Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

education in the roman empire 873
schools continued to flourish. The rich and influential senatorial aristocracy
and the still numerous upper class of the cities provided a milieu in
which they had an important role to play. And the favourable policy of
Theoderic, who had spent his youth in Constantinople, helped to preserve
the traditional educational structures. Ennodius (473/4–521), bishop of
Pavia, paints a picture of flourishing schools in northern Italy. 51 Boethius
planned to translate into Latin all of Plato and Aristotle, but was prevented
from realizing his project by his early death. The project bears witness both
to a lively interest in philosophy and to a declining knowledge of Greek in
Italy. He is today remembered for his five theological treatises and above
all for his Consolation of Philosophy, written while he was in prison awaiting
execution. 52
Cassiodorus (c. 487–c. 580) proposed to establish a kind of university in
Rome, in which classical literature and philosophy would be studied as a
preparation for the study of theology. His Institutiones provide an idea of
the curriculum which he envisaged. However, twenty years of war
destroyed not only much of the material fabric of Italy, but also the social
fabric of Italian society, and Cassiodorus had to content himself with
establishing a monastery at Vivarium in Calabria, where he strove to salvage
what he could of classical and Christian culture. Justinian by his Pragmatic
Sanction of 554 made some attempt to restore higher education in Rome.
Teachers of grammar and rhetoric were to be found in Rome and Ravenna
in the second half of the sixth century, under whom the future pope
Gregory the Great and the poet Venantius Fortunatus studied, but the
Lombard invasion in 568 struck the final blow to traditional education in
Italy, leaving monasteries as virtually the sole institutions providing basic
literacy. 53
In North Africa the Vandals at first gave no encouragement to traditional
education, and the flight of many of the wealthier citizens must have
reduced the support for classical culture. But the new rulers gradually came
to appreciate Latin learning, and to acquire a taste for panegyrics of themselves
in the classical manner. In the reigns of king Gunthamund (484–96)
and king Thrasamund (493–523) schools were established in Carthage. The
vast encyclopaedia of Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, 54
written in the fifth century, testifies to a revived, if somewhat superficial,
interest in classical culture. Poetry flourished, as exemplified by the technicality
correct but shallow poems collected in the Latin Anthology and the De
laudibus Dei of Dracontius. 55 Corippus, the last notable Latin poet in the
classical tradition, was educated in Vandal Carthage and composed there in
549 his panegyrical account of the exploits of the Byzantine general John
51 DBI 42 (1993) 681–95; Fontaine (1962). 52 Gibson (ed.), Boethius; Chadwick, Boethius.
53 Mommsen (1874); Mynors (1937); cf. O’Donnell (1979); Momigliano (1955).
54 Cf. Le Moine (1972). 55 Vollmer (1914).
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