Plato's Academy at Athens — founded around 387 BC — operated, with various interruptions, for almost a thousand years. Which emperor closed it for good, and when?
Justinian's 529 imperial edict prohibited pagans from teaching philosophy or law. Damascius — the last head of the Academy — closed the institution and led six other senior philosophers east to seek asylum at the Sasanian court of Khosrow I. They returned to Roman territory three years later under a clause of the 532 Treaty of Eternal Peace that guaranteed their legal protection. Theodosius I's 391 decree had earlier closed the pagan temples (the Serapeum at Alexandria was destroyed under it) but did not specifically close the Athenian schools.
Read the full story →In 529 the Emperor Justinian closed the philosophical schools of Athens. The Academy that traced its descent to Plato had operated for almost 900 years. Its surviving teachers, led by Damascius, walked east into Sasanian Persia. Five years later they walked back.
Related questions
- When the Greek philosophers who had fled Justinian's 529 AD closure of the Athenian Academy wanted to return to Roman territory in 532, the Persian king Khusrau I insisted on a specific protective provision in the Treaty of Eternal Peace. What did the provision do?
- What did Theodora persuade Justinian to do during the January 532 Nika riots in Constantinople?
- Modern 2013 DNA analysis at Aschheim confirmed the Plague of Justinian was caused by which pathogen?
- Athens invented democracy — direct citizen voting, in person, on every major political question. When did the system reach its mature form?