I.

The year 155 B.C. was signalised by an important event, if not in the history of ideas, at least in the history of their diffusion¹. This was the despatch² of an embassy from the Athenian people to the Roman Senate, consisting of three philosophers, the heads of their respective schools—Carneades the Academician, Critolaus the Peripatetic³, and Diogenes the Stoic⁴. Philosophic⁵ teaching, once proscribed⁶ at Athens, had, at the time of which we are speaking, become her chief distinction, and the most honourable⁷ profession pursued within her precincts. It was, then, as natural that an important mission should be confided⁸ to the most eminent⁹ representatives of the calling in question as that high ecclesiastics¹⁰ should be similarly employed by Rome in later ages, or that German university towns should send professors to represent their interests in the imperial Diet. But the same fate that befalls an established religion had befallen an established philosophy. An attempt to impose restrictions¹² on the liberty of teaching had, indeed, been successfully resisted, and the experiment was never repeated.212 Nevertheless, the teachers themselves lost as much in true dignity as they gained in affluence¹⁴ and popular estimation. In all probability, the threat of death would not have induced Socrates to undertake the task which was,