the palace extended their influence but little beyond its precincts. The Alexandrian Library was assiduously augmented: and in the Alexandrian schools a long succession of learned men attested the judgment and liberality of their patrons. At length the cruelties of Ptolemy Physcon, which made him dreaded by all classes of his subjects, were especially directed against the philosophers; and almost all were compelled to seek safety in flight, and to earn a scanty subsistence by opening schools in the Grecian islands and the cities of Asia t.

The Grecian philosophers of Alexandria became familiar with the mystic rites and secret learning of the Egyptian priests; and many of them were willing, not only with the indifference of unbelief to add the worship of Egyptian gods to the religion of their country, but in the earnestness of theological investigation to blend with their own speculations the traditions of Hermetic wisdom. But it was not only by Egyptian tenets that their doctrines were influenced. Alexander had invited colonists from every nation to settle in his new city, and had secured to all the free profession of their own religious creed; and afterwards, when it became the emporium of the world, a perpetual influx of strangers added perpetually to the popular superstitions, and occasionally to the dogmas of the philosophers. Some effect is to be attributed to intercourse with the Jews and the knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures. There were many of this people among the original settlers ; and they appear to have been regarded with peculiar favour by the earlier Ptolemies; probably on account of the advantages resulting from the friendship of their nation in those Syrian wars which occupied the ambition of the Egyptian kings. The translation of their sacred writings, executed under the patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus and his successors, made them readily accessible to the Greeks; and though we have scarcely any monuments by which we can judge of the effect produced by them in that age upon Grecian philosophy, yet their influence in later times upon the Alexandrian school is distinctly visible. This influence was reciprocal. The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (supposed to be written about 100 B. C.) is strongly tinged with Platonic doctrines; and Philo, in the age of Tiberius, is an instance of a Jewish Platonist §.

But it was not only in Egypt that the Grecian philosophy was exposed to the influx of foreign opinions. The schools, Athen. Deipnos. L. iv. p. 184. Jud. Antiq. L. xii. c. 1.

*Justin. L. xxxviii. c. 8.

§ Brucker Hist, Crit. Phil. Tom. II. Per. ii. Pars. I. Lib. II. cap. I. p.693 and 797.

which, in consequence of the persecution of Ptolemy Physcon, were established in Asia, soon became acquainted with the relics of the Chaldæan and Persian doctrines, and with those who still professed to be the descendants of the Magi and followers of Zoroaster. The Chaldæan and Sabæan worship has passed away from the face of the earth; but even at this day there survive two sects of the disciples of Zedushtthose who still adhere to the belief of the good and evil principles, and adore the ancient Aromasdes, under the name of Jezdan; and the Ghebers, or Parsees, who have ignorantly transferred their veneration to the symbolic fire *.~ Of the tenets of the scattered remnant of the Chaldæan and Persian Magi, during the centuries which immediately preceded and followed the birth of our Saviour, we have no direct information; but we have sufficient evidence, that out of their mysteries arose the cabalistic learning of the later Jews, and the heresies of the various sects of Gnostics which so long distracted the Christian Church. From these sources we may derive some knowledge of their doctrines and we have at least little room to doubt that they supplied by their invention what was deficient in their traditions, and sought to obtain the reputation of antiquity for their visionary speculations, by suppositions, oracles, and other forgeries, which they impudently ascribed to Zoroaster and his immediate followers. Much of their system appears to have consisted of an obscure theogony and cosmogony, which gave an account of various manifestations of the Supreme Deity, and of the successive emanations from his essence, or the Eons, which terminated in the formation of the material world. These speculations their Grecian disciples endeavoured to reconcile with the more recondite theory of the gods and the universe, which was supposed to be handed down from Orpheus, and to have been the creed of Pythagoras and Plato.

It is evident that, when we speak of the gradual adoption of Egyptian and Oriental tenets by the Grecian philosophers, we must be understood only of some particular sects. The Sceptic and Epicurean had nothing in common with them. The Peripatetic, intent upon the severe investigations of reason, looked with contempt upon fanciful systems of theogony, and allegories of the nature of the universe, which were susceptible of any interpretation that a lively imagination could affix to them. The Stoic perhaps might tolerate any doctrine that taught the unity and universality of the Deity, and the providence of his inferior agents; but it was the Pythagorean and the Platonist

* Mosheim in Brucker, tom. i. Pars ii. cap. iii.

whose speculations were most easily blended with the religion and philosophy of Egypt and the East. They held, in some measure, the same doctrines respecting the soul of the world, and its emanations into gods, dæmons, and heroes; the contrariety of mind and matter; the pre-existence of the human soul,-its gradual purification after death, by means of existence in another state of being, or in another form,-and its final resumption into the universal mind. They had the same fondness, for mystery and symbolical language, and allegorical interpretation; and they agreed in the distinguishing principle, that the knowledge of divine things is to be derived from a higher source than the human reason.

So much of the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato had been originally acquired in eastern countries, that, notwithstanding the modifications to which it had been subjected, and the changes which time had probably made in the systems from which it was borrowed, it readily coalesced with the opinions which still prevailed in its native soil. Much fable is intermixed with the traditionary history of Pythagoras, but we know that he devoted more than twenty years to the study of the rites of Egyptian worship, and the arcaná of Egyptian theology and philosophy: and, notwithstanding the chronological difficulties which occur*, we can scarely refuse our assent to the concurrent report of antiquity, that he visited Babylon, and was instructed in the learning of the Chaldæans and Median Magi; even if he did not penetrate into India, and adopt from the Brachmans the doctrine of the Metempsychosis. This he is more generally believed to have borrowed from Egypt; and, certainly, the direct testimony of Herodotus †, and the accounts of other writers, compel us to believe that it was received by at least some sects in that country. It was, probably, a vulgar opinion connected with the vulgar worship of animals: but it is at variance with what we can gather from. later writers, of the Egyptian belief in a future state; and Frederic Schlegel, in his lectures on the History of Literature, has very ably attempted to show that some far different creed must have been implied in the national practice of embalming. In Egypt and Chaldæa he became acquainted with geometry and the occult science of numbers, astronomy, and astrology, and the magical arts which he evidently appears to have practised. To the same source we may refer his establishment of a secret and esoteric sect, and the severe discipline and initiation which he required from his disciples. Some of his

* Brucker, tom. i. p. 1003 (pars. ii. lib. ii. cap. x. sect. i.)

Lib. ii. c. 123.

Brucker, tom. i. pars. ii. lib. ii. cap. x. sect. i. pp. 1014, 1019.

doctrines we have already mentioned: the identification of the Deity with the Ether, or Mundane Fire, was probably suggested by the Persian theology. We learn from Clemens Alexandrinus* that the name of Zoroaster was first made known to the Greeks by Pythagoras. Among surviving authors he is first mentioned by Plato, where, in his First Alcibiades, he describes his magic as consisting in the worship of the gods. According to Pliny +, the Eastern and Egyptian magic was the object and reward of the travels of Plato, as well as of Pythagoras. It is certain, at least, that he not only visited the cities of Italy, and imbibed the Pythagorean tenets from the remaining disciples of the school, but sought in the religion and learning of Egypt for the fountain-head of wisdom. Indeed he was the last of the philosophers of Greece, who submitted to the instruction of the more ancient nations. The revolutions of the academy were generated, not by the importation of fresh opinions, but by the progressive speculations of its scholars; and the great sects of Zeno and Epicurus sprang up in the porticos and gardens of Athens.

. The sect of Pythagoras, soon after its formation, incurred the hatred and persecution of the Italian cities. Its schools were broken up; and, from the reluctance of its followers to commit their philosophy to writing, it dwindled, and became almost extinct before the age of Alexander. The growing reputation of the Socratic and Platonic Philosophy hastened its fate; but the peculiar philosophy of Plato himself was in its turn neglected amidst the disquisitions of the academy, or deserted for the logical deductions of the Peripatetics, the dogmas of the Stoics, or the atheism of the Epicureans. In Greece, from the age of Arcesilaus (B. C. 270), the schools of Pythagoras and Plato were almost equally obsolete; and it was in Egypt and Asia that, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, they were at length revived. The resemblance of their tenets and their general spirit to the traditions and opinions. of the East, was, doubtless, the cause of this resuscitation; but the same cause contributed also to adulterate them, and to give them a character more entirely oriental. Although the Platonists possessed, in the writings of their great master, a standard to which they might refer their opinions, still the symbolical mode in which his higher philosophy was expressed, allowed to each individual a license of varying his tenets according to his learning or fancy. The disciples of Pythagoras, who could collect the dogmas of their supposed teacher,

* Strom. lib. i. p. 304.

+ Lib. xxx. c. 1. Hanc reversi prædicavere; hanc in arcanis habuere.

Brucker, tom. i. p. 1021.

only from tradition and the reports of discordant writers, were left still more at liberty; and for the want of surer guides, frequently approximated closely to the Platonic school. We find, accordingly, that in the first and second century the same philosophers are often called Pythagoreans and Platonists; and although a few, like Moderatus or Numenius, by the purity of their respective systems, might claim a distinctive title, to the greater number each name was almost equally applicable. But it was not the opinions of these sects only that were occasionally united. We gather from Seneca that his preceptor, Sotion Alexandrinus, joined the theology of the Pythagoreans with the morality of the Stoics; and in the preceding generation the same method of philosophy had been followed by Quintus Sextius*. At length, at the end of the second century, Potamo, of Alexandria, attempted to form an eclectic school, which should collect into one system the truths that were dispersed in the doctrines of different philosophers, and reconcile the theology of Pythagoras and Plato with the ethics of the Stoics and the metaphysics of the Peripatetics †. This undertaking produced no immediate consequence; but it was renewed within a few years by Ammonius Saccas, under a bolder and more comprehensive scheme; and so skilfully was his plan addressed to the superstitions and prejudices of the age, that its effects were felt for nearly three centuries, and extended to every part of the Roman Empire.

Ammonius Saccast was a native of Alexandria, born of Christian parents, and educated in the Christian faith; but he appears to have been at an early age seduced from his profession by the study of philosophy, and to have been an assiduous attendant on the Pagan schools. We learn from Hierocles, that the object of his ambition was to remove the opprobrium attached to philosophy, on account of the dissensions of its various sects, and to shew that they arose from the errors of its professors, not from the want of truth and certainty in its fundamental doctrines. We may see in all the writings of the primitive fathers, and especially in the attack of Hermias on the heathen philosophers, how great an advantage the discrepancy of their theories afforded to their

Brucker, tom. ii. pp. 87, 93. + Brucker, tom. ii. p. 193.

The greater part of the following detail of the rise and progress of the New Platonism has been taken from Brucker's Historia Critica Philosophiæ, Tom. II. Per II. Pars I. Lib. I. cap. ii. sect. 4. De Secta Eclectica. For the lives of the philosophers use has been made of the original authority, Eunapius; and much assistance has been derived from Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and from Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History.

Irrisio Gentilium Philosophorum.