All this shows us that in dealing with education in Gaul we cannot attempt a thorough and systematic study. Romanization lies over the country and its institutions like a veil. Roman authors give us scattered pictures of what went on beneath that veil, but they give it from the Roman point of view. Roman rule was so mighty, and its methods so far-reaching, that everything is reduced to Roman form. The ruler did not see the native genius or native ways, or if he saw them did not understand or sympathize. It was his task to rule, and he knew, in general, only one method: the rule of force—‘parcere subiectis et debellare superbos’—though diplomacy plays a large part in the later Empire. Moreover, the mass of the people were too uneducated to give expression to their individuality, or did not know Latin sufficiently well to do so. All our evidence comes from Greek or Roman pens. As soon as the Empire is withdrawn from Gaul natural differences find expression and variety of individuality is at once displayed. Jung[121] notices that the inscriptions of Arles and Trèves are an illustration of this. While the Empire is there we catch only dim glimpses of the sort of education that (fraught with the traditions of a mighty past) may have lingered on among the mass of the people even as late as the fourth century. When we deal with the schools of Gaul, therefore, it must be with those of the Gallo-Romans who were more Roman than Gallic. But there is another element which operated, as it were, under the surface of Romanization in Gaul.
4. Germanic Influence
In trying to form an idea, of the influence of the Germanic races on the culture of Gaul during the later Empire, we must again be satisfied with only a few stray references in the contemporary authorities. Philologists think that as early as the first century A.D. the German races must have influenced the Romans. They establish indisputable cases, but it is admitted that the whole question is difficult and complicated in the extreme.[122]
The question of German influence may be looked at from two opposite points of view—from the constructive and the destructive. The latter is by far the more prominent and will be dealt with at a later stage. The former is far the more difficult, and nothing is attempted here except to set down in bare outline one or two of its aspects. It would be far easier to describe the influence of Roman civilization on the barbarians.
Yet there is something to be said. If the Roman generals prescribed a Roman form of government for the barbarians, as Corbulo did for the Frisians in A.D. 47, German fashions intruded into the Roman world and the Roman ladies wore barbarian costume and coiffure.[123] On the Rhine frontier these barbarians developed to such an extent and so many towns sprang up—Cologne the prosperous, Bonn, Coblentz, Strassburg—which grew out of the Roman camps but drew their life from the neighbouring tribes, that the law forbade the selling of certain commodities to barbarians.[124] On the other hand, the Empire needed them as cultivators and soldiers, and the Panegyrici Latini show us that it was part of the imperial policy to make them settle in the provinces.[125] Social history shows that the Germanic peoples stood on a fairly high level of culture even in the first centuries of our era. They possessed a traditional religious cult which promoted the noblest virtues—conjugal love, friendship, hospitality—a body of legends about gods and heroes, an ancestral poetry, in which clan and family feeling plays a large part.[126] In these respects they were capable of influencing the Romans, who admired their courage and feared their strength.
Besides the casual intermingling of people for various reasons, there were three main sources of intercourse: the army, the administration, and trade. The first need not be dwelt on, nor the well-known question be raised how far the German element in it was responsible for the fall of the Empire. Of the second we may mention as an instance Pliny’s picture of Trajan dispensing justice in Germany—sometimes without an interpreter—while the influence of the trade in furs, wine, and fish in introducing Germanic words into Latin has been amply established.[127]
Turning to Gaul in particular, we find many avenues of Germanic influence; for, besides the big invasions of the third and fifth centuries, we find the Goths officially settled in Aquitaine in A.D. 419, and the Burgundians about the same time, in the north and north-eastern parts. It is not surprising, therefore, to catch from Ausonius glimpses of fairly familiar intercourse between German and Gallo-Roman in the fourth century. His enthusiastic praise of Bissula, the Suebian maid who was captured beyond the Rhine[128]—‘Barbara, sed quae Latias vincis alumna pupas’—is an indication of this. Now there is a law of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian, given in A.D. 370, forbidding all intermarriage. ‘Nulli provincialium’, it says, ‘cuiuscumque ordinis aut loci fuerit, cum barbara sit uxore coniugium: nec ulli gentilium (foreigners, i.e. not Roman) provincialis foemina copuletur. Quod si quae inter provinciales atque Gentiles adfinitates ex huiusmodi nuptiis exstiterint, quod in his suspectum vel noxium detegitur, capitaliter expietur.’[129] This law, however, as Lavisse remarks,[130] does not seem to have had much effect. Such laws very rarely have. We may assume, therefore, that there was considerable intercourse even before the Visigoths were settled in Aquitaine.
Not only had points of contact been multiplied, but the standard of civilization among the invaders had risen. Orosius notes that the Burgundians were mild and modest enough to treat their Gallic subjects as brothers,[131] and their laws dating from the sixth century show a considerable culture. Roman civilization and Christian morality had raised them to this level, but they still had their own contribution to make. For they still had their own national character and traditions and language, and these produced blends and combinations in the already richly blended Aquitaine which have played their part in the shaping of the whole. Such influences cannot be reduced to specific items, but it is plain that they were there. They left their mark (all the more effectively because the Goths welcomed Roman culture with open arms) on the character of the people, on their literature, and on their language.[132] Even in Cicero’s day Gallic Latin had a distinctive flavour. To Brutus he says that when he comes to Gaul he will hear words not used at Rome, though the differences are not fundamental.[133] By the time of Sidonius Germanic influences have accentuated these differences. To such an extent, says this lover of Rome to his friends, had the host of idle and careless people increased, that they would soon have to weep for the extinction of the Latin language, were it not for the tiny band of scholars who might save the purity of the Roman tongue from the rust of undignified barbarisms.[134] To Arbogast Sidonius declares[135] that Latin has perished from Belgium and the Rhine; and though this may be a rhetorical preparation for the antithesis ‘in te resedit’, we cannot fail to hear in it and in the phrase ‘our vanishing culture’ the tramp of the approaching barbarians.
The contribution of Germanic to the peculiar character of Gallic Latin is traced by modern philology to the following spheres: proper nouns, weapons and military terms, administration and jurisdiction, animals and plants, terms of domestic economy, and, what is more, certain abstract names (affre, hâte, guise, orgueil, &c.), and a good number of adjectives and verbs.[136]
Looking at this Germanic influence from the point of view of French, the decadence of Gallic in the fifth century and the preponderance of Germanic, to omit Latin for the moment, are accomplished facts. But from the point of view of the fourth and fifth centuries, what we find is that philologists have never clearly distinguished between those Germanic words which came in after the third-century invasions and those which were imported in the fifth century. The fact that most of the Germanic words recognized in French are Frankish seems to point to the conclusion that the most important German influence came with Chlodowig—i.e. after our period. Here, then, is a point which we would recommend for philological research: an estimation of the relative importance of Germanic influence in Gaul, after the third-century invasions and after those of the fifth.