privileges; and
hence it was a place much sought after, and even by the wealthy. But to
lessen this abuse it was ordered by an imperial rescript that none but
poor people who had been rate-payers should be _Parabalani_; and their
number was limited, first to five hundred, but afterwards, at the
request of the bishop, to six hundred. A second charitable institution
in Alexandria had the care of strangers and the poor, and was also
managed by one of the priests.

Alexandria was fast sinking in wealth and population, and several new
laws were now made to lessen its difficulties. One was to add a hundred
and ten bushels of grain to the daily alimony of the city, the supply on
which the riotous citizens were fed in idleness. By a second and a third
law the five chief men in the corporation, and every man that had filled
a civic office for thirty years, were freed from all bodily punishment,
and only to be fined when convicted of a crime. Theodosius built a
large church in Alexandria, which was called after his name; and the
provincial judges were told in a letter to the prefect that, if they
wished to earn the emperor's praise, they must not only restore those
buildings which were falling through age and neglect but must also build
new ones.

Though the pagan philosophy had been much discouraged at Alexandria by
the destruction of the temples and the cessation of the sacrifices, yet
the philosophers were still allowed to teach in the schools. Syrianus
was at the head of the Platonists, and he wrote largely on the Orphic,
Pythagorean, and Platonic doctrines. In his Commentary on Aristotle's
Metaphysics he aims at showing how a Pythagorean or a Platonist would
successfully answer Aristotle's objections. He seems to look upon the
writings of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus as the true fountains of
Platonic wisdom, quite as much as the works of the great philosopher
who gave his name to the sect. Syrianus afterwards removed to Athens, to
take charge of the Platonic school in that city, and Athens became the
chief seat of Alexandrian Platonism.

Olympiodorus was at the same time undertaking the task of forming a
Peripatetic school in Alexandria, in opposition to the new Platonism,
and he has left some of the fruits of his labour in his Commentaries on
Aristotle. But the Peripatetic philosophy was no longer attractive to
the pagans, though after the fall of the catechetical school it had
a strong following of Christian disci