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towards tyrants, and tyrants towards their people, was thephylactery, or charm, that supported power, and to sumup all, that it was during the night an Emperor shouldcease from all work, except that of death and slaughter.Hence it came to pass that the senate was mutilated*of its best members; and philosophy so panick-struck, that 1 * some-}- of its professors fled in disguise tothe farthest parts of Gaul, others to the deserts ofLibya and Scythia, and some there were who embracedthe doctrines most suitable to the fashionable vicesof the age. At this time Apollonius was what Tire-sias says of himself in the CEdipusJ of Sophocles , “ Iam Apollo ’s subject and not thine,” he always consideredwisdom as his sovereign mistress, and defended libertyunder Domitian. The words of Tiresias and Sophocles he applied to himself; he never entertained any fears forhis own life, but was deeply affected with what causedthe misfortunes of others. This was the true cause of histurning against the tyrant all who were young in the senate,and all in whom he found either wisdom or council. Hemade journeys into the several provinces, he talked totheir governors, said the pow'er of tyrants was not immor-tal, and was easily subverted by its own fears. He setbefore their eyes the panathenea of Athens , at which theexploits of Harmodius and Aristogiton were celebratedand the deed proceeding from Phyle, which brought on

* —mutilate, to deprive of some essential part,

t When Domitian was Emperor , the philosophers were, by a decreeof the senate, driven out of the city: aud banished Italy , at which timethe philosopher Epictetus went from Rome to Nicopolis on account o*that decree. Aulus Gellius .

$ GLdipus Tyrannus.

$ For when Thrasybulus fled to Phyle, which is a very strong castlein Attica, (not a hundred stadia distant from Athens ) he had n o morewith him than thirty of his countrymen. “ Hoc initium fait saluti*Atticorum, &c.” C.Nepos.