earthquake which threatened destruction to Athens. The sick were often restored by his prayers, which, however, he seems to have relied on merely for the purpose of invoking success on the orthodox medical treatment. Proclus attempted to wield some power in local politics, and at one time incurred the enmity of the predominant party, doubtless the Christians, so that he deemed it wise to retire into exile for a twelvemonth.[1] He died at the age of seventy-three (485) and was buried near Mount Lycabettus in a bilocular sepulchre with his master Syrianus, for whom he always entertained the greatest veneration.[2]
After the death of Proclus, the Neoplatonic school of Athens was probably somewhat eclipsed, but considerable activity was still maintained, and votaries continued to be drawn to it from Alexandria and other parts of the Empire.[3]*
- ↑ The alumni of the school went and taught in other places; for instance, Agapius, a hearer of Proclus, under whom Jn. Lydus studied (De Magist., iii, 26), the same, perhaps, who was the "big wig" of the medical faculty at CP., about that time, and made a large fortune, as related by Damascius and Suidas. Damascius (Vit. Isidori) gives an account of the practice of Jacob Psychristus, an eminent physician of the latter part of the fifth century. He trusted chiefly to purgations, baths, and diets, used the knife and cautery sparingly, and repudiated bleeding. On visiting CP. he found the profession there neither experienced nor learned, but relying on a routine derived from their predecessors, which they followed in a blind and careless manner. Pamprepius, one of the ablest disciples of Proclus, deserted the Academy for the Byzantine court, and attached himself to Illus, the great rebel in the reign of Zeno; but ultimately he was executed by his patron for having ventured on predictions which were falsified by the event; Suidas, sb. nom. (Malchus); Theophanes, an. 5976, etc.
- ↑ Marinus, op. cit., ad fin.
- ↑ Of this period there is a sort of chronicle extant in the form of a life of Isidore of Gaza, who became scholarch next after Marinus. The whole work has been abridged from the original of Damascius by Photius (Cod. 242), and portions of it are given by Suidas, apparently
