but these could not have been very many. Altogether we have only nine Greek Christian inscriptions in Gaul.[1232] Nor are the Greek remains on the pagan side more numerous. That Greek was declining is abundantly evident from other sources too. The Greek of Autun in the north shows signs of decadence even at the end of the third century. But it needed less than a century for the neglect to spread even to the Grecized south. Eumenius found it necessary in a formal and imperial speech to explain the word ‘Musagetes’ to his audience.[1233] He himself, of course, and many of his fellow teachers were familiar with Greek. Greek forms like ‘Heraclen’, ‘Pythiados’ are often used, and the orator of Oration VI, who was a Gaul, could quote Homer.[1234] Ausonius says in his quaint mythological style of Harmonius, professor of Greek at Trèves, that he was the only one who mingled Greek wine with Italian.[1235] But the subject was fast becoming a schoolmaster’s acquisition. By A.D. 376 it was not even that; for the emperors, in speaking of the appointment of a Greek rhetor, add dubiously ‘if any one worthy of the post can be found’.[1236] It was partly this neglect of Greek, no doubt, that made Julian refer so often to ἡ τῶν Κέλτων άγροικία.[1237] As the grandfather of Eumenius was an Attic Greek,[1238] we cannot suppose that it was the un-Greek atmosphere of his surroundings, but rather personal disinclination or disability that allowed Greek to dwindle in the schools. Ausonius says that his father’s Latin was halting: Sermone impromptus Latio, verum Attica lingua suffecit culti vocibus eloquii,[1239] and the verses are a commentary on the swiftness of the decline. Ausonius himself, in spite of his confession that he neglected Greek at school,[1240] is quite familiar with the language, and loves to display his knowledge of it—‘magnopere sibi videtur placere graecissando’.[1241] He drags it in pedantically in his epistles and the capers he cuts with it are merely annoying.[1242] But whenever he addresses the general public he finds it necessary to translate even the simplest words and phrases, as in the _Ludus septem sapientum_ when the pantomime player (_ludius_) speaks.[1243] And he admits that Greek was not very successfully taught, though the Greek grammarians were industrious enough.[1244] There was not much enthusiasm for the language and its literature, as there had been in past times. To Citarius, the Sicilian teacher of Greek, Ausonius says that he would have gained as much glory for learning as Aristarchus or Zenodotus among the Greeks were it not that the scale of values had changed.[1245]