A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Πλωτῖνος), the originator of the new Platonic system (though not of its fundamental principles), lived so exclusively in speculation, that he appeared to be ashamed of his own bodily organisation (ἐῴκει μὲν αἰσχυνομένῳ ὅτι ἐν σώματι εἴη, Porphyr. Vita Plotini, 100.1; comp. Ennead. 1.4. §§ 14, 15), and would tell neitherhis parents, his forefathers, his native country, nor his birthday, in order to avoid the celebration of it. (Porphyr. cc. 1, 2.) When requested to sit for his portrait, he asked, whether it was not enough to bear the image in which nature had veiled us, and whether we ought to commit the folly of leaving to posterity an image of this image ? so that his enthusiastic friend, Amelius, only succeeded in getting a faithful portrait of him by introducing an artist to his open lectures, in order that he might observe him accurately and then paint him from memory. (Porphyr. l.c.) According to Suidas and others, he was born at Lycopolis (Sivouth) in Egypt. That he was of Roman descent, or at least born of a freed man of Rome, is conjectured with great probability from his name. Porphyry could give very little information respecting his earlier life, at least from any personal communication. He learned, however, that he had been fed from the nurse's breast up to his eighth year, although he was already sent to school; that in his twentyeighth year the impulse to study philosophy was awakened in him, but that not obtaining satisfaction from the teacher he attended (who was named Alexandriens), he fell into a state of great anxiety, and was then brought by a friend to Ammonius Saccas; that from that day forward he remained continuously with Ammonius for eleven years,

until in his thirty-ninth year the desire he experienced to learn the philosophy of the Persians and Indians, induced him to join the expedition of the emperor Gordian (A. D. 242). After the death of Gordian he retreated with great difficulty to Antioch, and from thence went, in his fortieth year, to Rome. There he held communication with some few individuals, but kept the doctrines of Ammonius secret, as he had concerted to do with two others of the same school, namely, Herennius and Origen. Even after Herennius and Origen had successively, in opposition to the agreement, begun to make known these doctrines in their books, Plotinus continued only to make use of them in oral communications (ἐκ τῆς Ἀμμωνίου συνουσίας ποιούμενος τὰς διατριβάς), in order to excite his friends to investigation, which communications, however, according to the testimony of Amelius, were characterised by great want of order and superfluity of words (ἦν δὲ ἡ διατριβὴ .... ἀταξίας πλἠρης καὶ πολλῆς φλυαρίας, Porphyr. 100.3), until, in the first year of the reign of Gallienus (254), he was induced by his friends to express himself in writing upon the subjects treated of in his oral communications (γράφειν τὰς ἐμπιπτούσας ὑποθέσεις, Porph. 100.4). In this manner when, ten years later, Porphyry came to Rome and joined himself to Plotinus, twenty one books of very various contents had been already composed by him, which were only dispersed, however, with discretion and put into the hands of the initiated. (Ib. 100.4.) During the six years that Porphyry lived with Plotinus at Rome, the latter, at the instigation of Amelius and Porphyry, wrote twentythree books on the subjects which had been earnestly discussed in their meetings, to which nine books were afterwards added. (Porphyry had returned to Sicily in the year 268.) Of the fiftyfour books of Plotinus, Porphyry remarks, that the first twenty-one were of a lighter character, that only the twenty-three following were the production of the matured powers of the author, and that the other nine, especially the four last, were evidently written with diminished vigour. Although Porphyry's judgment, however, might only have approved of the edition which he had himself arranged, yet he has carefully given the titles to all three of the portions, as, with little variation, they again appear in the Enneads. (cc. 5, 6.)

The correction of his writings Plotinus himself committed to the care of Porphyry, for on account of the weakness of his sight he never read them through a second time, to say nothing of making corrections; intent simply upon the matter, he was alike careless of orthography, of the division of the syllables, and the clearness of his handwriting. He was accustomed, however, to think out his conceptions so completely, that what he had sketched out in his mind seemed copied as though from a book. He could always, with the utmost confidence, take up the thread of the investigation where he had broken off, without being obliged to read the preceding paragraph anew, even though foreign investigations might have filled up the intervening time. He lived at the same time with himself and with others, and the inward activity of his spirit only ceased during the hours of sleep, which, moreover, this very activity, as well as the scantiness of food to which he had accustomed himself, greatly abridged (cc. 7, 8); even bread itself he but seldom enjoyed (100.8), and when suffering from pains of the stomach denied himself the bath as well as treacle (a kind that was made of viper's flesh and poppies), the latter because he generally abstained from flesh altogether. (100.2, ib. Kreuzer.) His written style was close (συντονός), pregnant (πολύνους), and richer in thoughts than in words, yet enthusiastic, and always pointing entirely to the main object (ἐκπαθῶς φράζων, 100.14). Probably he was more eloquent in his oral communications, and was said to be very clever in finding the appropriate word, even if he failed in accuracy on the whole. Beside this, the beauty of his person was increased when discoursing; his countenance was lighted up with genius, and covered with small drops of perspiration. Although he received questions in a gentle and friendly manner, yet he knew well how to answer them forcibly or to exhaust them. For three whole days, on one occasion, he discussed with Porphyry the relation of the soul to the body. (100.13.) He ever expressed himself with the great warmth of acknowledgment respecting any successful attempts of his younger friends; as, for example, respecting a poem by Porphyry. Immoral principles he met by exciting opposition against them. (100.15.)

At a time when, notwithstanding the reigning demoralisation, a deep religious need was awakened, noble minds, which had not yet obtained satisfaction from the open teaching of Christianity, must have attached themselves with great confidence and affection to a personality so fraught with deep reflection as was that of Plotinus. It was not only men of science like the philosophers Aimelius, Porphyry, the physicians Paulinus, Eustochius, and Zethus the Arab, who regarded him with deep respect, but even senators and other statesmen did so as well. One of them, named Rogatianus, respected him to such a degree, that he stripped himself of his dignity (he had attained the praetorian rank) and renounced all kind of luxury; this he did, however, to his own bodily comfort, for having been previously lame both in his hands and feet, he perfectly recovered by this simple habit of living the use of all his limbs. (100.7.) Even women attached themselves to him, and his house was filled with youths and maidens, whom their dying parents had entrusted to his direction. He did not either appear at all deficient in the practical skill that was requisite to manage their affairs. His sharp penetrating judgment and good sense in such matters are highly extolled (100.11), and the care with which he looked through all the accounts respecting their fortune is much praised (100.9).

He enjoyed the favour of the emperor Gallienus and the empress Salonina to such a degree, that he obtained almost the rebuilding of two destroyed towns in Campania, with the view of their being governed according to the laws of Plato (100.12). Even envy itself was constrained to acknowledge his worth. It is said that the attempt of a certain Alexandrian, named Olympius (who for a short time had been a pupil of Ammonius), to injure Plotinus by magical arts (ἀστροβολῆσαι αὐτὸν μαγεύσας) recoiled upon himself, and revenged itself on him by causing the contraction of all his limbs. It is further related, that an Egyptian priest, in the temple of Isis, essayed in the presence of Plotinus to make his attending δαίμων appear, but that instead of this a god presented

himself as the protecting spirit of the philosopher, whose high dignity the Egyptian could now no longer call in question. These relations, occurring as they do in the comparatively sober-minded Porphyry (100.10; comp. Procl. in Alcibiad. 1.23. p. 198, Cons.), are well worthy of observation, as characteristic of the tendencies of that age, however little disposed we may be to attach any reality to them. Although Plotinus only attached any faith to the prophecies of the astrologers after a searching examination (100.15, extr.), yet he believed, as that Egyptian did (comp. Ennead. 3.4), in protecting spirits of higher and lower ranks, and not less, probably, in the power of calling them up through intense meditation, or of working upon those at a distance by magic. It was not indeed to his individual power, but to the divine power, gained by vision, that he ascribed this miraculous agency, but he would none the more acknowledge that the gods had any individual interest in himself, and on one occasion he put off Amelius' request to share with him in a sacrifice, with the words, "Those gods of yours must come to me, not I to them." (100.10.)

After Plotinus's death, Amelius inquired of the Delphic Apollo whither his soul was gone, and received in fifty-one lame hexameters an ardent panegyric on the philosopher, in which he was celebrated as mild and good, with a soul aspiring to the divinity, loved of God, and a fortunate searcher after truth; now, it was said, he abides like Minos, Rhadamnanthus, Aeacus, Pluto, and Pythagoras, where friendship, undisturbed joy (εὐφροσύνη), and love to Deity are enthroned, in fellowship with the ever-blessed spirits (δαίμονες, 100.22). Porphyry, his biographer, adds, that he had raised his soul to the contemplation of the supreme and personal God not without success, and that the Deity appeared to him to be something elevated above all body and form, beyond thought and imagination ; yea, that during his own intercourse with him, he (Plotinus) had, by a transcendent energy of soul, four times risen to a perfect union with God, and confesses that he himself, during a life of sixty-eight years, had only once attained that elevation. (100.23; comp. Plotin. Enncad. 5.5.3. The acknowledgments of Longinus, however, speak far more for the influence which Plotinus exercised on the mind of his age, than do the manifested Deity or the admiring love of Porphyry. That excellent critic had at first (having been himself a constant hearer of Ammonius and Origen) regarded Plotinus with contempt (100.20), and even after his death could not profess any kind of agreement with most of his doctrines; indeed he had written against Plotinus's doctrine of ideas, and not given in to the answers of Porphyry and Amelius; yet still he was most anxious to get perfect copies of his books, and extolled at once the pregnancy of their style and the philosophical treatment of the investigations. In the same manner he expresses himself in his work on final causes, and also in a letter written before the death of Plotinus; in these writings he unconditionally prefers our Lycopolitan, not only to the other philosophers of his time, whether Platonics, Stoics, or Peripatetics, but also to Numenius, Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus, more especially in reference to the fullness of the objects treated of (προβλήματα), the originality of the manner in which they were discussed (τρόπῳ θεωρίας ἰδίῳ χρησάμενος ; Amelius is in this respect placed by his side), and the closeness of the reasoning. (cc. 21, 22.)

When suffering from pain in the bowels, Plotinus used no other means than daily rubbing, and left this off when the men who assisted him died of the pest (A. D. 262). Suidas (who, however, is not to be relied on) says, that Plotinus himself was attacked by the plague; Porphyry on the contrary (100.15) states, that the omission of these rubbings produced only disease of the throat (κύναγχος), which gradually became disjointed, so that at last he became speechless, weak of vision, and contracted both in hands and feet. Piotinus, therefore, withdrew to the country seat of his deceased friend Zethus in Campania, and, according to Eustochius, passed by Puteoli. There was only one of his friends present in the neighbourhood when he died (Porphyry had been obliged to go on account of health to Lilybaeum in Sicily, and Amelius was on a journey to Apameia in Syria), and of him he took leave in the following words : "Thee have I waited for, but now I seek to lead back the Divine principle within me to the God who is all in all." At his last breath, Porphyry relates that a dragon glided from under the bed, and escaped through an opening in the wall. (100.2.)

[Ch. A. B.]