In Simplicius: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie (Berlin 1987, reviewed in JHS cx [1990] 244-45), the editor, Mme I. Hadot, in the first part of the biographical introduction, cites Agathias Hist. ii 31, 4. This is usually taken to show that the Neoplatonists, who had fled to the Persian court when Justinian closed down the Academy in 529, went back to Athens after 532. That view, she holds, rests on a misreading of the text (…δεῖν ἐκείνους τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐς τὰ σφέτερα ἤθη κατιόντας βιοτεύειν ἀδεῶς τὸ λοιπὸν ὲφ᾿ ἐαυτ–οῖσ…). However, she herself misconstrues ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτ–οῖς as ‘selon leur choix’': that is, on returning from exile to their own accustomed places, these men should henceforth live without fear as they might choose. To yield that version, the Greek would have to be καθ᾿ ἑαυτοὺς. The actual expression means ‘amongst themselves’: they might philosophise, but not in public. That a touch of private heterodoxy amongst the learned few is harmless if it does not stir up the ignorant many was well understood, indeed explicitly so later, in Islam and mediaeval Christianity.