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]
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]