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 chap. XL] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 281 Stoics, and the garden of the Epicureans, were planted with trees and decorated with statues ; and the philosophers, instead of being immured in a cloister, delivered their instructions in spacious and pleasant walks, which at different hours were con- secrated to the exercises of the mind and body. The genius of the founders still lived in those venerable seats ; the ambition of succeeding to the masters of human reason excited a gener- ous emulation ; and the merit of the candidates was determined, on each vacancy, by the free voices of an enlightened people. The Athenian professors were paid by their disciples ; according to their mutual wants and abilities, the price appears to have varied from a mina to a talent ; and Isocrates himself, who de- rides the avarice of the sophists, required in his school of rhetoric about thirty pounds from each of his hundred pupils. The wages of industry are just and honourable, yet the same Iso- crates shed tears at the first receipt of a stipend ; the Stoic might blush when he was hired to preach the contempt 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; 146 and the patrimony of Plato afforded an annual rent, which, in eight centuries, was gradually increased from three to one thousand pieces of gold. 147 The schools of Athens were pro- tected 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 philo- 146 See the Testament of Epicurus in Diogen. Laert. 1. x. segm. 16-20, p. 611, 612 [c. 1]. A single epistle (ad Familiares, xiii. 1) displays the injustice of the Areopagus, the fidelity of the Epicureans, the dexterous politeness of Cicero, and the mixture of contempt and esteem with which the Roman senators considered the philosophy and philosophers of Greece. J 47 Damascius, in Vit. Isidor. apud Photium, cod. ccxlii. p. 1054.