Note 3 — Chapter VI · PLATONIC CANON, AS RECOGNISED BY THRASYLLUS.

The teaching and conversation of the Platonic School continued fixed in the spot known as the Academy until the siege of Athens by Sylla in 87 B.C. The teacher was then forced to confine himself to the interior of the city, where he gave lectures in the gymnasium called Ptolemæum. In that gymnasium Cicero heard the lectures of the Scholarch Antiochus, B.C. 79; walking out afterwards to visit the deserted but memorable site of the Academy (Cic. De Fin. v. 1; C. G. Zumpt, Ueber den Bestand der Philosophischen Schulen in Athen, p. 14, Berlin, 1843). The ground of the Academy, when once deserted, speedily became unhealthy, and continues to be so now, as Zumpt mentions that he himself experienced in 1835.