Tu caeli numeros et conscia sidera fati callebas, studium dissimulanter agens. non ignota tibi nostrae quoque formula vitae, signatis quam tu condideras tabulis.[247] His aunt Aemilia lived a single life devoted to the study of medicine.[248] Herculanus, his nephew, was a teacher at Bordeaux, though he wandered from the straight path,[249] while the fame of his uncle Arborius, the rhetorician, reached as far as Constantinople.[250] In 398 Claudian could use _doctus_ as a conventional epithet of the citizens of Gaul.[251] It had long been the custom of the Romans to employ Gallic teachers, and it is a striking testimony to the pre-eminence of the schools of Gaul that Symmachus, the crusty old patrician, conservative of the pagan conservatives, should desire to have a Gallic tutor for his son at Rome.[252] He is not ashamed to confess his debt to Gaul. ‘I must confess that I miss the fountain of Gallic eloquence. All my skill (and I know its limitations) I owe to Gaul.’[253] If Rome had retained her former importance as an educational centre, if there had been the least chance of backing her against Gaul, this ardent lover of the Eternal City would certainly have done so. But Gaul at this time was rather like Scotland from Hume to Scott: a junior partner, but with a literary culture of her own that imparted to her a superior excellence. Turning to Christian writers, we find the same testimony to the prosperity of Gallic studies. Now this prosperity had two aspects. There was the height to which men like Paulinus and Sidonius rose in the attainment of knowledge, and there was the width to which the interest in reading the pamphlets of the Church Fathers extended. But that there was a great and increasing interest in education cannot be denied. Neither conservative haughtiness towards the provinces (as far as it survived) nor the hatred of religious zeal could ignore the fact. More than once Jerome in his _Chronicle_ uses the word _florentissime_ in this connexion,[254] and to Rusticus he writes that he has heard of his education at Rome, ‘post studia Galliarum quae vel florentissima sunt’.[255] Paulinus of Pella and his namesake of Nola, whom Ausonius taught, together with men like Prosper of Aquitaine,[256] leaders in the Christian world, all owed their early training to the flourishing pagan schools of Gaul.