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Updated: June 4, 2025
At Hierapolis in Phrygia was a cavern of Cybele. At the close of the fifth century, when the temple of the goddess had been completely abandoned through the interdiction of paganism, the philosopher Damascius, who had remained faithful to the old beliefs of his country, descended, along with a companion, into the Charonion in spite of the danger attending it, or was supposed to exist.
These learned men, with Damascius and others from Athens, were kindly received by the Persians, who soon afterwards, when they made a treaty of peace with Justinian, generously bargained that these men, the last teachers of paganism, should be allowed to return home, and pass the rest of their days in quiet. After the flight of the pagan philosophers, but little learning was left in Alexandria.
Seven friends and philosophers, Diogenes and Hermias, Eulalius and Priscian, Damascius, Isidore, and Simplicius, who dissented from the religion of their sovereign, embraced the resolution of seeking in a foreign land the freedom which was denied in their native country.
That scribe will give you a document which will secure your admission to one. So you come from Antioch? Then there is the refuge of Seleucus of Antioch. "To that of John the Baptist?" "Where Damascius was the preacher?" "Yes, holy Father. He was the shepherd of our souls." "What! Damascius the Arian?" cried the Bishop.
Among the refugees was the erudite Damascius, whose work De Principiis is well known, and has recently been found to exhibit an intimate acquaintance with some of the most obscure of the Oriental religions. Another of the exiles was the eclectic philosopher Simplicius, "the most acute and judicious of the interpreters of Aristotle."
Many persons prophesy 'in enthusiastic and divinely seized moments, awake, in a sense, yet not in their habitual state of consciousness'. Music of certain kinds, the water of certain holy wells, the vapours of Branchidae, produce such ecstatic effects. As an example of ancient visions in water, we may take one from the life of Isidorus, by Damascius.
Sanconiatho, in his Phoenician History, says, that Uranus devised the Boetylia, Gr.; Botal or Bothal, Irish; Bethel, Heb., or stones that moved as having life. Damascius, an author in the reign of Justinian, says he had seen many of these Boetylia, of which wonderful things were reported, in Mount Libanus, and about Heliopolis, in Syria."
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