Nor is the fundamental problem different when in the second part of this period we enter the great sweep of the religious current. The rise of religious ideals and the shift from ethics to religion was only the presentation of the practical problem of living with a different emphasis. Man was now in the dazzling glory of the empire, but that empire was unable to compensate the individual for the loss of his political importance. Rome had given to its conquered peoples an organized legal unity, but no spiritual ideal. It had none to offer. The individual was the least important factor in the organization. The present life offered little hope to the individual, except in the light of a future life. Practical wisdom thus became that which took account of the rewards and punishments that would come in the life beyond. The Hellenic-Roman Period is kaleidoscopic and bewildering in its shiftings; but amid them all is this one conscious problem: “_Show us the man who is sure of his happiness, whatever the accidents of the world may bring to him._” =The Centres of Hellenism.= =1. Athens.= With the overflow of Hellenism to the east and west the active history of Athens had ceased, but she became venerated for what she had been. Greece became hallowed and Athens became the shrine of Greece in the imaginations of men. Although the city was brutally ravished, she exercised a charm over the human mind for eight hundred years after Alexander. Athens remained the intellectual centre through the entire period. It became the conservative university town, where philosophy and rhetoric were taught. It is remarkable how many Oriental philosophers came to Athens to teach, how many youths from the whole world came to be taught. The rhetorical schools, such as that of Isocrates, did much toward making Athens the centre of culture, and they offered for many years the highest practical training to Greek, Roman, and Oriental. Besides the rhetorical were the philosophical or dialectical schools, which debated privately questions of speculative metaphysics. These did not offer public training, but groups of students were taught in the grounds attached to gymnasia. Four principal philosophical schools were thus formed,――the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Porch of the Stoics, and the Gardens of Epicurus. In the first two we have had especial interest in the previous period. All four, and especially the Stoic and Epicurean schools, will engage our attention in this period. They are known in history as “the Schools.” (See map for their location in Athens.) There were many minor schools in Athens which later became religious cults. These Schools lost their original interest in speculative inquiry, and in this period devoted themselves to the exposition of the teaching of their respective founders on ethical lines. The University of Athens was built upon the four Schools. Its chairs were endowed by Hadrian and the Antonines in the second century A. D.