My principal
and almost sole motive was that I had been informed that the
students there studied more quietly and were better kept under the
control of stern discipline, so that they did not capriciously and
impudently rush into the classroom of a teacher not their own --
indeed, they were not admitted at all without the permission of
the teacher. At Carthage, on the contrary, there was a shameful
and intemperate license among the students. They burst in rudely
and, with furious gestures, would disrupt the discipline which the
teacher had established for the good of his pupils. Many outrages
they perpetrated with astounding effrontery, things that would be
punishable by law if they were not sustained by custom. Thus
custom makes plain that such behavior is all the more worthless
because it allows men to do what thy eternal law never will allow.
They think that they act thus with impunity, though the very
blindness with which they act is their punishment, and they suffer
far greater harm than they inflict.
The manners that I would not adopt as a student I was
compelled as a teacher to endure in others. And so I was glad to
go where all who knew the situation assured me that such conduct
was not allowed.
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