Platonic Academy
The academy is regarded as the first institution of higher learning in the west, where subjects as diverse as biology, geography, astronomy, mathematics, history, and more were taught and investigated.
The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC.
It was located in or beside a grove of olive trees[4] dedicated to the goddess Athena, which was on the site even before Cimon enclosed the precincts with a wall,[5] and was called Academia after its original owner, Academus, an Attic hero in Greek mythology.
[6][7] Academus was said to have saved Athens from attack by Sparta, revealing where Helen of Troy was hidden, when she had been kidnapped by King Theseus years before the incidents of the later Trojan War.
His land, six stadia (a total of about one kilometre, or a half mile; the exact length of a stadion varied) north of Athens, became revered even by neighboring city-states, escaping destruction during the many local wars.
Out of respect for its long tradition and its association with the Dioscuri – who were patron gods of Sparta – the Spartan army would not ravage these original "groves of Academe" when they invaded Attica.
[8] Their piety was not shared by the Roman Sulla, who had the sacred olive trees of Athena cut down in 86 BC to build siege engines.
The road to Akademeia was lined with the gravestones of Athenians, and funeral games also took place in the area as well as a Dionysiac procession from Athens to the Hekademeia and then back to the city.
Plato inherited the property at the age of thirty, with informal gatherings which included Theaetetus of Sunium, Archytas of Tarentum, Leodamas of Thasos, and Neoclides.
[19] The school has been seen as the first institution of higher learning in the west, with subjects as diverse as mathematics, politics, ethics, biology, geography, astronomy, history, and much more were taught and investigated.
[23] According to an unverifiable story, dated of some 700 years after the founding of the school, above the entrance to the Academy was inscribed the phrase ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ, "Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here.
Under Arcesilaus (c. 266–241 BC), the Academy strongly emphasized a version of Academic skepticism closely similar to Pyrrhonism.
When the First Mithridatic War began in 88 BC, Philo of Larissa left Athens and took refuge in Rome, where he seems to have remained until his death.
Although the Athenian Neoplatonists clearly rejected Christianity and their school was a center of intellectual resistance to the prevailing religion, they remained unchallenged for a surprisingly long time.
According to Agathias, its remaining members looked for protection under the rule of Sassanid king Khosrau I in his capital at Ctesiphon, carrying with them precious scrolls of literature and philosophy, and to a lesser degree of science.
After a peace treaty between the Persian and the Byzantine Empire in 532, their personal security (an early document in the history of freedom of religion) was guaranteed.
From there, the students of an Academy-in-exile could have survived into the ninth century, long enough to facilitate an Arabic revival of the neoplatonist commentary tradition in Baghdad,[44] beginning with the foundation of the House of Wisdom in 832.
