with perfumes, and displaying a gold ring of remarkable size.[1] The advent of these self-ordained instructors of the public into a provincial town was often the occasion of much local enthusiasm, and a throng of citizens advanced to meet them for some distance, in order to conduct them to their lodgings.[2] All professors, whether in the pay of the state or otherwise, enjoyed a complete immunity from the civil duties and imposts enforced on ordinary individuals, thus presenting the singular contrast of being licensed to live in a condition of ideal freedom under a political system which restricted personal liberty at every turn.[3] Such material advantages inevitably became liable to abuse through imposture, and the country was permeated by charlatans in the guise of philosophers, who coveted distinction and emolument at the easy price of a merely personal assertion of competence.[4] In the fourth century this evil was scarcely checked by Imperial enactments which required that pro-*
- ↑ Themistius, Or., xxviii, etc.
- ↑ Themistius, Or., xiii; Chrysostom, In Epist. ad Ephes. Hom. xxi, 3 (in Migne, xi, 153); Eunapius, Proaeresius. These popular lectures were often merely colloquial entertainments, such as used to be associated with the name of Corney Grain, without the music. See the correspondence of Basil Mag. with Libanius, Epist., 351 (Migne), et seq., L.'s most effective piece, a dialogue in which he mimicked the fretfulness of a morose man.
- ↑ Cod. Theod., XIII, iii, 1, and Godefroy ad loc. At this time, however, pagan professors were often much persecuted by Christian fanatics, and Themistius complains that they were even officially muzzled; Or., xxvi, and ibid. Professors were naturally the last to become converts. As to the general esteem in which the class was held, see the poetical commemoration of the Bordeaux professors by Ausonius. Lucian deals satirically with philosophers in his Eunuch, De Merc. Cond., Hermotimus, etc.
- ↑ Cod. Theod., XIII, iii, 7, and Godefroy ad loc.; Cod., X, lii, 8; Themistius, Or., xxi, etc. Chrysostom, loc. cit. (note 4 supra).
