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EDUCATION
The same dependence, and the same emphasis on literal and verbal minutiae,
were evident in the next stage, under the teacher of literature {grammaticus),
begun usually at the age of eleven or thereabouts. The reading {praelectio) and
interpretation {enarratio) of texts was conducted on a predominantly technical
level. An example of the relentlessly pedantic methods employed may be found
in Priscian's Partitiones (' Distinctions') on the first twelve verses of the Aeneid:
they occupy some fifty-five large octavo pages in Keil's edition. 1 Exposition of
content {enarratio historiarurn) formed part of the process but was almost
entirely an affair of factual erudition. Literary criticism as it is now understood —
concern with larger social and aesthetic values — was virtually unknown at any
level of scholarly activity and certainly formed no part of the school curriculum.
A paradoxical feature of the system, but one which had important implications
for literature, was the concentration in the schools on poetical texts, given that
the ultimate aim was to produce the perfectus orator — a man consummately well
trained in the art of effective extempore speech in prose. 2 On the face of it this
emphasis was beneficial. The range of authors recommended by Quintilian
for school reading in both Greek and Latin (1.8.5—12) * s quite extensive and
offers an excellent foundation for a literary education. In point of fact his list
(like nearly all such lists) reflects a traditional view of -what is ideally desirable
rather than current reality. 3 However, even when allowance is made for the
normal discrepancy between theory and practice, it seems clear that the choice
of authors regarded as classical in the highest sense and so especially suitable to
form the basis of the curriculum gradually narrowed during the later Empire.
For the late fourth-century grammarian Arusianus Messius four authors had
come to represent the preferred sources of classical Latin usage, Virgil, Sallust,
Terence and Cicero. 4 Again, of these four it was the two poets who predominated
in the school curriculum and who attracted most attention from
grammarians and commentators. So it is that Virgil and Terence enjoy the best
protected traditions of all Latin writers — that is to say, they have been largely
immune from the casual and arbitrary alterations that in varying degrees have
affected the texts of other authors (cf. below, section 5). But there was no question
of studying them, or any other author, for their own sake. The role of
poetry in education was always ancillary to the overriding rhetorical purpose of
the system. When Quintilian commends the older poets of Rome (1.8.10—12),
it is as a source of authority and embellishment for the orator.
• GLK in 459—515.
2
Cf. Quint. Inst. 1-4-4, 2.5.1—20, suggesting, rather apologetically, the praelectio of orators and
historians by the rhetor as part of the first elements of rhetorical instruction (prima rhetorices
rudiment*).
3 This is even more true of his famous conspectus of the reading of the orator in Book 1 o: on its
sources in Alexandrian and later literary tradition see Peterson (1891) xxviii—xxxix.
• GLK VII 449—515; Cassiodorus (Jnst. 1.15.7) refers to 'Messius* foursome', quadriga Messii.
Cf. Marrou (1956) 177—8.
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