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Damascius
Damascius (; grc-gre, Δαμάσκιος, 458 – after 538), known as "the last of the Athenian Neoplatonists," was the last scholarch of the neoplatonic Athenian school. He was one of the neoplatonic philosophers who left Athens after laws confirmed by emperor Justinian I forced the closure of the Athenian school in c. 529 AD. After he left Athens, he may have sought refuge in the court of the Persian King Chrosroes, before being allowed back into the Byzantine Empire. His surviving works consist of three commentaries on the works of Plato, and a metaphysical text entitled ''Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles''. Life Much of what is known about Damascius' life comes from his semi-autobiographical work called ''The Philosophical History'', or ''Life of Isidore'', and from a work called ''Vita Severi'' written by the 6th-century bishop and historian Zacharias Scholasticus. Damascius, as his name suggests, was born in Damascus in c. 462 AD, and travelled to Alexa ...
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Isidore Of Alexandria
Isidore of Alexandria (; also Isidorus ; el, Ἰσίδωρος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; ) was a GreekEncyclopædia BritannicaIsidore of Alexandria (Greek philosopher)/ref> philosopher and one of the last of the Neoplatonists. He lived in Athens and Alexandria toward the end of the 5th century AD. He became head of the school in Athens in succession to Marinus, who followed Proclus. Life Isidore was born in Alexandria. In Athens, he studied under Proclus, and learned the doctrine of Aristotle from Marinus.Sudaμ199/ref> According to Damascius, "Isidore was awestruck at the sight of Proclus, venerable and marvelous to see; he thought he was seeing in him the very face of true philosophy." Proclus for his part used to "marvel at Isidore's appearance, as it was possessed by the divine and full of the philosophical life within." Damascius further tells us that "Isidore, besides simplicity, loved truthfulness especially, and undertook to be straight-talking beyond what was necessar ...
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Severianus Of Damascus
Severianus of Damascus was a Roman pagan politician who served under the emperor Marcian (450–457). Severianus' life is known mainly from the writings of Damascius, including what was incorporated into the ''Suda'' and the ''Epitome'' of Photius. He was born into a prominent family of Damascus descended from Roman colonists who had once settled in Alexandria. His father was Auxentius and his grandfather Callinicus. His father wanted him to become a lawyer and to this end he specialised in Roman law while also studying poetry and rhetoric. His father refused his request to study philosophy under Proclus at the Athenian Academy, but after his father's death he went. Too ambitious for the professional philosophical life, Severianus entered politics. He rose to high office—Damascius calls him an ''archon''—but he feuded with his superiors and was draconian in meting out justice. He blamed the short duration of his success in politics to a few unjustifiable death sentences. The of ...
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Simplicius Of Cilicia
Simplicius of Cilicia (; el, Σιμπλίκιος ὁ Κίλιξ; c. 490 – c. 560 AD) was a disciple of Ammonius Hermiae and Damascius, and was one of the last of the Neoplatonists. He was among the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the empire. He wrote extensively on the works of Aristotle. Although his writings are all commentaries on Aristotle and other authors, rather than original compositions, his intelligent and prodigious learning makes him the last great philosopher of pagan antiquity. His works have preserved much information about earlier philosophers which would have otherwise been lost. Life Simplicius was a disciple of Ammonius Hermiae, and Damascius, and was consequently one of the last members of the Neoplatonist school. The school had its headquarters in Athens. It became the centre of the last efforts to maintain Hellenistic religi ...
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Marinus Of Neapolis
Marinus ( grc, Μαρῖνος ὁ Νεαπολίτης; born c. 440 AD) was a Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician and rhetorician born in Flavia Neapolis (modern Nablus), Palestine. He was a student of Proclus in Athens. His surviving works are an introduction to Euclid's ''Data''; a ''Life of Proclus'', and two astronomical texts. Most of what we know of his life comes from an epitome of a work by Damascius conserved in the Byzantine Suda encyclopaedia. Life He was, according to his pupil Damascius, born a Samaritan, though some uncertainty remains about this attribution of his ethnicity. Damascius also adds that he had converted from Samaritanism. He came to Athens at a time when, with the exception of Proclus, there was a great dearth of eminent men in the Neoplatonist school. He was appointed as successor ('' diadochos'') to Proclus, sometime before the latter's death, during the period of the teacher's infirmity. Proclus dedicated to Marinus his commentary to the ...
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Platonic Academy
The Academy (Ancient Greek: Ἀκαδημία) was founded by Plato in c. 387 BC in Classical Athens, Athens. Aristotle studied there for twenty years (367–347 BC) before founding his own school, the Lyceum (classical), Lyceum. The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a Academic skepticism, skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC. The Platonic Academy was destroyed by the Roman dictator Sulla in 86 BC. Site The ''Akademia'' was a school outside the city walls of ancient Athens. It was located in or beside a sacred grove, grove of olive trees dedicated to the goddess Athena, which was on the site even before Cimon enclosed the precincts with a wall. The archaic name for the site was ''Ἑκαδήμεια'' (''Hekademia''), which by classical times evolved into Ἀκαδημία (''Akademia''), which was explained, at least as early as the beginning of the 6th century BC, by linking it to "Akademos", ...
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Priscian Of Lydia
Priscian of Lydia (or Priscianus; grc-gre, Πρισκιανός ο Λυδός ''Prīskiānós ho Lȳdós''; la, Priscianus Lydus; fl. 6th century), was one of the last of the Neoplatonists. Two works of his have survived. Life A contemporary of Simplicius of Cilicia, Priscian was born in Lydia, probably in the late 5th century. He was one of the last Neoplatonists to study at the Academy when Damascius was at its head. When Justinian I closed the school in 529, Priscian, together with Damascius, Simplicius, and four other colleagues were forced to seek asylum in the court of the Persian king Chosroes.George Sarton, (1927), ''Introduction to the History of Science, Volume 1'', page 423. Williams & Wilkins By 533 they were allowed back into the Byzantine Empire after Justinian and Chosroes concluded a peace treaty, in which it was provided that the philosophers would be allowed to return. Works Two works of Priscian's have survived: *An epitome of Theophrastus' ''On Sense-Percepti ...
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Proclus
Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity. He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism and, through later interpreters and translators, exerted an influence on Byzantine philosophy, Early Islamic philosophy, and Scholastic philosophy. Biography The primary source for the life of Proclus is the eulogy ''Proclus, or On Happiness'' that was written for him upon his death by his successor, Marinus, Marinus' biography set out to prove that Proclus reached the peak of virtue and attained eudaimonia. There are also a few details about the time in which he lived in the similarly structured ''Life of Isidore'' written by the philosopher Damascius in the following century. According to Marinus, Proclus was born in 412 AD in Cons ...
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Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonism, Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and Hellenistic religion, religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some ideas that are common to it. For example, the Monism, monistic idea that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One". Neoplatonism began with Ammonius Saccas and his student Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 271 AD) and stretched to the 6th century AD. After Plotinus there were three distinct periods in the history of neoplatonism: the work of his student Porphyry (philosopher), Porphyry (3rd to early 4th century); that of Iamblichus (3rd to 4th century); and the period in the 5th and 6th centuries, when the Academies in Alexandria and Athens flourished. Neoplatonism had an enduring influence on the subsequent history of philosophy. In the Middle Ages, neoplatonic ideas were studied and discussed ...
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Eulamius
Eulamius (; el, ), born in Phrygia, was, along with Damascius, one of the Athenian philosophers who sought asylum at the court of Khosrau I (r. 531–579) of Sassanid Empire, Persia in 531/532 when Byzantine emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) closed down the last pagan philosophical schools in Athens.. Eulamius was disappointed in Persia and ultimately returned to Byzantium in 532 together with other Greek philosophers, protected by a treaty that guaranteed their safety.. His name appears as Eulalios (Greek: Eὐλάλιος) in the ''Suda'' and as Eulamios (Greek: Eὐλάμιος) in the historical works of Agathias Agathias or Agathias Scholasticus ( grc-gre, Ἀγαθίας σχολαστικός; Martindale, Jones & Morris (1992), pp. 23–25582/594), of Myrina (Mysia), an Aeolian city in western Asia Minor (Turkey), was a Greek poet and the principal histo .... References Sources * * {{Authority control 6th-century philosophers 6th-century Byzantine people Byzantine ...
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Agapius Of Athens
Agapius ( el, Ἀγάπιος; 5th-6th century) was a Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in Athens. He was a notable philosopher in the Neoplatonist school in Athens when Marinus of Neapolis was scholarch after the death of Proclus (c. 485).Suda, ''Agapios'', (Damascius, ''Life of Isidore'' fr. 277, Zintzen) He was admired for his love of learning and for putting forward difficult problems. He may be the Agapius under whom John Lydus heard some lectures on Platonist philosophy, while he was studying Aristotelian doctrines in Constantinople in 511, and of whom the poet Christodorus Christodorus ( el, Χριστόδωρος), a Greek epic poet from Coptos in Egypt, flourished during the reign of Anastasius I (491–518). His father was named Paniskos (Πανίσκος). According to Suidas, he was the author of ''Patria'' (Gr ... in his work ''On the Disciples of the Great Proclus'' stated that "Agapius is assuredly the last but the first of all."John Lydus, ''De Mag.'' iii. 26. No ...
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Hermias (philosopher)
Hermias (; grc-gre, Ἑρμείας ἐκ Φοινίκης ''Hermeias ek Phoinikes'') was a Neoplatonist philosopher who was born in Alexandria c. 410 AD. He went to Athens and studied philosophy under Syrianus. He married Aedesia, who was a relative of Syrianus, and who had originally been betrothed to Proclus, but Proclus broke the engagement off after receiving a divine warning. Hermias brought Syrianus' teachings back to Alexandria, where he lectured in the school of Horapollo, receiving an income from the state. He died c. 450 AD, at a time when his children, Ammonius and Heliodorus, were still small. Aedesia, however, continued to receive an income from the state, in order to raise the children, enabling them to become philosophers. A ''Commentary on the Phaedrus'' written by Hermias survives. It consists of notes based on the lectures conducted by Syrianus concerning Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek phil ...
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Agathias
Agathias or Agathias Scholasticus ( grc-gre, Ἀγαθίας σχολαστικός; Martindale, Jones & Morris (1992), pp. 23–25582/594), of Myrina (Mysia), an Aeolian city in western Asia Minor (Turkey), was a Greek poet and the principal historian of part of the reign of the Roman emperor Justinian I between 552 and 558. Biography Agathias was a native of Myrina (Mysia). His father was Memnonius. His mother was presumably Pericleia. A brother of Agathias is mentioned in primary sources, but his name has not survived. Their probable sister Eugenia is known by name. The ''Suda'' clarifies that Agathias was active in the reign of the Roman emperor Justinian I, mentioning him as a contemporary of Paul the Silentiary, Macedonius of Thessalonica and Tribonian. Agathias mentions being present in Alexandria as a law student at the time when an earthquake destroyed Berytus (Beirut). The law school of Berytus had been recognized as one of the three official law schools of the empire ( ...
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