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Pope Simplicius in fine, as we learn from the same author, destined fixed weeks at S. Peter's, S. Paul's, and S. Laurence's, to receive penitents and administer baptism.
Thus, when the boy Romulus Augustus was deposed at Rome, and power fell into the hands of the Herule Odoacer, Pope Simplicius, directing his gaze over Africa, Spain, France, Illyricum, and Britain, would see a number of new-born governments, ruled by northern invaders, who from the beginning of the century had been in constant collision with each other, perpetually changing their frontiers.
There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him; but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Encheiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age. It is not said how he became a slave; but it has been asserted in modern times that the parents sold the child.
In these broad lands, which Rome had humanised during four hundred years, and of which the Church had been in full possession, Pope Simplicius could now find only the old provincial nobility and the common people still Catholic. The bishops in these several provinces were exposed everywhere to an Arian succession of antagonists, who used against them all the influence of an Arian government.
Though the Arcadians pretended they had inhabited the earth at an epoch before the moon existed, though Simplicius believed her immovable and fastened to the crystal vault, though Tacitus looked upon her as a fragment broken off from the solar orbit, and Clearch, the disciple of Aristotle, made of her a polished mirror upon which were reflected the images of the ocean though, in short, others only saw in her a mass of vapours exhaled by the earth, or a globe half fire and half ice that turned on itself, other savants, by means of wise observations and without optical instruments, suspected most of the laws that govern the Queen of Night.
After long wanderings and many hardships, Simplicius came to Rome, and now had sojourned here for a year or two, teaching such few as in these days gave any thought to philosophy.
At last he took a woman into his house as a nurse for a child, which one of Epictetus' friends was going to expose on account of his poverty, but Epictetus took the child and brought it up. Simplicius also says that the contents of the Encheiridion are found nearly altogether and in the same words in various parts of the Discourses. Arrian also wrote a work on the life and death of Epictetus.
As Peter the Stammerer had gone to the emperor to get his election approved and supported by Zeno and Acacius, so John Talaia had solicited Pope Simplicius to confirm his election. This the Pope had been on the point of confirming, when he received a letter from the emperor accusing John Talaia, and urging the appointment of Peter the Stammerer.
Can anyone calculate the power which maintains such a succession through centuries? Here, after four full centuries, in that one belief the seven next successors of St. Leo Hilarus, Simplicius, Felix, Gelasius, Anastasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas stood as one man. Their counsels did not vary. Their resolve was one. Their course was straight.
What profitable truth has it taught us which we should not equally have known without it? What has it enabled us to do which we should not have been equally able to do without it?" Such questions, we suspect, would have puzzled Simplicius and Isidore.
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