Plotinos · Plotinus
AMELIUS, PLOTINOS'S FIRST SECRETARY.
Amelius enrolled himself among the pupils of Plotinos during the third year of Plotinos's stay in Rome, which also was the third year of the reign of Claudius II, that is, 24 years. Amelius originally had been a disciple of the Stoic philosopher Lysimachus.[5] Amelius surpassed all his fellow-pupils by his systematic methods of study. He had copied, gathered, and almost knew by heart all the works of Numenius. He composed a hundred copy-books of notes taken at the courses of Plotinos, and he gave them as a present to his adopted son, Hostilianus Hesychius, of Apamea. (Fragments of Amelius's writings are found scattered in those of Proclus, Stobaeus, Olympiodorus, Damascius, and many of the Church Fathers.) IV. HOW PORPHYRY CAME TO PLOTINOS FOR THE FIRST TIME, IN 253. In the tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, I (then being twenty years of age), left Greece and went to Rome with Antonius of Rhodes. I found there Amelius, who had been following the courses of Plotinos for eighteen years. He had not yet dared to write anything, except a few books of notes, of which there were not yet as many as a hundred. In this tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, Plotinos was fifty-nine years old. When I (for the second, and more important time) joined him, I was thirty years of age. During the first year of Gallienus, Plotinos began to write upon some topics of passing interest, and in the tenth year of Gallienus, when I visited him for the first time, he had written twenty-one books, which had been circulated only among a very small number of friends. They were not given out freely, and it was not easy to go through them. They were communicated to students only under precautionary measures, and after the judgment of those who received them had been carefully tested.
PLOTINOS'S BOOKS OF THE FIRST PERIOD (THE AMELIAN PERIOD). I shall mention the books that Plotinos had already written at that time. As he had prefixed no titles to them, several persons gave them different ones. Here are those that have asserted themselves: 1. Of the Beautiful. i. 6. 2. Of the Immortality of the Soul. iv. 7. 3. Of Fate. iii. 1. 4. Of the Nature of the Soul. iv. 1. 5. Of Intelligence, of Ideas, and of Existence. v. 9. 6. Of the Descent of the Soul into the Body. iv. 8. 7. How does that which is Posterior to the First Proceed from Him? Of the One. v. 4. 8. Do all the Souls form but a Single Soul? iv. 9. 9. Of the Good, or of the One. vi. 9. 10. Of the Three Principal Hypostatic Forms of Existence, v. 1. 11. Of Generation, and of the Order of Things after the First, v. 2. 12. (Of the Two) Matters, (the Sensible and Intelligible). ii. 4. 13. Various Considerations, iii. 9. 14. Of the (Circular) Motion of the Heavens. ii. 2. 15. Of the Daemon Allotted to Us, iii. 4. 16. Of (Reasonable) Suicide, i. 9. 17. Of Quality, ii. 6. 18. Are there Ideas of Individuals? v. 7. 19. Of Virtues. i. 2. 20. Of Dialectics. i. 3.
21. (How does the Soul keep the Mean between Indivisible Nature and Divisible Nature?) iv. 2. These twenty-one books were already written when I visited Plotinos; he was then in the fifty-ninth year of his age. V. HOW PORPHYRY CAME TO PLOTINOS FOR THE SECOND TIME (A. D. 263-269). I remained with him this year, and the five following ones. I had already visited Rome ten years previously; but at that time Plotinos spent his summers in vacation, and contented himself with instructing his visitors orally. During the above-mentioned six years, as several questions had been cleared up in the lectures of Plotinos, and at the urgent request of Amelius and myself that he write them down, he wrote two books to prove that PLOTINOS'S BOOKS OF THE SECOND PERIOD (THE PORPHYRIAN PERIOD). 22. The One and Identical Existence is Everywhere Entire, I, vi. 4. 23. Second Part Thereof. vi. 5. Then he wrote the book entitled: 24. The Superessential Transcendent Principle Does Not Think. Which is the First Thinking Principle? And Which is the Second? v. 6. He also wrote the following books: 25. Of Potentiality and Actualization. ii. 5. 26. Of the Impassibility of Incorporeal Entities. iii. 6. 27. Of the Soul, First Part. iv. 3. 28. Of the Soul, Second Part. iv. 4. 29. (Of the Soul, Third; or, How do We See?) iv. 5.
30. Of Contemplation. iii. 8. 31. Of Intelligible Beauty. v. 8. 32. The Intelligible Entities are not Outside of Intelligence. Of Intelligence and of Soul. v. 5. 33. Against the Gnostics. ii. 9. 34. Of Numbers. vi. 6. 35. Why do Distant Objects Seem Small? ii. 8. 36. Does Happiness (Consist in Duration?) i. 5. 37. Of the Mixture with Total Penetration. ii. 7. 38. Of the Multitude of Ideas; Of the Good. vi. 7. 39. Of the Will. vi. 8. 40. (Of the World). ii. 1. 41. Of Sensation, and of Memory. iv. 6. 42. Of the Kinds of Existence, First. vi. 1. 43. Of the Kinds of Existence, Second. vi. 2. 44. Of the Kinds of Existence, Third. vi. 3. 45. Of Eternity and Time. iii. 7. Plotinos wrote these twenty-four books during the six years I spent with him; as subjects he would take the problems that happened to come up, and which we have indicated by the titles of these books. These twenty-four books, joined to the twenty-one Plotinos had written before I came to him, make forty-five. 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 exception of a few passages. The last nine are less powerful than the others; and of these nine, the last four are the weakest.
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