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.
Libanius draws a picture of the rhetor lingering in the classroom after
the day’s work because of the unpleasantness of conjugal and family
difficulties at home;[774] and Ausonius roundly declares, emphasizing
another side of the teacher’s unfortunate lot, that a grammarian is _not_
happy and never was; that the very name of grammarian is incompatible
with happiness. If beyond destiny and fate there has existed one that
was happy, he must indeed have passed beyond the bounds of the mere
grammarian.[775]
Routine produced its usual discontent, and it was true of the fourth
century as of the first:
Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros.
Yet the striking thing about the Gallic teachers (if we may take Bordeaux
as typical of the province) was their sociability. Alethius is ‘comis’
and ‘liberalis’;[776] Luciolus is commended by the poet for his geniality
to his guests, his good temper to his clients, his gentleness with his
servants;[777] and to Minervius[778] he says: ‘No gall embitters your
heart; your wit is abundant; yet your jokes are never such as lead to
strife.’[779]
They loved their dinners and their jokes, and could jest without malice
and in gentleness of spirit. So Nepotianus is addressed as a man ‘old in
years yet witty and young in heart; a spirit unembittered and overflowing
with much sweetness’.[780]
Leontius earns the cognomen Lascivus,[781] and Jucundus, though condemned
for inefficiency, is admitted to the ‘numerus grammaticorum’ on account
of his social and personal pleasantness.[782] It may be noticed, too,
that Constantius, in appointing Eumenius to the head-mastership of the
Maeniana, stated as one of his qualifications ‘his pleasing ways’.[783]
Wine played a great part among them. Crispus, the old master of Ausonius,
was believed to have tippled occasionally.[784] To the reader Ausonius
says in his introduction to _Bissula_ that he is to be read only by those
who have dined and dined well:
Ieiunis nil scribo; meum post pocula si quis
legerit, hic sapiet.
About the futile _Griphus_ he declares that all serious judgement must
be suspended, for ‘iniurium est de poeta male sobrio lectorem abstemium
iudicare’,[785] and the convivial spirit is further illustrated by the
epistles to Paulus[786] and to Theon.[787] Moreover, a favourite ideal
among these professors was to marry an heiress. Like Dynamius, who found
fortune and a wife as a teacher,[788] the jovial Marcellus won the
goodwill and the daughter of a nobleman,[789] as did the rhetor Alethius
Minervius.[790] Even the Syracusan Citarius ‘soon attained to wedlock in
a rich and noble family’.[791]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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