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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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hasty decree, restored the liberty of the schools, and were convinced, by the experience of ages, that the moral character of philosophers is not affected by the diversity of their theological speculations.[1]
They are suppressed by Justinian The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the exercise of reason, resolved every question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or sceptic to eternal flames. In many a volume of laborious controversy, they exposed the weakness of the understanding and the corruption of the heart, insulted human nature in the sages of antiquity, and proscribed the spirit of philosophical inquiry, so repugnant to the doctrine, or at least to the temper, of an humble believer. The surviving sect of the Platonists, whom Plato would have blushed to acknowledge, extravagantly mingled a sublime theory with the practice of superstition and magic; and, as they remained alone in the midst of a Christian world, they indulged a secret rancour against the government of the church and state, whose severity was still suspended over their heads. About a century after the reign of Julian,[2] Proclus Proclus[3] was permitted to teach in the philosophic chair of the academy, and such was his industry that he frequently, in the same day, pronounced five lessons and composed seven hundred lines. His sagacious mind exploited the deepest questions of morals and metaphysics, and he ventured to urge eighteen arguments against the Christian doctrine of the creation of the world. But in the intervals of study he personally conversed with Pan, Æsculapius, and Minerva, in whose mysteries he was secretly initiated, and whose prostrate statues he adored; in the devout persuasion that the philosopher, who is a citizen of the universe, should be- ↑ The birth of Epicurus is fixed to the year 342 before Christ (Bayle), Olympiad cix. 3; and he opened his school at Athens, Olymp. cxviii. 3. 306 years before the same æra. This intolerant law (Athenæus, l. xiii. p. 610. Diogen. Laertius, l. v. s. 38, p. 290 [c. 2]. Julius Pollux, ix. 5) was enacted in the same, or the succeeding, year (Sigonius, Opp. tom. v. p. 62. Menagius, ad Diogen. Laert. p. 204. Corsini, Fasti Attici, tom. iv. p. 67, 68). Theophrastus, chief of the Peripatetics, and disciple of Aristotle, was involved in the same exile.
- ↑ This is no fanciful æra: the Pagans reckoned their calamities from the reign of their hero. Proclus, whose nativity is marked by his horoscope (A.D. 412, February 8, at C.P.), died 124 years ἀπὸ Ἰουλίανον̂ βασιλείας, A.D. 485 (Marin. in Vitâ Procli, c. 36).
- ↑ The life of Proclus, by Marinus, was published by Fabricius (Hamburg, 1700, et ad calcem Bibliot. Latin. Lond. 1703). See Suidas (tom. iii. p. 185, 186), Fabricius (Bibliot. Græc. l. v. c. 26, p. 449-552), and Brucker (Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. ii. p. 319-326). [The Vita Procli, edited by Boissonade, is published in the Didot series along with Diogenes Laertius, etc.]
