=Subsidization of Education.=--Thus, through the adoption of the institutions of the Greeks, Roman education became thoroughly Hellenized. Although all the types of schools spread everywhere in the empire, there was, of course, no such thing as a real school system, except as the government gradually came to subsidize all schools. This the different emperors accomplished in various ways,--by contributing to school support, paying a salary to certain teachers, or granting them exemption from taxation and military service, or offering scholarships to a given number of pupils. As a result, schools came to be established in many cases for the purpose of getting these special privileges for the teachers, rather than for promoting education. To stop these abuses, the emperor in 425 A. D. decreed that he had the sole authority to establish schools, and that a penalty would be laid upon anyone else assuming this prerogative. In this way the schools came fully into the hands of the imperial government, and the basis for the idea of public education was laid for the first time in history. [Sidenote: Formal and superficial character.] =Decay of Education.=--Before this, however, Roman education had deteriorated. With the political and moral decay that were obvious after the second century A. D., it became a mere form and mark of the aristocracy. The training in oratory was continued, because it was a necessary qualification for entering the senatorial class, but it had lost its real function, since there was no longer any occasion for oratory when the emperor dominated all the government and law. It was not intended to furnish a training of any value in life, and the careful literary preparation was more and more shirked. While the grammarians and rhetoricians were still held in high esteem, they contented themselves with mere display, and wandered from town to town more for the purpose of entertaining than of teaching. Glittering phrases, epigrams, and other artificialities took the place of instruction and argument. [Sidenote: Institutions furnished for the ideals of Judea and Greece.]