In Greece, the work of destruction proceeded more slowly. But finally in the year 394, the Olympic games were abolished. As soon as this center of Greek national life (after an uninterrupted existence of eleven hundred and seventy years) had come to an end, the rest was comparatively easy. One after the other, the philosophers were expelled from the country. Finally, by order of the Emperor Justinian, the University of Athens was closed. The funds established for its maintenance were confiscated. The last seven professors, deprived of their livelihood, fled to Persia where King Chosroes received them hospitably and allowed them to spend the rest of their days peacefully playing the new and mysterious Indian game called “chess.” In the first half of the fifth century, archbishop Chrysostomus could truthfully state that the works of the old authors and philosophers had disappeared from the face of the earth. Cicero and Socrates and Virgil and Homer (not to mention the mathematicians and the astronomers and the physicians who were an object of special abomination to all good Christians) lay forgotten in a thousand attics and cellars. Six hundred years were to go by before they were called back to life, and in the meantime the world would be obliged to subsist on such literary fare as it pleased the theologians to place before it. A strange diet, and not exactly (in the jargon of the medical faculty) a balanced one. For the Church, although triumphant over its pagan enemies, was beset by many and serious tribulations. The poor peasant in Gaul and Lusitania, clamoring to burn incense in honor of his ancient Gods, could be silenced easily enough. He was a heathen and the law was on the side of the Christian. But the Ostrogoth or the Alaman or the Longobard who declared that Arius, the priest of Alexandria, was right in his opinion upon the true nature of Christ and that Athanasius, the bishop of that same city and Arius’ bitter enemy, was wrong (or vice versa)—the Longobard or Frank who stoutly maintained that Christ was not “of the same nature” but of a “like nature only” with God (or vice versa)—the Vandal or the Saxon who insisted that Nestor spoke the truth when he called the Virgin Mary the “mother of Christ” and not the “mother of God” (or vice versa)—the Burgundian or Frisian who denied that Jesus was possessed of two natures, one human and one divine (or vice versa)—all these simple-minded but strong-armed barbarians who had accepted Christianity and were, outside of their unfortunate errors of opinion, staunch friends and supporters of the Church—these indeed could not be punished with a general anathema and a threat of perpetual hell fire. They must be persuaded gently that they were wrong and must be brought within the fold with charitable expressions of love and devotion. But before all else they must be given a definite creed that they might know for once and for all what they must hold to be true and what they must reject as false.