empt of money; and I should be sorry to discover that Aristotle or
Plato so far degenerated from the example of Socrates, as to exchange
knowledge for gold. But some property of lands and houses was settled by
the permission of the laws, and the legacies of deceased friends, on the
philosophic chairs of Athens. Epicurus bequeathed to his disciples the
gardens which he had purchased for eighty minae or two hundred and fifty
pounds, with a fund sufficient for their frugal subsistence and monthly
festivals; and the patrimony of Plato afforded an annual rent, which,
in eight centuries, was gradually increased from three to one thousand
pieces of gold. The schools of Athens were protected by the wisest and
most virtuous of the Roman princes. The library, which Hadrian founded,
was placed in a portico adorned with pictures, statues, and a roof of
alabaster, and supported by one hundred columns of Phrygian marble. The
public salaries were assigned by the generous spirit of the Antonines;
and each professor of politics, of rhetoric, of the Platonic, the
Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean philosophy, received an annual
stipend of ten thousand drachmae, or more than three hundred pounds
sterling. After the death of Marcus, these liberal donations, and the
privileges attached to the _thrones_ of science, were abolished and
revived, diminished and enlarged; but some vestige of royal bounty may
be found under the successors of Constantine; and their arbitrary choice
of an unworthy candidate might tempt the philosophers of Athens to
regret the days of independence and poverty. It is remarkable, that the
impartial favor of the Antonines was bestowed on the four adverse sects
of philosophy, which they considered as equally useful, or at least, as
equally innocent. Socrates had formerly been the glory and the
reproach of his country; and the first lessons of Epicurus so strangely
scandalized the pious ears of the Athenians, that by his exile, and
that of his antagonists, they silenced all vain disputes concerning
the nature of the gods. But in the ensuing year they recalled the hasty
decree, restored the liberty of the schools, and were convinced by the
experience of ages, that the moral character of philosophers is not
affected by the diversity of their theological speculations.

The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the
establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the exercise
of reason, re