THREE:The time arrived when this last liberty was to be taken away. In the year 529, Justinian issued his famous decree prohibiting the public teaching of philosophy in Athens, and confiscating the endowments devoted to the maintenance of its professors. It is probable that this measure formed part of a comprehensive scheme for completing the extirpation of paganism throughout the empire. For some two centuries past, the triumph of Christianity had been secured by an unsparing exercise of the imperial authority, as the triumph of Catholicism over heresy was next to be secured with the aid of the Frankish sword. A few years afterwards, the principal representatives of the Neo-Platonic school, including the Damascius of whom we have already spoken, and Simplicius,361 the famous Aristotelian commentator, repaired to the court of Khosru Nuschirvan, the King of Persia, with the intention of settling in his country for the rest of their lives. They were soon heartily sick of their adopted home. Khosru was unquestionably an enlightened monarch, greatly interested in Hellenic culture, and sincerely desirous of diffusing it among his people. It is also certain that Agathias, our only authority on this subject, was violently prejudiced against him. But it may very well be, as stated by that historian530 that Khosru by no means came up to the exaggerated expectations formed of him by the exiled professors. He had been described to them as the ideal of a Platonic ruler, and, like inexperienced bookmen, they accepted the report in good faith. They found that he cared a great deal more for scientific questions about the cause of the tides and the modifications superinduced on plants and animals by transference to a new environment, than about the metaphysics of the One.531 Moreover, the immorality of Oriental society and the corruption of Oriental government were something for which they were totally unprepared. Better, they thought, to die at once, so that it were but on Roman soil, than to live on any conditions in such a country as Persia. Khosru was most unwilling to lose his guests, but on finding that they were determined to leave him, he permitted them to depart, and even made it a matter of express stipulation with the imperial government that they should be allowed to live in their old homes without suffering any molestation on account of their religious opinions.532Zeller finds several good qualities in Alexanderprecocious statesmanship, zeal for the extension of Hellenic civilisation, long-continued self-restraint under almost irresistible temptation, and through all his subsequent aberrations a nobility, a moral purity, a humanity, and a culture, which raise him above every other great conqueror; and these he attributes, in no small degree, to the fostering care of Aristotle;176 yet, with the exception of moral purity, which was probably an affair of temperament, and has been remarked to an equal extent in other men of the same general character, he was surpassed, in all these respects, by Julius Caesar; while the ruthless vindictiveness, which was his worst passion, exhibited itself at the very beginning of his reign by the destruction of Thebes. A varnish of literary culture he undoubtedly had, and for this Aristotle may be thanked; but any ordinary sophist would probably have effected as much. As to the Hellenising of Western Asia, this, according to Grote, was the work, not of Alexander, but of the Diadochi after him.
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