to scripture and put to good Christian use. The issue was less important in the east, which had undergone a more thorough Christianization earlier. When Justinian closed down the Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 he did so not to eliminate a threat but to advance his ideal of a uniform Christian community in which a handful of pagan intellectuals had no place. The Neoplatonic notions which dominated Late Roman philosophy had already been absorbed into Christian thought; for example, sixth-century writings which go under the name of the Pseudo-Dionysius depicted the universe as consisting of a hierarchy of beings emanating from God and exerted extensive influence in both east and west. In education the standard curriculum of antiquity was systematized in a treatise by Martianus Capella and then transmitted to the medieval west as the doctrine of the seven liberal arts by Cassiodorus.
The west experienced set-backs as well as advances in the fifth century. The letters and poetry of Sidonius Apollinaris convey an impression of ostrich-like rejection of an unconvivial world through absorption in the traditional pleasures of his class and cultivation of an over-elaborate literary style. Sidonius ended his days as a bishop, and by the sixth century literary and educational activity in Gaul was confined to a few senatorial prelates and a handful of monasteries. In Italy civilian society remained more durable for a time, but cultural activity became increasingly narrowly based and derivative. The important philosophical and scientific treatises of Boethius were less typical of the age than the priest Arator's metrical version of the Acts of the Apostles or the pompous letters of the bureaucrat Cassiodorus. The fragility of literary culture in Italy was shown by its almost complete disappearance after the Gothic War.
In the east the break came later. The middle and late sixth century saw the continued production of histories and other works along classical lines and the existence of a large body of imperial mandarins whose position depended on their educational accomplishments. Literary production also extended down the social scale through a proliferation of more popular historical and devotional works such as the chronicle of
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