clung to religious philosophy and undertook to reduce
the whole Greek tradition, viewed in the light of Plotinus' theory, to a
comprehensive and strictly articulated system, a philosophy arose here
which may be called scholastic. For every philosophy is scholastic which
considers fantastic and mythological material as a _noli me tangere_,
and treats it in logical categories and distinctions by means of a
complete set of formulae. But to these Neoplatonists the writings of
Plato, certain divine oracles, the Orphic poems, and much else which
were dated back to the dim and distant past, were documents of standard
authority, and inspired divine writings. They took from them the
material of philosophy, which they then treated with all the instruments
of dialectic.

The most prominent teachers at Athens were Plutarch (died 433), his
disciple Syrian (who, as an exegete of Plato and Aristotle, is said to
have done important work, and who deserves notice also, because he very
vigorously emphasised the freedom of the will), but, above all, Proclus
(411-485). Proclus is the great scholastic of Neoplatonism. It was he
"who fashioned the whole traditional material into a powerful system
with religious warmth and formal clearness, filling up the gaps and
reconciling the contradictions by distinctions and speculations,"
"Proclus," says Zeller, "was the first who, by the strict logic of his
system, formally completed the Neoplatonic philosophy and gave it, with
due regard to all the changes it had undergone since the second century,
that form in which it passed over to the Christian and Mohammedan middle
ages." Forty-four years after the death of Proclus the school of Athens
was closed by Justinian (in the year 529); but in the labours of Proclus
it had completed its work, and could now really retire from the scene.
It had nothing new to say; it was ripe for death, and an honourable end
was prepared for it. The words of Proclus, the legacy of Hellenism to
the Church and to the middle ages, attained an immeasurable importance
in the thousand years which followed. They were not only one of the
bridges by which the philosophy of the middle ages returned to Plato and
Aristotle, but they determined the scientific method of the next thirty
generations, and they partly produced, partly strengthened and brought
to maturity the mediaeval Christian mysticism in East and West.

The disciples of Proclus, Marinus, Asclepiodotus, Ammonius, Zenodotu