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an admirer of antiquity, a humanist. 20 As is evident from his life and from the information we have, Photios knew always, whether as a private citizen, as an important official in the imperial government, as patriarch during the peaceful years of his life, and later during the years of exile and hardship, how to offer his knowledge to everyone who came in contact with him. Krumbacher calls him "the great teacher of his nation."21 In his enthusiasm as a teacher, Photios resembles one of the great educators of early Christian times, St. Basil of Cappadocia.
Before he became a patriarch, and after his return from exile, Photios was a professor of philosophy and dialectics at the university at the Magnaura Palace. He was a young man at the time of his first appointment; this we surmise from the writings of some critics on the young teacher.22 Frequently a group of students awaited the teacher's return from his state duties, and Photios looked forward to that pleasant moment with anticipation.23 He exerted great influence over his young disciples and his aim in educating them was always, as it had been for Origen, to guide their minds towards religious reverence.
Many of the lectures which he delivered during this period have survived.24 In the same period, Photios continued the literary correspondence from which many letters survive. The topics he covered were as diverse as their recipients: To a historian he wrote "About Roman Titles";25 to scientists "About Medical Matters" and 'What is Called a Magnet", 26 to Leo the Philosopher, when he was head of the Magnaura University, Photios wrote a letter "On the Verb 'to be.' "27
In ninth-century Byzantium, Aristotelian logic and the Aristotelian method of research were the only accepted scientific ways. Regarding his philosophical preferences, Photios is considered an "avowed Aristotelian," but Plato was no stranger to him. He wrote on the Categories of Aristotle, 28 and while he disagreed with Plato's Republic,29 he absorbed his ideas about images.
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