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. (iv) IMPERIAL PROTECTION A change had come over the administration of schools in the later part of the empire. In early republican times there had been no public interference with education: the ideal of men like Cato was ‘in gremio matris educari’.[804] But even the spirit of Cato could not stop Crates of Mallos from establishing the first school of grammar, after the Punic Wars had opened the flood-gates of Greek influence; nor could it prevent fathers from paying large sums for the services of these public teachers. A transition stage came in the first century, when the conflict between the old and the new reached a crisis. The censors grew alarmed, and issued a decree in 92 B.C. prohibiting the teaching of the Latin rhetoricians as being contrary to the ‘mos maiorum’.[805] They had endured Greek rhetoricians, but when Romans began to adopt the ways of these ‘Graeculi’ they thought it was time to interfere.[806] But public schools were rapidly growing, and when Vespasian fixed the salaries of teachers the old conservative Roman prejudice against public education had practically died out. In the second century Hadrian opened his Athenaeum—the first school for higher education. Alexander Severus gave salaries to teachers ‘etiam in provinciis’.[807] The goodwill and personal interest of the emperors in the schools is seen in the letter of Constantius to Eumenius.[808] ‘Our loyal Gauls’, he says, ‘who enjoy the benefits of civilization in Autun, deserve that we should take thought for the development of their children’s talents. What gift, then, more fitting than that which fortune can neither give nor take away? Therefore, we appoint you to be head of this school; for we have learned to know from your service under us, your eloquence and your genial temper.’