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Aidōs in Plotinus: Enneads II.9.10

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. J. Edwards
M. J. Edwards
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

At one point in his treatise against the ‘Gnostics’ Plotinus treats his adversaries as men of flesh and blood, not merely as proponents of false books and false beliefs:

For I feel a certain shame (aidōs tis echei) with regard to some of my friends (philoi), who, having chanced upon this doctrine before the beginning of our friendship, have continued to adhere to it for reasons that I cannot understand. Not that they themselves show any compunction in saying what they say: they may believe what they say to be true (alethe), but perhaps they rather wish others to be persuaded of the truth of their own opinions. (Enneads II.9.10.3ff.)

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , May 1989 , pp. 228 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

1 See Halliwell, S., ‘Plato and Aristotle on the Denial of Tragedy’ in PCPS 30 (1984), 49–71, at 50Google Scholar. At Rep. 599a8 Homer is called a dēmiurgos eidōlou; the phrase eidōlon eidōlou does not occur, but it must be to this passage that Plotinus was alluding when he said that a portrait of him would be just such an ‘image of an image’ (VP 1). The occurrence of the same phrase in Enneads II.9 is noted below.

2 Cf. Augustine, ‘seducebamus et seducebamur’ at Confessiones 4.1Google Scholar, where he describes himself as following with equal avidity the shows of the theatre and the cheats of the Manichaeans. The Manichaeans are guilty of obscuring the image of God (3.12) by ‘corporalia phantasmata’ (3.10); the theatre called forth the same affected tears (3.3) that he shed for Dido (1.21), tears to be expiated by the ‘fiumina oculorum’ of his mother (5.15) and now by his own (3.3). Whether Aeneas came to Carthage is a matter of dispute (1.22); not so the miserable voyage of the young scholar along the ‘Rumen tartareum’ (1.26; see also 1.25, 2.3, 2.18) which brought him at last to the same destination and the same temptation to sacrifice duty to love: ‘Carthaginem veni et circumstrepebat me undique sartago fiagitiosorum amorum’ (3.1). Becoming a devotee of the theatre there he catches the tragic spirit in philosophy and is sustained in it by attachments to ‘amici’ which Plato, Plotinus and Aristotle advised the true philosopher to shun.

3 See Proclus, , Comm. in Rem Pub., ii. 105.23ffGoogle Scholar. (Kroll), where Colotes is reported to attack Plato's myth of Er on the grounds that: (1) it is a fabrication unworthy of philosophy; (2) such compositions are denounced by Plato himself; (3) myths are useless to those who do not understand them and superfluous for the philosophers who do.

The question of the correct interpretation of the Timaeus divided Platonists, and Proclus’ scorn for the ‘tragic’ style of Numenius (Fr. 21.6) may be inspired by his contempt for a cosmogony which seems to give the present world an origin in time. The terms which Proclus criticises seem to be a pedantic extrapolation from the description of the Demiurge as pater in the Timaeus.

4 Irenaeus' tragic ebullitions at Adv. Haer. 1.11.4. suggest that the myth of Sophia was felt to be eminently pathetic. Sophia suffers from phobos, lupē and ekplēxis (1.2.3), all emotions associated with tragedy (see Phaedrus 268c, Poetics 1456b and 1455a).

5 The use of aidoios (Comm. in Tim. ii.l 10.18) is almost certainly an allusion to Plato, . Thaumastos is a more common epithet for Theodorus (see Comm. in Tim. i. 322.7, ii.215.29–30, ii.l 73.24)Google Scholar. The tone is not easy to guess, since, though most of these citations are unfavourable, the use of such epithets as megas at iii.265 does not appear to be ironic.

6 Ammonius Saccas himself does not appear to have been a ‘Gnostic’. Nothing in the reconstructions of his philosophy by Dorrie, H. (Hermes 83 [1955], 439–77)Google Scholar, Langerbeck, H. (JHS 77 [1957], 67–74)CrossRefGoogle Scholar or Schroeder, F. M. (ANRW 36.1 [1987], 493–526)Google Scholar indicates that he was likely to embrace the doctrine so foreign to all Greek thought, that ‘the Maker of this Universe is malign”.

7 On the identity and activities of Origen see Schroeder, , art. cit. 494–509Google Scholar. On the identification of Aquilinus as a ‘friend’ see Brisson, L., ‘Amélius, sa Vie, son Oeuvre, sa Doctrine, sa Style’ in ANRW 36.2 (1987), 815Google Scholar. On the inaccuracy of Eunapius see Goulet, R., ‘Variations Romanesques sur la Melancolie de Porphyre’ in Hermes 110 (1982), 443–57, at 445–8Google Scholar.