Another possibility that was missed was that of using history to see the logical and psychological connexion between events. With the narrow conception of the subject that was entertained at the time this was impossible. The only sort of causal chain that the student was induced to see was that, if you did not please the emperor, so much the worse for you. Not only the reason, but also the critical faculty, was thus left undeveloped in this age of adulation and prescription. In the same way the moral significance of history was overlooked, and here again the cause was restriction. For in order to realize the influence of character on the march of events, a wide, and, if possible, a comparative study of the subject must be undertaken, and the values attached must not depend on a gilded imperial figure, but on ethical truth. Again, it was impossible to judge of the various aims and theories of men in the past age, to form some sort of opinion of the development of political theory, to be interested in truth and progress, as long as rhetoric, the handmaid of a rigid Imperialism, reigned supreme. 3. THE POSITION OF GREEK When Ephorus called the Celts philhellenes,[1225] he was doubtless thinking of the Greek influence which Massilia (as we have seen) so effectively spread in Gaul. This influence survived in the south as late as the seventh century and even later,[1226] but Massilia’s influence had long been waning. During the fourth and fifth centuries Latin had more and more become the language of the upper classes,[1227] so that the impetus to Greek studies from this quarter was becoming almost negligible. But tradition still counted for something. The Aquitanians, who boasted of the legend which connected their origin with Greece and Bordeaux, kept up commercial relations with Greece[1228] during the fourth century. It is they who are the most faithful to Greek and among whom we find most traces of Hellenism. Now Julian had created a sort of contrast between Greek learning and Christianity. Hellenism came to be identified with paganism, and so tended to fall into disrepute as Christianity gained ground in the fifth century. The inscriptions show remarkably few traces of Greek. Where they occur they are usually very short, as in the case of the one found in the Alps near Vienne and belonging probably to the fourth century: Εὔστοχι (vocat. case) ζήσαις,[1229] or else they refer to some foreigner, as the one at Trèves Οὺρσίκινος ἀνατολικός[1230] (i.e. from the land of the rising sun, eastern), who was probably one of those traders called in a general way ‘Syrians’.[1231] Conrad Celtes speaks of Greek inscriptions in Gaul which he had seen there in the fifteenth century: Graecis vidi epitaphiis inscripta busta,