Yet the chief connexion with Rome, the bond most frequently mentioned by Roman writers, was along the line of Massilia’s culture. Cicero speaks with enthusiasm[30] of the city which possessed a statue of Minerva, and it is well known that the Romans regularly sent their sons there,[31] rather than to Athens,[32] to study Greek. The young Agricola looked on it as his Alma Mater.[33] The climate was milder and healthier than that of Athens and its morals had a better reputation. Plautus uses the phrase ‘mores Massilienses’ in the sense of irreproachable character.[34] Valerius Maximus speaks of the city as ‘severitatis custos acerrima’. They prohibited pantomimes on moral grounds;[35] sumptuary laws limited personal expense; and women were not allowed to drink wine.[36] Such was the moral austerity (at any rate in early times[37]) of the Massilians, and this reputation no doubt enhanced its popularity—with parents at any rate—as an educational centre. Massilia stood for a very long time far above any other Gallic city in culture. The Rhodians in Livy[38] are made to say that the Massilians would long ago have been barbarized by the uncivilized tribes around (_tot indomitae circumfusae gentes_) had it not been for their sheltered situation; and Pomponius Mela[39] speaks of Massilia as ‘olim inter asperas posita’, and remarks that the Massilians nevertheless retained their individuality after the civilization of the rest. They had their own constitution, and it was prominent enough for Aristotle to notice.[40] Many writers tell us how the Massilians spread their Greek civilization among the Gauls.[41] Strabo speaks of Massilia as the School of Gaul, which so hellenized the barbarians that they drew up their contracts in Greek.[42] So Ammianus[43] says that after the foundation of Massilia ‘men gradually became civilized in these parts, and the pursuit of praiseworthy branches of knowledge, begun by the bards and the Celtic philosophers (_euhages_ and _drasidae_), grew and prospered’. The bards sang in heroic verse, to the accompaniment of tuneful music, the deeds of the valiant. The _euhages_ were natural philosophers who investigated the secrets of the physical world, ‘scrutantes seriem et sublimia naturae pandere conabantur’. And, according to Pythagoras, the _drasidae_, who were of loftier spirit and lived in exclusive clubs and colleges, investigated and pronounced on occult metaphysical questions. So effectively did Greek influence spread, ‘ut non Graecia in Galliam emigrasse, sed Gallia in Graeciam translata videretur’.[44]