hich was denied in their native country. They had heard, and
they credulously believed, that the republic of Plato was realized in
the despotic government of Persia, and that a patriot king reigned ever
the happiest and most virtuous of nations. They were soon astonished by
the natural discovery, that Persia resembled the other countries of the
globe; that Chosroes, who affected the name of a philosopher, was
vain, cruel, and ambitious; that bigotry, and a spirit of intolerance,
prevailed among the Magi; that the nobles were haughty, the courtiers
servile, and the magistrates unjust; that the guilty sometimes escaped,
and that the innocent were often oppressed. The disappointment of the
philosophers provoked them to overlook the real virtues of the Persians;
and they were scandalized, more deeply perhaps than became their
profession, with the plurality of wives and concubines, the incestuous
marriages, and the custom of exposing dead bodies to the dogs and
vultures, instead of hiding them in the earth, or consuming them with
fire. Their repentance was expressed by a precipitate return, and they
loudly declared that they had rather die on the borders of the empire,
than enjoy the wealth and favor of the Barbarian. From this journey,
however, they derived a benefit which reflects the purest lustre on the
character of Chosroes. He required, that the seven sages who had
visited the court of Persia should be exempted from the penal laws
which Justinian enacted against his Pagan subjects; and this privilege,
expressly stipulated in a treaty of peace, was guarded by the vigilance
of a powerful mediator. [155] Simplicius and his companions ended
their lives in peace and obscurity; and as they left no disciples,
they terminate 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 Epictetus
is preserved in the library of nations, as a classic book, most
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.

[Footnote 151: This is no fanciful aera: the Pagans reckoned their
calamities from the reign of their hero. Proclus, whose nativity is
marked by his horosco