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Ammonius, Teacher of Origen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2017

Mark Edwards
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Extract

Porphyry and Eusebius, antagonistic witnesses, agree that one of Origcn’s early tutors was called Ammonius. This was also the name of the tutor of Origen’s younger contemporary Plot in us, and it. has long been the fashion to argue or assume that they were pupils of the same man. Heinrich Dörrie perhaps remains alone in his view that the two men called Ammonius were distinct, a view for which I shall argue in this article, though not entirely on Döme’s grounds. In the first part I shall present the available evidence, and in the second use it to defend Döme’s position against its detractors; in the third part I shall argue that the confusion of the two began in the early Christian centuries, through a mixture of knowledge and pardonable ignorance, and finally I shall advance another candidate, whose credentials for the position of Origen’s tutor have not been adequately examined in modern discussion.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , April 1993 , pp. 169 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 The view of P. Nautin, , Paris 1977, 200-1; R. Goulet, ‘Porphyre, Ammonius, les deux Origenes et les autres', lvii (1977), 471-96; F. M. Schroeder, ‘Ammonios Saccas', II xxxvi (1987), 495-506 and most of the authors, other than Dorrie, cited there.

2 H. Dörrie, ‘Ammonios, der Lehrer Plotins', lxxxiii (1955), 439—77, esp. pp. 471-2. Dörrie argues largely from the unlikelihood of this one Ammonius having kept a school from 205 to 243. As, however, the evidence of Theodoret, cited below, suggests a date of about 170 for the birth of this Ammonius and a conversion to philosophy not later than 192, this objection has little force; cf. G. Fowden, ‘The Platonic philosopher and his circle in Late Antiquity', vii (1977), 364.

3 Assuming that Plotinus was born in 205/6 2. 37) and was thirty-eight years old when he left the Alexandrian school. The chronology of the has given rise to much controversy, but the dates given in this paper may be assumed to be accurate to within a year.

4 For the fullest defence of this view, see Schroeder, ‘Ammonios Saccas', 496-502. Citations of'Origen’ in neoplatonic authors never allude to any work which cannot be one of the two whose titles occur in the those titles never occur in any notice of the Christian Origen.

5 The phrase ETTISOCTIV exelv at 146b, i76e and iob28 signifies only the possession of a capacity, for addition or improvement; but clearly it must here connote the achievement, not merely the promise.

6 Thus G. Bardy, (Sources Chretiennes lxxiii), Paris 1955.

7 Goulet, ‘Porphyre, Ammonius', 485.

8 R. Cadiou, , Paris 1935, 233: ‘II ne considere que les idees d'Origene et les sources de l'exegese allegorique… d'une conversion proprement dite qui l'aurait mene de l'hellenisme a la religion chretienne, il n'est point question.'

9 See A. H. Armstrong's translation, Loeb Classical Library, i, New York 1964. The work in question was addressed to both Plotinus and Longinus 20. 15) and the tenor of 20. 75ff. implies that he was then still a frequenter of the school. Amelius retired to Aparhea in the first year of Claudius (268/9: ibid. 3. 40), there to present Longinus with the text of Plotinus’ lessons (17. i6ff.); Porphyry had embarked for Sicily only months before (6. 2: the fifteenth, i.e. last year of Gallienus, also 268/9).

10 Ibid. 21. 13. The proem would be the latest part of the work: J. Igal, , Madrid 1972, 109 argues that the phrase apx EXOVTOS means not that Porphyry was a novice in the school at the time when the proem was composed, but merely that the work to which Longinus refers at 20. 93 was an early one. As the unanimity of other translators shows, this reading is not a natural one, and leaves one asking why Longinus did not address himself to any later composition if he wrote in or after 268/9. Igal bases his argument upon 21. 18ff., which states that Longinus wrote ‘before ascertaining the doctrines of Plotinus with greater accuracy'. Since, however, he never secured the collaboration of Porphyry, which he solicited after the latter's arrival in Sicily, and continued to write against Plotinus even ‘up to the present' (otXpi vuv at 21. 19), Longinus might have written these polemics at any time before his death.

11 Goulet, ‘Porphyre, Ammonius', 491 assumes the early dating for the composition of the work His thesis is untenable if we accept the conclusions of T. D. Barnes, ‘Porphyry against the Christians: date and attribution of the fragments', liii (1973), 424-42; Porphyry must have known that there were two Origens by about AD 300.

12 Bardy,

13 On Numenius see Mark Edwards,’ Atticizing Moses? Numenius, the Fathers and the Jews', xliv (1990), 64-75, though there it is argued that Numenius' interest in the traditions of Judaism extended only to praising, not to reading, its sacred books.

14 Schroeder,.'Ammonios Saccas', 504-5.

15 H. R. Schwyzer, , Rheinische-Westfalische Akad-emie der Wissenschaft, Opladen 1983, 36; Schroeder, ‘Ammonios Saccas', 506-7.

16 arreKEKaSapTO at 3. 26 means ‘enunciated clearly'; the lectures of Ammonius are contrasted for their lucidity with the confusion that resulted when Plotinus asked his pupils to debate their way to truth (3. 35). The distinction between aKpocn-ai and £r|AcoTa( at 7. 1 concerns the zeal of certain pupils, not their admission to a higher grade of teaching. As we learn from 13. ioff. the most esoteric discussions are open to all.

17 Dorrie, ‘Ammonios, der Lehrer Plotins', 466-7. The position of the name Saccas is irrelevant, and there is no other sign that the passage requires emendation.

18 See W. Telfer, , London 1955, 262 n. 2.

19 There is certainly no evidence that Ammonius was speaking of soul and body rather than of mind and matter. Telfer remarks (ibid. 296) that the final sentence, which applies Ammonius’ tenet to the union of soul and body, is ‘in a different style'.

20 Dorrie, ‘Ammonios, der LehrerPlotins', 445-59 ;J. M. Rist, ‘Ps.-Ammonius and the soul-body problem', cix (1988), 403-5. Dorrie suggests that the source was the (cf. Telfer, , 262 n. 2 after Domanski), but, in view of the report of Hierocles, I should rather favour Porphyry's

21 Rist, ‘Ps.-Ammonius', 403.

22 Reference to the indices of Raeder's edition of the corroborates all the hypotheses of this paragraph concerning the extent and the defects of Theodoret's knowledge.

23 Ptolemaeus, treated as a contemporary of Ammonius, is mentioned by Sextus Empiricus at 1. 60, 72. This means that his writings were known in the last two decades of the second century: on the date of Sextus see Pauly-Wissowa, , HA (1933). i°57-

24 This can be easily verified by reference to , i, Munich 1979, 305-6. The practice of Longinus throughout the piece is to couple men who belong to the same locality; and Ammonius is coupled with a man who bears another Egyptian appellative, Ptolemaeus.

25 H. Langerbeck, ‘On the philosophy of Ammonius Saccas and the union of Christian and Aristotelian elements therein', lxxvii (1957), 77-84.

26 See , p. 187 (on praise and blame), 184 (on the authority of reason over impulse), 185 (on the limited power of deliberation), 197 (on the development of character). On the difference between the Chrysippean and Peripatetic definitions of 'what is in our power’ see R. W. Sharpies, , London 1983, 9-11.