Again, the inspiration which comes from the feeling of citizenship, the realization of being a living member of a group and helping to further its ends, was crushed out by the mechanical fiscal system of the empire. Men like Claudian and Sidonius might write with an enthusiasm inspired by this feeling, but what chance was there for the anxious curial or the fettered artisan to share this inspiration? For him the round of daily duty was too narrow or too relentless, to allow much room for ideals. ‘Municipal self-government, bereft of its political significance, restricted to the sphere of local interests and ambitions, is apt to degenerate into corrupt and spendthrift practices.’[759] To the curial, as he carried out the commands of the emperor, it must have been difficult to see any inspiring meaning in it all, when Gaul was day by day being more abandoned to the barbaric invasions, while the burden of taxation remained unalleviated. And yet it is where a meaning, an ideal, is most clearly seen, that education has its truest incentive and its most fruitful results.
Denk appeals to the fact that many Roman slaves could read and write, to Cato’s requirements of a household slave, and to Mommsen’s statement that there was much reading and writing among the lower classes. But (as far as the artisans and free labourers are concerned) the reference is to republican times when the guilds were free, and when a fiscal imperial system had not yet enslaved the people and created the frightful inter-class rigidity which culminated, to the detriment of education, in the fourth century. That there were, however, even then, some ‘collegiati’ who attained to higher education is clear from the law of 370.[760] The emperor, in asking the Prefect of Rome for a report of provincial students, makes an exception of those who are serving in the public guilds. But we must remember that these ‘collegiati’ probably belonged to the higher guilds, like that of the ‘navicularii’, in which the higher classes had a share, and were probably picked men. Ritter, in his commentary on the law, suggests that they were young men who had voluntarily joined a ‘corpus’ and were allowed to stay longer than usual because they were doing public work. However this may be, they were certainly the exceptions. The impression derived from the Theodosian Code is that the ‘collegiati’ who had the opportunity of higher education were very much the fortunate few.
As for the slaves, it is true that there were some of them in the fourth century who could read and write like Ausonius’s ‘notarius’, but slaves qua slaves received no education. It was found useful to make them acquire a knack like shorthand, just as it is useful to break in a horse. Their knack was their only virtue. But there was no provision for them as a class, and no encouragement to extend their knowledge beyond their narrow speciality. A glance at the laws of the Theodosian Code is sufficient to show this. A ‘colonus’ is bound to the soil on which he is born, and if he runs away from the place of his birth he is to be brought back immediately, together with his family.[761] So says a law of A.D. 419. A law of Constantine had also enacted that ‘coloni’, who purposed flight, should be reduced to slavery and put in chains, and with this sentence upon them be compelled, as they deserve, to perform the tasks of free men.[762] The law shows that the ‘coloni’ were still regarded as belonging to the third rather than the fourth class. But their freedom did not exist in more than name, and it seems most improbable that they had any share in the education of the day.
Finally, the deduction of Lavisse that education was general from the fact that the sergeants could read, and that the sons of veterans had schools, is not altogether justified. For, again, the soldier would pick up just the minimum of school knowledge to help him through (and this he might conceivably have done even without going to a ‘litterator’) more especially as the army by this time consisted largely of barbarians. As for the veterans, they were a privileged class, as the thirteen enactments of the Theodosian Code[763] regarding their status and immunity from public burdens can prove.
Turning now to the contemporary writers, we can trace the effect of the code on their methods and ideas. Sidonius clearly thinks of men in ‘ordines’. At the feast of St. Just, in which all classes participate, there is not much trace of intermingling or exchange of greetings, and when they scatter for relaxation the lines of demarcation are still plain.[764] Eumenius, too, illustrates the value which men attached to class privileges. He had been ‘magister sacrae memoriae’, and the emperor, in appointing him to the school at Autun, assures him that his ‘dignitas’ will not be impaired by the change. The gratitude of Eumenius for this boon, ‘ut salvo honoris mei privilegio doceam’,[765] is effusive and significant.
But the important point is that the upper classes came to look on education as their monopoly. Sidonius rebukes a friend who is absorbed in the material concerns of his estate for neglecting his reading.[766] It is a nobleman’s business, he finely says, to maintain a noble level of culture. Think of the disgrace of being distanced in your old age by one of humbler rank, and surpassed in honours by men whose worth is that of a lower class—‘cum eos, quos esset indignum si vestigia nostra sequerentur, videris dolens antecessisse’. The argument is that the nobleman has to undertake administrative and other imperial offices; they are his by right. Therefore he must keep up his education, which is the road to office, and also peculiarly his prerogative.[767] And so, when Ausonius says: ‘It isn’t right that I, a royal master, should expound verses to the common herd’,[768] there is a background of fact to his jocularity. At the end of the empire, when the social fabric was tottering and the accustomed ranks and distinctions were vanishing away (iam remotis gradibus dignitatum), Sidonius sees in literary knowledge the only mark of nobility that will survive: ‘solum posthac nobilitatis indicium litteras nosse.’[769]
In these circumstances it is hard to see how Jullian is justified in calling the Roman society in Gaul during the fourth century ‘toute intellectuelle’.[770] Yet there are two considerations which must modify our conclusion. The first is that in practice the lines of demarcation were not so rigid as in theory. As we have seen in the case of the ‘collegiati’, there was higher education where we should not have expected it, and members of guilds were not always swallowed up in their guild work. The second consideration is that their interest in education was not always damped by discouraging surroundings. There was a strong and almost passionate loyalty to letters among the upper classes which must have spread lower down in society. The curial, no doubt, sometimes cultivated his intellect as well as land and tax-collecting, even though there was no material gain to be won. And it was felt, perhaps, that it was the respectable thing to send one’s son to a grammar school.
We must, therefore, allow a certain margin for higher education among the ‘curiales’ and the ‘corporati’, while we accept a very wide range of mere literacy,[771] such as could be obtained from an elementary school teacher. The enormous staff of scribes required for the imperial ‘scholae’ must have embraced many of a lower social standing. The need for people who could read and write was great, and we may perhaps see in the large[772] number of grammarians[773] (as compared with the rhetoricians), which the emperors provided, an indication of this need. But, as we go down the social scale, it is only the exceptions who go beyond the grammarian, while the majority probably knew none but the elementary master.
(iii) The Teacher in Society
Libanius draws a picture of the rhetor lingering in the classroom after the day’s work because of the unpleasantness of conjugal and family difficulties at home;[774] and Ausonius roundly declares, emphasizing another side of the teacher’s unfortunate lot, that a grammarian is not happy and never was; that the very name of grammarian is incompatible with happiness. If beyond destiny and fate there has existed one that was happy, he must indeed have passed beyond the bounds of the mere grammarian.[775]