Moreover, any special event produced a holiday. At Antioch any festive occasions, funerals,[677] or civil commotions,[678] served to close the schoolrooms. On the occasion of the marriage of Ricimer with the daughter of Anthemius, the schools of Gaul enjoyed a holiday.[679] Apparently the length of the holiday was not controlled by organized rules, and this time it lasted so long that even Sidonius protested.[680] ‘_Tandem_’, he says, ‘reditum est in publicam serietatem, quae rebus actitandis ianuam campumque patefecit.’ It is interesting to find signs of a common life among the students, the beginnings of a residential university. Aulus Gellius claims the authority of Pythagoras for this mode of life. ‘Here is another point we must not omit: all the students of Pythagoras, as soon as they had been admitted into that “corps” of his, pooled all their possessions, slaves, or money, and so a close and lasting society was formed.’[681] Suetonius tells of one C. Albucius Silus of Novaria (Cisalpine Gaul) who came to Rome and was received into the ‘contubernium’ of Plancus, the orator, i.e. lived under the same roof, became a ‘convictor’ with him.[682] ‘You can enjoy the possession of no good thing’, Seneca says, ‘without some one to share it.’ You will gain more by talking and living with (_convictus_) people than from set speeches. Cleanthes could never have interpreted the philosophy of Zeno if he had merely attended his lectures. But he lived with him, examined his private life, and watched him to see if he practised what he preached.[683] Similarly, Plato and Aristotle and the rest learned more from the conduct than the words of Socrates, and ‘Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaenus were made great not by the school of Epicurus, but by living with him (_contubernium_).’ Gellius gives many examples of this sort of literary fellowship. While master and students dined together, one of the servitors would read some passage from a Greek or Latin author, and if a difficulty arose the master explained. So at the table of Favorinus ‘servus assistens mensae eius legere inceptabat....’ and a discussion was introduced by the philosopher on the word ‘parcus’.[684] Literary criticism was the favourite thing, as when the _Bucolics_ of Vergil and Theocritus were read together at a dinner, and it was noticed that Vergil had left alone passages which contained the peculiar Greek sweetness but could not and should not be translated.[685] We have no direct data for supposing that this system was followed in Gaul in our period; but the Favorinus mentioned in Gellius came from Arles, and there appear to have been ‘contubernia’ in Massilia.[686] Moreover, the ‘Platonic clubs’ of Sidonius and the general social temper of the Bordeaux professors make it likely that something of the kind was found at the Gallic universities.