1. Euripides, Orestes, 255-257 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus • Longinus, On the Sublime
Found in books: Liapis and Petrides (2019), Greek Tragedy After the Fifth Century: A Survey from ca, 315; de Bakker, van den Berg, and Klooster (2022), Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond, 603
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255 ὦ μῆτερ, ἱκετεύω σε, μὴ 'πίσειέ μοι"256 τὰς αἱματωποὺς καὶ δρακοντώδεις κόρας. 257 αὗται γὰρ αὗται πλησίον θρῴσκουσί μου.' "' None | sup>
255 Mother, I implore you! Do not shake at me those maidens with their bloodshot eyes and snaky hair. Here they are, close by, to leap on me! Electra'256 Mother, I implore you! Do not shake at me those maidens with their bloodshot eyes and snaky hair. Here they are, close by, to leap on me! Electra ' None |
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2. None, None, nan (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Cassius (Gaius Cassius Longinus) • Cassius Longinus, Gaius
Found in books: Gilbert, Graver and McConnell (2023), Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy. 111; Gordon (2012), The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, 191
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3. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Cassius Longinus, C. • Cassius Longinus, C., image venerated • “Longinus,”
Found in books: Elsner (2007), Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text, 187; Rutledge (2012), Ancient Rome as a Museum: Power, Identity, and the Culture of Collecting, 108
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4. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus • ps.-Longinus
Found in books: MacDougall (2022), Philosophy at the Festival: The Festal Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus and the Classical Tradition. 135; de Bakker, van den Berg, and Klooster (2022), Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond, 8
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5. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus
Found in books: Konig and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 344; König and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 344
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6. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus • Longinus, On the Sublime
Found in books: Hunter (2018), The Measure of Homer: The Ancient Reception of the Iliad, 59; Kazantzidis (2021), Lucretius on Disease: The Poetics of Morbidity in "De rerum natura", 165
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7. None, None, nan (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus • ps-Longinus
Found in books: Horkey (2019), Cosmos in the Ancient World, 255; Kazantzidis (2021), Lucretius on Disease: The Poetics of Morbidity in "De rerum natura", 131, 132, 133
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8. Dio Chrysostom, Orations, 18.12-18.17 (1st cent. CE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus
Found in books: Konig and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 343, 344, 348; König and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 343, 344, 348
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18.12 \xa0At this point I\xa0say it is advisable â\x80\x94 even if some one, after reading my recommendation of the consummate masters of oratory, is going to find fault â\x80\x94 also not to remain unacquainted with the more recent orators, those who lived a little before our time; I\xa0refer to the works of such men as Antipater, Theodorus, Plution, and Conon, and to similar material. For the powers they display can be more useful to us because, when we read them, our judgment is not fettered and enslaved, as it is when we approach the ancients. For when we find that we are able to criticize what has been said, we are most encouraged to attempt the same things ourselves, and we find more pleasure in comparing ourselves with others < 18.13 \xa0when we are convinced that in the comparison we should be found to be not inferior to them, with the chance, occasionally, of being even superior. I\xa0shall now turn to the Socratics, writers who, I\xa0affirm, are quite indispensable to every man who aspires to become an orator. For just as no meat without salt will be gratifying to the taste, so no branch of literature, as it seems to me, could possibly be pleasing to the ear if it lacked the Socratic grace. It would be a long task to eulogize the others; even to read them is no light thing. < 18.14 \xa0But it is my own opinion that Xenophon, and he alone of the ancients, can satisfy all the requirements of a man in public life. Whether one is commanding an army in time of war, or is guiding the affairs of a state, or is addressing a popular assembly or a senate, or even if he were addressing a court of law and desired, not as a professional master of eloquence merely, but as a statesman or a royal prince, to utter sentiments appropriate to such a character at the bar of justice, the best exemplar of all, it seems to me, and the most profitable for all these purposes is Xenophon. For not only are his ideas clear and simple and easy for everyone to grasp, but the character of his narrative style is attractive, pleasing, and convincing, being in a high degree true to life in the representation of character, with much charm also and effectiveness, so that his power suggests not cleverness but actual wizardry. <' "18.15 \xa0If, for instance, you should be willing to read his work on the March Inland very carefully, you will find no speech, such as you will one day possess the ability to make, whose subject matter he has not dealt with and can offer as a kind of norm to any man who wishes to steer his course by him or imitate him. If it is needful for the statesman to encourage those who are in the depths of despondency, time and again our writer shows how to do this; or if the need is to incite and exhort, no one who understands the Greek language could fail to be aroused by Xenophon's hortatory speeches. <" "18.16 \xa0My own heart, at any rate, is deeply moved and at times I\xa0weep even as I\xa0read his account of all those deeds of valour. Or, if it is necessary to deal prudently with those who are proud and conceited and to avoid, on the one hand, being affected in any way by their displeasure, or, on the other, enslaving one's own spirit to them in unseemly fashion and doing their will in everything, guidance in this also is to be found in him. And also how to hold secret conferences both with generals apart from the common soldiers and with the soldiers in the same way; the proper manner of conversing with kings and princes; how to deceive enemies to their hurt and friends for their own benefit; how to tell the plain truth to those who are needlessly disturbed without giving offence, and to make them believe it; how not to trust too readily those in authority over you, and the means by which such persons deceive their inferiors, and the way in which men outwit and are outwitted â\x80\x94 <" "18.17 \xa0on all these points Xenophon's treatise gives adequate information. For I\xa0imagine that it is because he combines deeds with words, because he did not learn by hearsay nor by copying, but by doing deeds himself as well as telling of them, that he made his speeches most convincingly true to life in all his works and especially in this one which I\xa0chanced to mention. And be well assured that you will have no occasion to repent, but that both in the senate and before the people you will find this great man reaching out a hand to you if you earnestly and diligently read him. <"' None |
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9. Tacitus, Annals, 14.43, 14.45 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Cassius Longinus • Cassius Longinus, C
Found in books: Talbert (1984), The Senate of Imperial Rome, 266, 493; Tuori (2016), The Emperor of Law: The Emergence of Roman Imperial Adjudication<, 158
sup>
14.43 Saepe numero, patres conscripti, in hoc ordine interfui, cum contra instituta et leges maiorum nova senatus decreta postularentur; neque sum adversatus, non quia dubitarem super omnibus negotiis melius atque rectius olim provisum et quae converterentur in deterius mutari, sed ne nimio amore antiqui moris studium meum extollere viderer. simul quidquid hoc in nobis auctoritatis est crebris contradictionibus destruendum non existimabam, ut maneret integrum si quando res publica consiliis eguisset. quod hodie venit consulari viro domi suae interfecto per insidias servilis, quas nemo prohibuit aut prodidit quamvis nondum concusso senatus consulto quod supplicium toti familiae minitabatur. decernite hercule impunitatem: at quem dignitas sua defendet, cum praefecto urbis non profuerit? quem numerus servorum tuebitur, cum Pedanium Secundum quadringenti non protexerint? cui familia opem feret, quae ne in metu quidem pericula nostra advertit? an, ut quidam fingere non erubescunt, iniurias suas ultus est interfector, quia de paterna pecunia transegerat aut avitum mancipium detrahebatur? pronuntiemus ultro dominum iure caesum videri.
14.45 Sententiae Cassii ut nemo unus contra ire ausus est, ita dissonae voces respondebant numerum aut aetatem aut sexum ac plurimorum indubiam innocentiam miserantium: praevaluit tamen pars quae supplicium decernebat. sed obtemperari non poterat, conglobata multitudine et saxa ac faces mite. tum Caesar populum edicto increpuit atque omne iter quo damnati ad poenam ducebantur militaribus praesidiis saepsit. censuerat Cingonius Varro ut liberti quoque qui sub eodem tecto fuissent Italia deportarentur. id a principe prohibitum est ne mos antiquus quem misericordia non minuerat per saevitiam intenderetur.'' None | sup>
14.43 \xa0"I\xa0have frequently, Conscript Fathers, made one of this body, when demands were being presented for new senatorial decrees in contravention of the principles and the legislation of our fathers. And from me there came no opposition â\x80\x94 not because I\xa0doubted that, whatever the issue, the provision made for it in the past was the better conceived and the more correct, and that, where revision took place, the alteration was for the worse; but because I\xa0had no wish to seem to be exalting my own branch of study by an overstrained affection for ancient usage. At the same time, I\xa0considered that what little influence I\xa0may possess ought not to be frittered away in perpetual expressions of dissent: I\xa0preferred it to remain intact for an hour when the state had need of advice. And that hour is come toâ\x80\x91day, when an ex-consul has been done to death in his own home by the treason of a slave â\x80\x94 treason which none hindered or revealed, though as yet no attacks had shaken the senatorial decree which threatened the entire household with execution. By all means vote impunity! But whom shall his rank defend, when rank has not availed the prefect of Rome? Whom shall the number of his slaves protect, when four hundred could not shield Pedanius Secundus? Who shall find help in his domestics, when even fear for themselves cannot make them note our dangers? Or â\x80\x94 as some can feign without a blush â\x80\x94 did the killer avenge his personal wrongs because the contract touched his patrimony, or because he was losing a slave from his family establishment? Let us go the full way and pronounce the owner justly slain! <
14.45 \xa0While no one member ventured to controvert the opinion of Cassius, he was answered by a din of voices, expressing pity for the numbers, the age, or the sex of the victims, and for the undoubted innocence of the majority. In spite of all, the party advocating execution prevailed; but the decision could not be complied with, as a dense crowd gathered and threatened to resort to stones and firebrands. The Caesar then reprimanded the populace by edict, and lined the whole length of road, by which the condemned were being marched to punishment, with detachments of soldiers. Cingonius Varro had moved that even the freedmen, who had been present under the same roof, should be deported from Italy. The measure was vetoed by the emperor, lest gratuitous cruelty should aggravate a primitive custom which mercy had failed to temper. <'' None |
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10. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus • Ps.-Longinus
Found in books: Keeline (2018), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero's Philosophy, 96; Konig and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 344; König and Wiater (2022), Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue, 344; Pausch and Pieper (2023), The Scholia on Cicero’s Speeches: Contexts and Perspectives, 155
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11. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus • Ps.-Longinus
Found in books: Keeline (2018), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero's Philosophy, 98; Pausch and Pieper (2023), The Scholia on Cicero’s Speeches: Contexts and Perspectives, 155
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12. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus • Longinus, • Longinus, On the Sublime • Ps.-Longinus • Pseudo-Longinus • Thucydides, assessment by Longinus • True stories, and ps.-Longinus, On the sublime • ps.-Longinus • “Longinus,”
Found in books: Bowie (2021), Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, 766, 773; Elsner (2007), Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text, 186, 187; Hunter (2018), The Measure of Homer: The Ancient Reception of the Iliad, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193; Kazantzidis (2021), Lucretius on Disease: The Poetics of Morbidity in "De rerum natura", 129, 130, 133, 163, 164; Kirkland (2022), Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature: Criticism, Imitation, Reception, 14, 17, 328; Konig (2022), The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture, 99, 339; Levison (2009), Filled with the Spirit, 156; Liapis and Petrides (2019), Greek Tragedy After the Fifth Century: A Survey from ca, 314, 315, 344; MacDougall (2022), Philosophy at the Festival: The Festal Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus and the Classical Tradition. 135; Mheallaigh (2014), Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality, 215; Pausch and Pieper (2023), The Scholia on Cicero’s Speeches: Contexts and Perspectives, 155; Pinheiro Bierl and Beck (2013), Anton Bierl? and Roger Beck?, Intende, Lector - Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel, 77; Robbins et al. (2017), The Art of Visual Exegesis, 62, 179; de Bakker, van den Berg, and Klooster (2022), Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond, 8, 275, 381, 603, 604, 605, 606, 607, 608, 609, 610, 611, 612, 614
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13. None, None, nan (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Pseudo,Longinus • Pseudo-Longinus
Found in books: Frey and Levison (2014), The Holy Spirit, Inspiration, and the Cultures of Antiquity Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 79; Levison (2009), Filled with the Spirit, 156, 326
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14. Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 15.1 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Longinus
Found in books: Corrigan and Rasimus (2013), Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient World, 468; Erler et al. (2021), Authority and Authoritative Texts in the Platonist Tradition, 220; Gerson and Wilberding (2022), The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, 132, 158; Hirsch-Luipold (2022), Plutarch and the New Testament in Their Religio-Philosophical Contexts, 195; Motta and Petrucci (2022), Isagogical Crossroads from the Early Imperial Age to the End of Antiquity, 86; Tanaseanu-Döbler and von Alvensleben (2020), Athens II: Athens in Late Antiquity, 281; d'Hoine and Martijn (2017), All From One: A Guide to Proclus, 35, 37
| sup>3 Despite his general reluctance to talk of his own life, some few details he did often relate to us in the course of conversation. Thus he told how, at the age of eight, when he was already going to school, he still clung about his nurse and loved to bare her breasts and take suck: one day he was told he was a 'perverted imp', and so was shamed out of the trick. At twenty-seven he was caught by the passion for philosophy: he was directed to the most highly reputed professors to be found at Alexandria; but he used to come from their lectures saddened and discouraged. A friend to whom he opened his heart divined his temperamental craving and suggested Ammonius, whom he had not yet tried. Plotinus went, heard a lecture, and exclaimed to his comrade: 'This was the man I was looking for.' From that day he followed Ammonius continuously, and under his guidance made such progress in philosophy that he became eager to investigate the Persian methods and the system adopted among the Indians. It happened that the Emperor Gordian was at that time preparing his campaign against Persia; Plotinus joined the army and went on the expedition. He was then thirty-eight, for he had passed eleven entire years under Ammonius. When Gordian was killed in Mesopotamia, it was only with great difficulty that Plotinus came off safe to Antioch. At forty, in the reign of Philip, he settled in Rome. Erennius, Origen, and Plotinus had made a compact not to disclose any of the doctrines which Ammonius had revealed to them. Plotinus kept faith, and in all his intercourse with his associates divulged nothing of Ammonius' system. But the compact was broken, first by Erennius and then by Origen following suit: Origen, it is true, put in writing nothing but the treatise On the Spirit-Beings, and in Gallienus' reign that entitled The King the Sole Creator. Plotinus himself remained a long time without writing, but he began to base his Conferences on what he had gathered from his studies under Ammonius. In this way, writing nothing but constantly conferring with a certain group of associates, he passed ten years. He used to encourage his hearers to put questions, a liberty which, as Amelius told me, led to a great deal of wandering and futile talk. Amelius had entered the circle in the third year of Philip's reign, the third, too, of Plotinus' residence in Rome, and remained about him until the first year of Claudius, twenty-four years in all. He had come to Plotinus after an efficient training under Lysimachus: in laborious diligence he surpassed all his contemporaries; for example, he transcribed and arranged nearly all the works of Numenius, and was not far from having most of them off by heart. He also took notes of the Conferences and wrote them out in something like a hundred treatises which he has since presented to Hostilianus Hesychius of Apamea, his adopted son. "
15.1 Once on Plato's feast I read a poem, 'The Sacred Marriage'; my piece abounded in mystic doctrine conveyed in veiled words and was couched in terms of enthusiasm; someone exclaimed: 'Porphyry has gone mad'; Plotinus said to me so that all might hear: 'You have shown yourself at once poet, philosopher and hierophant.' The orator Diophanes one day read a justification of the Alcibiades of Plato's Banquet and maintained that the pupil, for the sake of advancement in virtue, should submit to the teacher without reserve, even to the extent of carnal commerce: Plotinus started up several times to leave the room but forced himself to remain; on the breaking up of the company he directed me to write a refutation. Diophanes refused to lend me his address and I had to depend on my recollection of his argument; but my refutation, delivered before the same audience, delighted Plotinus so much that during the very reading he repeatedly quoted: 'So strike and be a light to men.' When Eubulus, the Platonic Successor, wrote from Athens, sending treatises on some questions in Platonism. Plotinus had the writings put into my hands with instructions to examine them and report to him upon them. He paid some attention to the principles of Astronomy though he did not study the subject very deeply on the mathematical side. He went more searchingly into Horoscopy; when once he was convinced that its results were not to be trusted he had no hesitation in attacking the system frequently both at the Conferences and in his writings. " "17 Some of the Greeks began to accuse Plotinus of appropriating the ideas of Numenius. Amelius, being informed of this charge by the Stoic and Platonist Trypho, challenged it in a treatise which he entitled The Difference between the Doctrines of Plotinus and Numenius. He dedicated the work to me, under the name of Basileus (or King). This really is my name; it is equivalent to Porphyry (Purple-robed) and translates the name I bear in my own tongue; for I am called Malchos, like my father, and 'Malchos' would give 'Basileus' in Greek. Longinus, in dedicating his work On Impulse to Cleodamus and myself, addressed us as 'Cleodamus and Malchus', just as Numenius translated the Latin 'Maximus' into its Greek equivalent 'Megalos'. Here followed Amelius' letter: 'Amelius to Basileus, with all good wishes. 'You have been, in your own phrase, pestered by the persistent assertion that our friend's doctrine is to be traced to Numenius of Apamea. 'Now, if it were merely for those illustrious personages who spread this charge, you may be very sure I would never utter a word in reply. It is sufficiently clear that they are actuated solely by the famous and astonishing facility of speech of theirs when they assert, at one moment, that he is an idle babbler, next that he is a plagiarist, and finally that his plagiarisms are feeble in the extreme. Clearly in all this we have nothing but scoffing and abuse. 'But your judgement has persuaded me that we should profit by this occasion firstly to provide ourselves with a useful memorandum of the doctrines that have won our adhesion, and secondly to bring about a more complete knowledge of the system--long celebrated thought it be--to the glory of our friend, a man so great as Plotinus. 'Hence I now bring you the promised Reply, executed, as you and your self know, in three days. You must judge it with reasonable indulgence; this is no orderly and elaborate defence composed in step-by-step correspondence with the written indictment: I have simply set down, as they occurred to me, my recollections of our frequent discussions. You will admit, also, that it is by no means easy to grasp the meaning of a writer who (like Numenius), now credited with the opinion we also hold, varies in the terms he uses to express the one idea. 'If I have falsified any essential of the doctrine, I trust to your good nature to set me right: I am reminded of the phrase in the tragedy: A busy man and far from the teachings of our master I must needs correct and recant. Judge how much I wish to give you pleasure. Good health.' " "19 Longinus' estimate of Plotinus, formed largely upon indications I myself had given him in my letters, will be gathered from the following extract from one of his to me. He is asking me to leave Sicily and join him in Phoenicia, and to bring Plotinus' works with me. He says: 'And send them at your convenience or, better, bring them; for I can never cease urging you to give the road towards us the preference over any other. If there is no better reason--and what intellectual gain can you anticipate form a visit to us?--at least there are old acquaintances and the mild climate which would do you good in the weak state of health you report. Whatever else you may be expecting, do not hope for anything new of my own, or even for the earlier works which you tell me you have lost; for there is a sad dearth of copyists here. I assure you it has taken me all this time to complete my set of Plotinus, and it was done only by calling off my scribe from all his routine work, and keeping him steadily to this one task. 'I think that now, with what you have sent me, I have everything, though in a very imperfect state, for the manuscript is exceeding faulty. I had expected our friend Amelius to correct the scribal errors, but he evidently had something better to do. The copies are quite useless to me; I have been especially eager to examine the treatises On the Soul and On the Authentic-Existent, and these are precisely the most corrupted. It would be a great satisfaction to me if you would send me faithful transcripts for collation and return--though again I suggest to you not to send but to come in person, bringing me the correct copies of these treatises and of any that Amelius may have passed over. All that he brought with him I have been careful to make my own: how could I be content not to possess myself of all the writings of a man so worthy of the deepest veneration? 'I repeat, what I have often said in your presence and in your absence, as on that occasion when you were at Tyre, that while much of the theory does not convince me, yet I am filled with admiration and delight over the general character of the work, the massive thinking of the man, the philosophic handling of problems; in my judgement investigators must class Plotinus' work with that holding the very highest rank.' " "20 This extended quotation from the most acute of the critics of our day--a writer who has passed judgement on nearly all his contemporaries--serves to show the estimate he came to set upon Plotinus of whom, at first, misled by ignorant talk, he had held a poor opinion. His notion, by the way, that the transcripts he acquired from Amelius were faulty sprang from his misunderstanding of Plotinus' style and phraseology; if there were ever any accurate copies, these were they, faithful reproductions from the author's own manuscript. Another passage from the work of Longinus, dealing with Amelius, Plotinus, and other metaphysicians of the day, must be inserted here to give a complete view of the opinion formed upon these philosophers by the most authoritative and most searching of critics. The work was entitled On the End: in Answer to Plotinus and Gentilianus Amelius. It opens with the following preface: 'In our time, Marcellus, there have been many philosophers--especially in our youth--for there is a strange scarcity at present. When I was a boy, my parents' long journeys gave me the opportunity of seeing all the better-known teachers; and in later life those that still lived became known to me as my visits to this and that city and people brought me where they happened to live. 'Some of these undertook the labour of developing their theories in formal works and so have bequeathed to the future the means of profiting by their services. Others thought they had done enough when they had convinced their own immediate hearers of the truth of their theories.. 'First of those that have written. 'Among the Platonists there are Euclides, Democritus, Proclinus the philosopher of the Troad, and the two who still profess philosophy at Rome, Plotinus and his friend Gentilianus Amelius. Among the Stoics there are Themistocles and Phoibion and the two who flourished only a little while ago, Annius and Medius. And there is the Peripatetic, Heliodorus of Alexandria. 'For those that have not written, there are among the Platonists Ammonius and Origen, two teachers whose lectures I myself attended during a long period, men greatly surpassing their contemporaries in mental power; and there are the Platonic Successors at Athens, Theodotus and Eubulus. 'No doubt some writing of a metaphysical order stands to the credit of this group: Origen wrote On Spirit-Beings, Eubulus On the Philebus and Gorgias, and the objections urged by Aristotle to Plato's Republic; but this is not enough to class either of them with systematic authors. This was side-play; authorship was not in the main plan of their careers. 'Among Stoic teachers that refrained from writing we have Herminus and Lysimachus, and the two living at Athens, Musonius and Athenaeus; among Peripatetics, Ammonius and Ptolemaeus. 'The two last were the most accomplished scholars of their time, Ammonius especially being unapproached in breadth of learning; but neither produced any systematic work; we have from them merely verses and duty-speeches; and these I cannot think to have been preserved with their consent; they did not concern themselves about formal statement of their doctrine, and it is not likely they would wish to be known in after times by compositions of so trivial a nature. 'To return to the writers; some of them, like Euclides, Democritus, and Proclinus, confined themselves to the mere compilation and transcription of passages from earlier authorities. Others diligently worked over various minor points in the investigations of the ancients, and put together books dealing with the same subjects. Such were Annius, Medius, and Phoibion, the last especially choosing to be distinguished for style rather than for systematic thinking. In the same class must be ranked Heliodorus; his writings contribute nothing to the organization of the thought which he found to his hand in the teaching of earlier workers. 'Plotinus and Gentilianus Amelius alone display the true spirit of authorship; they treat of a great number of questions and they bring a method of their own to the treatment. 'Plotinus, it would seem, set the principles of Pythagoras and of Plato in a clearer light than anyone before him; on the same subjects, Numenius, Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus fall far short of him in precision and fullness. Amelius set himself to walk in Plotinus' steps and adopted most of Plotinus' opinions; his method, however, was diffuse an, unlike his friend, he indulges in an extravagance of explanation. 'Only these two seem to me worth study. What profit can anyone expect from troubling the works of any of the others to the neglect of the originals on which they drew? They bring us nothing of their own, not even a novel augment, much less a leading idea, and are too unconcerned even to set side by side the most generally adopted theories or to choose the better among them. 'My own method has been different; as for example when I replied to Gentilianus upon Plato's treatment of Justice and in a review I undertook of Plotinus' work On the Ideas. This latter was in the form of a reply to Basileus of Tyre, my friend as theirs. He had preferred Plotinus' system to mine and had written several works in the manner of his master, amongst them a treatise supporting Plotinus' theory of the Idea against that which I taught. I endeavoured, not, I think, unsuccessfully, to show that his change of mind was mistaken. 'In these two essays I have ranged widely over the doctrines of this school, as also in my Letter to Amelius which, despite the simple title with which I contented myself, has the dimensions of a book, being a reply to a treatise he addressed to me from Rome under the title On Plotinus' Philosophic Method.' " "" None |
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