§ 73. This is, no doubt, the cause of the fixed and traditional character of the philosophical schools at Athens, and one main reason why this city became in the Roman Empire, when original research had died out, the principal university of the old world. The successive scholarchs seem to have thought of nothing but the repeating and expounding of the founder’s views; and it is mentioned as a special loss to the Peripatetic school that Aristotle’s works were left away from the school, and travelled into the possession of Neleus to Scepsis in the Troad. Hence the scholarchs, instead of developing a new doctrine, were simply helpless, and only taught what they could remember, or what had been preserved by fragments in the note-books of the school. The proper investment of the school property was also the scholarch’s duty, and we hear that in the fourth century A.D., under Proclus, the Platonic endowment was worth more than one thousand pieces of gold annually. Suidas tells us[64] “that from time to time pious patrons of learning bequeathed in their wills to the adherents of the school the means of living a life of philosophic leisure.” This is very analogous to the bequests of pious founders in the Middle Ages, especially of those who had the far-seeing wisdom to free their endowments from the penalty of teaching--a humane and enlightened intention, now frustrated by the rage for turning universities into mere training establishments. The designating of a successor by will, or shortly before the scholarch’s death, became the rule in the principal schools of rhetoric, except that at Athens election by the school came to take its place. So far as we know, this was first suggested by Lycon, Aristotle’s third successor, if not by Theophrastus. But the will of Lycon, preserved by Diogenes, is express: “I bequeath the _peripatos_ to my pupils Bulon, Kallinos, etc., without condition. Let them appoint whomsoever they think will be most zealous and best keep together the school. May the rest of the school stand by him, for my sake and that of the place.” These words not only imply that there was a staff of assistants, selected from favorite pupils who intended to make philosophy their profession, but is peculiarly interesting as naturally suggesting a competitive examination, without naming it, as the method of choice. In Lucian’s “Eunuch,” the appointment is described as an election by votes of the chief men, after an examination of the candidate in his knowledge of, and faith in, the system. There were cases when the electing body was not the school, but the Areopagus, or the council; for the hatred and jealousy of the schools made an election from without safer. When the chief literary posts at Athens became salaried by the State, such interference was natural, and disputed elections were even referred to the emperor at Rome.