Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/263

 finality of such speculations was shortly assumed, and schools of philosophy, representing every variety of doctrine, were formed, except that in which it was foreseen that knowledge would be attained only by the long and laborious path of experimental investigation. But whilst disciples were attracted to different sects by the personal influence of a teacher, by the novelty of his tenets, or by their own mental bias, the general sense of the community remained unconvinced; and the independent thinkers of the next generation perceived the futility of inquiries which evolved nothing coherent and revealed no new facts. Scientific research, for the deliberate striving after deeper insight ranked as such in the unpractised mind of the period, was discredited, and

Athenagoras, Apol., 4. The jaunty impiety of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse (c. 400 ), was celebrated in antiquity. After pillaging the temple of the Locrian Proserpine, he sailed back home and, finding the wind favourable, remarked to his companions, "See what a fine passage the gods are granting to us sacrilegious reprobates." He seized the golden cloak from the shoulders of Jupiter Olympus, observing that it was "too heavy for summer and too cold for winter, whereas a woollen one would suit him well for all seasons." Noticing a gold beard on Æsculapius at Epidaurus, he removed it, saying, that it was "improper for him to wear it, since his father, Apollo, was always represented beardless." Whenever in the temples he met with statues proffering, as it were, jewels and plate with their projecting hands, he took possession of the valuables, asserting that it "would be folly not to accept the good things offered by the gods." The pious were aghast at the example of such a man enjoying a long and prosperous reign and transmitting the throne to his son; Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii, 34; Lactantius, Div. Instit., ii, 4, etc. With a view to such instances, Plutarch wrote a treatise to prove that "the mills of God grind slow, but very sure." Euhemerus and Palaephatus transformed mythology into history by a rationalizing process, assigning the origin to popular exaggeration of common occurrences.]
 * [Footnote: to have impiously chopped up his image of Hercules to boil his turnips;