his grandson certain periods of Roman history: the conspiracy of Catiline, the twelve years after the events connected with Lepidus and Catulus, the Sertorian war.[1188] Among the encyclopaedic attainments of Staphylius, the Bordeaux teacher, is a knowledge of Livy and Herodotus.[1189] In the library of Ausonius there are
ὀκτὼ Θουκυδίδου, ἐννέα Ἡροδότου,
and in his invitations to Paulinus he advises him to leave behind
Historiam, mimos, carmina....[1190]
We must, however, be careful how we interpret ‘historia’. It was an elastic term. In the Technopaegnion, for example, Ausonius has a piece ‘de historiis’,[1191] but the subject-matter is almost entirely in the shadowy realm of mythology—the ‘history’ of Narcissus, Juno, and Philomela; and when the grammarians Crispus and Urbicus are said to be ‘callentes mython plasmata et historiam’, we feel that the juxtaposition of the two subjects is significant. ‘History’, Quintilian had said, ‘is akin to the poets, a sort of prose poetry.’[1192] The interest in the actual facts of history and their meaning is small. A teacher like Ausonius takes very little notice of contemporary events. He refers vaguely to ‘tempora tyrannica’,[1193] and to the residence of Constantine’s brothers at Toulouse.[1194] But of all those contemporary events which we should have expected a man in Ausonius’s position to mention, the declaration as emperor in Gaul of the German Magnentius (350), the campaigns of Julian against the invading Franks (357-8), the crossing of Maximus to Gaul after having been declared emperor in Britain (383), and the affair of Arbogast and Eugenius (392)—these and many other contemporary events of importance do not appear in the pages of Ausonius.
If mythology was a danger for history on the one side, there was antiquity on the other. In the former the tendency was to wander away from facts altogether, in the latter there was a temptation to concentrate on bare facts too much. The historical facts which Sidonius sometimes enumerates sound very much like an inventory.[1195] Staphylius, who is noted for his knowledge of history, was steeped in the six hundred volumes of Varro,[1196] and the antiquarian Victorius dug deep into the musty documents of antiquity, spending on unexplored fields a keen intellect and a tenacious memory.[1197] Ausonius remarks that this meticulous encyclopaedism had made Staphylius neglect Cicero and Vergil,
et quidquid Latia conditur historia.[1198]
Victorius had the scientific spirit, but no use can be made of it for history, which, to Ausonius, means something much nearer to the brilliance of the rhetor than to the patient study of a Victorius or a Staphylius, whom he regards with an airy smile of contempt. The ‘prompta studia’ of the ordinary teacher who glibly talked the traditional stuff are separated with an air of respectability from the work of such cranks as indulge in dusty research.[1199] Rocafort rightly suspects that these students ‘irrisioni, sicut Ausonio, ita cunctis Burdigalensibus fuisse’.[1200] A practical sign of this is the low position which Victorius held: he was not even a grammarian but merely an assistant (subdoctor sive proscholus),[1201] poorly paid, ‘exili nostrae fucatus honore cathedrae’. The subsidiary position of history is indicated by Augustine when he says that it was an accessory to ‘Grammar’, and its mythological and artificial character is criticized in the remark that it was more worked at by grammarians than actual historians.[1202]
It is quite clear that history was studied in a very haphazard way. Even a teacher of sufficient prominence to deliver several[1203] panegyrics before the emperor, such as the Gallic author of the speech to Constantius, talks in a very vague way about some of the best-known statements of Herodotus. ‘Xerxes, ut audio, Persarum rex potissimus, pedicas iecit aureas in profundum....’ Unfamiliarity with Greek history is implied both on the part of the speaker and on the part of the audience. When Ausonius tells us that he wrote a Roman History for his son (ignota aeternae ne sint tibi tempora Romae[1204]), we get the impression that he did it largely because his name appeared in the list of consuls, and to urge his son to follow his footsteps.
Scire cupis qui sim? titulum qui quartus ab uno est
quaere: leges nomen consulis Ausonii.
And,
Exemplum iam patris habes, ut protinus et te
adgreget Ausoniis purpura consulibus;[1205]
and again, to Proculus:
Mille annos centumque et bis fluxisse novenos
consulis Ausonii nomen ad usque leges.[1206]
It is a pity that the main part of the work is lost, but probably its author merely followed the tendency of the age to epitomize, as he did in the summary of Suetonius’s lives of the Caesars. The study of history, in fact, was merely ancillary: ‘ut aliquid nitoris et copiae orationi afferrent (sc. historiae studia) et aliquid materiae carmini.’[1207]
The models followed by the historians are chosen chiefly for their literary brilliance. Sallust is the most famous, and he plays a large part in Ausonius’s syllabus. Orosius was greatly influenced by Tacitus, and Arnobius by Lucretius.
The truth is that the ancients always regarded history more as an art than as a science. The books of Herodotus came to be called by the names of the Muses, Sallust and Tacitus strove predominantly after stylistic effectiveness, and even Thucydides gave oratorical technique a much more important place than would now be accorded to it. Rhetoric had cast her spell over the historians as over all the other intellectuals. Polybius alone resisted, and suffered, in consequence, at the hands of the critics. ‘The only ancient historian’, Norden writes of him,[1208] ‘who opposed with all his might the influence of rhetoric on the writing of history, and who, therefore, is most closely related to the modern point of view, belongs, according to the judgement of Dionysius of Halicarnassus ... to those dull authors whom nobody can bear to read through.’ So far had rhetoric asserted its sway over history, that Cicero, to whom we look for the sane and balanced conception of rhetorical education, could say that it was permissible for a rhetor to falsify history for the sake of style,[1209] and could describe the function of the historian as essentially rhetorical (unum ... oratorium maxime).[1210] A custom that gave special scope to this view of history was the insertion of imaginary speeches such as we find in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sallust, and Tacitus. And not only speeches, but letters and documents were set down in a fictitious form. Against this practice Quintilian, like Polybius, had warned. The orator’s task, he maintained, was different from that of the historian. ‘Id quoque vitandum, in quo magna pars errat, ne in oratione poetas nobis et historicos, in illis operibus oratores aut declamatores imitandos putemus. Sua cuique proposita lex, suus cuique decor est.’[1211] But the warning was in vain. The historians were still trained in the rhetor’s school, and the rhetor frequently used historical subjects. When Ammianus wrote his history, he stood in the great tradition of Asiatic rhetoric. Thus history continued to wear the fetters of oratory.
As time went on these fetters became more and more galling. Just as the Athenians ceased to produce genuine history when their day of national greatness passed with the failing Empire and the inefficient democracy, leaving their learning and their civilization to be overgrown by the weeds of rhetoric and sophistic, so now the Gauls of the transition choked whatever history there was with an abundant growth of words. When the panegyric becomes fashionable in Gaul, we see how history develops into an instrument of imperial policy. Not merely beauty of form and the following of traditional rules, but the narrower purpose of praising the emperor becomes the goal. The facts of history are loosely and wildly used.[1212] Alexander the Great (with the old argument that he conquered merely ‘imbelles Asiaticos’), Hannibal, Augustus, are great names for these Epigoni to juggle with and to mingle promiscuously with the incense of adulation. Of Caesar it is said: ‘ille Graeculos homines adortus est, tu (Constantine) Subalpinos’.[1213] So far did the travesty of history go.
‘There’, said Eumenius of the Maeniana, ‘let the flower of our youth learn ... to praise the deeds of the mighty emperors—quis enim melior usus eloquentiae?’[1214] The school must teach them the proofs, varying with the different places, that establish the exploits of the prince; and as the news of victory comes hotly in from time to time, the teacher must point out the land concerned on the map—the double river of Persia, the parching fields of Libya, the curving ‘horns’ of the Rhine, the many-flowing mouths of the Nile. All these several exploits must mould the mind of youth to a sense of imperial greatness, while he envisages the Pax Romana throughout the erstwhile troubled world, ‘for now, now at length we may look at the map of the world with joy, seeing in it naught that is foreign’.[1215]
This imperialistic use of history made men afraid to tamper with it, lest indiscretion should mar their fortunes. In the fifth century there was no longer a Domitian to put historians to death, but there was a tradition to bind and intimidate. When Leo, the minister of Euric, advised Sidonius to occupy himself with history during his banishment, the reply was: ‘turpiter falsa, periculose vera dicuntur’.[1216] In this sort of work, says Sidonius, the mention of the good wins scant credit, the mention of the great, unbounded enmity. ‘The writing of history’, he maintains, ‘seems to be the last thing a man of my class ought to undertake, for to begin it means envy, to continue it, trouble, and the end of it is hatred.’ The attitude of mind which made men write to order was spreading: Ausonius is an outstanding example. At the same time the rhetorical tradition in history was persisting. Sidonius wants Leo to undertake a history and the argument for his fitness refers merely to style: ‘nemo te celsius scripserit’.[1217]
The all-pervading imperial atmosphere, therefore, was not encouraging for the historian. We hear of histories begun but never finished. Symmachus tells of one Protadius, a nobleman, who set about writing a domestic history.[1218] Sidonius had been asked by Bishop Prosper to write a history of the war with Attila, and actually set to work on it but gave it up.[1219] It was not only on the tax-payer that the Empire weighed heavily.
It may be, too, that the emperors interfered with the selection of the material for the historical course, such as it was. In the list given by Ausonius (Jung remarks) much stress was laid on the history of insurrections, and this was done by way of an object-lesson to the Gauls ‘quo magis rebellionem audientes detestarentur’.[1220] Whether this was actually the case, or whether the remark is a mere scholastic refinement, we cannot with certainty say. The imperial authorities were quite capable of such an act, but, on the other hand, the evidence is not conclusive. We are inclined to give the emperors the benefit of the doubt.
With the reaction against the superfluities of rhetoric in the Christian schools, there followed important results for history. Christian writers, as we have seen, reinforced and developed, especially in Gaul, the tendency towards chronography. This was part of the reaction against the domination of Form in historical writing, and it proved to be a valuable antidote from the historian’s point of view. But another and a greater service resulted. The Christian reaction, as we saw, affected thought as well as style, and the Christian historians, with their renewed interest in theology and philosophy, began to look for first principles in the series of events. The universality of the Christian religion made them look not only to single nationalities (though the Church fostered nationalism),[1221] but to the whole world. They tried to see all things in relation to their conception of the divine. Thus they tended to produce a philosophy of history, which, though often distorted and biased, set history on a much more markedly philosophic basis than before. As instances we may remember Augustine’s City of God, which was written to justify the fall of Rome, and the universal history of Orosius (who wrote with far less balance than his master Augustine), which attempted to prove that ‘there’s a Divinity that shapes our ends’. Filled with the same note, and poignantly real, are the de Providentia Dei and the ad Uxorem, written in Gaul after the great invasion at the beginning of the fifth century had forced men to reconsider their philosophy of life.
We can hardly claim, however, that the Christian elementary schools were much affected by these contributions of Christianity. History was still very much of a subsidiary subject and its standard was low. Yet its extent was widened by the addition of Bible-history, which often, no doubt, ousted pagan history altogether; but the interest of men like Augustine in secular history, and the use they made of it to reinforce Christianity, would have prevented its disappearance from the more advanced Christian schools. Bible-history had the advantage, moreover, of not having an imperial policy behind it, and the greater simplicity and sincerity of the Christian ideal must have produced something nearer to historic truth (the absence of which Augustine deplores in the pagan schools) than the frills and draperies of rhetoric would generally allow. Bias and misrepresentation, born of the fervour of conversion, were responsible for a great many distortions, and the growing formlessness did much damage to the artistic side of history; but it cannot be denied that there was a greater desire for truth in the eager questions of the early Christian than in the smug complacence of the glib rhetorician.
History, in the hands of a skilful master, may become one of the very finest instruments of education. It has a legitimate use in inspiring patriotism. The deeds of a man’s ancestors become part of his individuality, and may be a source of high and noble action. Similarly, in proportion as a man realizes his national unity with his people, their history may become a motive and a driving force in his life. Now the Roman Empire set before the schoolboys of Africa and Italy and Gaul the events of the Roman republic and the deeds of the emperors. But the area was too wide. The Gallic schoolboy could not feel the value and the force of things so far distant, different from his own conditions, and so slightly connected with them. He could not feel that he was a responsible member of an Empire which could not defend him. Moreover at this time nationality was coming to be more and more clearly realized under the influence of the Church:[1222] each province sought to uphold the specific doctrines of its leaders, and bishops waged fierce controversial warfare for the traditions of their country,[1223] especially in Africa. There is a dim individuality to be seen in Spain,[1224] and Salvian’s attacks on the Empire had an aspect which pointed to the beginning of Gallic nationality. The Roman Empire was beginning to feel the strain of national individuality. In these circumstances, history, being hedged in as we have seen by imperial persons and questions, must have become more and more artificial. The lack of citizenship which was so prevalent at this time increased for lack of an inspiring national or international ideal. And such an ideal might have come partly through a method by which history would have become more vivid and real to the children in the schools.
Another possibility that was missed was that of using history to see the logical and psychological connexion between events. With the narrow conception of the subject that was entertained at the time this was impossible. The only sort of causal chain that the student was induced to see was that, if you did not please the emperor, so much the worse for you. Not only the reason, but also the critical faculty, was thus left undeveloped in this age of adulation and prescription.
In the same way the moral significance of history was overlooked, and here again the cause was restriction. For in order to realize the influence of character on the march of events, a wide, and, if possible, a comparative study of the subject must be undertaken, and the values attached must not depend on a gilded imperial figure, but on ethical truth. Again, it was impossible to judge of the various aims and theories of men in the past age, to form some sort of opinion of the development of political theory, to be interested in truth and progress, as long as rhetoric, the handmaid of a rigid Imperialism, reigned supreme.