Note 99 — X. CHRYSOSTOM. 347–407 A.D.

His biographer, Marinus, writes in terms of the highest admiration of his virtues as well as of his genius, and of the perfection to which he had attained by his unmaterialistic diet and manner of living. He seems to have had a remarkably cosmopolitan mind, since he regarded with equal respect the best parts of all the then existing religious systems; and he is said even to have paid solemn honours to all the most illustrious, or rather most meritorious, of his philosophic predecessors. That his intellect, sublime and exalted as it was, had contracted the taint of superstition must excite our regret, though scarcely our wonder, in the absence of the light of modern science; nor can there be any difficulty in perceiving how the miracles and celestial apparitions—which form a sort of halo around the great teachers—originated, viz., in the natural enthusiasm of his zealous but uncritical disciples. One of his principal works is On the Theology of Plato, in six books. Another of his productions was a Commentary on the Works and Days of Hesiod. Both are extant. He died at an advanced age in 485, having hastened his end by excessive asceticism.