One of the main features of the imperial policy towards the teachers was the panegyric. The emperors had to mould public opinion, and, not possessing newspapers, they fell back on the professor. And perhaps this is the reason why, during the fourth century, they made such a special point of residing in Gaul and expressing their fondness for her by word and deed—Gaul the home of rhetoricians. However that may be, the panegyric obtained a regular place among the teacher’s duties. Ever since Pliny had set the fashion with his panegyric on Trajan, ‘there had gradually grown up a custom, especially in the cities of Gaul, where rhetorical studies were flourishing, a custom which became frequent in the times of Diocletian and Maximian, and again under Constantine and Constantius, of sending rhetors to the emperor to congratulate him on successes and to thank him for benefits.’[836] The panegyric was one of the accomplishments of the famous Minervius,[837] and among the ‘Panegyrici Latini’ it was a much-coveted honour to be allowed to air this accomplishment. ‘Summam votorum meorum’[838] is the description applied by the sixth panegyrist to his speech before the emperor. Nor need we consider this mere flattery; for the rewards were many and substantial. Sidonius’s panegyric on Avitus procured him a statue in the forum of Trajan,[839] after his panegyric on Majorian (who had been nominated by Avitus’s murderer Ricimer), he was admitted into the court and became a count, and when he performed the same service for Anthemius in 468 he was made prefect of Rome and president of the Senate; he tells us himself that he obtained the praefecture ‘sub ope Christi, styli occasione’.[840]