INTRODUCTION

After Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus is arguably the greatest philosopher of antiquity and certainly one of the most influential. His particular interpretation of Plato set the guidelines for the next three hundred years and those Platonists who followed (Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus) kept close to the general outlines of his thought. He is therefore rightly regarded as the major instigator of a movement in Platonic philosophy whose innovative nature has since the nineteenth century been recognised with the title of Neoplatonism. Yet, perhaps even more influential was his indirect influence, which ensured that Plato was, until the early nineteenth century, largely read in the spirit of Plotinus. Plotinus’ thought, however, did not spring fully armed from the head of Zeus, but was the culmination of a long period of development in Platonic and Pythagorean circles. By the second century BC Plato’s Academy was firmly in the hands of a group of Platonists who gave more emphasis to the aporetic side of Plato’s work and thus to the early dialogues in which Socrates played a more prominent role. A figure such as Carneades astonished his Roman audience by arguing for opposite views of Justice on two consecutive days. Their ethics was characterised by ‘reasonableness’, and their epistemology by the notion of suspension of judgement. By the first century BC, however, there had begun a return to the more positive doctrines of Platonic metaphysics. Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon pointed the way. Antiochus was also heavily influenced by Stoicism and this combination of philosophical ideas was to become more and more characteristic of philosophical activity in the first centuries of the Roman Empire. Pythagoreanism also saw a revival. And when we consider that Plato himself was thought to have been influenced greatly by Pythagorean ideas, it is not difficult to see that Platonism and the revived Pythagoreanism could be mutually influential. One

of the most important figures was Eudorus who seems to have developed the notion of a unitary first principle. A later advocate of Pythagoreanism, Numenius, also owed much to Plato and might as easily be considered a Platonist. His works were avidly studied by some of Plotinus’ circle. At the same time the study of Aristotle was not neglected. A distinguished line of Peripatetics continued to comment on the works of Aristotle. Some, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, even developed Aristotle’s ideas.