In the social world, therefore, these teachers ranked high: in the intellectual world their place was considerably lower. We find that there was a certain standard set for a teacher:
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grammaticorum.
Jucundus[793] is reproached for not reaching this standard and being unworthy of his profession. But there can be no doubt that the requirements were fairly low and very irregularly fulfilled. Leontius knew only the little that his poor position demanded,[794] and masters like Ammonius and Anastasius were equally ignorant.[795] Ausonius twits Auxilius on his defective pronunciation and addresses him as ‘inscite magister’,[796] and Rufus, the rhetorician, had so little sense (cor) that he used to write ‘reminisco’ in his verses. Moreover, he was very like a statue in his lifelessness—only softer and more effeminate.[797] Philomusus, again, had stuffed his library full of books, but this was his only claim to knowledge.[798]
Jung[799] finds an illustration of the general tendency to superficiality in the fact that many of the Bordeaux professors were at the same time advocates, poets, and farmers.[800] But we feel that this is carping criticism, and that such combinations of activity are no more anomalous or indicative of shallowness than they are in many universities of to-day.
But, on the whole, we get the impression that Julian’s emphasis on the preparation of teachers,[801] apart from its motive, was much needed throughout this period, and that the level of the Gallic university was probably not much above that of a modern high school.[802]
In the professional world the status of the teacher had steadily risen, ever since Vespasian had given education the imperial blessing by appointing Quintilian to the first State-paid chair. We find Constantius, in his letter to Eumenius, deprecating the idea that the teachers’ task is a lower form of imperial service;[803] and there can be no doubt that Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries, all enthusiastic as she was for literature and culture, honoured her teachers more than had previously been the custom. With the full light of imperial favour upon them, they were respected, not so much for what they were, but for all the golden avenues of imperial office to which their profession could lead.
The picture which Ausonius gives of the Bordeaux professors suggests a resemblance to Oxford. The division of studies between the grammarian and the rhetor gives an ‘institutio’ which is the forerunner of the Oxonian School of Classics. For the grammarian did ‘Mods.’ work, training the pupil in a wide range of detailed facts, while the rhetorician aimed (though in a poor way) at a philosophic combination of the facts into a speech, and at grace and lucidity of style. And this is largely also the aim of ‘Greats’.
Moreover, there is a similarity of social atmosphere. There is a bright and genial contact of man with man, which implies a study of men as well as of books, and there is that emotional content springing from such intercourse, which, if kept within bounds, serves to keep thought fresh and balanced, and prevents the letter from killing the spirit. That there was also the danger, as at Oxford, of the social side looming too large, is clear from a study of these professorial portraits.