One of the panegyrists[852] mentions ‘sapientia’ as a blessing of the empire, ‘ipsa ... illa quae videtur rerum omnium domina esse’, and this wisdom comes by experience of men and things, ‘perspectis hominum moribus et exploratis rerum eventis’. By giving opportunities to the Gauls for studying and mixing with different types from all parts of the world, Roman rule contributed to the general culture of the country; and the provincial orator is not guilty of his usual exaggeration when he emphasizes the fact that in this way, too, the empire was a boon at this time to the education of Gaul.
But against these real and undeniable advantages there may be set some corresponding drawbacks. Elaborate centralization[853] may be good from a purely military point of view, but it checks the progress of the human spirit. The panegyrists show how excessive the expenditure of the central court was, and how the interests of the empire were sacrificed to the sovereign.[854] The accession of Julian was a boon, for ‘the provinces were exhausted, partly by the plundering barbarians, partly by the greed, destructive as it was disgraceful, of the provincial governors.’[855] And of Julian the orator asks in a way which affirms the charge on the part of his enemy Constantius: ‘Flagitiis administrantium non modo frena laxaret, sed etiam stimulator accederet...?’
This over-centralization resulted in over-interference in education. ‘The traditional liberty which had formed the foundation of Roman education was seriously infringed by the appearance of imperial privileges.... All these benefactions were in reality an interference in the affairs of education.... Thus from the second to the fourth centuries of our era, the complete transformation of school organization was quietly accomplished. It is the transition period between the ancient Roman school and the formalism of the Middle Ages.’[856] This stiffening of the imperial support into formalism and tyranny is seen in the Theodosian Code. The personal liberty of the teacher becomes more and more restricted. Theodosius and Valentinian decreed[857] in 425 that no State teachers, on pain of being driven from the city with the stigma of ‘infamia’, were to hold classes in public outside the prescribed limits. Tutors in private families were permitted if they confined their teaching to the inmates of the house. But all who taught in the emperor’s Capitoline ‘auditorium’ were strictly forbidden to teach privately or else they must lose all the privileges of their office.
It looks as if this prohibition of all public schools outside the imperial academy was directed against the itinerant sophists. The law was issued at Constantinople and it may have been a salutary measure in some ways; but there is a suspicion that the emperor is rather abusing his authority to favour his own particular college, and the principle of vesting such unlimited powers over education in one man is a dangerous one. The penalty imposed on those who disobey this injunction (infamia and banishment) seems to be disproportionately severe. It smacks of that rigidity which made the emperor forbid the masters of his academy (intra Capitolii auditorium) to teach, even privately, elsewhere. And it is a continuation of that coercive attitude on the part of the imperial patron towards the schools, which we see increasing from the beginning of our period when Julian enacted that every teacher must receive the imperial approval before he was qualified to teach.[858] He was right in insisting on efficiency, but his evident attempt to abolish private adventure schools can hardly be justified.
Extreme centralization had also another and subtler influence. We feel, as we read the words of Eumenius or Ausonius to the emperors, that there was an unhealthy relation between them, one which tended to destroy the individuality of the subject. The deification of the emperor looms very large in the Panegyrici:[859] his favour was the summit of a man’s ambitions, to him all ideas and ideals had to be accommodated. It is quite pitiful to watch the hysterics of the panegyrists. It is no more a case merely of the rules of rhetoric and the laws of the game; it is the complete breakdown of all self-respect and individuality, an abasement of body and soul before the temporal powers, springing partly from the rhetorical tradition and partly from a real sense of dependence on the emperor.
‘O that fortunate journey of mine!’ exclaims one of the panegyrists of his visit to the emperor at Rome, ‘O labour excellently begun and ended! What blessings do I taste of! With what joys am I furnished! What wonders will I dispense when I return to the cities of the Gauls! What numbers of thunderstruck people around me, what huge audiences will listen to me when I say: “Rome I have seen, Theodosius I have seen, and both together have I looked on. I have seen him, the father of the prince, I have seen him, the prince’s avenger, him, the restorer of the prince.”’[860] Such is the recurrent language of a distinguished man, Pacatus the Gaul, a friend of Ausonius, who dedicated to him the Ludus Septem Sapientum and the Technopaegnion, and said of him that none, save Vergil, was better loved by the Muses.[861] Nazarius, who may be one of Ausonius’s professors,[862] solemnly maintains that it is wicked to form an opinion about the emperors, and reasons out his thin-spun absurdities thus: ‘Nam et in vestibulo suo inquirentem repellit obiecta veneratio, et si qui mentem propius adierunt, quod oculis in solem se contendentibus evenit, praestricta acie, videndi facultate caruerunt.’[863] The splendour of majesty (it is a golden glitter) affects the eyesight of the orator. Ausonius had been asked by the emperor to write a poem. ‘I have no talent for it: but Caesar has commanded: I will have. It isn’t safe to refuse a god.’[864] He speaks with great glee of his escape, in attaining to the consulship, from all the usual methods of candidature: all was summed up in Caesar ‘Romanus populus, Martius campus, equester ordo, rostra, ovilia, senatus, curia—unus mihi omnia Gratianus’.[865] The ease implied in the simplification of everything to the person of the emperor was no doubt pleasant: but it was a mark of decadence. It meant a limitation of ideas, a cramping of individuality, a slavishness of spirit which must eventually reduce education to spiritless formalism. What perverted results this militaristic control of education sometimes could produce is well illustrated by the Cento Nuptialis. Ausonius had enough education and taste to be half ashamed of his subject. ‘Piget enim Vergiliani carminis dignitatem tam ioculari dehonestasse materia.’ Yet what was he to do? ‘Iussum erat.’ Valentinian had commanded it: ‘sanctus imperator ... vir meo iudicio eruditus’. If we are to judge of this erudition by such fruits as these, we cannot say much for its depth or taste. ‘Ridere, nil ultra expeto’, says the poet. But there is more than one way of laughing, as he very well knew. Here, then, we have imperial interference making a man at the head of his profession, a man who would be imitated by his pupils and by other teachers as he imitated the emperor, write for the edification of the world the most asinine and disgusting verses ever produced.
Not only the personal, but also the collective individuality, tended to be impaired by over-centralization. The sense of citizenship, which it is one of the duties of education to foster, was crushed in the great mechanical organization of the Empire. Loyalty to Rome grew hollow for lack of a subordinate and more immediate loyalty. Loyalty is in the first place evoked by personal contact, and the emperor was sometimes very far away. The subordinate official lost the full sense of partnership because some mighty power from without imposed laws and made regulations, and could interfere between him and his superior official at any moment. Even in men like Ausonius, who could get into touch with the emperor and feel genuine loyalty towards him by reason of a sense of partnership and personal benefits, we find Rome appearing as the symbol of the Empire in a very official capacity. In his description of noble cities he gives one perfunctory line to Rome and forty to Bordeaux. ‘Bordeaux has my love, Rome my respect’,[866] he says, and he gives the reason: ‘here stood my cradle, there my chair of office.’ Officialdom may evoke respect, but it can never call forth that spirit of love which is the basis of true loyalty in every sphere. Paulinus of Pella, writing after the barbarian invasions of the early fifth century, expresses himself in a similar way. Rome is only cursorily mentioned[867] in conventional terms,[868] and there is no point at which Rome touches him personally. Indeed, he has rather bitter memories of her:
Romanumque nefas contra omnia iura licenter
in mea grassatum diverso tempore damna.[869]