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.
As to the payment of teachers, it is clear that before Vespasian it was
very unequal. Verrius Flaccus, who was tutor to the children of Augustus,
received a salary of 100,000 sesterces (£1,000).[687] Even the infamous
Palaemon, to whom parents were forbidden to send their children by
Tiberius and Claudius, got as much as 40,000 sesterces. Martial takes a
pessimistic view. In his advice to a friend on a career for his son he
counsels: Let him avoid grammarians and rhetoricians if he wants to make
money:
Artes discere vult pecuniosas?
fac, discat, citharoedus aut choraules.[688]
In Gaul, it appears, teachers were paid by the State before this was
the case at Rome; for Strabo remarks in the first century A.D. that
he found State-appointed teachers there.[689] But there must have been
great lack of organization and equality because State-payment meant, at
that time, payment by the municipal town, which could not always provide
proper security. Security, indeed, became more and more shaken, and the
improvement made by Vespasian when he fixed the teachers’ salaries was a
much-needed measure. In the famous decree of 376 Gratian and Valentinian
ratified this enactment.[690] Rhetoricians are to receive twenty-four
_annonae_[691] from the treasury, Greek and Latin grammarians, twelve.
The chief cities of the provinces are encouraged to elect professors who
are to be paid according to the standard fixed by the emperors. Trèves,
the imperial favourite, gets something more (_uberius aliquid_), thirty
annonae for a rhetor and twenty for a grammarian.
There can be no doubt that the emperors tried to monopolize education.
Julian’s decree[692] that the appointment of all teachers was to
be subject to the imperial approval, and the law of Theodosius and
Valentinian in the next century forbidding all public schools outside
the imperial academy, are illustrations of this tendency. Nevertheless,
there must have been a large number of private-school teachers who were
not paid by the State. The imperial legislation of the later empire could
not have done away entirely with so established and widespread a class
of men. They survived, especially in elementary education, and possibly
their number exceeded that of the officially State-paid teachers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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