Categoria: Porfírio

IX. PLOTINOS AS GUARDIAN AND ARBITRATOR. There were women who were very much attached to him. There was his boarding house keeper Gemina, and her daughter, also called Gemina; there was also Amphiclea, wife of Aristo, son of Jamblichus, all three of whom were very fond of philosophy. Several men and women of substance, being…

VIII. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PLOTINOS. Once Plotinos had written something, he could neither retouch, nor even re-read what he had done, because his weak eyesight made any reading very painful. His penmanship was poor. He did not sepa”- rate words, and his spelling was defective; he was chiefly occupied with ideas. Until his death he…

VII. VARIOUS DISCIPLES OF PLOTINOS. Plotinos had a great number of auditors and dis ciples, who were attracted to his courses by love of philosophy. Among this number was Amelius of Etruria, whose true name was Gentilianus. He did indeed insist that in his name the letter “l” should be replaced by “r,” so that…

VI. PLOTINOS S BOOKS OF THE THIRD PERIOD (THE EUSTOCHIAN PERIOD). While I was in Sicily, where I went in the fifteenth year of the reign of Gallienus, he wrote five new books that he sent me: 46. Of Happiness. i. 4. 47. Of Providence, First. iii. 2. 48. Of Providence, Second. iii. 3. 49.…

V. HOW PORPHYRY CAME TO PLOTINOS FOR THE SECOND TIME (A. D. 263-269). I remained with him this year, and the five follow ing ones. I had already visited Rome ten years pre viously; but at that time Plotinos spent his summers in vacation, and contented himself with instructing his visitors orally. During the above-mentioned…

IV. HOW PORPHYRY CAME TO PLOTINOS. FOR THE FIRST TIME, IN 253. In the tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, I (then being twenty years of age), left Greece and went to Rome with Antonius of Rhodes. I found there Amelius, who had been following the courses of Plotinos for eighteen years. He had…

III. PLOTINOS’S EARLY EDUCATION. This is as much as we learned about him during various interviews with him. At eight years of age he was already under instruction by a grammarian, though the habit of uncovering his nurse s breast to suck her milk, with avidity, still clung to him. One day, however, she so…

II. SICKNESS AND DEATH OF PLOTINOS; HIS BIRTH DAY UNKNOWN. Plotinos was subject to chronic digestive disorders; nevertheless, he never was willing to take any remedies, on the plea that it was unworthy of a man of his age to relieve himself by such means. Neither did he ever take any of the then popular…