Thus the concurrence of a master and a pupil of Bordeaux gives us an idea of the general scope of primary education. When we try to look a little closer, we find it difficult to get a detailed view. In elementary education especially there is a general reticence, an assumption that the things that existed before continued to exist, and who is ignorant of the order which the Roman tradition prescribes? In this order the school of the litterator or elementary master came first, then the school of the grammaticus, and, finally, that of the rhetor.[352]
Quintilian was the last great Roman writer on pedagogy, and his influence may be traced on pagan and Christian masters alike. He was regarded as the model of school-eloquence. Ausonius addresses the most famous of the Bordeaux professors, Minervius, as
Alter rhetoricae Quintiliane togae;[353]
and he speaks of the distinguished sons of Gaul as having been students under Quintilian’s system of education:
Quos praetextati celebris facundia ludi
contulit ad veteris praeconia Quintiliani.[354]
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:
Et sic scribere non minus valentem
Marcus Quintilianus ut solebat;[357]
and Jerome tells us that Hilary of Poitiers imitated the style and the number of Quintilian’s twelve books.[358]