A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

2. A celebrated Neo-Platonic philosopher, was born at Chalcis in Coele-Syria, and was perhaps a descendant of No. 1. He was a pupil of Anatolius and Porphyrius. Respecting his life we know very little beyond the fact that he resided in Syria till his death, making every year an excursion to the hot springs of Gadara. He died in the reign of Constantine the Great, and probably before A. D. 333. (Suidas, s.v. Ἰάμβλιχος; Eunapius, Iamblich.) He had studied with great zeal the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras, and was also acquainted with the theology and philosophy of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians. The admiration which he enjoyed among his contemporaries was so great that they declared him to be equal to Plato himself, and that the difference of time was the only one existing between them. (Julian, Orat. iv. p. 146, Epist. 40.) We cannot join in this admiration, for although he pretended to be a follower of Plato, his Platonism was so much mixed up with notions and doctrines derived from the East, and with those of other Greek philosophers, especially Pythagoras, that it may justly be termed a syncretic philosophy. By means of this philosophy, which was further combined with a great deal of the superstition of the time, he endeavoured to oppose and check the progress of Christianity. He did not acquiesce in the doctrines of the earlier New Platonists, Porphyrius and Plotinus, who regarded the perception and comprehension of the Deity, by means of ecstasies, as the object of all philosophy; but his opinion was that man could be brought into direct communion with the Deity through the medium of theurgic rites and ceremonies, whence he attached particular importance to mysteries, initiations, and the like.