Tarsus, its capital, though less frequented by strangers than Athens 

 and Alexandria, claimed a superiority over both those cities, and 

 every other seat of learning, for successful application to the study 

 of philosophy and the sciences. * It could boast of numerous distin- 

 guished philosophers both of the Stoic and Academic sects, and also 

 poets, among whom Diogenes and Dionysides are worthy of men- 

 tion, the one for the inspired facility with which his verses flowed 

 on any given subject — and the other as forming one of the stars 

 which composed the poetic constellation of the Pleiades in the court 

 of Ptolemy. It had also the honour of producing the apostle Paul ; 

 Nestor the tutor of Marcellus, the son of Octavia ; -f- — Athenodorus 

 the eloquent and philosophic friend of Augustus ; — and Herrao- 

 genes the sophist, who wrote a treatise on rhetoric at the age of 

 fifteen, J and acquired such reputation that M. A. Antoninus 

 listened . with pleasure to his discourses, and rewarded his genius 

 with magnificent presents. That the other cities of the province 

 were imbued with the same taste for letters as the capital, would 

 be no unreasonable supposition, though we had no direct proof of 

 its reality ; for there is a contagion in literary improvement which 

 is impatient to be diffused ; and it seldom happens that one region 

 is in a state of great mental activity without producing a corres- 

 ponding action and meritorious emulation in others. Such was ac- 



^««v yiyoviy, uc-^ v7rl^^lQ?^yiv\xt, tcxi AS"*]K«5, kxi AM^xv^fiiixv, y.xi it rivx «APiow tottov dvvxTov iiTitv if 

 u u-^aXot KXt atXT^t^xt TUt £p(Aotroip(Uii, text rcjy y^oyav yiyovxiri Strabo. lib. XIV. 



f Iilem. 



% This Hermogenes was a striking proof of what has often been remarked of the preco- 

 city of genius, that it outgrows its strength, and decays as rapidly as it flourishes. At the 

 .-jge of twenty-five his memory was gone, and though he lived till an advanced age he soon 

 relapsed into second childhood and became the contempt of those to whom he had once been 

 an object of envy or admiration. " Hermogenes in peuritia senex, in senectute puer." 



