Museum that the earth was the centre of the universe, and yet, notwithstanding, could foretell an eclipse almost as well as the astronomer royal. In philosophy, the university of Alexandria has played a peculiar part. As long as the Ptolemies reigned in Egypt, the Museum could boast of no philosophy save commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, consisting, in great measure, of subtle obscurities to which the darkest quiddities of the deepest scholastic would appear to have been light reading. But when the Roman came in, there sprang up a school of thought that has done more than any other thing to hand down the fame of Ptolemy's university to succeeding ages. Alexandria was the birthplace of Neo-Platonism, and, whatever we may think of the philosophy itself, we must allow it has bestowed fame on its alma {36} mater. At the dawn of the Christian era, Philon the Jew was already ransacking the great library to collect matter that should enable him to prove a common origin for the books of Plato and of Moses. Two hundred years afterward--that is, just at the time of which we speak-- Plotinus was listening to Ammonius Saccas in the lecture-hall of the Museum, and thinking out the system of emanations, abysms, and depths of which he is the first and most famous expounder. Porphyry, the biographer and enthusiastic follower of Plotinus, was probably never at Alexandria in person; but his voluminous writings did much to make the Neo-Platonist system known to Athens and to the cities of Italy. In his youth he had listened to the lectures of Origen, and thus was in possession of the traditions both of the Christian and the heathen philosophy of Alexandria. But his Christian studies did not prevent him from being the author of that famous book, "Against the Christians," which drew upon him the denunciations of thirty-five Christian apologists, including such champions as St. Jerome and St. Augustine. The Neo-Platonist school culminated and expired in Proclus, the young prodigy of Alexandria, the ascetic teacher of Athens, the "inspired dogmatizer," the "heir of Plato." Proclus died in 485, and his chair at Athens was filled by his foolish biographer Marinus, after which Neo-Platonism never lifted up its head.