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the philosophical chairs; and one talent to those of the civilians. The professors, unless appointed by the emperors, were elected after solemn examination by the principal magistrates.

Education now flourished in all its branches at Athens. The Roman world resorted to its schools, and reputation and riches awaited the able preceptor. The tender mind was duly prepared for the manly studies of philosophy and eloquence. Age and proficiency were followed by promotion. The youth was advanced into the higher classes, enrolled with the philosophers, and admitted to their habit. The title of sophist was conferred on him, when mature in years and erudition; and this was an honour so much affected, that the attainment of it almost furnished an apology for insolent pride and extravagant elevation. It was a custom of the masters to inscribe on marble the names of their scholars, those of Attica ranged under their respective tribes; and also to what demos or borough each belonged. Some specimens of these registers are preserved in the Oxford collection, and many fragments are yet extant at Athens.

At this period Athens abounded in philosophers. It swarmed, according to Lucian, with clokes and staves and satchels; you beheld every where a long beard, a book in the left hand, and the walks full of companies, discoursing and reasoning. The cloke or tribonium was the habit of all the orders. The general colour was dark, but the cynic wore white, and, with the stoic, had the folds doubled. One shoulder was bare; the hair hanging down; the beard unshaven. The cynic, with the stoic and Pythagorean, was slovenly and negligent, his cloke in tatters, his nails long, and his feet naked. The cynic was armed with a staff, as a defence from

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dogs or the rabble. The sophist was adorned with purple, and commonly polished as well in dress and person as in manners and language. It behoved the professor, as Lucian affirms, to be handsomely clothed, to be sleek and comely, and above all to have a flowing beard inspiring those who approached him with veneration, and suitable to the salary he received from the emperor.

A learned father, who was contemporary with Julian at Athens, has described the manner in which the novice was treated on his arrival there, with the ceremony of initiation. He was first surrounded by the pupils and partizans of the different sophists, all eager to recommend their favourite master. He was hospitably entertained; and afterwards the students were allowed to attack him with rude or ingenuous disputation, as each was disposed. This, the relater has surmised, was intended to mortify conceit, and to render him tractable. He was next to be invested with the habit. A procession in pairs, at equal distances, conducted him through the agora to a public bath, probably that without Dipylon 'by the monument of Anthemocrites. An opposition was feigned on their approach to the door, some calling out and forbidding his admission, some urging on and knocking. These prevailed. He was introduced into a warm cell, washed, and then clothed with the tribonium. He was saluted as an equal on his coming out, and re-conducted. No one was suffered to appear in that dress at Athens, without the permission of the sophists and this ceremony, which was attended with considerable expense.

The philosophers were long as distinguished by their aver

Gregorius Nazianzen. Orat. xx.

sion to Christianity as by their garment. It is recorded of Justin Martyr, that he preached in the tribonium, to which he had been admitted before his conversion. Some monks also, whom the gentiles termed impostors, assumed it, uniting, with spiritual pride and consummate vanity, an affectation of singular humility and of indifference to worldly show. But the emperor Jovian commanding the temples to be shut, and prohibiting sacrifice, the prudent philosopher then concealed his profession, and relinquished his cloke for the common dress. The order was treated with severity by Valens his successor, because some of them, to animate their party, had foretold that the next emperor would be a gentile. They were addicted to divination and magic, and it was pretended, had partly discovered his name. The habit was not wholly laid aside. In the next reign, a sedition happened at Alexandria, when Olympius, a philosopher, wearing the cloke, was exceedingly active, urging the Gentiles to repel the reformers, and not to remit of their zeal or be disheartened because they were dispossessed of their idols; for the powers, which had inhabited them, were, he asserted, flown away into heaven. The heathen philosophers gradually disappeared; but the Christian, their successors, are not yet extinct, still flourishing in Catholic countries, and differing not less than the ancient sects, in dress, tenets, and rules of living.

The decline of philosophy must have deeply affected the prosperity of Athens. A gradual desertion of the place followed. Minerva could no longer protect her city. Its beauty was violated by the proconsul, who stripped Poecile of its precious paintings. It was forsaken by good fortune, and would have lingered in decay, but the barbarians interposed, and suddenly completed its downfall. When the

Goths were in possession of it in the time of Claudius, two hundred and sixty-nine years after Christ, they amassed all the books, intending, it is related, to burn them; but desisted, on a representation that the Greeks were diverted, by the amusements of study, from military pursuits. Alaric, under Arcadius and Honorius, was not afraid of their becoming soldiers. The city was pillaged, and the libraries were consumed. Devastation then reigned within, and solitude without its walls. The sweet sirens, the vocal nightingales, as the sophists are fondly styled, were heard no more. Philosophy and Eloquence were exiled, and their ancient seat occupied by ignorant honey-factors of Mount Hymettus.

CHAP. XXV.

Of the people of Athens-The Turkish government-The Turks -The Greeks-The Albanians-The archbishop-Character of the Athenians.

ATHENS, after it was abandoned by the Goths, continued, it is likely, for ages to preserve the race of its remaining inhabitants unchanged, and uniform in language and manners. History is silent of its suffering from later incursions, from wars, and massacres. Plenty and the prospect of advantage produces new settlers; but, where no trade exists, employment will be wanting, and Attica was never celebrated for fertility. The plague has not been, as at Symrna, a frequent visitant; because the intercourse subsisting with the islands and other places has been small, and the port is at a distance. The plague described by Thucydides began in the

Piræus, and the Athenians at first believed that the enemy had poisoned the wells. If, from inadvertency, the infection be now admitted into the town, the Turks, as well as the Greeks, have the prudence to retire to their houses in the country, or to the monasteries, and it seldom prevails either so long or so terribly as in cities on the coast.

A colony of new proprietors was introduced into Athens by Mahomet the Second; but the people secured some privileges by their capitulation, and have since obtained more by address or money. The Turk has favoured the spot, and bestowed on it a milder tyranny. The Kislar Aga, or chief of the black eunuchs at Constantinople, is their patron ; and by him the Turkish magistrates are appointed. The vaiwode purchases his government yearly, but circumspection and moderation are requisite in exacting the revenue, and the usual concomitants of his station are uneasiness, apprehension and danger. The impatience of oppression, when general, begets public vengeance.. The Turks and their vassals have united, seized and cut their tyrants in pieces, or forced them to seek refuge in the mountains, or in the acropolis. An insurrection had happened not many years before we arrived, and the distress, which followed from want of water in the fortress, was described to us as extreme.

The Turks of Athens are in general more polite, social, and affable, than is common in that stately race; living on more equal terms with their fellow-citizens, and partaking, in some degree, of the Greek character. The same intermixture, which has softened their austerity, has corrupted their temperance; and many have foregone the national abstinence from wine, drinking freely, except during their Ramazan or Lent. Some too after a long lapse have re-assumed, and rigidly ad

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