Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

874 29. education in the roman empire
Troglita before migrating to Constantinople, where he celebrated the
accession of Justin II in 565. 56
Prose writing, mainly of Christian content, flourished in late antique
Africa. Typical works are the Chronicle of Victor of Tunnuna and the
numerous Christian polemical treatises and other works of Fulgentius of
Ruspe. Both writers were active in the sixth century. Schools continued to
function, albeit on a dwindling scale, until the capture of Carthage by the
Arabs in 698.
In Spain the establishment of a Visigothic kingdom marked less of a
break than elsewhere in the barbarian west and did not change the dominant
role of classical Latin culture. Cities survived unscathed, and new ones
were founded by the Visigothic rulers. The Byzantine reconquest of southern
Spain, short-lived as it was, encouraged the maintenance of Roman
institutions and way of life. The conversion to the Catholic faith of king
Reccared in 589 brought Visigoths and Hispano-Romans closer together,
and leading Visigothic families intermarried with the surviving senatorial
aristocracy. There is little direct evidence for schools, but the general level
of culture, and the recently discovered documents written on slate in a late
Roman cursive hand, suggest that they had not disappeared. Medicine and
law continued to be studied. The Visigothic kings patronized literature, and
king Sisebut (612) even dabbled in Latin verse; an astronomical poem in
sixty-one hexameters survives from his pen. Eugenius, bishop of Toledo
(died 657), revised Dracontius’ poem De laudibus Dei. Isidore of Seville
(c. 570–636) must have had a fairly rich library at his disposal when he composed
his encyclopaedic Etymologiae. 57 John of Toledo (c. 642–90) composed
minor works on theology and grammar. In 710 Toledo was captured
by the Arabs. The Romano-Visigothic culture did not very long survive its
fall.
In Gaul the situation was more complex. In the fifth and sixth century
the region south of the Loire and the Langres plateau, though ruled by
Visigothic, Burgundian and Frankish kings, still belonged culturally and
socially to the Mediterranean world, whereas in the north, which was
subject to invasions and where Latin culture was more thinly implanted,
Roman institutions and social relations largely vanished. In Provence,
Burgundy and Aquitaine the old senatorial families survived and flourished
in uneasy symbiosis with barbarian rulers. But city life gradually dwindled,
and with it public schools, and, indeed, schools of any kind, became few
and scattered. The aristocrats had their libraries and included in their
entourage men of learning, sometimes slaves. Sidonius Apollinaris
(431–90) corresponds with his friends in elegant Latin, peppered with classical
allusions and involved figures of speech. His friend, the senator Felix,
56 Diggle and Goodyear (1970); Cameron, Corippus. 57 Fontaine (1959) 846–61, 1174–80.
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