A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution

1. Ammonius Saccas and the Philosophy without Conflicts

23 q Chapter 1 Ammonius Saccas and the Philosophy without Conflicts Ammonius (fl. 232–43), Porphyry averred, “made the greatest advance (πδοσιν) in philosophy of our time” (ap. Eus. HE 6.19.6). Identifying him as the philosophical inspiration for both Origen, the Christian theologian (6.19.6), and the great Platonist Plotinus (Porph. Plot. 3.10), Porphyry saw Ammonius as the fountainhead of the true philosophy for his own generation. This view held for over a century: Hierocles of Alexandria (fl. 430) also believed Ammonius had set philosophy back to rights after centuries of error, and he identified Plotinus as one of his most illustrious pupils.1 Today, the schools of Ammonius’s successors, Plotinus and Origen, have markedly different reputations, the former as the place where Neoplatonism coalesced, the latter as the school in which Christian theology steeped deeply in a Platonist spirit. But for Porphyry, writing in the 290s some half a century after Ammonius’s death, Origen’s failure to follow the way of life exemplified by his mentor meant that these were competing schools. Each had roots in the Ammonian tradition; each claimed a monopoly on truth. Nevertheless, the significance of this competition for religious life at the cusp of the fourth century has not been recognized,because historians ,once reluctant to imagine Christians and Hellenes intermingling freely, 1. Hierocl. Prov. 7 ap. Phot. Bibl. cod. 214, 173a18–40. He also listed Origen among Ammonius ’s worthy successors (see chapter 2). 24 A THREAT TO PUBLIC PIETY posited that there were two Ammonii,a Christian instructing Christians and a Hellene training Hellenes. After dispensing with Ammonius’s alter ego and sketching the outline of his career, analysis of his hermeneutics, ecumenism, and community commitment illustrates that these values were not only the foundations of his philosophical practice, but also the issues of deepest contention for his heirs. Porphyry’s allusions to the philosopher who made such advances are a good place to start exploring the sage’s career, because they led modern historians to imagine the existence of two Ammonii.2 Porphyry’s testimonial to Ammonius occurred in a work identified by Eusebius as the third treatise () of those Porphyry “wrote against Christians” ( ... ).3 This treatise “against Christians,” however, is no longer extant. Rather, Eusebius’s own Historia ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History),written about a decade later (306),preserves Porphyry’s account of Ammonius as a quotation or fragment.4 The citation appears in Eusebius’s defense of Origen (book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History), the motivations for which chapter 2 addresses. Eusebius’s label for the treatise he quoted may not have matched Porphyry’s title. Nevertheless, Eusebius’s description explains the treatise’s disappearance, since by 325 the Christian emperor Constantine would call for Porphyry’s anti-Christian works to be burned (Socr. HE 1.9).5 In the section quoting Porphyry, Eusebius is eager to assert Origen’s stature as a Christian teacher and establish his good name. In particular, Eusebius strives to justify Origen’s “training () in philosophy” and “knowledge of the world” (    ) (6.18.14). Key to understanding Ammonius and Origen, the passage is worth quoting in full: 6.19.1 Among the Hellenes,witnesses of [Origen’s] right action regarding these philosophical activities are the philosophers who flourished in his time, in whose treatises we have found frequent mention of the man, sometimes dedicating their logoi to him, at other times bringing their own efforts to him as to a teacher or master. (2) Why is it necessary to say these things? Even Porphyry, having settled in our time 2. The Athenian philologist Longinus made the first extant references to Ammonius in his treatise Peri telous several decades before Porphyry wrote (Porph. Plot. 20). 3. All translations are my own unless stated otherwise. 4. R. W. Burgess, “The Dates and Editions of Eusebius’Chronici canones and Historia ecclesiastica,” JThS n. s. 48 (1997): 471–504. 5. See the conclusion for a discussion of Porphyry’s religious writings and the difficult problem of their dates and titles. AMMONIUS SACCAS 25 in Sicily, having begun treatises against us, and having tried therein to discredit the Holy Scriptures or set them at variance, mentioned those who interpreted them. Not having been able to bring one trifling complaint as a charge against our doctrines, for lack of arguments, he takes to reproaching and denigrating their exegetes, of whom his target is Origen most...