PLOTINUS. THE LATER PLATONISTS. 289 



the latter alludes to another Ammonias, who wrote a Harmony of the 

 Gospels. From a fragment of Hierocles, preserved by Photius, 

 it appears that Ammonius Saccas, disgusted with the scandal brought 

 upon philosophy by the acrimonious disputes which existed among 

 the Platonists, Aristotelians, and others, and which had even led them 

 to corrupt the writings of their great masters, attempted, by the rejec- 

 tion of certain superfluous parts, to demonstrate that, in the main, 

 the doctrines of Plato were in harmony with those of Aristotle. He 

 had some eminent disciples, in which number are reckoned Herennius, 

 Origen, Longinus, and Plotinus. 



Of Herennius, nothing is known. Origen is, probably, not the same Herennius. 

 who acquired so distinguished a name in ecclesiastical history. 



Dionysius Longinus, 1 a native of Emesa, in Syria, is known to pos- Longinus. 

 terity, not in consequence of his philosophical opinions, of which we 

 have scarcely any extant memorials, but through his celebrated work 

 'On the Sublime;' which, occasionally fired with all the enthusiasm 

 which the finished models of better days would naturally excite in a 

 high and noble spirit, continues to charm and to instruct the great 

 educated mass, while the barren speculations of his Platonic contem- 

 porary who refused to concede to him the title of philosopher, 2 are 

 confined to the closets of a few learned and meditative men. 



His private history, too, is of a nature which interests our common 

 feelings in a high degree. After having studied under the most 

 distinguished masters, and visited the most noted seats of literature, 

 and acquired so extensive a fame by the profundity of his erudition, 

 as to be called the Living Library, he fell a victim to the fury of the A. D. 273. 

 Roman soldiery, at the downfal, and, perhaps, by the ingratitude, of 

 Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, whom he had assisted by his instructions 

 and defended by his counsels. From the slight shreds still remaining 

 of his philosophical works, it is gratifying to perceive that he rejected 

 the sophistical hypotheses, which had transferred the properties of 

 matter to the operations of spirit, and had resolved all mental pheno- 

 mena into the effects of mere mechanical action. 



But, undoubtedly, in philosophical history, the most celebrated fol- Plotinus, 

 lower of Ammonius was Plotinus, from whom, as having completed 

 the Eclectic system, that school afterwards took its name. He was 

 born at Lycopolis, in Egypt, 3 in the year 205. His family is not 

 known, and the events of his early life are involved in obscurity. 



1 Called Cassius Longinus in Phot. Lex. v. 2ep<oi. See also Suid. v. Aoyyivos. 

 In a recent treatise, entitled Remarks on the supposed Dionysius Longinus, the 

 author attempts to show that the work On the Sublime was written in the Augustan 

 Age. z ^i\6\oyos pey 6 Aoyyivos, <pi\6ffo(})os 5e ov8a/j.>s. 



3 Eunap. in Plotin. Plotinus himself would not tell the place of his birth or his 

 family. On the same principle contempt for his body he refused to have his 

 picture painted. " As if, forsooth, it were not enough," he said to Amelius, " to 

 carry the image in which Nature has enclosed us ; you think we should transmit 

 to posterity, as a sight worthy of its attention, the image of an image !" And from 

 the same cause, perhaps, he observed great abstemiousness, avoiding the flesh even 

 of tame animals, and abstaining from baths. Porphyr. in Plotin. 



[G. K. P.] U 



