Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

424 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDphilosophic school,* took up his abode in the Porticoat Athens, a court surrounded with pillars, andadorned with the paintings of Polygnotus. Herehe began to teach about 308 B.C., and here he continuedteaching as some say for fifty-eight years. Itis said that the character of Socrates, as drawn byXenophoii and by Plato in his Apology, filled himwith astonishment and admiration :82 and the Stoicsafterwards drew their doctrine of the wise man,which they endeavoured to image out and realise,from that living example of it,83 an instance of theconnection of doctrine with person which is full ofinterest and suggestion. Zeno was succeeded inhis office of teaching by Cleanthes, and Cleanthesr Chrysippus and a long line of teachers, who forseveral hundred years continued, with variations,the same general doctrine of ethics.Just in the same way and at the same timeZeiio's great rival Epicurus fixed the seat of hisschool in the Garden at Athens, which thenceforthbecame for thirty-six years the central point of theteacher's activity. About him gathered a circle offriends whom similarity of principles and the enjoymentof cultivated intercourse bound togetherwith unusual intimacy. It speaks for the specialcharacter of his philosophy that from the beginningwomen and even heta3ra3 formed a part of this society.But he succeede during this long period82 Ueberweg, i. p. 188, from Diogenes and Themistius.83 Ibid, from Noack, Psyche, v. i. sec. 13.