In order to understand this exclusive spirit we must remember the circumstances: the tenacity of paganism, which had taken its last stand in the public amusements,[988] the persecutions, the close connexion between the schools and the old religion. The Gallic panegyrists (most of them teachers) ostentatiously proclaim the gods of ancient Rome even to Christian emperors like Theodosius.[989] ‘Di boni’ and ‘Di immortales’ appear everywhere, the emperor is divine, and the school at Autun is ‘aedes Herculis atque Musarum’.[990] The rhetorical education had the immense advantage of being traditional. Then, as now, the argument carried great weight. Libanius in his defence of dancing asks indignantly (and the method of his protest is typical) whether the settled opinion of the ancients in this matter is to be upset: ἆρ’ οὖν πρᾶγμα ἀρχαῖον, καὶ παρὰ τοῖς οὕτω γενναίοις οὕτω γενναῖον καὶ καλὸν εἶναι δοκοῦν, εἰκῆ καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἡμεῖς τῶν φαύλων εἶναι πιστεύσομεν;[991] Everything that was not cut according to the traditional pattern, according to the opinions handed down with hardly any criticism, from one teacher to another,[992] tended to be despised, and this was the attitude towards the Christians in the educational world of the day.[993] Moreover, the old system was properly organized, and Christians in being compelled to send their children to pagan masters felt the danger. For the subject-matter of both the grammatical and the rhetorical schools was largely the pagan mythology, which was next door to religion. Even contemporary literature proclaimed pagan ideas: the fourth-century comedy _Querolus_ is permeated by the heathen conception of fate. To all these causes of opposition and bitterness towards the pagan culture, there were added the desperate earnest of these early Christians to whom salvation and perdition were piercing and vivid realities, and the bitter scorn of pagans like Rutilius Namatianus. As he returned to his native country, Gaul, he saw in the growth of monachism one of the causes of Rome’s decline—Rome who had all his devotion, whose magistrate he was proud to have been. Squalet lucifugis insula plena viris, he says of Capraria,[994] where a monastery had been started. Pride and prejudice make the monks an inexplicable problem to him: Munera fortunae metuunt, dum damna verentur.[995] Either they are really criminals forced to live this sort of life, or else the slaves of black bile. To him, too, the youth who becomes a monk is ‘impulsus furiis’.[996] Such was the temper towards the Christians even as late as the fifth century, and the counterpart of this bitterness is seen in the murder of Hypatia in Alexandria (A.D. 415).