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if possible, to maintain their doctrines elsewhere; and they sought refuge with the Persian Magi, with whose tenets, or, at least, manner of living, they believed themselves to be most in accord. The Persian customs were distasteful to the purer ideal of the Platonists, and, disappointed in other respects, they reluctantly relinquished their fond hopes of transplanting the doctrines of Plato into a foreign soil, and returned home. The Persian prince, Chosroes, we may add, acquired honour by his stipulation with the bigoted Justinian, that the seven sages should be allowed to live unmolested during the rest of their days. “Simplicius and his companions ended their lives in peace and obscurity; and, as they left no disciples, they terminated the long list of Grecian philosophers who may be justly praised, notwithstanding their defects, as the wisest and most virtuous of their contemporaries. The writings of Simplicius are now extant. His physical and metaphysical commentaries on Aristotle have passed away with the fashion of the times, but his moral interpretation of Epiktetus is preserved in the library of nations as a classical book excellently adapted to direct the will, to purify the heart, and to confirm the understanding, by a just confidence in the nature both of God and Man.”[100]
