We may take it, then, that Vergil was read. We hear also of the fables of Avianus, who lived under the Antonines,[1089] and the fourth-century _Disticha Catonis_, a collection of moral rules. The former work remained in the schools till the tenth century, while the latter was among the commonest of elementary school-books as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth century.[1090] The text-books of the grammarians were no doubt freely used. Sidonius praises the ‘discipline’ of Agroecius[1091] (fifth century), who wrote a famous work on Orthography, intended to supplement a book on the same subject by Flavius Caper. It is significant that the work is dedicated to Bishop Eucherius. As we go into the sixth century the traces of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium begin to appear.[1092] The fifth century was a transition period, in which the doctrine of the extreme monastic party (if we may speak of a party when so many eminent men spoke now on the one side and now on the other), and the teaching of the liberals, were represented in the schools in fluctuating and uncertain proportions. By the time of Gregory of Tours (sixth century) the extremists had so far given way that he allowed his theological students to pass through the seven arts of Capella, and to write poetry, which, however, was still suspect, and had fallen from its previous prominence to a precarious place at the end of the list. ‘Quod si te, sacerdos Dei, quicumque es, Martianus noster septem disciplinis erudiit, id est si te in grammaticis docuit legere, in dialecticis altercationes propositiones advertere, in rhetoricis genera metrorum agnoscere, in geometris terrarum linearumque mensuras colligere ... si in his omnibus ita fueris exercitatus ut tibi stylus noster sit rusticus, nec sic quoque deprecor ut avellas quae scripsi sed si tibi in his quiddam placuerit, salvo opere nostro, te scribere versu non abnuo.’[1093] When we take all this into account we cannot fail to see a certain exaggeration in Kaufmann’s[1094] statement that the training of the monastic school was entirely religious and moral. These elements were doubtless predominant, but they were not all.