A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Αἰδεσία), a female philosopher of the new Platonic school, lived in the fifth century after Christ at Alexandria. She was a relation of Syrianus and the wife of Hermeias, and was equally celebrated for her beauty and her virtues. After the death of her husband, she devoted herself to relieving the wants of the distressed and the education of her children. She accompanied the latter to Athens, where they went to study philosophy, and was received with great distinction by all the philosophers there, and especially by Proclus, to whom she had been betrothed by Syrianus, when she was quite young. She lived to a considerable age, and her funeral oration was pronounced by Damascius, who was then a young man, in hexameter verses. The names of her sons were Ammonius and Heliodorus. (Suidas, s.v. Damascius, apud Phot. cod. 242, p. 341b. ed. Bekker.)