One or two particular cases of the survival of rhetoric may be given. Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia, born in 474 at Arles, illustrates in a typical way the enormous power which rhetoric could exercise over Christians as late as the end of the fifth century. He is passionately in love with the forms and methods of his pagan authors, loves their pomp and glitter,[936] and is always playing a part in the hope of winning applause.[937] He makes rhetoric say: ‘I am she who does things or changes things done. Light can dispel the darkness, however vast, in which the law involves a man, and this light by reading I can give. I am she from whom men await prosecution if guilty and acquittal if innocent ... for my gain the Roman keeps vigil throughout the Empire. Unless I adorn them, office, riches, honours lose their attraction: it is I who rule the rulers.’[938] This is all very similar to what Isocrates had said centuries ago, when he talked of the power and benefits of Persuasion,[939] and the traditional moral note is there just as in Isocrates[940] and in Cicero.[941] Rhetoric, says Ennodius, is the only moulder of public opinion. Her charm is irresistible and universal. (Why mention so obvious a fact?) The opinion she creates is eternal. It is she who makes people believe whatever she wishes about the deeds of the brave, she who can suppress facts with impunity. She is the mother of poetry, jurisprudence, dialectic, arithmetic, and she gives them their value.[942] ‘Grammar’ is recognized as the necessary precedent, the nurse of knowledge and virtue, who produces the sparks that lead to the Ciceronian fire of speech.[943] The idea that rhetorical adornment is specially connected with the school is still current. A correspondent begs him with many prayers that his letter to him should be embellished with the graces of the school (_multis enim supplicationibus exegistis ut pagina vobis concinnationis didascalicae fingeretur_[944]) and in the _Libellus pro Synodo_ he urges ‘illas _didascalici_ libelli relegamus argutias’.[945] Later on Ennodius began to have misgivings about the part rhetoric played in his life. ‘Erat orandi fastidium dum perorandi tenebar cupiditate....’[946] He laments his placid satisfaction with his fine speeches, his elation at poetic successes, while he had no ear for the ‘angelorum chori’ owing to the intoxication of applause. ‘Quotiens adclamantium flatibus propter religionem vertex nudatus intumuit....’ But even in his confessions rhetoric is present, and she triumphs at the very time when he speaks of her defeat.