Reading room

Life of Plotinus (by Porphyry)

Plotinus

"On the life of Plotinus and the arrangement of his books", written around 301, when Porphyry was sixty-eight. It narrates the Alexandrian youth, the Persian expedition, the school in Rome, the circle of pupils, the Platonopolis project, the mystical unions and the death in Campania; it transcribes Apollo's oracle on Plotinus' soul and gives the chronological list of the treatises with their distribution into enneads. It is one of the richest biographies of philosophers from antiquity.