The law makes it quite clear that the State-paid school and university teachers[693] were, at one time, dependent on their towns for pay; and the frequent mandates of the emperors to the municipalities not to neglect these salaries show that they were not always prompt in paying. Symmachus, also, complains of the withholding of salaries;[694] and it has been suggested in this connexion that the teachers were unpopular because they were mostly pagans. It is more likely that their unpopularity was due to the fact that their teaching did not touch the mass of the population, who nevertheless had to support them. That the municipal salary stopped when the imperial one came into existence seems unlikely. Denk thinks that the imperial-paid ‘auditoria’ were distinct from the lower municipal-paid schools,[695] but probably the individual cities went on contributing part of the professors’ salaries, even after the law of Gratian.[696] As to the amount received, the impression made by the upper circle of the Bordeaux professors is certainly one of material prosperity. Marcellus of Narbo,[697] Sedatus of Toulouse,[698] and Exsuperius[699] did very well for themselves, and Eumenius considers his salary of £5,000 as nothing extraordinary: ‘multo maiora et prius et postea praemia contulerunt’ (_sc._ _principes_).[700] Even of the grammarian Marcellus, Ausonius could say that riches came by teaching: Mox schola ... grammatici nomen divitiasque dedit.[701] On the other hand the less distinguished seem to have had a disproportionately small salary. The frequent application of the epithet ‘sterilis’ or ‘exilis’ to the chair of the grammarian is a feature of Ausonius’s picture of them. Besides the imperial and the municipal support there were the gifts from the emperor,[702] and the possibility of presents from the family of the pupils—a practice which is still very much in evidence in many country centres. Finally, there were the fees from the pupils, part of which seems to have been paid directly to the teacher. The class fee (_merces_, _minerval_) seems to have been stipulated for by the rhetors individually. Axius asks Merula in Varro’s _De Re Rustica_,[703] ‘to be his master in the shepherd’s art’, and the reply is, imitating the practice of the rhetors, ‘Yes, as soon as you promise to pay my fee’ (_minerval_). Juvenal refers to the same practice: Quantum vis stipulare, et protinus accipe quod do ut toties illum pater audiat.[704]