A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

PLOTINUS. PLOTINUS. 425
himself as the protecting spirit of the philosopher, respect placed by his side), and the closeness of the
whose high dignity the Egyptian could now no reasoning. (cc. 21, 22.)
longer call in question. These relations, occurring When suffering from pain in the bowels, Ploas they do in the comparatively sober-minded tinus used no other means than daily rubbing, and
Porphyry (c. 10; comp. Procl. in Alcibiad. i. 23. left this off when the men ewho assisted him died
p. 198, Cons.), are well worthy of observation, as of the pest (A. D. 262). Suidas (who, however, is
characteristic of the tendescies of that age, how- not to be relied on) says, that Plotinus himself was
ever little disposed we may be to attach any reality attacked by the plague; Porphyry on the contrary
to them. Although Plotinus only attached any (c. 15) states, that the omission of these rubbings
faith to the prophecies of the astrologers after a produced only disease of the throat (tKcvayXos),
searching examination (c. 15, extr.), yet he believed, which gradually became disjointed, so that at last
as that Egyptian did (comp. Ennead. iii. 4), in lie became speechless, uweak of vision, and conprotecting spirits of higher and lower ranks, and tracted both in hands and feet. Plotinus, therenot less, probably, in the power of calling them up fore, withdrew to the country seat of his deceased
through intense meditation, or of working upon friend Zethus in Campania, and, according to Euthose at a distance by magic. It was not indeed stochius, passed by Puteoli. There was only one
to his individual power, but to the divine power, of his friends present in the neighbourhood when
gained by vision, that he ascribed this miraculous he died (Porphyry had been obliged to go on
agency, but he would none the more acknowledge account of health to Lilybaeum in Sicily, and
that the gods had any individual interest in him- Amelius was on a journey to Apameia in Syria),
self, and on one occasion he put off Alnelius' re- and of him he took leave in the following words:
quest to share with him in a sacrifice, with the " Thee have I waited for, but now I seek to lead
words, " Those gods of yours must come to me, back the Divine principle within me to the God
not I to them." (c. ] 0.) who is all in all." At his last breath, Porphyry
After Plotinus's death, Amelius inquired of the relates that a dragon glided from under the bed, and
Delphlic Apollo whither his soul was gone, and escaped through an opening in the wall. (c. 2.)
received in fifty-one lame hexameters an ardent II1 reference to former systems of Grecian phipanegyric on the philosopher, in which he was losophy, we are fully able to point out, for the
celebrated as mild and good, with a soul aspiring to most part with decision, how far they had prepared
the divinity, loved of God, and a fortunate searcher the way for Plotinus by earlier developments, and
after truth; now, it was said, he abides like how much the peculiarity, both of their matter and
Minos, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, Pluto, and Pytha- their form, gained by his additional and creative
goras, where friendship, undisturbed joy (esopo- reflections. It is not so easy, however, to decide
ruvy7,), and love to Deity are enthroned, in fellow- by what peculiar ideas Plotinus compressed the
ship with the ever-blessed spirits (3atiovee, c. 22). New Platonic doctrines into that systenlatic form
Porphyry, his biographer, adds, that he had raised in which they lie before us in the Enneads. This
his soul to the contemplation of the supreme and result, indeed, we may see was prepared for by the
personal God not without success, and that the Deity philosophical efforts of almost two centuries. On
appeared to him to be something elevated above all the one side, Philon and others had attempted to
body and form, beyond thought and imagination; bring the Emanation-theory, peculiar to the East,
yea, that during his own intercourse with him, he into harmony with the flower of the Hellenistic
(Plotinus) had, by a transcendent energy of soul, philosophy, namely with Platonism; on the other
fozur times risen to a perfect union with God, and side, various Greeks had attempted partly to perconfesses that he himself, during a life of sixty- fect and complete this theory, as the mature fruit
eight years, had only once attained that elevation. of the Greek philosophic spirit, by a selection from
(c. 23; comp. Plotin., Eassead. v. 5. ~ 3.) The the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic doctrines, partly
acknowledgllents of Longinus, however, speak far (as a satisfaction for the religious wants of the age)
more for the influence which Plotinus exercised on to base upon it the elements of the symbolism and
the mind of his age, than do the manifested Deity the faith both of the Oriental and Grecian relior the admiring love of Porphyry. That excellent gions. With reference to the latter, that which
critic had at first (having been himself a constant first of all had sprung out of the religious wants of
hearer of Ammonius and Origen)regarded Plotinus the age, was afterwards continued in the hope of
with contempt (c. 20), and even after his death raising a barrier against the spread of the Christian
could not profess any kind of agreement with most doctrines, by ennobling the various polytheistic
of his doctrines; indeed he had written against religions, and by pointing to their common and
Plotinus's doctrine of ideas, and not given in to rational basis. But as, on the one hand, the Orithe answers of Porphyry and Amelius; yet still ental Emanation-theory, with its hidden and selfhe was most anxious to get perfect copies of his excluding deity, could not strike its roots in the
books, and extolled at once the pregnancy of their soil of the Grecian philosophy, so neither, on the
style and the philosophical treatment of the inves- other hand, could the eclectic and syncretic attigations. In the same manner he expresses him- tempts of Plutarch, Maximus Tyrius, and others,
self in his work on final causes, and also in a letter satisfy the requisitions of a regular philosophy of
written before the death of Plotinus; in these religion. Without altogether renouncing these
writings he unconditionally prefers our Lycopolitan, syncretic and eclectic attempts, or rejecting the new
not only to the other philosophers of his time, intuitional method of the Oriental Emanationwhether Platonics, Stoics, or Peripatetics, but also theories, Numenius and his contemporary Cronius
to Numenius, Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus, appeared to be striving to make these several systems
more especially in reference to the fullness of the accessible to the Grecian dialectics. In place of
objects treated of (,rpogAsr7jara), the originality of emanations from the divine self-revealing essence,
the manner in which they were discussed (rspoirq2 which become more and more finite in proportion
wooplas ii, XOriaardAevos; Aurelius is in this as they stand further from the godhead, Numcnius,