Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But an inquiry must also be raised about schoolmasters — and, indeed, about teachers of literature generally. In fact there is no doubt that they too are involved in idolatry of many kinds. To begin with, they are obliged to proclaim the gods of the nations — their names, their genealogies, their myths, every one of their honorific titles — and then to observe their solemnities and festivals, since it is by these that they reckon their fees. What schoolmaster will fail to keep the Quinquatria, even without his tablet listing the seven idols? He consecrates his new pupil's very first fee to Minerva, to her honor and her name, so that even if he is not said in so many words to be defiled by having offered something to an idol, he should still be shunned as an idolater. What of it? Is the pollution any less because the profit, invoked in the names and honors of an idol, happens to pay better? The same goes for the Minervalia in honor of Minerva, for the Saturnalia in honor of Saturn — which even the household slaves have to keep during the season of the Saturnalia. The presents of the New Year have to be angled for too, and the Feast of the Seven Hills, and all the tribute-money of the midwinter Bruma and of dear kinship must be exacted; the schools of Flora must be crowned with garlands; the flaminicae and the newly elected aediles offer sacrifice; the school is given a holiday in their honor. The same happens at the idol's birthday: the whole pageantry of the devil is attended in full. Who will think this fitting for a Christian, unless he also thinks it fitting for one who is not a teacher? We know it can be objected: if it is not lawful for God's servants to teach literature, then it will not be lawful even to learn it — and how, in the meantime, is anyone to be trained in ordinary human good sense, or in any kind of perception or action, since literature is the instrument for all of life? How can we reject secular studies, when divine things cannot be had without them? Let us, then, weigh the necessity of a literary education, and consider that in one respect it must be allowed, in another it can be avoided. A believer stands on firmer ground learning literature than teaching it, since the reasoning behind acquiring it differs from the reasoning behind handing it on. Should a believer take up teaching it, then unquestionably, in that very act of instruction, he lends his approval to the gods' pronouncements bound up within it; in handing it on, he affirms it; in rehearsing it, he bears it witness. By that very act he sets his seal on the gods themselves, though the law forbids — as we have said — that gods be so much as named, and that this name be invoked in vain. From this, from the very beginnings of education, the devil's first claim on faith is built up. Ask yourself whether the man who catechizes pupils about idols is not committing idolatry. But when a believer merely learns these things, if he already has the sense to know what they are, he neither accepts nor admits them — all the more so if he has long had that sense. Or if he is only beginning to gain it, he must first have the sense of what he learned earlier, namely, about God and the faith. Accordingly he will spit that material out and not take it in, and will be as safe as a man who, knowing it for poison, takes it from someone who does not, but does not drink it. For him, necessity counts as an excuse, because he cannot learn any other way. But it is so much easier not to teach literature than not to learn it, that a believing pupil will more easily steer clear of the rest of the pollutions of the schools — the public and private solemnities — than a teacher will steer clear of attending them.
XI.