, and Origen, a pagan writer, together with Longinus,
the great master of the "sublime," who owns him his teacher in elegant
literature. Ammonius was unequalled in the variety and depth of his
knowledge, and was by his followers called heaven-taught. He aimed at
putting an end to the triflings and quarrels of the philosophers by
showing that all the great truths were the same in each system, and
by pointing out where Plato and Aristotle agreed instead of where
they differed; or rather by culling opinions out of both schools of
philosophy, and by gathering together the scattered limbs of Truth,
whose lovely form had been hewn to pieces and thrown to the four winds
like the mangled body of Osiris.

Origen in the tenth year of this reign (A.D. 231) withdrew to Caesarea,
on finding himself made uncomfortable at Alexandria by the displeasure
of Demetrius the bishop; and he left the care of the Christian school to
Heraclas, who had been one of his pupils. Origen's opinions met with no
blame in Caesarea, where Christianity was not yet so far removed from its
early simplicity as in Egypt.

The Christians of Syria and Palestine highly prized his teaching when
it was no longer valued in Alexandria. He died at Tyre in the reign of
Gallus.

[Illustration: 149.jpg A MODERN SCRIBE]

On the death of Demetrius, Heraclas, who had just before succeeded
Origen in the charge of the Christian school, was chosen Bishop of
Alexandria; and Christianity had by that time so far spread through the
cities of Upper and Lower Egypt that he found it necessary to ordain
twenty bishops under him, while three had been found enough by his
predecessor. From his being the head of the bishops, who were all styled
fathers, Heraclas received the title of _Papa_, pope or grandfather, the
title afterwards used by the bishops of Rome.

Among the presbyters ordained by Heraclas was Ammonius Saccas, the
founder of the platonic school; but he afterwards forsook the religion
of Jesus; and we must not mistake him for a second Alexandrian Christian
of the name of Ammonius, who can hardly have been the same person as
the former, for he never changed his religion, and was the author of
the _Evangelical Canons_, a work afterwards continued by Eusebius of
Caesarea.

On the death of the Emperor Alexander, in A.D. 235, while Italy was
torn to pieces by civil wars and by its generals' rival claims for the
purple, the Alexandrians seem to have taken no part in the stru