In so far as the Christian writers refer to the detailed practice of Christian teaching, they deal chiefly with the elementary school, which is what we should expect. Protogenes, when banished from Edessa in the latter part of the fourth century, set up a school at Antinoe (_Antinoopolis_), on the Nile. τόπον εὑρὼν ἐπιτήδειον καὶ τοῦτον διδασκαλεῖον καὶ παιδευτήριον ἀποφήνας, μειρακίων κατέστη διδάσκαλος, καὶ ... γράφειν τε εἰς τάχος ἐδίδασκε καὶ τὰ θεῖα ἐξεπαίδευε λόγια.[1052] Writing then (including shorthand), and scripture lessons (especially the Psalms and the Doctrine of the Apostles), formed the substance of his teaching. And the same general scope was found in the West. With considerable elaboration Jerome expounds to Laeta the method by which she is to teach her daughter the alphabet. She is to be supplied with letters carved of wood or ivory and be encouraged to play with them, for in playing she will learn.[1053] In this, as in most other educational matters, he follows the mighty authority of Quintilian.[1054] He deprecates a fixed order of the letters so that only the sequence is remembered. The child must mix the letters frequently, and then put them together for herself, ‘in order that she may learn to recognize them by the eye as well as by the ear’. Seneca’s motto[1055] about the visual being stronger than the acoustic memory seems to have held an important place in the education of the day.[1056] Elsewhere Jerome explains his method for learning to read. ‘Itaque Pacatula nostra hoc epistolium post lectura suscipiat. Interim modo litterarum elementa cognoscat, iungat syllabas, discat nomina, verba consociet.’[1057] He advocates the usual method of proceeding from letters to syllables, from syllables to words, from words to sentences. Again Quintilian is followed.[1058] Modern experimental psychology inclines to the view that the analytic method, which proceeds from sentences and words to syllables and letters, may be the more profitable.