One of the ways in which Christianity exercised its moral influence consisted in raising the status of women; and this was done, to a large extent, by making education more general among them. In answering the question whether girls attended the schools at Bordeaux, Jullian[1162] says that this was probably the case. We may omit the ‘probably’. It would have been strange indeed if this had not been the case, seeing that at Rome girls’ schools go back possibly to the time of the unfortunate Virginia[1163] (449 B.C.), while in the Ciceronian period Hortensia belonged to the orators, Lesbia wrote poetry, and girls are mentioned as attending school with the boys by Martial[1164] and Ovid.[1165] Moreover, Ausonius says quite plainly to his grandson, referring to the ordinary school course: Haec olim genitorque tuus _genetrixque_ secuti ...[1166] and tells us that his aunt was a student of medicine, though he indicates that this was not the usual thing (_more virum_ medicis artibus experiens).[1167] Sometimes the mother taught her daughter literature: Latios nec volvere libros (says Claudianus of the bride),[1168] desinit aut Graios, ipsa genetrice magistra. But such home-education was probably rare and confined to the upper classes. We hear of no such instance in Gaul. Yet we know that there was sufficient interest in the classics and in knowledge generally on the part of the Gallic women to elicit a lament from Claudius Marius Victor. For among the signs of corruption of his day he notes their preference for pagan authors. Moreover, they show a knowledge of abstruse questions and a desire to know which is truly monstrous: Quae ... Deo tantum sunt nota, recondita cunctis, scire volunt (heu grande nefas!) et scire videntur. But it is all the fault of the men, he says (_sunt nostri crimina sexus_). Without the example of the husband, the wife would never have strayed into such ways of wickedness: Sic exempla virum uxores accepta sequuntur.[1169] Eulalia, the wife of Probus, was fond of reading the involved writings of Sidonius,[1170] who does not think it too much to expect from a wife that she will be interested in literature. For he reminds a friend that marriage need not interfere with his studious habits: have not Marcia, Terentia, Calpurnia, Pudentilla, Rusticiana, and many others ‘held the light for those who read’?[1171] We may conclude, therefore, that while a large number of girls received a home-education, chiefly in spinning and household crafts,[1172] many of them attended the schools and became interested in literature.[1173] If there was an increasing liberalism about women’s education in pagan circles (to take the references from Ausonius and Sidonius under this head), the principle of a woman’s right to education assumed much wider and more active proportions among the Christians.