nunc lembum exiguum scandit et ipse regit.[1363]
The roads, which had promoted education by linking up towns and spreading civilization, were now (as we have seen) uncertain and unsafe. Centres, consequently, which had previously teemed with life, now became isolated, torpid, despairing. Schools and books were neglected.
Maxima pars lapsis abiit iam mensibus anni
quo scripta est versu pagina nulla tuo.[1364]
The sum total of education was decreased materially by the slaughter of children:
Quid pueri insontes? Quid commisere puellae
nulla quibus dederat crimina vita brevis?[1365]
Yet there is the spark which kept alive the flickering torch of learning in the dark ages, the interest in literature surviving material ruin. For, in spite of the crash of circumstances and although times are sad, there is a feeling that the mind, even when oppressed by misfortune, should keep unconquered its interest in education:
Invictum deceat studiis servare vigorem.
There is much of rude and rushing violence in this ‘barbarization’ of Gaul. One of the writers likened it to a flood, and as far as the time at which he wrote is concerned he was right. But, regarded as a whole, the process was gradual and persistent. Gaul became de-Romanized ‘not as a valley is ravaged by a torrent, but as the most solid substance is disorganized by the continual infiltration of a foreign substance’.[1366] So Rutilius says of Rome, referring to Stilicho’s German followers: