Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/74

 which he purchased a garden for the reception of those whose inclinations were in harmony with his peculiar doctrines. The vanity of human effort, and the superiority of a simple life of ease and contentment, formed the burden of the Epicurean didactic. In seclusion the tranquil mind might apply itself to intellectual pleasures, as oblivious of the gods as they themselves evidently were of the restless race of mortals. Death was merely the term of life, and no anxiety as to a hereafter should ruffle the placidity of a man of philosophical temperament. As "Know thyself" was the germinal thought of the Socratic school, so "Live unknown" was that of the Epicurean. An asceticism of this hue, which advocated the suppression of all energy, whilst allowing a mild, but aesthetic indulgence of the passions, was extremely acceptable to the average man of the period, for whose sensuous nature it afforded the consolations of Stoicism without the strain inseparable from that vigorous doctrine.

The philosophers of these four sects maintained their position at Athens as dictators of human thought for more than five centuries before their vitality began to be chilled into immobility by the new life which was arising in the widely Christianized Empire. When Marcus Aurelius halted at Athens in 176, on the return from his Asiatic expedition, he found the schools in a flourishing condition, and gave them a firmer constitution by bestowing a fixed salary of 10,000 drachmas (£400), payable by the Imperial treasury, on the heads of each of the four. It is improbable*