Two of the subjects over which the grammarian paused in his exposition may be noticed. Blümner remarks[406] that geography was not a school subject, and Bernhardy draws attention to the traditional weakness of the Romans in it.[407] Yet considerable and increasing attention must have been given to it with the extending operations of the Roman army and the growth of commerce with distant lands. Maps were in use even in early times. Varro[408] mentions a ‘picta Italia’ in the temple of Tellus, and Propertius testifies that he was compelled to learn by heart the countries of the world painted on the map.[409] The elder Pliny[410] mentions Pytheas, the famous Gaul, who lived probably at the time of Alexander the Great, and was a writer on geography, ‘praesertim Geographiae notitia illustris, commendatus ... ab omnibus gentibus’.[411] Aethicus Hister tells us in his _Cosmographia_ of a measurement of the Roman world which was ordered by Julius Caesar and carried out by the ablest men of the day, and there were writers on geography like Poseidonius and Mela.[412] In our period we find the subject being used as part of the imperial policy. ‘Moreover’, says Eumenius, ‘let the young see in the porticoes of the new schools all countries and all seas and whatever of cities or races or tribes the invincible princes either restore or overcome by their valour or bind down by the fear they inspire.’[413] And again, since children learn better by eye than by ear,[414] ‘the situation, the extent and the distances of all places have been marked and the names given, the source and the mouth of every river, the bend of the coast-lines, the curves of the sea where it flows round the land or breaks into it.’[415] In Ausonius we are struck with the accuracy and extent of the author’s geographical knowledge, due, no doubt, to the fact that he had to practise it in his school. He refers directly to maps in the _Gratiarum Actio_.[416] He wants to put in a compact form all the emperor’s praises, as the geographers do with the earth (_qui terrarum orbem unius tabulae ambitu circumscribunt_). Such a ‘tabula’ Millin reports at Autun, on the site of the Maeniana, containing the outline of Italy with the boundaries of Gaul and towns like Bononia, Forum Gallorum, Mutina.[417]