Of the conditions under which he and students like him studied the Theodosian Code has much to say. The decree of Valens and Gratian in 370[1331] prescribed that any provincial student who wanted to take a course at Rome must apply for leave to the provincial judges, and must, on his arrival in Rome, show his letter of permission, which mentioned the town to which the student belonged, his relations, and connexions, to the Master of the Census. The regulation about getting special permission from the governors of the provinces is an instance of the usual coercion of the individual in the Roman Empire; but it is also based on the rigid economic system of the emperors, and it may have had its good side in preventing students from coming over too young. Of a piece with it, and illustrating the utilitarianism of the Roman mind, is the rule that no one may remain in Rome as a student after the age of twenty, for no one must escape the public burdens longer than that (‘ne diutius his patria defraudetur, muneraque adeo publica declinent’).[1332] During the student’s residence in the imperial city he stood under strict supervision and drastic discipline. He must state clearly what his special subject is so as to waste no time, and the Censuales must know where he lives and keep an eye on his studies. His public conduct and associations are carefully watched. Shows, theatres, and late banquets are specially mentioned as snares and delusions in the path of youth. Any one who behaves in unseemly fashion is to be publicly whipped and shipped home to his province. So far did the coercive Roman spirit in education go. For the Romans always looked on education as a discipline which must serve some external end, and not (like the Greeks) as a development of the human spirit valuable for its own sake. But while we cannot justify this drastic interference with individual development, we must remember that the strictness of the moral discipline was probably wholesome and necessary. The state of Rome, which Ammianus twice in his history describes with considerable care,[1333] and the account which Augustine gives of the ‘eversores’, or bands of rowdy students,[1334] in the contemporary African schools of rhetoric warrant such a supposition. We must reflect, moreover, that the custom and temptations of life in a metropolis were probably new to most of the provincial students and apt to have disconcerting results. There is a curious inscription of Lyons which bears on the question of Gallic students abroad. It reads as follows: Memoriae A. Vitelli Valeri hic annorum X in studiis Romae de(cessit) parentes Nymphi(us) et Tyche uni(co) et carissimo fil(io).[1335]