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

3. Plotinus, Porphyry, and Philosophy in the Public Realm

72 q Chapter 3 Plotinus, Porphyry, and Philosophy in the Public Realm Porphyry and Hierocles lauded Ammonius as the founder of their philosophical community,but Plotinus brought Ammonius ’s teaching into wider renown: Plotinus took Ammonius’s ideas to Rome and, by teaching them openly there, gave them a heightened prominence and a more political context. For these reasons, Porphyry, Plotinus’s student, called him “the philosopher of our times.”1 For Eunapius, the Iamblichaean historian writing toward the end of the fourth century, contemporary philosophy began with Plotinus, not Ammonius. Regardless of Plotinus’s status as founder or promoter of the late antique approach to Plato, however, modern knowledge of him is almost entirely dependent on Porphyry, who collected , arranged and published his mentor’s separate treatises as The Enneads, prefaced by a substantial biography. Because of this entangled relationship, it is useful to consider the careers of both men together, at least for the period up to Plotinus’s death. The extent to which Plotinus incorporated Ammonius ’s teaching into his own classroom will then be addressed: he apparently adopted Ammonius’s exegetical practices,his deep commitment to the teachings of Plato, his openness to alternative sources of wisdom, and his willingness to teach to a diverse group of students, while modifying Ammonius’s 1. Plot. 1.1:     . PLOTINUS, PORPHYRY, AND PHILOSOPHY 73 conception of the first three hypostases. I will also discuss Plotinus’s asceticism as a point of contact with Origen, a practice for which we have no evidence with Ammonius. This similarity may indicate that Ammonius was the common source, but it is also possible that Plotinus was influenced by Origen in these respects. Finally, the chapter addresses the political implications of Plotinus’s philosophy and Porphyry’s elaboration of it. Here I situate Dominic O’Meara’s recent analysis of Neoplatonist political philosophy in its specific historical context. Virtually everything known about Plotinus comes from the biography Porphyry wrote introducing his systematized edition of his mentor’s teachings , the Enneads. Since Porphyry studied with Plotinus in the 260s,2 the Life of Plotinus is an important, sometimes eyewitness account of the famous philosopher and his school. This association makes the Life more valuable than Eusebius’s biography of Origen,since neither the bishop nor Pamphilus his patron knew the theologian. Nevertheless, Porphyry’s treatise is still a bios, a genre that in antiquity, whether in the hands of Plutarch or Suetonius, presented its subject as a moral exemplar for good or for ill. An ancient biography portraying its protagonist as bringing the divine to earth, an increasingly common theme starting in the third century, should thus be read as hagiography, whether the central character is Jesus in the second century or Apollonius of Tyana, Origen, or Plotinus, all subjects of third- and early fourth-century biographers. For Plotinus, Lucien Jerphagnon has argued that Porphyry, “contrasting the irrational figure of the incarnate God against the rational figure of the disembodied man,”3 sketched his portrait in response to the Gospels’ treatment of Jesus. For this reason, Porphyry’s account of Plotinus’s early life ought to be handled with great care, even though he says that he included stories that the elder philosopher used to tell about his youth (Porph. Plot. 3.1–2). According to Porphyry, Plotinus was born in 204 or 205 and died in 270;4 Eunapius says that he was Egyptian and from Lyco.5 In 231/2, “he felt the impulse to study philosophy.” He made the rounds of the most famous Alexandrian teachers, possibly including Origen (Thdt. Affect. 6.60–61), but 2. Plot. 4.1;5.1;6.1:Porphyry came to Rome just before Gallienus’s tenth anniversary,and he left for Sicily at the end of the emperor’s fifteenth year. 3. L. Jerphagnon, “Les sous-entendus anti-chrétiens de la Vita Plotini ou l’évangile de Plotin selon Porphyre,” Museum Helveticum 47 (1990): 43. 4. Plot.2.29–32:the year Plotinus died was “the end of the second year of the reign of Claudius, and...he was sixty-six years old.” For the conversion of Plotinus’s regnal dates into Julian dates, see T. D. Barnes, “The Chronology of Plotinus’ Life,” GRBS 17 (1976): 65–70. 5. VS s.v. “Plotinos”; i.e., Lycopolis; cf. the Suda. Lycopolis, now Asyut, is about 190 miles up the Nile from Alexandria. 74 A...