Many of the students were very poor. Eunap. Lib. Ep. 466. as a talent . . . Well, what of that? It seems to me more liberal and high-minded to spend my means upon my hearers, if they are in want, than to harry and torment them, or put my hand upon their throats to force the money from them, when they cannot pay.' Many of the students seemingly were poor. Proæresius, the most famous scholar of the age, had been so poor in earlier years, that stories were repeated of his student life, to put his poverty in telling forms before the fancy. He and a fellowstudent named Hephæstion, it was rumoured, only had one coat between them, and a few old dirty blankets. Only one therefore at the time could walk abroad, or go to lecture; meantime the other wrapped the bedclothes round him, and did his exercises as he could, till his turn came to wear the coat. Others like Eunapius gave private lessons to younger or less forward scholars, and so managed to pay their way and keep themselves in independence. Sometimes the richer citizens took pity on the poor students, who were living or starving near their doors, and the teachers now and then wrote letters in such cases to appeal to the compassion of their wealthier neighbours, or to thank them for their liberal aid. There is no evidence, however, of any systematic way of helping youths of slender means. were no exhibitions for them. There were no scholarship or exhibitions such as And there those of later times. Such endowments as existed, were confined entirely to the Professors, and the claims of studious poverty were quite ignored. But at whatever sacrifice of means or comfort still they stayed on, and often found it hard to tear themselves away. Eunapius remained for a period of five years, poor as he was; Gregory was there at least for ten. The ambitious hoped to qualify themselves for teachers, setting up first as lecturers and afterwards aspiring to a Public Chair. Others, who had no such hopes or plans, and felt no spur of poverty, loved so well the Classic memories of the venerable city, and it may be also the freedom from official meddlers, that they lingered on in the old halls and only left them with regret. At length,' says Gregory, 'the fatal day was come, and with it all the troubles of departure; the last words of farewell, the last good wishes, the repeated leave-takings, the sighs, the tears, and the embracings. Nothing is so harrowing and so painful as for those who have been follow-students to part at last from Athens and each other. Our friends and compeers were all around us, some there were even of our tutors, protesting that they could not let us go, beseeching and imploring us to stay, and showing in everything they did or said, the evidence of genuine sorrow.' They often remained long at the University, and left with regret. Greg. Naz. in laud. Basil. I 20 CHAPTER V. The early Sophists were freethinkers. The later were con servative in religion. CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES ON THE SCHOOLS OF ATHENS. reason. THE early Sophists were the free-thinkers of old Greece. They startled the world with revolutionary maxims; they undermined the faith in the moral standards and the local institutions of each country, by appealing to a wider experience or conclusions drawn from varied data. They were the Encyclopædists of their age, the Apostles of enlightenment who set aside authority and advanced the claims of The schoolmen and rhetoricians, who bore in a later age the name of Sophists, clung to the old faith, walked in the old paths, and spoke with unquestioning reverence of the Classic and the Ancient. The poetry, the art, the drama, and the history of Greece were linked so closely to the associations of religion, the fibres of Paganism had so intertwined themselves round all that they held dear, that when the final struggle came at last, they rallied as volunteers in a forlorn hope, for the defence of the Hellenic creed, whose theologians had been Hesiod and Homer. For,' says Libanius, religion and cul- ii. 43 . ture are close friends, or even near of kin, both for Philosophers and Sophists, and for all who are initiated into the rites of Hermes and the Muses.' Some things there were perhaps in the old poems, which, written as they had been for a people's childhood, were scarcely suited for robuster thought; passages too gross and sensual not to shock at times a reverent fancy; but there were canons of interpretation ready, which found an allegory in each romance, resolved persons and places into mere abstractions, and shifted the reasoner at will into the realms of transcendental dreamland. The philosophers took kindly to these principles of Hermeneutic, and on the basis of this new concordat enrolled themselves in the service of Religion, and were of all men most devout. Thus one of whom Eunapius tells us was a High Priest of Lydia, another lived in the temples to a great old age, and others are spoken of as busy with sacrifice and divination, and as staunch defenders of the faith. as were the philosophers of later days, Eunap. claimed powers over world. So familiar were they with the unseen and who often supernatural, that they often claimed and were mysterious believed to have a mysterious hold upon the spirit the spirit world, and the writer just referred to tells us strange tales of power to foresee the far-off both in time and space, and to make unearthly beings answer to their The Christians took them at their word and tried to put Eunap. Ædes. call. It is no wonder if the Christians took them at their word, and believed that they were leagued with powers of darkness; their religion seemed but them down. an unclean demon-worship, its ritual only sorcery or magic. And so the cry grew louder to sweep away the accursed thing, and Christian Emperors soon began to discourage if not to suppress the older faith. Thus Eunapius thinks that possibly desius concealed his gift of inspiration, because of the hard times. For Constantine then reigned, who threw down the most famous temples, and raised Christian Churches in their stead. Whence it came to pass that the wisest philosophers took refuge in mysterious silence and reserve becoming to their priestly office. So much so that the writer of these lives, though a pupil of Chrysanthius, was scarce thought worthy of admission to the truth until his twentieth year, so hard a matter was it for the doctrines of Iamblichus to be introduced and gradually spread among us, for after he was taken from us the men of note were scattered here and there, and none were left of any worth or reputation.' The disfavour was extended from the philoso phers to the schools of rhetoric. The same discouragement was felt ere long, though to a less extent perhaps, by the schools of rhetoric and the Sophists. Christians still flocked indeed to Athens, where the Pagan sentiment was intensely strong, and where all the greater schoolmen known, save |