As for the slaves, it is true that there were some of them in the fourth century who could read and write like Ausonius’s ‘notarius’, but slaves _qua_ slaves received no education. It was found useful to make them acquire a knack like shorthand, just as it is useful to break in a horse. Their knack was their only virtue. But there was no provision for them as a class, and no encouragement to extend their knowledge beyond their narrow speciality. A glance at the laws of the Theodosian Code is sufficient to show this. A ‘colonus’ is bound to the soil on which he is born, and if he runs away from the place of his birth he is to be brought back immediately, together with his family.[761] So says a law of A.D. 419. A law of Constantine had also enacted that ‘coloni’, who purposed flight, should be reduced to slavery and put in chains, and with this sentence upon them be compelled, as they deserve, to perform the tasks of free men.[762] The law shows that the ‘coloni’ were still regarded as belonging to the third rather than the fourth class. But their freedom did not exist in more than name, and it seems most improbable that they had any share in the education of the day. Finally, the deduction of Lavisse that education was general from the fact that the sergeants could read, and that the sons of veterans had schools, is not altogether justified. For, again, the soldier would pick up just the minimum of school knowledge to help him through (and this he might conceivably have done even without going to a ‘litterator’) more especially as the army by this time consisted largely of barbarians. As for the veterans, they were a privileged class, as the thirteen enactments of the Theodosian Code[763] regarding their status and immunity from public burdens can prove. Turning now to the contemporary writers, we can trace the effect of the code on their methods and ideas. Sidonius clearly thinks of men in ‘ordines’. At the feast of St. Just, in which all classes participate, there is not much trace of intermingling or exchange of greetings, and when they scatter for relaxation the lines of demarcation are still plain.[764] Eumenius, too, illustrates the value which men attached to class privileges. He had been ‘magister sacrae memoriae’, and the emperor, in appointing him to the school at Autun, assures him that his ‘dignitas’ will not be impaired by the change. The gratitude of Eumenius for this boon, ‘ut salvo honoris mei privilegio doceam’,[765] is effusive and significant.