Ausonius’s experience as pupil, therefore, seems to contradict the statement that the master followed his students from class to class. But it may be argued that the scheme was upset in Ausonius’s case by his temporary removal to Toulouse, and his experience as master may be urged. This is a plausible contention. For he tells us in the _Protrepticon_ of three stages in his career corresponding presumably to those of the litterator, the grammarian, and the rhetor. Yet Jullian’s supposition is not therefore true. Not every primary master was an Ausonius who could rise to the top of his profession and become an imperial tutor. Obviously there were a large number who found, as they left, the teaching profession a poor and dreary task. The grammarians whom Ausonius mentions,[724] except, perhaps, Nepotianus,[725] did not rise to the higher position, and some, in their old age, even lost the little glory they had achieved, as Anastasius did.[726] Moreover, Ausonius does not say that his promotion kept pace with the advance of his students. The terms he uses are quite vague (_mox_, _idem_). And even supposing the master could in this way remain with his pupils, what happened when they had reached the highest stage? Jullian maintains that he started at the bottom again with a new class: ‘Le même homme était tour à tour professeur de grammaire et rhéteur: il lui arrivait ainsi de suivre ses élèves, de les accompagner de classe en classe.’[727] Now this is reducing the matter to an absurdity. The fixity of the distinction between grammarian and rhetor is so striking in all Latin literature, and particularly in Ausonius, that the system, however desirable, would have been impossible. It is quite clear that there was a definite status attached to the positions,[728] and the Theodosian Code prescribes different salaries. Is it conceivable (to mention no other objections) that a man would be constantly changing his social standing and his salary in order to accompany his class from stage to stage? The most we can say is that the connexion between the lower and higher forms of education was sufficiently close (as in France to-day) to allow a man of merit to rise from the lowest to the highest. This is proved by Ausonius’s case, and Denk is not stating the whole truth when he says that the teachers were independent of one another.[729] There was a certain amount of independence, no doubt, between grammarian and grammarian, or rhetor and rhetor, but between the grammatical school and that of the rhetorician there was a considerable degree of interdependence. C. OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL (i) ADMINISTRATIVE AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS