These were the rewards of the brilliant. But even the humblest grammarian enjoyed the emperor’s favour as a potential panegyrist. Many laws at different times protected him from taxes and military service. Constantine had decreed this, and had added that they were also to be free from prosecution and shielded from wrongdoing. The magistrates were to exact a fine of £1,000 from any one who injured them, or themselves bear the punishment.[841] In the case of a slave whipping was prescribed. In 333 Constantine confirmed this law ‘to facilitate and extend the teaching of liberal arts and studies’.[842] His example was followed in 414 by Honorius and Theodosius, who decreed that grammarians, orators, and teachers of philosophy as well as certain court doctors, besides all the privileges granted to them by the emperors in the past, should enjoy freedom from the rearrangement, municipal or curial, of property which had been put together from several sources in order to be divided equally (_conlatio_), from the marking out of land for the senatorial or land tax (_descriptio_), and from all office and public burdens. Nor were they to have soldiers or judges billeted on them wherever they lived. Moreover, all these privileges were to be shared by their sons and wives, so that their children could not be forced to serve in the army.[843] But the gratitude of the Gallic teachers to the emperor was based on more than personal benefits. They realized very clearly (in the fourth century, at any rate) that without the Roman military power education could not have flourished. Eumenius tells how, after the confusion of destroying barbarians, the trees flourish again and the corn-stalks lift their heads when the frontier is made secure. The age of gold has come again. ‘Adeo, ut res est, aurea illa saecula, quae non diu quondam Saturno rege viguerunt, nunc aeternis auspiciis Iovis et Herculis renascuntur.’[844] Panegyric inspires comforting pictures, but in this case there is a basis of truth. There is a true ring about the praises of the Aeduan who describes the evil condition of his country, and pours out his thanks before the emperor,[845] even though he has a tendency to hysterics.[846] There is a certain amount of real feeling in his exclamation: ‘O divinam, imperator, tuam in sananda civitate medicinam’;[847] and the Gallic orator of the sixth panegyric is not very far wrong when he says: ‘Thence, O emperor, comes this peace which we enjoy: not the waters of the Rhine, but the terror which thy name inspires is the rampart that defends us.’