The general outlook of history in our period was not very encouraging. There were no historians except Ammianus. It was a time when a writer like Suetonius was taken as a model. There were, however, numerous compilations. Eutropius, for example, wrote an abbreviated history of Rome towards the close of the fourth century. Chronography was a science started by Sextus Julius Africanus early in the third century, and his example was widely followed. Eusebius, and his translator and expander Jerome, carried on the tradition. Prosper of Aquitaine took up the record where Eusebius had left off, and Prosper’s work was continued by Idatius. Sulpicius Severus illustrated the same tendency, while Rufinus, the adversary of Jerome, did important work in translating and continuing the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius. Dry and formless as these chronographies were, they had the merit of giving a truer perspective of history by introducing the cold lucidity of dates. Corresponding to this activity there had appeared on the Christian side the records of the _Acta Martyrum_. Many of these Acta were of a legendary character, and though they were useful for their local colour, they are certainly less valuable from a scientific point of view than the bare chronicles. This was the general position of history. Its position in the Gallic schools was not more satisfactory. Throughout the ancient educational tradition, from the ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, of Posidonius to the ‘seven liberal arts’, there had been no place for the study of history. From Dionysius Thrax to Quintilian it is consistently treated as a side issue.[1185] Blümner says that when Quintilian assigned ‘historias exponere’ as one of the tasks of the grammarian, it only meant that the teacher commented on such historical facts as turned up in the course of his reading, since history was not a school-subject.[1186] Yet this is not always true.[1187] For from what Ausonius says in the _Protrepticon_, it appears that at Bordeaux, at any rate, history determined the course of the reading and not vice versa, and that it was a school-subject to this extent that definite books were included in the course for its sake. For Ausonius prescribes for his grandson certain periods of Roman history: the conspiracy of Catiline, the twelve years after the events connected with Lepidus and Catulus, the Sertorian war.[1188] Among the encyclopaedic attainments of Staphylius, the Bordeaux teacher, is a knowledge of Livy and Herodotus.[1189] In the library of Ausonius there are ὀκτὼ Θουκυδίδου, ἐννέα Ἡροδότου, and in his invitations to Paulinus he advises him to leave behind Historiam, mimos, carmina....[1190]