Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire : $b A study of pagan and Christian education in the last century of the Western empireHaarhoff, T. J. (Theodore Johannes)
History
Schools of Gaul in the last century of the Western Empire : $b A study of pagan and Christian education in the last century of the Western empire
Haarhoff, T. J. (Theodore Johannes)
Education, Ancient -- France; Gaul -- History -- 58 B.C.-511 A.D.
It is vain to look for any detailed scheme of arrangement in the
subjects of the schools. As we have seen, no definite compartments can
be distinguished in a subject like ‘Grammar’, nor were the same number
of subjects found in every school: Law, Philosophy, and Medicine being
taught in accordance with the traditions and the size of the place. We
are not even quite clear as to the relation of the various grades of
schools to one another when we try to look at Gaul in particular. For a
point that is left vague in one’s mind after reading the authorities for
Gaul, is whether a distinction was made between the elementary school
and the more advanced classes of the grammarian. Julius Capitolinus, in
his _Life of M. Antoninus_, the philosopher,[629] makes it quite clear
that a different master was used at Rome during the second century
for the two stages. ‘Usus est magistris ad prima elementa Euforione
litteratore ... usus est praeterea grammaticis, Graeco, Alexandro
Cotiaensi, Latinis, Trosio Apro et Pollione et Eutychio Proculo
Siccensi. Oratoribus usus est Graecis Aninio Macro ... Latino Frontone
Cornelio....’ Apuleius is just as clear. Drawn from the fountain of the
Muses, he says that the first goblet provides the instruction of the
elementary master, the second the teaching of the grammarian, while the
third provides the rhetor’s eloquence; and that this is as far as most
people go.[630] And in our period Augustine says that he was very fond of
Latin literature ‘non quas primi magistri sed quas docent qui grammatici
vocantur’.[631]
There is, therefore, a clear traditional distinction in the Roman world
between the _primus magister_ or _litterator_, the grammarian and the
rhetor, and perhaps we may see this division in the stages of his career
which Ausonius describes in the _Protrepticon_:[632]
(1) Multos lactantibus annis,
ipse alui gremioque fovens et murmura solvens.
(2) Mox pueros molli monitu et formidine leni
pellexi.
(3) Idem vesticipes, motu iam puberis aevi,
ad mores artesque bonas fandique vigorem
produxi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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