Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

872 29. education in the roman empire
that a decision by council is involved (Or. xxxi.16–18). The salaries of
some teachers in Gaul in the fourth century seem to have been paid from
the fiscus (C.Th. xiii.3.11), but there is some ambiguity in the language used.
For the fifth and sixth centuries there is scarcely any firm evidence for the
source or amount of teachers’ salaries, other than the edicts of Theodosius
II already quoted.
In the high empire the culture of the urban élites was largely shared
between the eastern and western halves of the empire. This shared culture
is still visible in the temples, theatres, baths and other public buildings from
the Yorkshire Ouse to the Euphrates, as well as in the almost identical
mosaics sometimes found a thousand miles apart. Greeks, on the whole, did
not find it worth while to learn Latin, although some, like Plutarch, Appian,
Herodian and Cassius Dio, were at home in the language of their rulers.
Educated Romans, on the other hand, were more often than not bilingual,
or at any rate had a reasonably good knowledge of Greek. A break begins
to appear in the common culture by the late third century. It is significant
that the rhetorical concepts of Hermogenes failed to be adopted by Latin
teachers of rhetoric, and that the analysis of Greek syntax by Apollonius
Dyscolus was not imitated by Latin grammarians until Priscian, who lived
and worked in Constantinople. The quasi-bilingual culture of the westerners
gradually gave way to a monoglot Latin culture. Jerome knew Greek very
well indeed. But in his famous dream it was Cicero, and not Demosthenes,
who held him in thrall. His almost equally learned contemporary Augustine
was bored by Greek at school, and never learned enough to understand the
Greek church Fathers of the fourth century. 50 The gulf between eastern and
western culture was widening. At the same time, however, the transfer of
the imperial capital to Constantinople and the increasing bureaucratization
of the Roman government meant that more easterners learned Latin in
order to further their careers. Libanius laments the abandonment of the
study of rhetoric for that of Latin by some of his most promising pupils.
Most of these young Greeks probably aimed at no more than a functional
knowledge of the language. But in order to learn it they were obliged by the
age-old pedagogical tradition to make some study, however superficial, of a
few works of Latin literature. The papyri from late antique Egypt containing
passages from Virgil with a parallel ‘crib’ in Greek illustrate vividly how
a Hellenophone learned Latin.
In the fifth century large tracts of Roman territory in the west passed
into barbarian control, and by the end of the century Italy itself was an
Ostrogothic kingdom. In general, the new Germanic rulers were not much
interested at first in classical culture, which they saw as a threat to their
sense of ethnic identity. But attitudes varied from region to region. In Italy
50 Aug. Conf. i.13.
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