Moreover, any special event produced a holiday. At Antioch any festive occasions, funerals,[677] or civil commotions,[678] served to close the schoolrooms. On the occasion of the marriage of Ricimer with the daughter of Anthemius, the schools of Gaul enjoyed a holiday.[679] Apparently the length of the holiday was not controlled by organized rules, and this time it lasted so long that even Sidonius protested.[680] ‘Tandem’, he says, ‘reditum est in publicam serietatem, quae rebus actitandis ianuam campumque patefecit.’

It is interesting to find signs of a common life among the students, the beginnings of a residential university. Aulus Gellius claims the authority of Pythagoras for this mode of life. ‘Here is another point we must not omit: all the students of Pythagoras, as soon as they had been admitted into that “corps” of his, pooled all their possessions, slaves, or money, and so a close and lasting society was formed.’[681] Suetonius tells of one C. Albucius Silus of Novaria (Cisalpine Gaul) who came to Rome and was received into the ‘contubernium’ of Plancus, the orator, i.e. lived under the same roof, became a ‘convictor’ with him.[682] ‘You can enjoy the possession of no good thing’, Seneca says, ‘without some one to share it.’ You will gain more by talking and living with (convictus) people than from set speeches. Cleanthes could never have interpreted the philosophy of Zeno if he had merely attended his lectures. But he lived with him, examined his private life, and watched him to see if he practised what he preached.[683] Similarly, Plato and Aristotle and the rest learned more from the conduct than the words of Socrates, and ‘Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus were made great not by the school of Epicurus, but by living with him (contubernium).’ Gellius gives many examples of this sort of literary fellowship. While master and students dined together, one of the servitors would read some passage from a Greek or Latin author, and if a difficulty arose the master explained. So at the table of Favorinus ‘servus assistens mensae eius legere inceptabat....’ and a discussion was introduced by the philosopher on the word ‘parcus’.[684] Literary criticism was the favourite thing, as when the Bucolics of Vergil and Theocritus were read together at a dinner, and it was noticed that Vergil had left alone passages which contained the peculiar Greek sweetness but could not and should not be translated.[685]

We have no direct data for supposing that this system was followed in Gaul in our period; but the Favorinus mentioned in Gellius came from Arles, and there appear to have been ‘contubernia’ in Massilia.[686] Moreover, the ‘Platonic clubs’ of Sidonius and the general social temper of the Bordeaux professors make it likely that something of the kind was found at the Gallic universities.

As to the payment of teachers, it is clear that before Vespasian it was very unequal. Verrius Flaccus, who was tutor to the children of Augustus, received a salary of 100,000 sesterces (£1,000).[687] Even the infamous Palaemon, to whom parents were forbidden to send their children by Tiberius and Claudius, got as much as 40,000 sesterces. Martial takes a pessimistic view. In his advice to a friend on a career for his son he counsels: Let him avoid grammarians and rhetoricians if he wants to make money:

Artes discere vult pecuniosas?

fac, discat, citharoedus aut choraules.[688]

In Gaul, it appears, teachers were paid by the State before this was the case at Rome; for Strabo remarks in the first century A.D. that he found State-appointed teachers there.[689] But there must have been great lack of organization and equality because State-payment meant, at that time, payment by the municipal town, which could not always provide proper security. Security, indeed, became more and more shaken, and the improvement made by Vespasian when he fixed the teachers’ salaries was a much-needed measure. In the famous decree of 376 Gratian and Valentinian ratified this enactment.[690] Rhetoricians are to receive twenty-four annonae[691] from the treasury, Greek and Latin grammarians, twelve. The chief cities of the provinces are encouraged to elect professors who are to be paid according to the standard fixed by the emperors. Trèves, the imperial favourite, gets something more (uberius aliquid), thirty annonae for a rhetor and twenty for a grammarian.

There can be no doubt that the emperors tried to monopolize education. Julian’s decree[692] that the appointment of all teachers was to be subject to the imperial approval, and the law of Theodosius and Valentinian in the next century forbidding all public schools outside the imperial academy, are illustrations of this tendency. Nevertheless, there must have been a large number of private-school teachers who were not paid by the State. The imperial legislation of the later empire could not have done away entirely with so established and widespread a class of men. They survived, especially in elementary education, and possibly their number exceeded that of the officially State-paid teachers.

The law makes it quite clear that the State-paid school and university teachers[693] were, at one time, dependent on their towns for pay; and the frequent mandates of the emperors to the municipalities not to neglect these salaries show that they were not always prompt in paying. Symmachus, also, complains of the withholding of salaries;[694] and it has been suggested in this connexion that the teachers were unpopular because they were mostly pagans. It is more likely that their unpopularity was due to the fact that their teaching did not touch the mass of the population, who nevertheless had to support them. That the municipal salary stopped when the imperial one came into existence seems unlikely. Denk thinks that the imperial-paid ‘auditoria’ were distinct from the lower municipal-paid schools,[695] but probably the individual cities went on contributing part of the professors’ salaries, even after the law of Gratian.[696] As to the amount received, the impression made by the upper circle of the Bordeaux professors is certainly one of material prosperity. Marcellus of Narbo,[697] Sedatus of Toulouse,[698] and Exsuperius[699] did very well for themselves, and Eumenius considers his salary of £5,000 as nothing extraordinary: ‘multo maiora et prius et postea praemia contulerunt’ (sc. principes).[700] Even of the grammarian Marcellus, Ausonius could say that riches came by teaching:

Mox schola ...