Nor can we wonder at this. The whole educational system was calculated to produce a good memory. The grammarian’s school supplied facts which had to be remembered in declamations, and the rhetor introduced a host of technicalities which had also to be kept in memory. The declaimer had to fit into his speech as many quotations as he could possibly remember,[545] and in Ausonius’s letter to his grandson the ‘good boy’ is the one with the long memory.[546] Bearing this in mind, Quintilian recommended that boys should learn as much as possible by heart, going over the same ground again and again (_quasi eundem cibum remandendi_, _sc._ _opus_). They must, therefore, begin with the poets, before going on to prose which is harder to remember.[547] Memory is a matter of pigeon-holes. What is to be remembered must be imagined in certain places, so that the order of the places will recall the order of the things to be remembered. We shall then use the ‘places’ instead of tablets, and the images associated with them as letters (_ut locis pro cera, simulacris pro litteris uteremur_).[548] To cultivate the memory various tricks may be tried. We learn a large subject by remembering parts of it in order; or we may take a sign to stand for the thing to be remembered, e.g. an anchor for ‘sailing’, or a weapon for ‘campaign’. Like Cicero, he lays stress on ‘loca’, imagined or actual, and on ‘simulacra vel imagines’. In the case of a long speech it is best to divide it into parts which should not be too small. Division is important. ‘Qui recte diviserit, nunquam poterit in rerum ordine errare.’ He also recommends marking a difficult passage (_aliquas apponere notas_).[549] Thirdly, we may note the fruits of this training, as far as memory is concerned. Ausonius, by writing the _Cento Nuptialis_, proved only one good thing: that he knew the whole of Vergil by heart. Minervius[550] was noted for his memory. Ausonius spends ten lines in describing it, and clearly indicates how highly it was prized. Nepotianus, too, is specially commended for possessing this gift.[551] In view of all this, we may not unfairly conclude that mnemonics played a considerable part in the schools of Gaul. In the history of the human race, as in that of the individual,[552] the memorizing stage comes before the development of thought. And the less advanced systems of education all over the world are characterized by their almost exclusive emphasis on learning things by heart. (iii) CONTROL AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE SCHOOL (a) _Discipline in primary and secondary schools._ The rhetorical tradition brought with it certain traditional methods, and one of them was the excessive use of corporal punishment. In the East, Libanius testifies to the frequent employment of this method. We have seen that the _paedagogus_ appealed as a matter of course to the ‘argumentum ad baculum’; we find in Libanius that the rhetor, the university teacher, did likewise.