Guthrie: Vida de Plotino VI

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. Of the Hypostases that Act as Means of Knowledge, and of the Transcendent. v. 3.

50. Of Love. iii. 5.

These books he sent me in the last year of the reign of Claudius II, and at the beginning of the second.

Shortly before dying, he sent me the following four books:

51. Of the Nature of Evils. i. 8.

52. Of the Influence of the Stars. ii. 3.

53. What is the Animal ? What is Man ? i. 1 .

54. Of the First Good (or, of Happiness). i. 7.

These nine books, with the forty-five previously written, make in all fifty-four.

Some were composed during the youth of the author, others when in his bloom, and finally the last, when his body was already seriously weakened; and they betray his condition while writing them. The twenty- one first books seem to indicate a spirit which does not yet possess all its vigor and firmness. Those that he wrote during the middle of his life, show that his genius was then in its full form. These twenty-four books may be considered to be perfect, with the excep tion of a few passages. The last nine are less power ful than the others; and of these nine, the last four are the weakest.