Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire

by T. J. Haarhoff

Two of the subjects over which the grammarian paused in his exposition may be noticed. Blümner remarks[406] that geography was not a school subject, and Bernhardy draws attention to the traditional weakness of the Romans in it.[407] Yet considerable and increasing attention must have been given to it with the extending operations of the Roman army and the growth of commerce with distant lands. Maps were in use even in early times. Varro[408] mentions a ‘picta Italia’ in the temple of Tellus, and Propertius testifies that he was compelled to learn by heart the countries of the world painted on the map.[409] The elder Pliny[410] mentions Pytheas, the famous Gaul, who lived probably at the time of Alexander the Great, and was a writer on geography, ‘praesertim Geographiae notitia illustris, commendatus ... ab omnibus gentibus’.[411] Aethicus Hister tells us in his Cosmographia of a measurement of the Roman world which was ordered by Julius Caesar and carried out by the ablest men of the day, and there were writers on geography like Poseidonius and Mela.[412] In our period we find the subject being used as part of the imperial policy. ‘Moreover’, says Eumenius, ‘let the young see in the porticoes of the new schools all countries and all seas and whatever of cities or races or tribes the invincible princes either restore or overcome by their valour or bind down by the fear they inspire.’[413] And again, since children learn better by eye than by ear,[414] ‘the situation, the extent and the distances of all places have been marked and the names given, the source and the mouth of every river, the bend of the coast-lines, the curves of the sea where it flows round the land or breaks into it.’[415] In Ausonius we are struck with the accuracy and extent of the author’s geographical knowledge, due, no doubt, to the fact that he had to practise it in his school. He refers directly to maps in the Gratiarum Actio.[416] He wants to put in a compact form all the emperor’s praises, as the geographers do with the earth (qui terrarum orbem unius tabulae ambitu circumscribunt). Such a ‘tabula’ Millin reports at Autun, on the site of the Maeniana, containing the outline of Italy with the boundaries of Gaul and towns like Bononia, Forum Gallorum, Mutina.[417]

Astronomy, in an elementary way, was quite popular among the ‘savants’ of Gaul. Ausonius’s grandfather, Arborius, dabbled in it,[418] and Sidonius mentions it frequently. It was one of the accomplishments of Claudianus Mamertus that he could wield the horoscope with Euphrates and explore the stars with Atlas.[419] When Sidonius describes Lampridius’s superstition in consulting astrologers (for superstition was intimately connected with the few scientific facts of the subject which had been ascertained), he mentions technical terms such as ‘climactericos’, ‘thema’, ‘diastemata zodiaca’, which indicate an organized body of astrological tradition, of which Julianus Vertacus and Fullonius Saturninus were the founders, according to Sidonius (matheseos peritissimos conditores).[420] He writes to his friend Leontius[421] of one Phoebus, the head of whose college can surpass in argument not only musicians, but also masters of geometry, arithmetic, and astrology. For no one knew more accurately than he the astrological significance of stars and planets in their varying positions. These references give us some idea of the extent of astronomical knowledge, which cannot have included much more than elementary facts about the zodiac, the solstices, the equinoxes, and the revolution of the planets. The more strictly astrological developments were, no doubt, confined to such as cared to make a hobby of them, but some knowledge of the stars was imparted in the schoolroom and considered necessary to the pupil for the understanding of poetry,[422] as it was for practical purposes, by no less an authority than Quintilian. For time was largely computed by direct reference to the sun and the stars.

(ii) The Substance and Methods of Secondary Education

From the grammarian the boy passed into the hands of the rhetor and studied ‘Rhetoric’. We must be careful in our interpretation of this term. Just as ‘Grammatikê’ covered a large number of subjects, so ‘Rhetorikê’ was not confined to the theory of speaking. ‘On apprenait des rhéteurs l’art de bien parler et de bien écrire, non pas seulement sur la littérature ou la poésie, mais aussi sur l’histoire, la morale, la science même.’[423] The characteristic thing about the rhetor’s school was discussion and declamation, and the end in view was oratory or oratorical composition; the characteristic thing about the grammarian’s school was exposition and interpretation, and the immediate end in view was encyclopedic knowledge. But the subjects treated in either case were very much the same; only, the emphasis was shifted. The grammarian used his knowledge to expand the text, the rhetor his imagination. The grammarian’s method was prosaic, the rhetor strove to be poetic.[424]

The rhetor chose some subject from imagination or from literature (from the books which the grammarian had been reading with his class) for his pupils to exercise their ingenuity upon. Three stages may be distinguished[425] in the schools of the later Empire. First, the Vergilian stage (locus Vergilianus), at which the students paraphrased some speech in the Aeneid. The point was to portray as closely as possible the emotions of the original speaker. ‘Proponebatur mihi negotium animae meae’ (says Augustine) ‘ut dicerem verba Iunonis irascentis et dolentis quod non posset Italia Teucrorum avertere regem.’[426] Next there came the Dictiones Ethicae—soliloquies which persons in history or mythology would have made on certain occasions: e.g. Juno’s words when she saw Antaeus matched with Hercules, or Thetis before the body of Achilles. Ennodius gives several examples of this type: ‘Verba Didonis cum abeuntem videret Aeneam,[427] Verba Menelai cum Troiam videret inustam,’[428] and so forth. Thirdly, there were the Controversiae, nearer to the oratory of public life, on some more general subject, e.g. against an ambassador who betrays his country, against one who refuses to support an aged father, against a tyrant who has honoured a parricide with a statue, ‘in eum qui in lupanari statuam Minervae locavit.’[429]

The influence of Vergil did not decline with the entry into the rhetor’s school. The rhetors of Ausonius’s day could hardly write a page without a Vergilian reminiscence. And Servius[430] tells us of the rhetors Titianus and Calvus that they chose all their subjects from Vergil, adapting them for rhetorical exercises. They gave as examples of the controversia the speeches of Venus and Juno in Aeneid x. 17 and x. 63. When Venus says to Juno: ‘A cause of peril hast thou been to these whom Fate has granted the land of Italy,’ she is using the ‘status absolutivus’. Juno, in her reply, uses the ‘status relativus’.

This passage gives a single instance of that intricate system of technical terminology which the study of rhetoric had elaborated. But in our period there is no writer who explains that system in any way. It had become traditional, covering a large space of time; it had become almost universal, covering a large part of the Roman Empire. The text-books we hear of belong to a previous time: Cicero’s Rhetorica, the anonymous Rhetoricorum ad Herennium libri quattuor, and Quintilian. The work of C. Chirius Fortunatianus,[431] it is true, dates from the fifth century, and that of Sulpicius Victor[432] from the fourth. But Fortunatianus drew mainly from Quintilian and Cicero, and Sulpicius Victor, in the fragments of his book that survive, professes his dependence on the traditional statement of the subject. ‘I have set in order’, he says, ‘the general rhetorical principles that have come down to us, and have been taught me by my masters. Yet I have reserved the right to pass over points as I thought fit, adhering in the main to the traditional substance and order, and inserting from other authors a number of points which I considered necessary.’[433] In fact, all the fourth- and fifth-century writers on rhetoric (in that age of summaries) are merely compilers or epitomizers. Solid and persistent is the body of tradition which runs through the centuries. The precepts and examples[434] which we find in Seneca, the rhetorician, are almost identical with those of Ennodius at the end of the fifth century; and Quintilian is found again in Hilary of Poitiers.

In these circumstances it need not distress us that there is no contemporary account of the activities of the rhetor’s school. We do not even possess the title of a declamation at Bordeaux, and the very silence is significant: the rhetorical system was too widespread and too well known to need special mention or explanation. Not only the Latin rhetoricians were bound together by this common tradition: the Greek of the East shared in it as well. Libanius is on familiar terms with Symmachus,[435] who loved pagan oratory next to pagan religion, and mentions the books of Favorinus who was a native of Arles, and lived in the time of Hadrian.[436] One of the Theodori to whom Libanius wrote, was, according to Ammianus, a Gaul,[437] and so was Rufinus, the ‘Praefectus praetorio’, of whose praises the letters are full. Intercourse between East and West was free and frequent. But the most convincing proof of the unity of the tradition is found in a comparison of the Greek rhetoricians with men like Quintilian or Seneca: there is hardly any difference of importance.[438] But the Rhetores Graeci give us a much more detailed and lively picture of means and methods than any other body of evidence.

In imparting his facts the grammarian had to work up to that educational consummation represented by the rhetorical school. ‘Ratio dicendi’ is quite distinctly laid down by Quintilian as one of his duties.[439] In giving his exercises, therefore, he would endeavour to give such information on technical and traditional points as would prepare the pupil for his course of study in the senior school. Sometimes the pupil went for further preparation to a special master.[440] Sometimes a whole course—the famous ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία—in which special stress was laid on music and geometry[441]—was put in between the grammarian’s and the rhetor’s schools. How far these practices were customary in Gaul we have no means of ascertaining; but it is certain that there must have been exercises preparatory to the rhetorical training, and it is these which are recorded by the Greek rhetoricians, and which give us a unique insight into the methods of that training. Προγυμνάσματα they are called by the rhetors, and defined by one of them as ἂ πρὸ τῆς ὑποθέσεως (i.e. before declaiming from a given subject) ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι εἰδέναι τε καὶ ἐπιεικῶς ἐγγυμνάζεσθαι.[442]