We have, then, these two facts: the persistence in Christian thought of rhetoric, and the reaction in the direction of simplicity. But we must ask what the Christian attitude was towards pagan education as a whole, for on this attitude largely depended the nature of the Christian schools. Sulpicius Severus is uncompromisingly harsh. All literature except the Bible and theological writings are utterly vain. ‘For what did the pagan writers themselves gain by a literary glory that was to perish with their generation? Or what profit was it to posterity to read of Hector’s battles or Socrates’ philosophy? Not only is it folly to imitate those writers, but not to attack them with the utmost fierceness is sheer madness....’[979] The pagan philosophy has been a mighty bane. ‘Qui quidem error humanus (pagan philosophy) litteris traditus in tantum valuit ut multos plane aemulos vel inanis philosophiae vel stultae illius virtutis invenerit.’[980] Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius on entering the Church abjured the heathen literature,[981] and Jerome conceived of the difference between the two groups of writers as that between light and darkness.[982] Philosophy was regarded as dangerous, and extensive secular reading deprecated.[983] Poetry was banned because it inflamed passion,[984] and Claudius Victor of Marseilles went so far as to trace the misfortunes of his day to the pagan schools and authors. ‘Is not ours the blame?’ he wails: ‘Paul and Solomon are neglected and the Vergil who wrote of Dido and the Ovid who described Corinna are recited, the verses of Horace are applauded and the scenes of Terence, and it is we, we who are at fault, we who basely feed those flames.’[985] Paulinus writes to his old master Ausonius who is much concerned because his pupil has deserted the Muses, and declares with pathetic firmness that the Christian heart must needs say ‘No’ to Apollo and the Muses. ‘New is the force and greater the god that now moves the soul, and he permits not leisure in work or play for the literature of fable.’[986] To him the education and the literature of the pagan world is nothing but ‘the clever influence of a sophist, the knack of a rhetor, the false imagination of a bard’, and its professors men who miss the truth, Qui corda falsis atque vanis imbuunt tantumque linguas instruunt; nihil adferentes ut salutem conferant, quod veritatem detegat.[987]