Cicero’s attempt to make the oratorical education something of wide scope, and to make it bear upon practical politics, was doomed to failure. More and more the tyranny of rhetorical rules, co-operating with the restriction of liberty under the Empire, produced a narrow and formal result. The sciolists of the fourth century believed that philosophy could be so easily learned that they hardly troubled to make its acquaintance. A political connexion with oratory was kept up, but it consisted in the degenerate panegyric. More and more rhetorical education narrowed its range, and retired within the academical atmosphere of the school.[924] As for moral education, we must find in the criticisms of Tacitus and Juvenal an element of truth. The emperor set the fashion, and the subject did not always find an inspiring example. The change that came over oratory was not entirely one of artificiality. This there had been in Isocrates, whose rules were just as artificial as those of the ‘Panegyrici Latini’. It was rather a question of ideal. Isocrates had a national ideal, which could give meaning and life to his utterances; Cicero had the interests of a party to inspire him; but the panegyrists of the fourth century were confined to the emperor; his birthday or his benefits are the sort of subjects that stimulate their oratory, and Pliny could praise with equal fervour the political reforms and the white horses of Trajan. Thus the rhetorical tradition, the ideal of oratory as the goal of education, came down through the centuries to our period. It came to Gaul, and flourished exceedingly on account of the natural aptitude of the Gauls for eloquence. Lucian, in the _Herakles_,[925] gives a picture of the Gallic Hercules who drags all men after him by fine chains attached to his tongue and their ears, and they follow gladly though it is in their power to break away. Cerialis, in addressing the Treveri and Lingones, maintained that the Roman way of establishing justice was the sword, but that words had most influence with the Gauls.[926] And Jerome said of the Gauls: ‘The fact that they are prolific of orators points not so much to the studious character of the country as to the noise made by the rhetors: especially as Aquitaine boasts of its Greek origin.’[927] This is borne out by the inscriptions. We are struck in the south by the frequency of long-winded and ornate epitaphs, e.g.[928] D.M. Memoriae aeternae Socchiae Enneanis Dulcissim. et. super. ae tatem. ingenio. nobi lissimo. qui vixit. an ... Menses VII. D. XXIIII L. Boconius. Pho(t)inus Pa ter et Alpia Castina ma ter. Parentes infelicis simi repentina huius. a missione orbati filio Karissimo unico prae cl.... p.... s.... sibi erepto (praeclaro pro sua aetate) et sibi vivi posteris que suis Po(s) et sub Ascia (posuit) dedicaverunt.