grammatici nomen divitiasque dedit.[701]
On the other hand the less distinguished seem to have had a disproportionately small salary. The frequent application of the epithet ‘sterilis’ or ‘exilis’ to the chair of the grammarian is a feature of Ausonius’s picture of them.
Besides the imperial and the municipal support there were the gifts from the emperor,[702] and the possibility of presents from the family of the pupils—a practice which is still very much in evidence in many country centres. Finally, there were the fees from the pupils, part of which seems to have been paid directly to the teacher.
The class fee (merces, minerval) seems to have been stipulated for by the rhetors individually. Axius asks Merula in Varro’s De Re Rustica,[703] ‘to be his master in the shepherd’s art’, and the reply is, imitating the practice of the rhetors, ‘Yes, as soon as you promise to pay my fee’ (minerval). Juvenal refers to the same practice:
Quantum vis stipulare, et protinus accipe quod do
ut toties illum pater audiat.[704]
Bulaeus says that the amount of the fee was sometimes left to the generosity of the parents.[705] He can hardly be referring to a common practice. The fourth century was far too business-like for this sort of thing. Most of the teachers who were in a position to do so probably demanded a large fee, like Exsuperius.[706] How far this bargaining went on after the law of Gratian we cannot tell: but the fact that it went on after Vespasian had fixed the salaries shows that it was not necessarily stopped in 376. Much more liberal was the East. Lectures at Antioch were open to all, even to pupils of other rhetors:[707] and sometimes invitations to attend were sent round by the servant of the lecturer.[708]
As to the number of the professors appointed little is known. Probably from what Ausonius says there were ten at Bordeaux, six ‘grammatici’ and four ‘rhetores’—the highest number, Jullian thinks, that Bordeaux ever reached. At Constantinople Theodosius appointed in 425 to his special auditorium[709] three rhetors and ten grammarians for Latin, five rhetors and ten grammarians for Greek, one professor of philosophy, and two for law. But this is Eastern exuberance. Trèves, the imperial favourite, had only two or three rhetoricians, one Latin grammarian, and one Greek grammarian—a post which could not always be filled.[710]
Denk, in remarking that the number of teachers was thus definitely fixed, adds that there is no trace of a principal who gave direction to the work of the students.[711] Now it is true that there was no definite organization, but it seems very probable that the emperors, when they interested themselves in a school and appointed teachers, would have some one at the head of the establishment to facilitate communication between the imperial offices and the school. Moreover, it is a natural and traditional thing the world over for a group of men more or less permanently banded together to have a chief. The Druids had their leader,[712] and among the Persian Magi there was an archimagus. Besides, we have at least one ‘trace’ which Denk does not notice. Eumenius, as head of the Maeniana, was called moderator, which looks like an official title. And in the Christian schools it was a common thing to have a head (primicerius), as will be shown later.
Jullian[713] notices as a praiseworthy feature of the fourth-century educational system that the master passed on with his pupils as they advanced from stage to stage. Our author reads into his idealized fourth century a method which has long been practised by the Jesuits. But perhaps the wish is father to the thought. For it is clear that this could not, in the majority of cases, apply to the elementary master, whose intellectual limitations would effectually prevent him from taking the higher classes. Ausonius tells us as much.[714] Such teachers were ‘humili loco ac merito’. He mentions Romulus and Corinthius[715] as the Greek grammarians who taught him ‘primis in annis’, and they do not appear again in the list of his masters. When quite young he was put under his uncle Arborius (qui me lactantem, puerum iuvenemque virumque | artibus ornasti),[716] who may have been a kind of general tutor to him at that time. When he was about ten years old he went to Toulouse (c. A.D. 320) and was taught for eight years in the school of Arborius, who in 328 was appointed tutor to one of the sons of Constantine at Constantinople,[717] where he died. Ausonius then returned to Bordeaux where he seems to have continued his studies in the rhetorical school, studying under Minervius,[718] and Luciolus,[719] who was once his fellow student, and probably under Alcimus[720] and Delphidius,[721] while Staphylius took the place of Arborius[722] as general tutor: