304 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



combined with the grossest superstitions of Pagan- 

 ism. The successors of lamblichus appeared rather 

 to hold a priesthood, than the chair of a philoso- 

 phical school 7 . They were persecuted by Constan- 

 tine and Constantius, as opponents of Christianity. 

 Sopater, a Syrian philosopher of this school, was 

 beheaded by the former emperor, on a charge that 

 he had bound the winds by the power of magic 8 . 

 But Julian, who shortly after succeeded to the 

 purple, embraced with ardour the opinions of lam- 

 blichus. Proclus (who died A.D. 487,) was one of 

 the greatest of the teachers of this school 9 ; and 

 was, both in his life and doctrines, a worthy suc- 

 cessor of Plotinus, Porphyry, and lamblichus. We 

 possess a biography, or rather a panegyric of him, 

 by his disciple Marinus, in which he is exhibited 

 as a representation of the ideal perfection of the 

 philosophic character, according to the views of 

 the Neoplatonists. His virtues are arranged as 

 physical, moral, purificatory, theoretic, and theurgic. 

 Even in his boyhood, Apollo and Minerva visited 

 him in his dreams: he studied oratory at Alex- 

 andria, but it was at Athens that Plutarch and 

 Lysianus initiated him in the mysteries of the New 

 Platonists. He received a kind of consecration at 

 the hands of the daughter of Plutarch, the cele- 

 brated Asclepigenia, who introduced him to the 

 traditions of the Chaldeans, and the practices of 

 theurgy; he was also admitted to the mysteries 

 7 Deg. iii. 407- * Gibbon, iii. 352. 9 Deg. iii 419. 



