6. Roman Education in Gaul before the Fourth Century A.D.
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]