he was about. Was it last week we were
talking of the endless need of the ages: a stronghold of the
Gods to be established in this world, whence they might conduct
their cyclic raidings? What had Pythagoras tried to do in his
day?--Found a Center of Learning in the West, in which the Laws
of Life, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, should be
taught. He did found it,--at Croton; but Croton was destroyed,
and all the history of the next seven centuries suffered from the
destruction. Then--it was seven centuries after his death,--
Ammonius Saccas arose, and started things again; and left a
successor who was able to carry them forward almost to the point
where Pythagoras left them. For the fame of this Neo-Platonic
Theosophy had traveled by this time right over the empire; and
Plotinus in Rome, and in high favor with Gallienus, was a man on
whom all eyes were turned. He proposed to found a Point Loma in
Campania; to be called Platonopolis. Things were well in hand;
the emperor and empress were enthusiastic:--as your Gallieneuses
will be, for quarter of an hour at a time, over any high project.
But certain of his ministers were against it; and he wobbled;
and delayed; and thought of something else; and hung fire; and
presently was killed. And Claudius, the first of the Illyrian
emperors, who succeeded him, was much to busy defeating the Goths
to come to Rome even,--much less could he pay attention to
spiritual projects. Two years later Plotinus died, in 270;--and
the chance was not to come again for more than sixteen centuries.

But Neo-Platonism was not done with yet, by any means. Plotinus
left a successor in his disciple Porphyry, born at Tyre or at
Batanea in Syria in 233. You see they were all West Asians, at
least by birth: the first spiritual fruits of the Crest-Wave's
influx there. Porphyry's name was originally Malchus (the Arabic
_Malek,_ meaning _king_); but as a king was a wearer of the
purple, someone changed it for him to Porphyry or 'Purple.' In
262 he went to Rome to study under Plotinus, and was with him for
six years; then his health broke down, and he retired to Sicily
to recover. In 273 he returned,--Plotinus had died three years
before, and opened a Neo-Platonic School of his own. He taught
through the last quarter of that century, while the Illyrian
emperors were smashing back invaders on the frontiers or upstart
emperors in the provinces. Without imperial support, no
Platonop