The ancients felt this themselves. They recognized the force of Seneca’s dictum: ‘Scholae non vitae discimus’. Tacitus had criticized the system in his _Dialogue_, and Petronius is very outspoken in his condemnation. He considers that the school produces in its pupils not wisdom but folly, seeing that what they hear or see there has no bearing on practical life. ‘It is for ever pirates standing in chains on the beach, tyrants writing edicts in which they order sons to cut off their fathers’ heads, oracles to avert a pestilence demanding the sacrifice of three or more virgins, verbal honey-balls, all words and acts sprinkled, as it were, with poppy seed and sesame. Children brought up in these surroundings can no more be sensible than those who live in a kitchen can be fragrant.’[1373] The school-exercises which Aphthonius prescribed clearly illustrate these objections. The artificiality of obeying all the rules at all times for a certain type of subject is apparent even in the models. In a little essay on ‘Poverty’, introduced by two verses of Theognis, the poet, under the heading ἐγκωμιαστικόν, is praised at length for seeing what an exaggerated emphasis poets lay on myths, and turning to serious moral teaching.[1374] He is also praised for observing metrical rules, which is at any rate less harmful than the sentiment expressed in the text that it is better to die than to be poor. Under the heading ‘cause’ it is alleged that poverty is incompatible with virtue. Those who are rid of poverty grow up fine men and do glorious deeds and entertain the poor. Look at Irus, the beggar (under the heading παραδείγματα)—he was so poor that he had even to change his name: for formerly he was called Arnaeus. And think of all the woes of Ulysses himself when he came home in the disguise of a beggar. How terrible it is to be poor! For all this a verse must be found from some poet (under the heading μαρτυρία παλαιῶν) in order to give the seal of respectability. This quotation is generally chosen quite irrespective of the main theme, Euripides being quoted on this occasion to the effect that poverty cannot change nobility of birth. Truth is made to consist in the nature of the charge brought, and not sought in the human facts of the case. Thus, in the stock example of a speech against a tyrant,[1375] we have a ‘_conjectural_ attack on the man’s past life’, and an ‘exclusion of pity’ worked up with the utmost artificiality. Ingenuity, not truth, is the object. And the same can be said of the ‘Encomium’, in which we find the germ of the panegyric. Of all these exercises those which fall under the heading of ‘Description’[1376] are the only ones which possess any kind of naturalness.