[129] Jn. Malala, pp. 427, 430; Theophanes, an. 6,020, etc.
[130] Ibid. Malala says she was won over by "gifts of hospitality, a collection of silver vases, and a considerable present in money."
[131] Jn. Malala, p. 450; Procopius, De Bel. Pers., i, 24.
CHAPTER VI
THE SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY AT ATHENS AND THEIR ABOLITION BY JUSTINIAN
THE systematic teaching of philosophy at Athens had its origin in the dialectic of Socrates, whose mental bias impelled him to a persistent search after the fundamental truths which underlie the sociological organization of mankind. His constant effort was to discover what principles should be instilled into young men in order to render them worthy members of the community; and in pursuit of this object he made a practice of perambulating the city intent on applying his method of question and argument to all persons accredited with any kind of knowledge. Thus he laboured unremittingly in earnest effort to elicit sound opinions or to convict of fallacy. Every Greek town was adorned with a gymnasium, and large cities, such as Athens, possessed several institutions of the kind. Established for the physical training and athletic development of youth, a gymnasium consisted of covered halls, of porticos provided with sculptured stone seats, and of a small park or exercise ground shaded with plane and olive trees.[132] Ultimately the gymnasiums assumed something of the form of the colleges of a modern university, and were resorted to habitually by teachers of young men, sophists, rhetoricians, and philosophers, in order to procure pupils, and to lecture to classes already formed. In such localities Socrates found most scope for his activities,[133] but, after his death by a judicial sentence in 399 B.C. as an innovator and theological sceptic, his system of inciting the youth to seek after genuine knowledge was not publicly professed for a number of years. In the course of a decade, however, the Athenians repented of their severity, and Plato, who had been his principal disciple, was allowed to resume Socratic instruction in a suburban gymnasium called the Academy,[134] situated on the north-west of the city. This institute proved to be the first permanent school of philosophy founded at Athens, and was always known as the Academy, although Plato soon removed his classes to a private garden which he acquired in the vicinity, where he built a Museum, or Hall of the Muses, for their accommodation.[135] Plato had numerous successors, all of whom continued to teach in the same garden, which was inherited regularly for many centuries by the chief of the Academy.[136]
The most remarkable pupil of the original Academy was Aristotle, a native of Stageira, but he, after protracted studies, finding that his thirst for knowledge remained unsatisfied by the dreamy and inconclusive philosophy of his master, determined to follow a more practical path of inquiry according to the bent of his own genius. Observation and correlation of facts, sociological, zoological, and physical, assumed the greatest importance in his eyes, and he thus became the founder of natural science in the widest sense. The Stagirite essayed to teach in various places, and was successful in impressing his views on many of those with whom he came in contact. His growing reputation attracted the attention of Philip of Macedon, who soon claimed his services for the tuition of his son Alexander, and embellished his native town as an inducement for him to open a school there.[137] In a few years, however, the young prince passed from his class-rooms to the throne, and Aristotle migrated to Athens, where he fixed on the Lyceum,[138] a gymnasium in the eastern suburbs, for the scene of his prelections (c. 355 B.C.). More than half a century had elapsed since the foundation of the Academy, and Plato had now been dead for many years. In the shady walks of the Lyceum Aristotle continued to give instruction for a dozen years, and it is understood that he usually kept on foot, moving about while discoursing with his disciples, whence the sect received the name of Peripatetics,[139] that is "promenaders."
The third philosophical school at Athens was established, about twenty-five years later than that of the Peripatetics, by Zeno of Citium, in Cyprus, who is reputed to have been inspired by reading treatises emanating from the followers of Socrates.[140] Zeno convened his disciples in the heart of the city, in a colonnade called the Painted Stoa or Porch, whence the name of Stoics became attached popularly to his philosophical coterie.[141] As the founder of Stoicism was an immigrant from the near East his mind was overcast by the Oriental sense of resignation under oppression;[142] and an ethical doctrine of doing and suffering in a world of adversity was the gift of the Porch to the humanity of the period. The circumstances of the times created and gradually increased the need for such a philosophy in the West. Grecian liberty passed under the despotic sway of Macedon, and later, under that of Rome, whilst the Latin Republic at length succumbed to the ambition of its military chiefs, and an arbitrary emperor usurped the place of a spirited democracy. Thus the tenets of all those ardent souls who shunned the servility of a court, and chafed under political restraints which they were powerless to throw off were derived from Zeno.[143]
The foregoing schools were essentially of a theological cast, and inculcated more or less dogmatically an attitude of veneration and piety in respect of a divine providence, but the leading feature of a fourth, founded about the same time as that of the Stoics, was a frank repudiation of any form of religious ritual. Epicurus was an Athenian by blood, but his youth had been passed abroad;[144] and he claimed to have originated, without the aid of a master,[145] the rule of life which he taught to his disciples. At the age of thirty-five he settled in his ancestral city (306 B.C.), within which he purchased a garden for the reception of those whose inclinations were in harmony with his peculiar doctrines.[146] The vanity of human effort, and the superiority of a simple life of ease and contentment, formed the burden of the Epicurean didactic. In seclusion the tranquil mind might apply itself to intellectual pleasures, as oblivious of the gods as they themselves evidently were of the restless race of mortals. Death was merely the term of life, and no anxiety as to a hereafter should ruffle the placidity of a man of philosophical temperament. As "Know thyself" was the germinal thought of the Socratic school, so "Live unknown" was that of the Epicurean. An asceticism of this hue, which advocated the suppression of all energy, whilst allowing a mild, but aesthetic indulgence of the passions, was extremely acceptable to the average man of the period, for whose sensuous nature it afforded the consolations of Stoicism without the strain inseparable from that vigorous doctrine.[147]
The philosophers of these four sects maintained their position at Athens as dictators of human thought for more than five centuries before their vitality began to be chilled into immobility by the new life which was arising in the widely Christianized Empire. When Marcus Aurelius halted at Athens in 176, on the return from his Asiatic expedition, he found the schools in a flourishing condition, and gave them a firmer constitution by bestowing a fixed salary of 10,000 drachmas (£400), payable by the Imperial treasury, on the heads of each of the four.[148] It is improbable that this subsidy was assured to them for long after the death of that emperor (180), or that they could have claimed it successfully in the disorganization of the Empire which followed the murder of his son Commodus (192). But Pagan philosophy was still independent of state aid, and the first step in the dissolution of these schools had its origin within when their individuality was submerged by the tide of eclecticism, upon which Neoplatonism rose to pre-eminence about the middle of the third century.[149] Henceforward Athens had a serious rival in Alexandria, and somewhat later in Pergamus,[150] whence the mysticism and theurgy of Plotinus and Iamblichus enthralled the senses of almost all non-Christians by the fervent hopes to which they gave birth. The teaching of the Academy, of the Peripatetics, and of the Porch, were the soul of Neoplatonism, but the Epicureans were abhorred by the new school as being most hostile to their vivid theistic aspirations, and at this juncture that sect must have rapidly become extinct.[151] Subsequently to 425, the year in which the Auditorium at Constantinople was founded by Theodosius II,[152] the Athenian rhetoricians, so famous in the youth of Julian and Gregory Nazianzen,[153] appear to have suffered greatly in prestige, but long before that date the teaching of philosophy was in the way of becoming a lost art at Athens. The disappointment of Synesius at finding no trace of the schools, when he landed in Attica about 410, has already been adverted to.[154] If, however, he had carried his investigations a little deeper he would have discovered that in at least one quarter the traffic in the honey of Mount Hymettus was not the sole care of the dwellers on the Cephisus. The garden of Plato, even at that date, was still possessed by the philosophic succession,[155] and the actual occupant, the venerable Plutarch,[156] had achieved a reputation which deserved the devotion of several eminent disciples. Yet the school was languishing, and even after the murder of Hypatia, the holder of the professorial seat, Syrianus, was apprehensive lest he should find no worthy successor.[157] But a movement of recuperation was at hand, and surviving Neoplatonists soon began to turn their eyes towards Athens as the appointed retreat of the sect. A new votary had arisen, gifted with the genius to revive their hopes, and to infuse a fresh enthusiasm into their almost moribund philosophy.