Essays on the Latin Orient — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Essays on the Latin Orient
John Stuart Mill · en
extant, was engaged in demonstrating by the purity of his life and his
doctrines that a pagan could be no less moral and more intellectual than
a Christian. The old gods, deposed from their thrones, seemed to favour
their last champion; so, when the statue of Athena was removed from the
Akropolis, the goddess appeared to the philosopher in a dream and told
him that henceforth his house would be her home. The famous Bœthius,
whose _Consolation of Philosophy_ was translated by our King Alfred,
is thought to have studied at Athens in the last years of Proklos, and
earlier in the fifth century the charming Hypatia, whom Kingsley has
immortalised for English readers, may be numbered among the ladies who
at that time sought higher education at Athens and softened by their
presence the rough manners of the masculine students. But, with the death
of Proklos, the cause of polytheism and the prosperity of the university
declined yet more. The shrewd young Greeks saw that there was no longer
a career for pagans; even the rich benefactor of Athens, Theagenes, was
converted to Christianity. Justinian dealt the university its death-blow
in 529 by decreeing that no one should teach philosophy at Athens, and by
confiscating the endowments of the Platonic school. Seven philosophers,
of whom the most celebrated was Simplikios, the Aristotelian commentator,
resolved to seek under the benevolent despotism of Chosroes, King of
Persia, that freedom of speech which was denied to them by Justinian.
They believed at a distance that the barbarian monarch had realised the
ideal of Plato—a philosopher on the throne; they went to his court and
were speedily disillusioned. Home-sick and heart-broken, they begged
their new patron to let them return to die in Greece. Chosroes, who was
at the time engaged in negotiating a treaty of peace with Justinian,
inserted a clause allowing the unhappy seven “to pass the rest of their
days without persecution in their native land,” and Simplikios was thus
enabled, in the obscurity of private life, to compose those commentaries
which are still studied by disciples of Aristotle[27]. Thus perished the
University of Athens, and with it paganism vanished from Greece, save
where, in the mountains of Laconia, it lingered on till beyond the middle
of the ninth century. The ancient name of “Hellenes” was now exclusively
applied to the remnant which still adhered to the old religion, so much
so that Constantine Porphyrogenitus[28] in the tenth century called the
Peloponnesian Greeks “Graikoi,” because “Hellenes” would have still meant
idolaters. All the subjects of Justinian were collectively described as
“Romans,” while those who inhabited Greece came gradually to be specified
as “Helladikoi.”