Plato's Academy survives

IOTL, Plato's Academy at Athens was forcibly closed down in the 6th century by Justinian, as Athens was still a hotbed of paganism. Now, a pagan academy surviving to the present day would be ASB- the later Byzantines wouldn't allow it. So WI, instead, the Academy is Christianised, at least on the surface, and survives- the Byzantines have no incentive to get rid of it, and the Ottomans are unlikely to.
Possible effects:
Athens remains a sizable city, although as a university town not a political or trade centre.
Greece now contains the world's oldest university- more than 1000 years older than Al-Karaouine in Morocco, 1500 years older than Bologna or Oxford, and 700 years older than the University of Nanjing. What effect does this have on the War of Independence or Philhellenism?
 
I was recently reading "The Byzantine Empire and the Crusades" and the author made an interesting claim- The Byzantine Empire's ability to keep bouncing back from its various disasters was due in large part to the continuity in education of its elites. The men who ran the Byzantine bureaucracy were from long lines of bureaucratic elite, and were educated in the same way for hundreds of years.

So make the Academy a part of this education. I would bet that the Academy had a lot of graduates in the Byzantine elite- so simply integrate the Academy into the necessary education of the Byzantine elite. This would appeal to the Byzantines' claims of being the Roman Empire- after all the same school that educated Roman Emperors is still doing it for Constantinople.
 
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