CHAPTER IV.
LUCIAN AND THE PHILOSOPHERS.
The great success and reputation achieved by the early Greek philosophers, and especially by those who professed Rhetoric and Dialectics, naturally led to the assumption of the character by a host of successors, many of them mere pretenders. It was a profession not only tempting to a man's self-conceit, but to his love of gain: for, in spite of the protest of one at least of the great teachers of antiquity—Socrates—against debasing philosophy to a mere trade by accepting money for discoursing on it, it had not unnaturally become the custom to take fees both for public lectures and for private instruction. For a philosopher had to live, like other men. The Antonine Cæsars, zealous for the education of their subjects, founding lecture-ships and endowing colleges throughout their empire, possibly encouraged too much the mere pretenders to learning by the liberality of their grants, and the ire of the satirist may have been justly roused by the unworthiness of many of the recipients.[1]
- ↑ "Beaucoup de gens se faisaient philosophes parce que Marc Aurèle les enrichissait."—Champagny, "Les Antonines," iii.
