Another chronicler, Agathius, reported that the last headmaster of the Athens school was forced to leave not only the school and the city, but the empire itself. (In 531 he and several of his fellow teachers fled to Persia.) And this was more than mere relocation. In effect, Justinian’s diktat had spelled the end for the famous school in the ancient Greek capital—the city of Plato and Aristotle—where students had absorbed the insights of classical philosophy and natural science for generations.
