CAH.VOL.XII.THE IMPERIAL CRISIS AND RECOVERY. CHAPTER XVIII. LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE EASTERN HCAH.VOL.XII.THE IMPERIAL CRISIS AND RECOVERY. CHAPTER XVIII. LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE EASTERN HALF OF THE EMPIRE"> <meta name="keywords" content=">CCAH.VOL.XII.THE IMPERIAL CRISIS AND RECOVERY. CHAPTER XVIII. 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A.D. 193-324</a></h1> <div class=WordSection1></div> <p class=MsoNormal1 align=center style='margin-top:1<2.0pt;margin-right:63.75pt; margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:2.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent:35.45pt'> </p> <div class=WordSection14> <h1>CHAPTER XVIII</h1> <h1>LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE EASTERN HALF OF THE EMPIRE</h1> <h2>I.</h2> <h2>THE GREEK NOVEL AND RHETORIC</h2> <p> </p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>GREEK Literature at the beginning of the third century, apart from the Christian schools, has no outstanding name or striking personality, no work of any great note and very seldom one with even as much as a suggestion of poetry. It was not that any of the ancient forms were neglected. There was plenty of eagerness shown in the maintenance and restoration of theatres, <span class=SpellE>Odeums</span> and play-houses of various kinds; but they were chiefly for performances of mimes, and for farces such as parodies of Christian baptism, and though a tragedy of Euripides might sometimes still be seen holding the stage the real spirit of the theatre was dying. It is true enough, also, that while, as may be observed as a sign of the times, the <span class=SpellE><i>Georgies</i></span> of Virgil were translated into Greek hexameters, many didactic poems continued to be written. In one of these, <i>On Fishing (<span class=SpellE>Halieutica</span>)</i> the author, <span class=SpellE><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Oppian</span></span><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>,</span> admittedly shows very fair skill in his descriptions of the homes and habits of fish, and he won thereby the imperial <span class=SpellE>favour</span> of a coin of gold for each verse; but the other poem which has come down to us under his name, though it is not by him (the <span class=SpellE><i>Cynegetica</i></span><i>)</i> would deserve very little attention did not the <span class=SpellE><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>mss.</span></span> contain miniatures of the animals described and even a picture of Apamea, the author’s birthplace. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In this age of prolific verse-making epic poems also swarmed. Many a sand-heap in the Fayum has been found full of scraps of papyrus covered with copies of a <span class=SpellE>Soterichus</span>, <span class=SpellE>Pisander</span>, <span class=SpellE>Tryphiodorus</span>, <span class=SpellE>Zoticus</span> or some other manufacturer of hexameters all of the same level. The craze for exertions of this kind went so far that a certain Nestor of <span class=SpellE>Laranda</span> sought to emulate Homer by producing an <i>Iliad</i> in words chosen in such a way that in none of the twenty-four books did there once occur its distinguishing letter of the alphabet. It may well be doubted whether at any time so many thousands of verses have been written with so little creative imagination; but it must be remembered contemporary taste required that all the poesy of which the age was capable should appear in prose in order to make it musical and florid. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>With the Greek orators of this generation the art of speaking and writing concerned itself less and less with the mind, and speakers set themselves up more and more as ‘melodists’ and rivals of lyric poets. Even their delivery consisted of a rhythmical declamation of a very artificial kind. They followed a prosody which the living language of their day no longer obeyed, and by a form of virtuosity exploited the tone and modulations of their speech, in this way securing their effects on audiences by means which were largely musical. At a time when so much pleasure was taken in listening to various wind and string instruments, the lecturer was delighted if his singing and rhythmical eloquence was accompanied by the rapturous sounds of the flute. He was carried away by the music of his own voice, and cared little if his phrases were fine-sounding that they were almost devoid of meaning. An adequate idea of these speakers can be formed by perusing the <i>Lives of the Sophists</i> as told by their fellow-member and admirer <span class=SpellE>Philostratus</span>, an orator who was a native of Lemnos. One seldom finds an idea of any note or a flash of wit. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span class=SpellE><span lang=EN-US style='font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif;font-variant:small-caps'>Philostratus</span></span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'> would have small claim to the space here given to him were it not for the fact that, in speaking of him, one cannot help touching on two people of an attractiveness widely different from his—the beautiful and spirited Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span>, the intelligent and self-willed Empress to whom the orator owed the subject of at least one of his chief works, and, with her, the Emperor Septimius Severus himself. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The grandson of an orator resident at Rome in the reign of Domitian, but born into a family which continued to speak Punic, the young Septimius Severus at the age of eighteen was capable of expressing himself in Greek with sufficient fluency to take part, in spite of his rustic accent, in public declamations at his native town of Leptis Magna. Having completed at Athens his equipment of literature and philosophy, Septimius arrived at Rome to make himself an orator and <i>advocatus fisci</i> before becoming a member of the Senate and commanding the legions of Pannonia who ultimately raised him to the rank of emperor. As part of the extraordinary industry of this hard-working man must be mentioned here the memoirs which he, like Marcus Aurelius, wrote in Greek, and the fragments of his letters addressed to the Senate, without any literary grace or charm, but concise, clear and to the point. It is not surprising that one so well educated delighted to surround himself with men of letters and preferably with Greeks, while his wife, Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span>, the daughter of the High Priest of the Sun at <span class=SpellE>Emesa</span>, held a real literary salon upon the Palatine. Besides her sister, Julia <span class=SpellE>Maesa</span>, and her two nieces, <span class=SpellE>Soaemias</span> and the half-Christian <span class=SpellE>Mamaea</span>, many famous writers and scholars were to be met at her house—the poet <span class=SpellE>Oppian</span>, who has already been mentioned; <span class=SpellE>Aelian</span>, the honey-tongued storyteller, engaged in collecting the anecdotes of his <span class=SpellE><i>Varta</i></span><i> Historian </i>Gordian, who was a poet before he was an emperor; the learned doctor <span class=SpellE>Sammonicus</span> <span class=SpellE>Serenus</span>, who owned a magnificent collection of books; sometimes Galen when his great age permitted him to be present; and many other intimates of the Palatine who figure in the <span class=SpellE><i>Deipnosofhistae</i></span><i> of</i> <span class=SpellE>Athenaeus</span>. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>But Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span>, the impassioned Syrian, ‘<span class=SpellE>temeraire</span> <span class=SpellE>jusqu’a</span> <span class=SpellE>l’utopie</span>’ in Renan’s phrase, must have had an almost classical literary taste. When the orator Hermogenes started a reaction against excessive regard for rhythm and musical effects in oratory, Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span> seems to have approved a return to a feeling for moderation and imitation of the ancient models; at all events, <span class=SpellE>Philostratus</span> in one of his letters clothes in the form of a learned treatise observations possibly intended to divert the Empress from an inclination towards an old-fashioned purism in literature, of which he disapproved. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>As has often been pointed out, the advance of the new religions evoked an opposition from pagan intellectuals who sought to give new life to their old cults by allying them with philosophic creeds and especially with a theology of sun-worship which spread ever more widely in highly diverse forms, while in ethics they preached a Pythagorean asceticism. The Empress herself, who from youth up had been initiated in the <span class=SpellE>hellenized</span> beliefs of the great Semitic sanctuaries, and whose circle at Rome included thinkers from all parts of the Empire, was as it were predestined to become the high priestess of a syncretic polytheism. Realizing the need of finding a historical figure fitted to counter the propaganda of subversive gospels, she sought particularly to revive the memory of a hero of pagan hagiology, Apollonius of <span class=SpellE>Tyana</span>, who lived under the first two Flavians and had left behind him in Greek lands the reputation of a saint and wandering prophet drawing multitudes to himself by his holy life and by so many beneficent miracles that the magicians of the East used to invoke his aid and issue the formulas of their incantations under his name. In time, he was looked upon as the greatest of all sorcerers. Chancing to come upon the memoirs of one who claimed to have been a confidant of this Apollonius—<span class=SpellE>Damis</span> a Babylonian—Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span> was impressed by the <span class=SpellE>favourable</span> light in which the character of the wise man was presented. Far from having <span class=SpellE>practised</span> sorcery this true follower of Pythagoras, according to his disciple, had taught the purest of religions, and in India especially, a country which long before Egypt and in different fashion had enjoyed the <span class=SpellE>favour</span> of divine wisdom, had found the evidence and inspiration to support his faith. As if to call attention to what <span class=SpellE>Damis</span> had recounted concerning India, some Brahmans and <span class=SpellE>Samanians</span> in the time of Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span>, taking advantage of the means of travel provided by a renewal of trade with Central Asia, came on a deputation to the religious propagandists in Syria, particularly to <span class=SpellE>Bardaisan</span>, and it can be seen from Porphyry that they succeeded in obtaining a hearing. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In any case the Empress, wishing to spread the knowledge of the model character of the life of Apollonius, the holy man of <span class=SpellE>Tyana</span>, and of the source of his wisdom in an Eastern country which worshipped the sun, entrusted the memoirs of <span class=SpellE>Damis</span> to <span class=SpellE>Philostratus</span>, one of the <span class=SpellE>habituds</span> of her parties whom we have already had occasion to mention. On the canvas provided the court hagiographer boldly embroidered his theme, borrowing extensively so as to unite in the eight books of his edifying biography the features best suited to bring out the importance and virtues of his hero: his love for his fellow-men, his profound pity for human suffering, his deeply-rooted religion which showed itself in the worship of all the gods and of the divine Sun in particular, and in his adoption of the Pythagorean prohibition of the sacrifice of living creatures. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>However full it may be of fine-drawn speeches little to modern taste, the book was undeniably successful. Opponents of Christianity were not slow to see what use could be made of it in combating the propaganda of the new religion, if not in advancing a pagan syncretism. The story of Apollonius, accepted as true, could be set against the Gospel as a life noble, upright, godly, unselfish, and conspicuous for its miracles and good works: the apologists of Greek culture did not fail to exploit it, and the result was that <span class=SpellE>Philostratus</span>, second-rate story-teller though he was, became one of the most famous of the Greek novelists. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>It may seem strange to connect with edifying work of this nature the ten books of the <i>Loves of <span class=SpellE>Theagenes</span> and <span class=SpellE>Chariclea</span></i> or <i>Aethiopica.</i> Certainly at first sight there is nothing but agreeable diversion in the story of <span class=SpellE>Chariclea</span>, an Ethiopian princess abandoned at birth by her mother, the queen <span class=SpellE>Persina</span>, then carried off to Delphi to be brought up there by the Greek Callicles, subsequently <span class=SpellE>enamoured</span> of the handsome Thessalian <span class=SpellE>Theagenes</span> and by the unkindness of fate involved with him in the severest trials of various kinds until she finally appears before the king <span class=SpellE>Hydaspes</span>, her father. Then, on the point of being sacrificed to the Sun with her faithful lover, she reveals herself, recovers her rank and with it the right to marry the man she loves. But, on a closer view, it will be seen that <span class=SpellE><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Heliodorus</span></span><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>,</span> the author of this seeming story of adventure, is almost as much concerned to glorify the fierce chastity with which he endows his virgin heroine as to demonstrate his skill in the art of tying and untying the threads of an exciting plot. His descriptions of virtue often become homilies, and, until the final words of his denouement, he exhibits a religious feeling which is too characteristic of his age to be regarded as a traditional feature of his literary form. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Nothing is known about the author of <span class=SpellE><i>Laphnis</i></span><i> and Chloe,</i> and, this pastoral being unique of its kind, any attempt to determine its own peculiar merits must be guess-work. As for <span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Longus</span> himself, although it is generally agreed that his work is to be included with those of the orators of the time of Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span>, there is little agreement about the type of society in which he wrote. Some are impressed by the discovery in him of touches of a genuine and almost rustic feeling for nature, while others insist that, from the very opening scene, the balance of melodious antitheses betrays the sophisticated pastoral of the salon with its bells and ribbons affectedly bedecking the necks of lambkins, sleek and white as snow. But, in speaking of <i>Daphnis and Chloe,</i> it is hardly possible not to give oneself up to the pleasure of admiration and leave on one side questions of date and other such problems, It is, indeed, commonly admitted that this pearl of Greek romance is one of the most attractive works that have come down from antiquity. Translated by <span class=SpellE>Amyot</span>, admired by Goethe, and imitated by Bernardin de S. Pierre, the author of <i>Paul et Virginie, </i>this delightful source of inspiration may still be traced in our own day. After ‘le petit <span class=SpellE>berger</span> avec <span class=SpellE>sa</span> flute et <span class=SpellE>ses</span> chevres’ of a great painter, Corot, it has found expression in ‘la <span class=SpellE>symphonie</span> <span class=SpellE>choregraphique</span>’ of an equally great musician, Ravel. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>No summary need be given here of this story of the two young figures, Daphnis and Chloe, deserted by their parents and driven amid all kinds of abduction and romantic adventures to the discovery of natural love. In this pastoral the ordinary <i>motifs</i> of the <i>genre</i> make up only the frame of the plot, and the love of the country which pervades it certainly goes back to the poets of the Hellenistic age who first gave expression to the modern feeling for nature: for the rocks, meadows, fountains, streams, wooded hills, sea-shores, little chapels dedicated to Pan and the nymphs, which decorate his tale, it may be said that Longus had before him the Idylls of Theocritus, so strong is the bucolic tradition in his scenery. Here again, therefore, we end by being faced with what has been called by one scholar the ‘Hellenistic sea,’ the common source in whose vast waters were absorbed and mingled for a time the most varied currents and elements of the literatures of the world. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>It has been already observed that the only literary form of the time which would show much power of development was the romance, which appeals largely through its opportunities of self-identification with hero or heroine. Our picture would be seriously incomplete if we were to leave this field of romantic literature without noticing its productions outside scholarly circles. Everywhere in this age, even among the least educated sections of the population, tales were invented and wonders sought out. Among the Christians, too, edification was sought in the recital of adventures: travels of the Evangelists in the remotest countries, acts of the apostles (Andrew, John or Thomas) and even of the earliest evangelists, the life of Joseph the carpenter, stories of the childhood of Jesus, or Conversions or Confessions such as those of Cyprian of Antioch. The work of which Rufinus has left us a Latin translation with the title S. <span class=SpellE><i>Clementis</i></span><i> <span class=SpellE>Recognitiones</span></i> is one of the best examples of this type of composition. The title alone is almost enough to show the affinity of this edifying narrative with the romantic literature of the age. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In the third century delight in romantic fiction left its mark even on works of the most profound theological speculation. Men still continued to enjoy reading Plato, and this preserved a taste for giving controversial writings the form of fictitious discussion. Contemporary Christian apologetic especially may be said to have caused a sort of revival of the philosophic dialogue. But there was this difference, that fashionable adventure stories were introduced into the setting. For instance, when <span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Methodius,</span> a cultured bishop of Olympus in Lycia, wished to refute the very daring views of Origen on the future life and the resurrection of the body, and had the idea of borrowing from the <i>Phaedo</i> the plan of a new dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul, he did not stop at embellishing his work with some touches from the <i>Protagoras.</i> He also found room for some of the inventions which were then a feature of adventure stories, and in this dialogue, entitled <span class=SpellE><i>Aglaophon</i></span><i>,</i> he relates how a friend of his, Theophilus, was cast up by a storm on the Lycian coast, and how, when he sought for him, he found him in the house of a doctor—the character who gives his name to the dialogue—engaged in a discussion with him on the subject of the resurrection. <span class=SpellE>Aglaophon</span> acts as the mouthpiece of Origen and accordingly maintains that, as the flesh is the origin of evil, if the body is reborn, sin must necessarily at the same time be reintroduced into the soul. A certain <span class=SpellE>Memmian</span>, in the course of discussion, undertakes to refute this argument, and the dialogue ends in the discomfiture of the rash doctor who had claimed to eliminate from the future life the presence of the human body, the most attractive of all forms, and to substitute for it, as the support of the soul, the ethereal or astral vehicles of the Platonists, with geometric shapes—sphere, polyhedron, cube or pyramid—derived from the fancies of the <i>Timaeus.</i> <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>It was also in a dialogue that Methodius controverted the doctrine of the eternity of the world—a doctrine assigned to a fictitious follower of Origen of the name of Centaur—and in the same form he discussed the problem of free-will. But he was destined to go down to posterity more especially as the writer of the long dialogue called the <i>Symposium of the Ten Virgins.</i> The pure love-feasts of this <i>Symposium</i> are set in a delightful garden, a kind of earthly paradise in the far East, which is poetically described by the author with the aid of scraps from the <i>Phaedrus,</i> the <i>Theaetetus </i>and the <span class=SpellE><i>Axiochus</i></span><i>.</i> There also occurs a reminiscence of the untouched solitude which Euripides, in one of his plays, had taken as the symbol of Modesty: Agatha, one of the wise virgins, exclaims ‘there is the garland I offer to thee, woven with flowers picked in the meadows of the Prophets, O Virtue, that I in my turn may adorn thee.’ Methodius knew that, if he substituted Chastity for the Eros of the <i>Symposium</i> of Plato, the best analogue for the purity of his heroines was the ideal of the <i>Hippolytus</i> of Euripides. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>This type of romantic imagination, which is so noticeable a feature of the work of the bishop of Olympus, shows that Christian teaching, without losing too much of its seriousness, is already beginning to put off the heavy <span class=SpellE>armour</span> of its early polemics and is turning to seek the company of the Muses. It strikes out on new paths leading to the rhetorical schools, and secures the applause of the lecture-room. Somewhat in the manner of Methodius, <span class=SpellE>Apollinarius</span> of Laodicea a little later cast into Socratic dialogue the conversations of Jesus and the apostles. Subsequently the pagan emperor, Julian, vexed by the sight of Galileans at lectures on Greek literature, determined to put a stop to their coming and plundering the resources of the Greeks in order to use them against the civilization from which they had sprung. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Athens at this time was nothing more than a city of the past, the resort of tourists, of art-lovers and literary critics, a quiet town where men devoted themselves to disinterested study, literary pursuits and the contemplation of history. But this was not to endure. Soon the march of events tore Hellenism, in the most sacred of its retreats, from the joys of contemplation and swept it into the storms of political affairs, though, meanwhile, the Athenian rhetorical schools had, in <span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Longinus,</span> their last moment of <span class=SpellE>splendour</span>. A nephew through his mother of the sophist <span class=SpellE>Fronto</span>—a citizen of <span class=SpellE>Emesa</span>, like more than one of the friends of Julia <span class=SpellE>Domna</span>—Longinus, on coming into a legacy from his uncle, used his wealth in furthering his education by extensive travel, particularly to Alexandria, attended by <span class=SpellE>Ammonius</span> <span class=SpellE>Saccas</span> in a society in which we shall see his name reappear. He then settled at Athens, where he began by teaching rhetoric and philosophy. He was nicknamed the ‘living library’ and the ‘walking museum,’ but he was not lacking in shrewdness and taste. He soon became the leading figure in literary criticism. Some of his judgments are known to us, and they seem to deserve the esteem which they enjoyed. It was not long before pupils flocked to his school. Among them he singled out a man of an inexhaustible love of learning, one who, like himself, had come from Syria, the Tyrian <span class=SpellE>Malchus</span>, ‘the king,’ whose name he changed to its Greek equivalent, <span class=SpellE>Porphyrius</span>. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Longinus taught at the Academy, and, in loyalty to the traditions of the School, he piously observed the anniversary of its founder Plato. We have some detailed knowledge of one of these celebrations: at the commemorative symposium the conversation turned on learned questions. The thesis was put forward that Ephorus, <span class=SpellE>Theopompus</span>, Menander, <span class=SpellE>Hellanicus</span>, Herodotus and Euripides were plagiarists, and even the originality of the hero of the feast had to be defended. This scene is of a piece with what we know of contemporary teaching and reveals the learning and childishness of the talk of the scholars at Athens who were united in the veneration of Plato. The occasion was before Porphyry left for Rome about the year 262/3. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Five years later the Goths landed at the Piraeus. In Athens itself they would have made a bonfire of the books of one of the libraries, if one of their number, looked up to by his fellows for his wisdom, had not pointed out to the barbarians that it would be better to leave the Greeks buried in the lumber room of old books, which made them easy to conquer, than to cause them to arm themselves with swords. About this time Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, had invited her countryman Longinus to her court, and the master, hearkening to the voice of nature, decided it would be far better to win a new empire for Hellenism than to persist in the <span class=SpellE>defence</span> of the Acropolis. He therefore left Greece, entrusting the latter task to the historian <span class=SpellE>Dexippus</span>, and at Palmyra threw himself so whole-heartedly into his new work of adviser to an ambitious princess that not long afterwards, when Zenobia submitted to her conqueror Aurelian, he was condemned to death for high treason by the Roman emperor. After the bravely faced execution of the ill-starred champion of a lost cause, rhetoric at Athens was for a time brought to a standstill. On the other hand, <span class=SpellE><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Dexippus</span></span> learnt from the grim fortunes of his times—like Cassius <span class=SpellE>Dio</span>, if not <span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Herodian</span>—the style and manner of Thucydides, the weightiest and most profound of the historical writers of antiquity. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'><strong>II. <o:p></o:p> </strong></span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><strong><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>ALEXANDRIA: PLOTINUS </span></strong><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'> <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'> </p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>After the assassination of Geta, and at the time of the massacres carried out at Alexandria by the merciless fratricide Caracalla, the officials of the Museum at Alexandria were cruelly deprived of their revenues and allowances and suffered great hardship; those who were not natives of the country were even expelled. After this first alarm the reading-rooms of the city libraries recovered sufficient quiet for the Egyptian <span class=SpellE><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Athenaeus</span></span> of Naucratis to be able to devote his leisure to the scrutiny of more than 1500 works and to draw from them the material for the essays in his <span class=SpellE><i>Deipnosophistae</i></span> in fifteen books on drinking, eating, seasoning, sauces, the delicacies of notable gourmets, the customs at banquets, and even on love, besides the dance, singing and games. These essays would have caused the guests at the banquet to die of boredom if the banquet had really been served. We today can find entertainment in the diverse episodes in the literary life of the past of which <span class=SpellE>Athenaeus</span>’ compilation enables us to form a picture. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Literary pastimes such as those of <span class=SpellE>Athenaeus</span> were possible at Alexandria only for a short period. About the time when the Goths pillaged Athens, the troops of Zenobia (269—270) came and plundered the quarter of the public buildings and palaces (<span class=SpellE>Brucheion</span>) which had been erected in the capital of the Ptolemies near the tomb of Alexander. The Museum was not spared in the general destruction, and henceforth this great home of Greek culture, although it did not disappear completely, could hardly do more than maintain a shadow of what it had been in the past. As late as the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, the scientific genius of the old metropolis still pursued various branches of learning: ‘geometry continued to make useful discoveries, music had its devotees, harmony its expounders, and, though astronomers were rarer, the movements of the stars were still observed; a study never ceased to be made of the science of numbers and especially of the art of foretelling the future.’ There is no lack of names or examples for a commentary on this piece of evidence from Ammianus Marcellinus. It will be enough here to recall what was said in the last volume about the mathematician Diophantus, with whom may be placed the commentator Pappus and Theon his continuator. As for schools, Ammianus in speaking of Alexandria mentions also those of medicine which remained so celebrated that ‘it was enough for a doctor to say that he had studied there, and no further recommendation was required of him.’ But one thing Ammianus does not say, because he stood too close to perceive it. Even at Alexandria in the third century the times were <span class=SpellE>unfavourable</span> for scientific observation and research. The age of discovery had come to an end. One was content with making <span class=SpellE>encyclopaedic</span> compilations in order to adapt to the needs of the day what was essential in knowledge already acquired by science and technical achievement. Men no longer dreamed of probing into the secrets of nature; nature was regarded as the agent of wonders and to gain her service recourse was had to miracle-workers who expounded in oracles what they called the ‘holy science’ or ‘the great art.’ <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Despite the establishment of official doctors, medicine itself so far declined that instead of being able to point to exact observations of clinical workers one has to cite a magical pharmacopoeia and the occultism of astrology, demonology and exorcism. In anatomy Galen, to give a single example, was one of the last to carry out dissection. Moreover, with the growth of sick wards attached to Christian benevolent institutions the art of healing became in the end separated from university teaching. At the time of the great plague in the third century the Christians exhibited a devoted solicitude for the sick, while pagans were content to cast victims of the scourge into the street. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>But to help us to form an idea of the new attitude taken up by those connected with the old-established Museum we have something more valuable than a series of facts of this kind; we can come to know a personality which by itself is worth more than a hundred others. His works will show us, among other things, that the art of healing which men sought more than anything else was a spiritual regime which would ensure the soul’s happiness, not through the simple consciousness of belief and love, nor by the mystical and sacramental effect produced by initiation into the secrets of a ‘gnosis,’ but by the illumination of the intellect enraptured and transported, as the result of a new conception of assimilation with God, to the sublimities of the supreme Intelligence. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif;font-variant:small-caps'>Plotinus</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'> was born at <span class=SpellE>Lycopolis</span> in204 and was already twenty-eight when he came to Alexandria to learn philosophy. He studied under the most famous teachers, but instead of finding himself enlightened, he experienced a disillusion. In deep depression he confessed his disappointment to a friend, who at once introduced him to the very select circle of the mysterious Alexandrine, <span class=SpellE><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Ammonius</span></span><span style='font-variant:small-caps'> <span class=SpellE>Saccas</span>.</span> Plotinus was accepted by <span class=SpellE>Ammonius</span>, and soon realized from talking with him that he had found exactly the sort of guide for whom he was looking. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>It may be asked what precisely did <span class=SpellE>Ammonius</span> teach. As if it were a mystery, all those who listened to him had to promise to disclose nothing about it, and it is by the teaching of Plotinus himself that we can best divine its nature. After eleven years spent in philosophical discussion and meditation with this thinker, Plotinus, when the Emperor Gordian opened the doors of the temple of Janus at Rome to announce a great expedition against the Sassanid kingdom, determined to make use of so fine an opportunity to observe on the spot ‘the philosophy <span class=SpellE>practised</span> by the Persians,’ as well as by the Indians, who likewise were at that time exciting much interest. He therefore joined the army which was preparing to invade Mesopotamia. But some months later Gordian was killed by riotous soldiers near Doura, and Plotinus had to abandon his plan without having got even as far as Ctesiphon. He returned to Antioch (February 244) after having perhaps an opportunity at Apamea on the Orontes of making himself familiar with the philosophy of Numenius, which had always filled his thoughts. Finally, from Antioch he went to Rome, where he opened a school. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>A visitor to it for the first time must have been deeply impressed. Still stunned by the bustle of the great city, and only a step from the streets in which was displayed, in a brilliant setting of public buildings, the <span class=SpellE>splendour</span> of a life of pleasure such as we can hardly imagine, he came upon a quiet circle of ascetics who turned their backs upon the world and meditated on books of philosophy, <span class=SpellE>practising</span> a lofty disdain for external things. Leading together a life of sanctity the initiates of this philosophic conventicle looked, first, for a moment of ecstasy on this earth and ultimately for the deliverance of their soul through death and its return to the bosom of the eternal Being. The existence in the world-capital of this small cloistered brotherhood of ‘pale folk’ is nothing of a surprise. It is one of those violent contrasts which occur in the intense and hectic life of such a <span class=SpellE>centre</span> as that of Imperial Rome. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>When Porphyry, no doubt bearing a letter of introduction from Longinus, presented himself to Plotinus, the master’s teaching had been fully thought out. His quiet and attractive manner, his serious and simple nature, his distaste for fashionable rhetoric and cheap success, the loftiness of his ideas and the strictness with which he followed his philosophic principles, his knowledge of men and that intuitive understanding which sometimes made him seem like a thought reader, the force and passion of his words, his genuine enthusiasm and disinterestedness, won for him an authority altogether different from that of the philosophers who lived like private chaplains in the large houses of Rome and were good fellows with whom master and servant enjoyed making merry. Plotinus had transformed and exalted the part of the philosopher. He had cast a halo round him by earning for himself so high a prestige in the eyes of the Romans. He was one of those strong-willed geniuses who exercise a strange kind of fascination. He still fascinates today. It is impossible to come into contact with him without being overpowered. ‘I have been almost frightened,’ Novalis wrote to a friend, ‘by his resemblance to Fichte and Kant.... In my heart I feel that he is worth more than both of them.’ <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Plotinus’ mode of life was simple. He showed an entire disregard for the care of the body and <span class=SpellE>practised</span> vegetarianism. Sometimes he abstained even from bread. Although he was not strong he disobeyed his doctors’ orders, and he carried his scorn for worldly things so far as to neglect them in all their forms, from the sonorous style with which rhetoricians pleased the ear, to the details of his own writing, which was by no means correct and hardly readable. On the other hand, he gave himself up to meditation with an intense concentration of which Porphyry has left us an impressive account. He was consumed by the fire of an intellectual passion which transfigured him. Four times while Porphyry was staying with him, the wise hierophant ‘went beyond the choir of virtues as a man leaves behind him the statues of the gods to enter the sanctuary’ and reached ecstasy, or communion and identification with the Infinite. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>One of the original features in the teaching of Plotinus is to be seen in the part played by images and figurative expressions in the exposition of his ideas. If it were not for the luminous and brightly <span class=SpellE>coloured</span> touches which constantly help to make up for the ineffectiveness of the reasoning, the <i>Enneads,</i> with their laborious attempts to grasp the most elusive abstractions, would not wholly succeed in conveying the writer’s doctrine. In this respect Plotinus followed the example of the wise men of his country, who, as he tells us, instead of writing letters and words on the walls of their temples, preferred to draw images and symbols. It will not be surprising to hear that speculation so little inspired by the method or even the spirit of the sciences called exact showed itself as far removed as possible from a purely mechanistic conception of the universe. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; tab-stops:179.65pt;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Nature, for Plotinus, knows not levers. That is why he constantly emphasizes distant action; like an echo, which seems to come from a wall of rock, whereas in fact it is caused by the resonance of a far-off voice; like a softly spoken word which sets going something at vast distances; like the heavenly choirs and the harmony of the world whose agreement and rhythm are maintained across the intervening space simply by the attention of the executants. Is it some material contact which causes a flower or stone to vibrate in accord with the astral powers? How can we explain the power of God in every branch of nature and the universal prayer which makes every being try to rise towards Him? <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The more improbable materialistic mechanism appeared to Plotinus, the more universally he detected in the actions and interactions of beings the effects of a kind of magic power and recognized the reality of the universal sympathy made active in the mystical religions of his day. But Plotinus is not content with the principle of unity thus revealed in the interconnection of the members of a living organism. He needs a higher unity, and, drawing inspiration from the idealism of Plato, he finds it in the intelligence. For him the bond of dependence among beings becomes entirely intellectual. The intelligences are to the supreme Intelligence and to one another as the theorems of a particular science are to Science as a whole and to one another: each of them potentially includes the others however different from them it may be. Thus it is that one can contemplate in the unity of a science its whole content. On the other hand beings have no reality except in the Intelligence itself. They are neither before it, nor after it; the Intelligence is, as it were, alike their first legislator and their principle, or rather the very law of their being, and it is true to say that existence and thought are the same thing. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>By synthesizing the ‘rational-creative <i>Logoi'</i> of the Stoics with the Platonic Idea, and introducing them to the intelligible world whence these <i>‘Logoi'</i> shape sensible beings and reflect themselves in them, Plotinus reached his famous doctrine of the creative activity of contemplation. It is by contemplating the one that the soul gives unity—and therefore being—to each of its productions. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; tab-stops:211.95pt;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>To say that the one is the principle of being is for him the same as saying that the only true reality is contemplation. Not only is intelligence contemplation of its object, but nature also is contemplation, silent, unspeaking, unconscious contemplation of the intelligible pattern which it strives to imitate; an animal, a plant, any object has its form, in the Aristotelian sense, only in so <span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>far as it contemplates the ideal pattern which is reflected in it. To maintain that contemplation is at the same time creation, is one of the most violent paradoxes ever propounded by philosophy. Plotinus develops it with a variety and abundance of arguments and images which are at times dazzling. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>If anyone were to demand of Nature why it produces, it would answer, if it were willing to listen and speak: ‘you should not ask questions, but like me understand in silence: for I am a silent one, and to talk is not my custom. What ought you to understand? This, that the created world is my silent contemplation, a contemplation produced by my nature: for being born myself of contemplation [the meditation of the Intellective Soul], I am naturally contemplative and that which contemplates in me produces an object of contemplation, <i>as geometers describe figures while contemplating.</i> I, however, do not describe figures; but while I contemplate, the outlines of bodies take substance, as though they had fallen from my lap. I preserve the disposition of my mother [the universal soul] and of those who engendered me (the rational-creative <i>Logoi).</i> They too were born of contemplation. So my birth in turn came about by no action of theirs; from the self-contemplation of Principles that are greater than I, I was generated. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>This passage contains a comparison which helps greatly towards understanding the paradox of creative contemplation: That which contemplates in me produces an object of contemplation, as geometers describe figures while contemplating.’ If one turns to the <i>Timaeus,</i> it will be found there that, in the myth of creation, the four elements are produced with simple geometrical outlines, those of the four regular <span class=SpellE>polyhedra</span>—the cube in the case of earth, the icosahedron in that of water, the octahedron in that of air, the tetrahedron in that of fire; so, as with the geometer, the soul of the world has but to consider the design, as it were, of the constituent mathematical relations of the Intelligence, which is its model, and then, acted upon by Eros, the figures which the soul contemplates and whose beauty it admires and loves spontaneously project themselves into reality. This example alone is enough to show how deeply imbued with the spirit of Plato Plotinus was. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>It will also have been noticed that the Mother of sensible beings, or Nature (Averts), who speaks thus, is the daughter of the universal soul (soul of the world or principle of life), and this soul is itself born of pure Intelligence, which is at once thought and being—the subject and object of modern philosophers—above which, to avoid plurality or, in other words, to escape from the influence of matter, one must go one step higher. Once arrived at the top of the slope by which the ascent has been made through the three chief stages—the famous system of ‘the three hypostases’ (the trinity of the soul, the spirit and the One)—a specially gifted man may experience, in a rapture, intuition of the Absolute. This Absolute, the father of beings, inconceivable except as pure goodness, cannot but bestow existence on all things, and while it keeps itself intact, unchanging, and indivisible throughout its constant production, on everything which emanates from it, it leaves its mark with a more or less vague or conscious desire to return to it. Here if a man wishes to understand he needs the help of comparisons and parallels. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Conceive a spring having no alien source; giving itself to all rivers, yet not exhausted therein, but itself abiding at rest; and the rivers that have gone out from it journeying a while together in one flood before they run their several courses, yet each as it were already conscious in what place its own waters shall find issue. Or conceive the life of a great plant pervading every part, whilst the source of that life itself endures undispersed, having its seat, as it were, in the root. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>This, then, is the theme which this philosophy delights to return to and develop with every kind of variation: there proceeds from the Absolute in an unbroken continuity first the world of thought, secondly that of the pure ideas contained in it, thirdly that of souls and material bodies; then, under the impulse of desire, everything which has been born strives to return to the prime source of Being. The divine does not descend; however remote it may be, man must climb to the height of divinity, if he is to unite himself with the One above all multiplicity. The possibility of this union lies in the activity of pure thought, and, far beyond the human spirit, in the mysterious accord of the individual with the first Being, an accord beyond all reason. Only an imperfect idea of Plotinus can be gained without reading in their context some of the flashes of his ‘quivering and vibrating’ style, whereby is expressed the wealth of contradictory ideas and difficulties which come before him as soon as he tries to speak of this being in rapture with God in which consciousness of personality fades away. </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The teaching and vocation of this philosophy were renunciation of this world and detachment from all activity in it for the sake of a better. At the same time, this renunciation of the world did not at all imply condemnation of it, nor a horror or deep dislike or denial. In the eyes of Plotinus the world is beautiful, as should be the work and reflection of the divinity which is immanent in it. A last ray of the Greek spirit in its decline thus shines where the philosopher glorifies the <span class=SpellE>splendour</span> of the cosmos. On this theme he sometimes raises his voice in a way that can be explained only by the antipathy which his eyes observed in his own audience. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; tab-stops:164.95pt;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In Plotinus’ day ‘gnosis,’ a religious philosophy of Oriental inspiration, was spreading everywhere in various forms. It condemned a world created by the spirit of evil and given up to a cruel Destiny, and stressed the need of the worship of saving gods who would intervene in person here on earth and distribute their <span class=SpellE>favours</span> and mercy to gatherings of the faithful and elect. Dwelling on apocalypses and revelations, they set against Platonic cosmology, ruled by pure Intelligence, the dualism of the armies of Good and Evil. Compared with the immense antiquity of the traditions to which they appealed, whether they were Syrian, Chaldean or Iranian, the seven centuries of Greek thought seemed nothing but the first phase of a philosophy still in its infancy. These ‘<span class=SpellE>gnostics</span>’ appeared to have everything in their <span class=SpellE>favour</span>. They went straight to men’s souls in all they said. They set forth a fine display of theology and speculative fancies; They claimed that Plato himself was a pupil of their ancient wisdom and that Christ gave them the mystical benefit of his death and redemption. They forced their way into Plotinus’ audiences and argued against him. Their persuasive tones shook the faith of his pupils, and Plotinus felt the need of breaking free from the hold which threatened to fetter him. Plato’s position as the supreme director of thought was seriously menaced, and the dogma of the goodness of the world was openly flouted. Plotinus replied, and an echo of his vehement refutations may be heard in the <i>Enneads. </i>Plotinus, in fact, refused to look upon the soul as a prisoner in a satanic <span class=SpellE>gaol</span> with no hope of salvation except by the supernatural intervention of a redeemer; for him, on the contrary, the soul, by itself and its own unaided powers, could free itself from the body, cleave to the pure Intelligence, regain its first dignity, and, at the end of its liberation, rise to God—not, of course, to the personal God of the <span class=SpellE>gnostics</span>, but to that state of ecstatic union with the One which it is the aim of philosophy to achieve. To find God Plotinus has no need to enter a temple or bow down before an image. His prayer is not a cry of despair, nor an avowal of repentance, nor an entreaty designed to move to pity a being who can help if he will. ‘The gift of the intellect is not like a present which can be taken away. ’ After a divorce from unity the soul has only to turn again towards the lost communion and our fulness is re-established together with the desired equilibrium. Our destiny is entirely in the life within us; it depends on that, and on nothing else. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>At <span class=SpellE>Medinet</span> Madi in the Fayum a library has lately been discovered which proves that Manichaean writings could be read in Egypt in the time of <span class=SpellE>Ammonius</span> <span class=SpellE>Saccas</span>, and in order to explain the <span class=SpellE>vigour</span> of Plotinus’ resistance to the invasion of <span class=SpellE>gnosticism</span> from the Near East his attempt to go and observe the philosophy of India on the spot has been called in evidence; writers have even tried to credit him with some of the understanding of Hindu asceticism which Mani had won in the course of his travels a century before and of which he took account in founding his cosmopolitan religion. It is undeniable that there was some kind of contact between Plotinus and Indian thought. But it is another matter to say that without this contact Plotinus could not have conceived a type of idealism to which many independent thinkers since his time have approached. Rather may it be said that Plotinus’ fundamental achievement was to bring to life in the heart of Platonism the activity of certain affinities with Asia as old as the first philosophic conversations in the gardens of the Academy. As far back as the time of <span class=SpellE>Eudoxus</span> of Cnidus Plato was sufficiently open-minded not to refuse to consider the ideas of the East. Plotinus brought to his work as a Greek thinker the same readiness to learn. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> </div> <span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language: EN-US'><br clear=all style='page-break-before:always;mso-break-type:section-break'> </span> <div class=WordSection16> <h2 class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>III. <o:p></o:p> </span></h2> <h2 class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>PORPHYRY <o:p></o:p> </span></h2> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In order to characterize the work of his pupil <span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Porphyry</span> it must be emphasized that Plotinus stands at the beginning of a new era. Men were ceasing to observe the external world and to try to understand it, utilize it or improve it. They were turning away from nature because they could no longer see in it anything but change, deterioration, corruption, materiality, coarseness and meanness. They were driven in upon themselves. In the inmost consciousness of life and the being of the soul they believed they were in touch with the eternal, the unchanging and the divine. Instead of deifying the world and uniting themselves with God by the heightening of the senses or by the contemplation of the stars, they began to draw fancies from their inner impulses or sought benefit in meditation. The idea of the beauty of the heavens and of the world went out of fashion and was replaced by that of the Infinite. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Plotinus was one of the chief authors of this revolution. He gave it theoretical justification. He clad the ascetic in the cloak of Platonic philosophy. He expressed the new teaching of the value of things by means of some of the most striking images which could appeal to men’s minds. But there was nothing of the popularizer in the head of the Neoplatonic school, and a long initiation was necessary in order to penetrate his thought. He needed assistants capable of giving a kind of preliminary instruction. In this work Porphyry excelled. He trained the minds of his students in the <span class=SpellE><i>Qrganon</i></span> of Aristotle and in the study of formal logic. In time, by musing on the great principles of asceticism, he made himself the moralist of the teaching of which Plotinus was the metaphysician. In commenting on selected works of Aristotle and Plato on many points he developed, justified and clarified the ideas of his master and even found new applications of them. His untiring industry, his controversial <span class=SpellE>ardour</span>, and enthusiastic propaganda contributed greatly to the good management and early success of the school. It has been said that he became, as it were, the very soul of Hellenism and the protagonist of his party. The most striking conversions to the ideas of Plotinus were due to him; it was he who established the contact between Platonism and St Augustine, the builder of a new City of God. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Plotinus was an admirable improviser, but no composer on paper. He always disdained not only rhetorical artifice but also the trouble needed to secure a well-turned and exact phrase. He did not even re-read what he wrote. But he realized the value of a revision of his writings by a skilled hand, and entrusted the task of publishing them to Porphyry. His pupil accepted it, but did not carry it out at once. For a long time after the death of Plotinus he was content to expound his master’s teachings orally. To those who like Longinus asked for the written word he sent indifferent copies. But he was urged ever more strongly to produce an accurate definitive text. There was inevitably a loud demand for such a publication on the part of the growing number of the admirers of Plotinus. Furthermore, in issuing the works of the last great pagan thinker, Porphyry was taking thought not only of the needs of the Platonic school but also for the Hellenism to which he was devoted. Plotinus was the true interpreter of Plato. His works supplemented those of the master of masters and were to supply men who were specially gifted and eager to learn with a selection of pious meditations which they needed. When Porphyry published his collection of Plotinus’ lectures in six <i>Enneads </i>or divisions, each consisting of nine chapters, he added notes at the request of some friends who desired explanations. If today we may hope to restore to life the oral teaching of Plotinus, it is mainly due to the explanations that have by chance been handed down to us by the most understanding and attentive of his auditors. Porphyry also provided his edition with summaries and arguments, and at the beginning of the work gave an account of the philosopher’s life. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In the short work thus devoted to the biography of his master, Porphyry does not always speak in the tone or spirit that might be desired. In more than one place the philosopher is looked at through the idle fancies and hallucinations of silly imaginations obsessed by the <span class=SpellE>marvellous</span>, and many a story casts a halo round his head which he himself would not have permitted. But on the whole Porphyry succeeds in bringing his hero to life before us, in body and in soul. In his <i>Life of Plotinus</i> he is still <span class=SpellE>practising</span> the art of the older biographers, and there is a contrast between his way of showing forth the merits of an ascetic and the manner which is soon to distinguish the first products of Christian hagiography—for example the life of Antony the Hermit by Athanasius. The souls which Porphyry sets himself to win for his faith are not the simple souls of ‘the poor in spirit.’ <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The fame of Porphyry is very largely due to his great work <i>Against the Christians.</i> During the reign of Severus Alexander and Gallienus the new religion had enjoyed toleration. After all, neither the observances of the believers nor their faith nor their attitude to society were any longer a cause of trouble. Set beside the mystic frenzy of a strongly <span class=SpellE>orientalized</span> paganism, the Lord’s Supper celebrated as a sacrifice, the water poured at baptism as in a rite of initiation, must have had the effect of attractive and easily understood symbols, and even the piety by which Christians were guided in invoking their <span class=SpellE>Saviour</span> God and asking salvation of him was still shared by many souls. In widely different circles the Gospel made steady progress. At Rome the number of those sealed of the faith was increasing rapidly, and during this period a strong and influential episcopacy was being organized in the principal churches. More and more, enlightened pagans had to take account of the seriousness of the situation. The time was coming when a systematic persecution was to be set on foot. It was these calamitous and troubled days that evoked the composition of Porphyry’s treatise against the Christians. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>There are in the <i>Enneads</i> moving hymns to the creative Soul, ‘our beneficent sister who has the power to accomplish so much without effort.’ As has been seen, she is the cause of the sympathy in all the parts of the universe, mankind and the stars, the sea, animals and plants. She gives nature its impressive beauty and its poignant sadness. Cybele drank the water of Lethe, but in her dreams, which follow one another like clouds racing across the sky, she seeks to recall God. She would not succeed in raising her eyes or in uttering the saving words if the human soul did not find them for her. For we are—as may be said, according to Plotinus—nature after its awakening, already speaking to God and ready to see Him face to face. How inexhaustible are such founts of a mysticism to which our poets will still so often go to seek ecstatic visions 1 How limitless the fruitfulness of a religion which could seem in fact dead, but which, even during its old age, still had so brilliant a hierophant! The Neoplatonist depicted it in such wonderful forms that the Christians felt compelled to avoid them. To avert the effect of its charms, they had to pronounce anathema upon it. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Among the more enlightened spirits the conflict was felt less keenly. With Plotinus certainly controversy never assumed an unduly personal <span class=SpellE>colour</span>, and it left unimpaired the dream of a common ideal and even of some measure of understanding. But the more men turned to the public at large, the greater the wish to extend the field of propaganda—the activity to which Porphyry devoted himself—and the more keenly felt and inevitable became the clashes. Faced by the common herd, men were soon drawn into a fighting attitude, and thus the Platonists undertook the justification of all the observances of the established cults, while the Christians thundered against the <span class=SpellE>wickednesses</span> of idolatry. There is, then, nothing surprising in the sight of a Porphyry who thus became at the same time popularizer of the teaching of Plotinus and adversary of the Church. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Nevertheless, the hostility of Porphyry is not to be explained entirely by the development of philosophy. <span class=SpellE>Amelius</span>, his <span class=SpellE>fellowstudent</span> and collaborator, still invokes the testimony of the beginning of the gospel according to St John, and although, following the fashion of the school, he calls the disciple of Christa ‘barbarian,’ there is nothing to show that he was hostile to the Church. Neoplatonism and Christianity were doubtless rivals destined sooner or later to meet in conflict, but, if we wish to explain the declaration of war, we must certainly take into account the personality of Porphyry himself. No Neoplatonist was more likely than he was to engage in hostilities. He had always concerned himself with Christian teaching and observances and with the error which they seemed to contain. In his earliest works, in his <i>Philosophy of the Oracles,</i> if he appears to bow before the sanctity of Christ, he looks upon the reverence shown to him as excessive. A little later, when he published his treatise <i>On the images of the gods,</i> he writes for the select, from whom the Christians are excluded, and it is the Christians whom he takes to task. It is clear that at every period of his literary activity and before he could have dreamed of putting his gifts at the service of the ideas of Plotinus, he looked on the new religion as a hostile force. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Porphyry’s treatise against the Christians was a considerable work. It ran to fifteen books, wherein Porphyry made full use of his learning and intellectual skill. Trained, as he had been, by Longinus in critical scholarship, he soon saw how to set about revealing inventions, improbabilities and contradictions in the narratives <i>of the</i> Evangelists and other canonical books, and he <span class=SpellE>laboured</span> to shatter the authority of the evidence appealed to by true believers in support of their faith. Origen’s allegorical interpretation, ‘which cleverly read into the falsehoods of foreigners the beliefs of the Greeks,’ did not find <span class=SpellE>favour</span> in his eyes. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Porphyry repeats, follows up and enlarges all that the ingenuity of <span class=SpellE>Celsus</span> had discovered by way of argument. He brings against the books of Daniel a proof of spuriousness that many modern scholars consider conclusive. He attacks the genealogy of Jesus. He claims to show by the contradictions of the synoptists that their narratives cannot claim to be believed. He criticizes many passages in the Acts of the Apostles. He finds that Peter is contradicted by Paul. Paul he attacks with special fury. The philhellene sees in him nothing but coarse rhetoric and intolerable incoherence. Porphyry’s whole polemic is elaborated with an abundance of arguments in which contemporary controversialists might find many of their <span class=SpellE>favourite</span> themes. Whenever rationalism came into conflict with Christian revelation, it was enough to repeat what had been said by Porphyry. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Porphyry, like his predecessor <span class=SpellE>Celsus</span>, was particularly shocked to see among the Christians revolutionaries breaking with all their ancestral inheritance, even with the ordinances of the Old Testament, and threatening the established order of things. He puts them down as ‘barbarians.’ But, in spite of this, he seems less concerned than <span class=SpellE>Celsus</span> to defend the Roman State. His special originality comes out in the breadth of view with which he now and then comprehends the struggle. Since <span class=SpellE>Celsus</span> the horizon of Platonism had been widely extended. Porphyry has not the same contempt as <span class=SpellE>Celsus</span> either for the Jews or for Orientals. His humanity is such that he feels a measure of sympathy even with the person of Christ and some parts of his teaching. He keeps his wrath for the disciples of Jesus, for the distortions of which they were the originators and for the ‘myths’ of the Evangelists. As early as his day the canon of the writings of the New Testament had been determined. He knows it and directs his attacks at it, and it is this which gives his criticism a forcefulness and thrust which places it far above that of his predecessors. In him are found hardly any of the crude aspersions to which pagan polemic of the first centuries had recourse. Nor is he malevolent in tone like Julian. His controversy rarely sinks to the futile. He makes a careful study of the points at issue and tries to foresee objections. In the main he seems much less concerned with the effect he will have on the public than with the particular error which he is seeking to demonstrate. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Porphyry certainly <span class=SpellE>endeavours</span> to expose what he holds to be weaknesses in the arguments used to prove the divine origin of Christianity; but apart from this the work which he conceived is one of deep philosophy and not mere polemic. He speaks as a profoundly religious man. The need of revelation, redemption, asceticism and immortality inspires him with a faith like that of his opponents. In his desire to convince and to find what he calls a universal(‘catholic’) <span class=SpellE>wayof</span> salvation, he goes so far as <span class=SpellE>tojettison</span> the theurgy and observances of pagan worship. He shows himself still filled with the lofty and conciliatory thought of Plotinus.<span style='font-variant: small-caps'> <o:p></o:p> </span></span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif;font-variant:small-caps'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span></span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In this respect, as in all others, he marks the transition between early Neoplatonism and that of the time of Iamblichus and Julian. Philosophy is already at war with Christianity, but, in spite of the outbreak of hostilities, there can always be suspected in him a hope of agreement. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>This hope proved illusory. No settlement was possible. In the treatise which Porphyry wrote against them the Christians saw nothing but hostility, and they had good reason for feeling anxious about it. The sum-total of testimonies and doctrines on which the Church based its teaching had to meet the most formidable indictment which has ever been drawn up by Hellenism. Rejoinders succeeded one another. Methodius, Eusebius of Caesarea, <span class=SpellE>Apollinarius</span> of Laodicea and <span class=SpellE>Philostorgius</span> attempted refutations. But these refutations were not thought sufficient. As late as 448, by the orders of the Emperors Valentinian III and Theodosius II, the work was consigned to the flames, and the edict which prescribed this auto-da-fe mentions Porphyry alone, saying nothing of <span class=SpellE>Celsus</span> or of <span class=SpellE>Hierocles</span> or of Julian, as if of all the <span class=SpellE>defences</span> of paganism only his need cause disquiet. Jerome, for example, pours out on Porphyry all the abuse of which his nature was capable, and that is saying a good deal. He calls him a scoundrel, an impudent fellow, a vilifier, a sycophant, a lunatic and a mad dog. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>It is as the collaborator of Plotinus that Porphyry has his chief claim to our gratitude; but, at the same time, he has rendered us services of a different kind. He was the author of a considerable number of commentaries and miscellaneous works of learning, and he is one of the chief scholars to whom we owe our knowledge of a host of writers of antiquity. A large part of the information to be found in the Homeric scholia, in the series of Neoplatonic commentaries and in many a Byzantine writer has come down to us through him. For example, in modern collections of the fragments of the pre-Socratics and Stoics, of the Orphic poems and many other works, it would be enough to put Porphyry’s name at the head of the extracts which we really owe to him, to show that his contribution is one of the largest. In this respect he deserves a place beside Pliny, Galen, Ptolemy and the other men of letters of the Imperial age whose learned works enable us in some measure to make up for the loss of so many precious documents. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>If Porphyry could return to the world of men, he would undoubtedly be not a little surprised at the fate which has befallen his work. Certainly the idea of the supreme importance of the spiritual life and the search for individual salvation to which he gave a great part of his efforts, have worked wonders on this earth. For many centuries a large elite of mankind has withdrawn from the world and sought in the silence of the cloister forgetfulness of bondage to the flesh. But the triumph of idealism and mysticism has not fallen to the standards and to the leaders under whom the publisher of the <i>Enneads</i> took his place. The doctrines of the Neoplatonists have influenced men’s minds in a Christian form. In the visions of Dante and in the outpourings of medieval piety Plotinus is forgotten, and in our own day also there are few indeed who have even a slight knowledge of the debt due to him. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'><strong>IV. <o:p></o:p> </strong></span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><strong><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>IAMBLICHUS <o:p></o:p> </span></strong><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'></span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'> </p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>All that is known of the early education of the philosopher <span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Iamblichus</span> can soon be told. Born about 250 at Chalcis in Coele- Syria, this Semite was at first, doubtless at Rome, the pupil of Porphyry and of the mathematician <span class=SpellE>Anatolius</span>; he then returned to Asia, and it is now known that, following the example of the Neoplatonist <span class=SpellE>Amelius</span>, he went to teach at Apamea. Details concerning the life of Iamblichus are scanty, but of his works, which consisted of ponderous commentaries on Aristotle and Plato, a life of Alypius, an essay on the gods, and other writings, there remain considerable specimens and in particular long fragments from a collection of treatises dealing with the philosophy of Pythagoras: a <i>Life</i> of the master, an <i>Exhortation to Philosophy,</i> a treatise <i>On the science of mathematics.</i> All these make up a tedious collection, full of mystical remarks concerning the science of numbers and a mass of quotations drawn from every kind of writer and paraphrased from a moralistic standpoint, without any show of literary merit, but commonplace in form and diffuse in style, a nerveless and wearisome composition. Whoever has tried to read this writer, who far from having ‘sacrificed to the graces of Hermes’ seems to wish ‘to repel with a phrase which grates upon the ears,’ will ask himself how such a nincompoop could have been regarded by the most distinguished men of his time as a divine master and how he managed to arouse in them so passionate an enthusiasm. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>For Plotinus, as has been seen, religion was a matter entirely for the inward man, and the means by which an attempt is made to impress the imagination in public worship were unworthy of a philosopher who wished to preserve his soul from all contact with the external world. The master took little thought for the general public. It was enough for him if his mysticism was available to a chosen few. But as soon as Iamblichus took over the management of the school, at a time when paganism in its hour of danger was calling more and more urgently for all the forces of Hellenism to come to its help, the Neoplatonists threw themselves into the struggle and they soon found that Porphyry had been too yielding. In their desire to take more account of the needs of their time they ceased to concern themselves only with an élite and set to work to extend their field of propaganda. The system of Plotinus was too remote for many minds; hence, in order to give a less abstruse form to the speculations of his philosophy, Iamblichus and his successors thought it well to enable men to contemplate them through the showy and misty images of the mystery religions. <span class=SpellE>Sarapis</span>, Isis, Hecate, Demeter, Dionysus and Cybele supplied them with a whole host of emblems which they put to ingenious use, and in future it was by symbolic visions that they claimed to prepare the return of the soul to God. The Neoplatonists thus turned themselves into ‘hierophants’ and initiated their pupils into the secret cults of their time. Multiplying the triads and hebdomads according to the needs of the cause, Iamblichus set the example by admitting as many as 360 divine entities with 21 lords of the world and 42 gods of nature. In this kind of barracks open for a general mobilization of polytheism, the mystic priest could find a place for anything which the established cults offered him, giving the place of <span class=SpellE>honour</span> naturally to the leader of the gods set in charge of Plotinus’ intelligible world, the great king Helios, with his image the visible Sun, his doubles Zeus and <span class=SpellE>Sarapis</span>, his representatives Dionysus and Asclepius, his emanations Apollo and Athena (Providence and soul of the world), and lastly his companion Aphrodite. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>To this Neoplatonist the real aim was to set up the great confraternity of all the doctrines and religious practices of Hellenism, a Hellenism which from now onwards let its flag fly over all the traditional beliefs of Greece and the Near East. The gods of every peopleware henceforth joined to form a pantheon which puts its sanctuaries and priesthoods at the disposal of all the devout, their religious blessings being, as it were, pooled. All difference of opinion must in future be abolished. Not only Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, but also Heraclitus, Democritus and the other philosophers—Epicurus and the Cynics alone being excepted—as well as the <span class=SpellE>Orphics</span> and the followers of Hermes Trismegistus and with them the Jews, <span class=SpellE>gnostics</span> and Chaldeans, have all to be made to agree, and woe betide anyone who disturbs this united front! The ‘queries’ that Porphyry had submitted to the Egyptian priest <span class=SpellE>Anebo</span> will be regarded as blasphemous; Iamblichus will dispose of them and condemn them with equal severity and unction. The enlightened intellectualism of a Plotinus and a Porphyry drew its power and insight from the free effort of individual thought. Iamblichus is inspired by a mob fanaticism. Plotinus and Porphyry had rejected the help of saving gods: Iamblichus appeals to every form of redemption and revelation borne witness to by ancient tradition. Plotinus and Porphyry had laid great stress on silent prayer and banished living sacrifice from the worship of the gods. In his desire to found a pagan Catholic church Iamblichus is sensitive to the danger to which his plan would be exposed by the smallest concession to the revolutionary Evangelists: just as he pours scorn on the monks, so he persists in the search for clever sophistries to show that, religion being made for the people and the people having need of visible divinities to worship, like those which can be seen in the sky, the fire and smoke of sacrifice are symbols bearing, by their very antiquity, incomparable power to strengthen the prayers and raise towards the gods of the world the souls of the faithful gathered in the temples. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Egypt had long been for Greek religious feeling the Holy Land. But at the time when the Sassanids were making the voice of Zoroaster speak with a fresh accent, when the sacred books of the Hebrews, thanks to their <span class=SpellE>hellenizing</span> interpreters, were universally reverenced, when the prophet Mani claimed to renew the ancient predications of Buddha, Jesus and Zoroaster, it was impossible to put a comprehensive religious syncretism under the exclusive patronage of the old priesthoods of the country of the Pharaohs. In the Second Century two holy men called Julian, who styled themselves Chaldeans, drew up the extraordinary series of oracles known as ‘logia <span class=SpellE>Chaldaica</span>’ in which re-appeared, with the very spirit of the <i>Timaeus</i> of Plato, the principles of the old Orphic-Pythagorean mysticism from which Plato himself had borrowed so much. To show the ‘symphony’ of the wise men of ancient Greece with the doctrines revealed to priesthoods many thousands of years old this doctrine of Oriental <span class=SpellE>colour</span> seemed like a godsend. Iamblichus at once said farewell to dialectic and the unsuccessful efforts of a rationality that had only shown into what fog and wild vagaries reason, suspended between myriads of errors, ends by sinking, and with all sail set sought shelter in the <span class=SpellE>harbour</span> of superhuman revelation. Thus it is Iamblichus who was responsible for an alliance which was to make his successor, Proclus, observe that, if it were for him to decide, he would destroy all books, with two exceptions, the <i>Timaeus</i> and the <i>Logia. </i>If any originality is to be attributed to Iamblichus, it would have to be found in his idea of combining so strangely the spirit of Plato with the most fanatical aberrations; the conjunction was certainly monstrous, but the influence which it produced spread rapidly, at all events in the East. In the crypt at Ephesus in which the Neoplatonist Maximus initiated the future Emperor Julian into the mysteries of paganism, the spells used by the wonder-worker were those which Iamblichus had borrowed from the theurgy of the oracles called <span class=SpellE>Chaldaean</span>. Writing from Gaul to the philosopher Priscus, one of his companions in Platonic mysticism, Julian asked him for a copy of ‘everything that Iamblichus wrote on his namesake’ (the theurge Julian). When he set down these words, Julian believed he was undergoing a supernatural experience and he apologizes for speaking with the rapture of an enthusiast and adds, ‘ for my part I idolize Iamblichus in philosophy and my namesake, the theurge in theosophy, and, to speak in the manner of <span class=SpellE>Apollodorus</span>, compared with them in my eyes the others<sup> </sup>do not count.’ After this piece of evidence there is no reason for surprise at reading in Eunapius that pupils hurried in crowds all along the roads of Asia to the town of Apamea where Iamblichus taught and where his conversation— not the reading of his writings—charmed those present at his dinner parties so much that he seemed to fill them with nectar. Like one inspired, living in communion with the gods, when he made solemn sacrifice on the appointed dates, he caused spirits to appear on the waters of fountains, and, as he prayed, his garments changed to a beautiful golden hue, and, by a phenomenon like the levitation of spirits in modern times, his body soared aloft ten cubits from the ground. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'><strong>V. <o:p></o:p> </strong></span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'><strong><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS: EUSEBIUS </span></strong><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'> <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto20 align=center style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right: 81.35pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:center;text-indent: 1.0cm;background:transparent'> </p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The Phoenician <span class=SpellE>Pamphilus</span> was trained in the catechetical school of Alexandria under the direction of <span class=SpellE>Pierius</span>, the successor of Origen. On returning to his own country he settled at Caesarea in Palestine, the city already well-known through the Acts of the Apostles, where Origen had taught latterly and had left his books. To carry on the work of his master, <span class=SpellE>Pamphilus</span> founded a biblical school at Caesarea and as a second ‘Demetrius of <span class=SpellE>Phalerum</span>’ not only spent money freely on collecting the scattered remains of Origen’s library, but also began to copy with his own hand the precious works which he was unable to acquire. Subsequently he had a whole staff of scribes, which was soon joined by Eusebius, working for him and with him so eagerly and efficiently that before long the school possessed a collection of books unrivalled in Christian circles. In friendly collaboration with <span class=SpellE>Pamphilus</span>, to whom he was so attached that he used his name like that of an adoptive father, Eusebius then occupied himself under his direction in transcribing, cataloguing and editing texts, in considering questions of authenticity, in drawing up chronological lists of writers and in collecting about them all kinds of information of literary history. With a mind and training less philosophic than Origen and a learning less profound than Porphyry he set himself, like them, to emulate the great librarians who had in an earlier day inaugurated the methods of historical and philological criticism in the Museum at Alexandria. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In 307 the persecution let loose by Galerius attacked the school at Caesarea, and <span class=SpellE>Pamphilus</span> was cast into prison. Eusebius relates the scenes of horror which he witnessed at that time. But none the less for two years—we do not know how—he managed to continue to work with his imprisoned master and together they wrote an elaborate <i>Apology for Origen.</i> <span class=SpellE>Pamphilus</span> was executed in 310, and his disciple took it on himself to complete their common work. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif;font-variant:small-caps'>Eusebius</span><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'> was an indefatigable worker and continued writing until a very advanced age. As has been said by the author of one of the best histories of the early Church, ‘he knew everything, biblical history, pagan history, ancient literature, philosophy, geography, computation, exegesis. He commented on Isaiah, and the Psalms and on other books. He could explain the difficult question of the Passover which depended on exegesis, ritual and astronomy. Towards the end of his life men began to be interested in the Holy Places, and Eusebius, who had a thorough knowledge of Palestine and the Bible, explained the names of peoples and places mentioned in Scripture, described Judaea and reconstructed the ancient topography of the holy city. He excelled in formal orations; in particular he delivered the one which opened the discussions of the Council of Nicaea (325). It was to him that the Emperor Constantine turned when he needed well-written and accurate copies of the Bible: he once asked him for fifty all at once, for the churches of Constantinople. ’ <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The vast activity of Eusebius reveals an impressive unity of inspiration. From start to finish of his literary career, the man who may be thought of as the first archivist historiographer of the Church set himself to rehabilitate the new religion in the eyes of educated men by securing for it a title to nobility of which the unbeliever Porphyry was ignorant. In the thought of this learned reviver of apologetic who gives a richness and entirely new <span class=SpellE>splendour</span> to the ideas of his predecessors, it is no longer a question of winning an indulgent toleration for an obscure and latter-day sect. Eusebius has the skill to draw from history a striking proof of Christianity, designed by God to enter upon the heritage of ancient civilizations. Taking up Origen’s idea that with the accession of Augustus the reign of the <i>pax Romana</i> had smoothed the way for the mission of the Apostles and the preaching of the Gospel, he finds in it an argument to prove that the destiny of the Roman Empire was providentially bound up with that of Christianity, and in this way the <span class=SpellE><i>historia</i></span><i> <span class=SpellE>philologos</span></i> and <span class=SpellE><i>philosophos</i></span> of a Porphyry was, in the thought of his rival Eusebius, to serve as a preparation for what he calls ‘ecclesiastical history.’ <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In the cause of Hellenism, or, as he put it, of ‘philosophy,’ in order to strengthen the consciousness that Greece ought to have of so many inherited virtues and benefits to mankind, Porphyry had composed a chronography; Eusebius followed his example by beginning his work with the drawing up of a chronicle in the same way. But his subject led him to conceive of horizons differently set from those of his predecessor. To recall the origins of Greek thought it was naturally unnecessary to go farther back than Homer and the fall of Troy; but it was necessary to go very much farther back if one wished, as Eusebius did, to contrast with the traditions of the Greeks those of foreign nations. At the same time Eusebius does not lose himself in the obscurities of a past altogether fabulous. Dismissing the apocalyptic fancies of his predecessor Julius Africanus who, in order to establish his messianic chiliasm, claimed to know how many years ago the world had been created, Eusebius had not to go beyond the time of the patriarch Abraham to prove his case. Even in its starting-point his chronology is the work of a careful and exact mind. In the first part (chronography) the author tried to fix the chronological order of the important events of his history, using for each people as a terminal date; in the second (table of concordant dates) he abstracted from these different series of events a collection of synchronisms of which the most characteristic in his eyes was the simultaneousness of the birth of Jesus and the census of Quirinius. This work is the most considerable of its kind in antiquity, and one of the foundations on which still rests our knowledge of the dates in a large part of Greek and Roman history. It must be confessed that Eusebius does not display the complete independence of mind or the forceful originality of an Eratosthenes or <span class=SpellE>Apollodorus</span>, the creators of his type of research, but the Christian chronographer knew how to work according to their methods, and it may be allowed that, considering the evidence at his disposal, he was perfectly honest in thinking that he had established the priority of Moses to Homer and the primacy of the revelations of the Bible. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Christians were reproached by pagans with their novelty, and the criticism was damaging, for the word ‘innovation’ still bore the bad sense which the word ‘revolutionary’ has with us. But Eusebius held that the accusation was unjust, as he sets out to prove in his <span class=SpellE><i>Praeparatio</i></span> and <span class=SpellE><i>Demonstratio</i></span><i> <span class=SpellE>Evangelica</span>, </i>starting invariably from the ideas of Origen. If the Christians gave up the beliefs of their ancestors and went over to Judaism, that was because paganism with its obscene and shocking myths, with its idolatry and the bad customs which it fostered, was an indefensible aberration which had all too long perverted mankind. For centuries divine wisdom had vouchsafed a glimpse of the truth to the best of the Greek thinkers; in the teaching of a Plato Christians recognized opinions which were ‘relations and friends’ of their own. Having thus in the <span class=SpellE><i>Praeparatio</i></span> refuted pagan polytheism and shown the superiority of Hebraic monotheism, Eusebius in the <i>Demonstration</i> which formed the sequel, turned to the Jews to rebut their criticism that the Christians accepted Judaism only to alter it. He maintained that the legislation of Moses was only a temporary dispensation, intended to serve as a transition between the age of the patriarchs and the coming of Christ. Christianity with its doctrine of the Trinity—the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost—and of the salvation secured for men by free submission to the divine will, was to him the natural development of Judaism and at the same time the clear revelation of the ideas and aspirations imperfectly expressed in the doctrines of the Platonic school. Nominally directed against the Jews, the <span class=SpellE><i>Demonstratio</i></span> quite as much as the <span class=SpellE><i>Praeparatio</i></span> is really aimed at Porphyry’s treatise <i>Against the Christians,</i> which by sounding the alarm in the name of threatened traditions and philosophy, had reinforced among the conservative élite the dislike of the new religion. The innumerable quotations from various writers, biblical or profane, which form the staple of these two works of Eusebius, the <span class=SpellE><i>Praeparatio</i></span> and <span class=SpellE><i>Demonstratio</i></span><i> <span class=SpellE>Evangelica</span>,</i> were put together and published first, with the title of ‘introduction’, as collections of plain extracts, while an express and detailed refutation of Porphyry’s treatise <i>Against the Christians</i> was given in a separate work now lost which had itself been preceded by a reply of the same kind to the pagan <span class=SpellE>Hierocles</span>, the author of a comparison intended to show that the merits of Apollonius of <span class=SpellE>Tyana</span> were quite as exemplary as those of Jesus. In this reply Eusebius made good use of his wide reading in overwhelming <span class=SpellE>Hierocles</span> with an exposure of his plagiarisms; on Eusebius’ showing this sham writer had done nothing more than copy <span class=SpellE>Celsus</span> and a re-reading of Origen was enough to refute him. No doubt Porphyry was combated with a similar display of learning. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>Having disabused the minds of his readers of all the prejudices fostered by pagan polemic and thrown light on the ancient origins of Christianity and on the orientation and course of universal history, Eusebius had only to deal with the period of its full bloom since the teaching of Jesus to complete his panegyric on the new religion. If he succeeded in demonstrating the constant loyalty of the Church to the teaching of its founder, men should recognize in it the realization of a work of salvation prepared and foretold in the most distant past. The sufferings of the Jews abandoned by God after the death of Christ and condemned to dispersion; all the power of the Faith borne witness to by the heroism of the martyrs and by the failure of persecutions; the permanence of the teaching of Christ assured by the unbroken tradition of the creed received from the holy apostles; finally the complete realization of divine promises with the victories, to begin with, of Constantine over Maxentius (first edition), later over Licinius (second edition) and with the coming of the kingdom of God in an Empire reconciled with the Church—these are the chief events whose connection he wished to make clear in his <i>Ecclesiastical History.</i> It was an indispensable work but one which no member of the Church had hitherto attempted although, in his eyes, a first sketch of it could be found in the corresponding part of his <i>Chronicle.</i> By means of the translation of Rufinus the work soon spread throughout the Latin world, and made upon it a profound and lasting impression. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The relation of the method of Eusebius to that of the Alexandrine grammarians who were the first to try to put together a history of profane literature is now well understood. General history in Eusebius comes out only through and by means of literary history. His practice is patiently to collect and revise texts, to date them and classify them, and finally to examine them pen in hand in order to extract passages containing exact evidence and proof; he draws up lists of succession of bishops just as the grammarians drew up lists of succession for the heads of the great philosophical schools; for the martyrs he makes and reproduces a selection of the best authenticated records of their trials. Work of this kind is largely that of an archivist, and Eusebius did not always avoid the danger of letting his main idea disappear under a mass of documents. His literary skill and gift for composition are insufficient to overcome the difficulties of his task; for example, the periods represented by each of his chapters are unequally enlarged upon according to the greater or less abundance of the materials at his disposal. But, for all that, by means of clearly marked guide-posts he keeps a systematic arrangement where there seems only to be disorder; he brings out the stages of history, and leads us to his goal, not by phrases but by documents; and it is precisely this that gives an incomparable worth to what he insists is an ‘ecclesiastical history,’ and to the whole bulk of his writings, however slight their literary value may be. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>It is hardly to be supposed that he did the work of an enquirer, that is to say of an enquirer irresistibly driven by curiosity to the search for the truth, as the title he chose might lead one to think. The time was really past even for the <span class=SpellE><i>historia</i></span> of Greek learning, and Porphyry had not succeeded <span class=SpellE>inbeing</span> more than an erudite compiler serving literary dilettanti. Much more than he Eusebius was incapable of going against the stream or recovering the lost spirit. It is not even as if his stimulus was a purely scientific curiosity. He <span class=SpellE>labours</span> to propagate a faith and his work is designed to further a particular cause. What he looks for is the material of an advocate. He concerns himself only with what suits him, and to suppress an irrelevant record seems to him part of his task. It is no less true that in his anxiety not to accept evidence or texts until they have been subjected to strong criticism he draws his inspiration from the old <i>historian</i> and to form a proper idea of the very great merits of his work, as of that of Porphyry, whose rival he wished to be, it is enough to make a comparison and consider, for example, how much genuine understanding and breadth of view is to be found in the organizers of great modern <span class=SpellE>encyclopaedias</span>. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>In the <i>Ecclesiastical History</i> of Eusebius there is one other feature to observe. This first picture of the Church’s past, which was to give it a very real consciousness of itself and complete <span class=SpellE>selfconfidence</span>, was not simply a work conceived and carried out in Greek, but was written from the point of view of the East. The Christian communities of the Western half of the Empire count for little; in the eyes of the historian the great unity of the <i>mare nostrum</i> is fading, or rather, as the vital <span class=SpellE>centre</span> of the organism grows weak, disintegration begins, and cracks appear foretelling a more complete schism. When, for example, Eusebius discusses heresies, the whole spectacle of the European part of the Mediterranean seems hidden from him. His knowledge of Tertullian’s <span class=SpellE><i>Apologeticum</i></span> comes from a Greek translation, and he thinks Tertullian was a Roman; he discovers at Caesarea the writings of Hippolytus of Rome, but carelessly enough locates somewhere or other what he calls his ‘bishopric’; he has no more regard for the writings of Cyprian. Even concerning the church of Rome the conscientious archivist does not think it his duty to make himself well-informed; at least, for several pontificates his chronology seems to mix up years and months. But there is no reason for surprise. How could a scholar faithful to the spirit of the school at Alexandria give up his time to Latin? Besides, at the time when Eusebius concluded his <i>Ecclesiastical History</i>, men’s minds were turned to the ‘New Rome’ of an Empire that had changed its <span class=SpellE>centre</span>, and in Greek ecclesiastical histories the Latins were soon to be referred to with a hint of contempt as Italians. <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>The last part of Eusebius’ work belongs to a new period on which we cannot enter. We may end by observing that in celebrating the <span class=SpellE>Tricennalia</span> of Constantine Eusebius glorifies an Empire which will not become Christian except with the aim of making the Church subordinate to it. The time is near when at the councils questions of dogma become questions of politics, and the choice of men in the succession of holy apostles is made according to the purpose and will of the Government. Further consideration cannot be given here to the relation of Eusebius’ work to the great theological and political conflicts which threatened in his time, but this account of Eusebius may be fittingly closed with this quotation: certainly, the scholarship of the great disciple of Origen, Eusebius, ‘was employed to fashion the political philosophy of the Byzantine world.’ <o:p></o:p> </span></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family: "Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif'>When the sack of Rome by Alaric shattered the dreams of <i>Ecclesiastical History,</i> the two halves of the Mediterranean were already practically isolated from one another and shut up in two closed vessels, and the shock of the catastrophe reached the East only as an echo, as can be clearly seen by noticing how little space is given to the event in the parallel narratives of the three synoptic historians, Socrates, <span class=SpellE>Sozomen</span> and <span class=SpellE>Theodoret</span>, and, after their example, in the <span class=SpellE><i>Tripartita</i></span> composed by Cassiodorus for the West. Very soon after the death of Plotinus, his school is found roughly divided into two spheres of influence almost without intercommunication, that of Iamblichus in the countries which had long been <span class=SpellE>hellenized</span>, and that of Porphyry in the West which still remained younger. It is a sign of an incompatibility of temper, due, no doubt, to a difference in age, which begins to part the two areas of the world which Rome had hitherto united under its protection and which the pressure of nationalism was finally to sunder.</span><sup><span lang=FR style='font-size: 18.0pt;font-family:"Amasis MT Pro Medium",serif;mso-ansi-language:FR'> <o:p></o:p> </span></sup></p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'> </p> <p class=Cuerpodeltexto0 style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:81.35pt; margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:3.0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:1.0cm; background:transparent'> </p> </div> <p align="center"> </p> </td> <td width="28" background="../EMPIRE-AND-PAPACY/images/l.gif"> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><strong> </strong> </p> <div align="center"></div> </body></html>