This chapter considers the place of epic, above all Homer, in three overlapping areas of ancient Greek and Roman culture – education at all levels, elite literary culture, and the more specialised interpretations of scholars and philosophers. Homer was central to Greek education and Hunter considers the various types of evidence for this centrality – anecdotes, literary descriptions, papyri – and the reasons for the greater attention given to the Iliad over the Odyssey. He then illustrates the place of epic in the creative poetry and prose of the Hellenistic and imperial periods and finally samples the scholarly and philosophical approaches taken to Homer from Ptolemaic Alexandria to late antiquity. The chapter brings together a range of authors and thinkers, from Quintilian to Horace, Dio Chrysostom to Eustathius, and Porphyry’s remarkable allegorical treatment of Homer.

This chapter considers some aspects of the intertextual and intervisual dynamics of Euripides’ Cyclops with particular reference to the cave represented by the skēnē. The particular links of the Cyclops to Sophocles’ Philoctetes are used to explore a network of allusive possibilities in both plays going back to Homer’s ‘Cave of the Nymphs’ in Odyssey 13 and embracing the lost Philoctetes plays of Aeschylus and Euripides. The powerful mediating role of Homer’s cave is seen to be transferred to the caves of drama as the boundary between the seen and the unseen, between the past, present, and future, and as a strongly suggestive marker of the difference between epic narrative and dramatic representation. As the Homeric cave had separate entrances for mortals and gods, so did the Athenian stage. In exploring some of the richness of ‘intertextual allusion’ in fifth-century drama, the chapter also contributes to the appreciation of the differences in allusive practice between tragedy, comedy, and satyr play and of how poets acknowledged and exploited those differences.

An examination of the Anatolian sources of Greek theogonic traditions, syncretistic myths that took shape in admixed Ur-Aeolian–Luvian communities in the Late Bronze Age, and descendent Aeolian assemblages of mythic and cult elements that persist into the Iron Age. Essential to many of these traditions is the presence of honey, especially honey having psychotropic properties of a sort that occurs naturally along the southern and eastern shores of the Black Sea.

This chapter investigates the contours of prognosis itself. It begins by describing prognosis in the Neoplatonist Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis. It then “catches” Iamblichus in the act of inventing a new definition of prognosis in his response to Porphyry, shifting it away from discrete knowledge of particular events towards panoptic knowledge that emerges as an expression of divine substance. This chapter then shows how both the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and the Manichaeans were also theorizing prognosis along similar lines.

Divination was an important focus of philosophical dialogue and ‘pagan’-Christian religious debates in late antiquity.One of the most extensive late antique exchanges on the nature of divination and other religious practices is that evident in Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and Iamblichus’ Reply of the Master Abamon to the Letter of Porphyry to Anebo and the Solutions to the Questions It Contains. This chapter re-assesses the key features of this exchange, arguing for its status as an important philosophical dialogue which bears some resemblance to oracular modes of discourse. In order to support this argument, the broader status of questioning, interrogation, and inquiry in traditional Greek oracular practices and within Platonism is examined. The chapter analyses the ways in which Porphyry’s and Iamblichus’ exchange is framed within these philosophical and oracular contexts, demonstrating that this dialogue draws implicitly on Socrates’ interrogation of the Delphic oracle as presented in Plato’s Apology and on Plutarch’s Delphic Dialogues. The citation and discussion of Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo by the Christian Church Fathers Eusebius and Augustine will also be considered in relation to exploring pagan-Christian religious approaches and debates.

This chapter reframes the early Arian controversy in the context of the legacy of the Great Persecution and contemporary conflicts on visuality, divinity, and image. Arius’ controversial apophatic theology and his definition of the changeability of the Son reflect traditional anti-idolatry themes. These may be linked to values of lived religion in Alexandria, especially as illustrated by martyrs and ascetics in the uncertain new reign of imperial tolerance under Licinius. Placing Arius’ description of the Son into the context of Porphyry’s discussions on religious images, as cited by both Athanasius and Eusebius, suggests that he was defending broader cultural values and practices of monotheism against alleged materialism in Alexander’s definition of eternal generation and image.

Chapter 1 draws on Julian’s earliest surviving oration – the Letter to Themistius – to illustrate the interaction between Julian’s early rhetoric and the political discourse developed at the court of Constantius II. The first section challenges scholarly readings of the Letter as voicing a rejection of the late antique ideal of the sovereign as ensouled law. It argues that Julian’s primary intent in this text lies rather in a desire to advertise his exegetical skills at the expense of his interlocutor, the famous philosopher Themistius. The second sectio contextualises Julian’s ambition in the context of third- and fourth-century debates on the relationship between leadership and culture. It shows that this theme was invested with particular significance by Christian authors – such as Lactantius and Eusebius – who used it in claiming Christianity’s intellectual dominance over pagan thinking. This testifies to the existence of a shared perception that cultural authority legitimised political authority but also signals the ambitions of Christian intellectuals to negotiate Christianity’s cultural prestige in conversation with the Roman elites.

Chapter 10 studies Augustine’s arguments for and descriptions of the future resurrection of all human flesh. Augustine defends the credibility and intelligibility of the fleshly resurrection not only against those pagans who doubt or deny human immorality and eschatology of any kind, but also against those who assume or assert some alternative version of human immorality and eschatology, especially such Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophers as Plato and Porphyry. Whereas their pride prevents these opponents from accepting the bodily resurrection, Augustine insists upon the Christlike humility that opens both the mind to accept it and the flesh to experience it truly and happily. Augustine’s Catholic faith in the resurrection prompts him to revise the cosmological and anthropological paradigms of classical antiquity. Furthermore, he identifies the recipients of the future resurrection as both the entirety of our human race and the entirety of our human flesh, even down to its smallest particles.

Discussion of the only Hermetic practitioners still known to us by name: Zosimos of Panopolis, Theosebeia, and Iamblichus of Chalcis. They shared a strong emphasis on the embodiment of spirit, in the contexts of alchemy and theurgy.

Chapter 4 treats Augustine’s dialogue with the Platonists in books VIII–X of The City of God on philosophic or natural theology. Augustine emphasizes the excessive, false humility he considers Apuleius to have promoted, and the philosophic pride that may have prompted Porphyry’s harsh critique of Christianity, even as he lauds their achievements together with those of Socrates, Plato, and Plotinus.

The present chapter aims to show the connection between the ethical views of early Neoplatonist philosophers (Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus) and their metaphysical doctrines concerning the hierarchy of being. In the first section, it is argued that Plotinus focuses on virtues within the framework of a discussion about how the embodied soul can revert to the intelligible god (Enn. 1.2(19)). According to Plotinus the intelligible god has no virtues: there are paradigms of virtues in the Intellect, but these are not the virtues themselves. This is consistent with Plotinus’ view that different levels in the hierarchy of being are heterogeneous and do not share the same properties. Plotinus’ approach makes the status of political virtues problematic. Sections two and three focus on Porphyry and Iamblichus respectively. Their arrangements of the levels of virtues are connected to their accounts of the hierarchy of being, which are different both from that of Plotinus and from each other. Porphyry’s account in Sent. 32 is based on the idea that the cause pre-contains what depends on it (hence Porphyry’s emphasis on paradigmatic virtues). Iamblichus’ account seems to rely on his view that different levels in the hierarchy are connected via analogy.

In this chapter, I show how the contemplative ethics of Neoplatonism repurposes classical and Hellenistic ethics, advancing a new distinction between practical and theoretical wisdom. The classical and Hellenistic contrast between the bios praktikos and its attendant virtue phronesis, and the bios theoretikos together with its attendant virtue sophia, informs a half millennium or more of ethical thinking. In the discourse surrounding the competing value of these ethical registers, the practical life and the contemplative life, both ancient philosophers and their modern exegetes approach the theoretical life with trepidation, as if a certain amount of apology is owed for the practical limits of contemplative ethics. But such anxiety as to how the life of theoria can be valorised from the point of view of ordinary virtue is out of place when it comes to understanding the ethics of Plotinus and of Porphyry, at least in the Enneads and in the Sententiae. There is an important place for the practical life, if by practical we understand the development of the capacity for contemplation. As such, the practical side of this ethics is a form of mind training ,or even an ethics of concentration. Its complement, wisdom, theoretical virtue, or sophia, consists in insight, or knowledge of the nature of the real, together with realisation of the true self of the practitioner.

This paper focuses on Porphyry’s account of the just treatment of non-human animals in his treatise On Abstinence from Killing Animals. In responding to the Stoic argument that justice extends only to rational beings and leaves out non-rational animals, Porphyry introduces a number of considerations to show that animals are not entirely deprived of reason. It is usually assumed that Porphyry thereby commits himself to the view that animals are rational, thus breaking from the tradition of treating rationality as distinctive of humans. This assumption has been recently challenged by G. Fay Edwards, who argues that Porphyry neither believes that animals are rational nor that justice extends only to rational beings, but that he is merely trying to trap the Stoics into admitting that animals are rational and for this reason recipients of justice. I will argue that Porphyry ascribes rationality to animals, although he does not think that this is the reason for treating them justly. Central to my interpretation is Porphyry’s claim that rationality admits of degrees, which allows him to ascribe to animals a certain level of rationality without compromising his Platonic ideals.

The bitter division in Alexandria that led to the Council of Nicaea began as a theological dispute between Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, and a significant number of his clergy, including a presbyter Arius, and quickly overflowed into a feud among eastern bishops. “Arianism” was assumed by scholars and theologians to be a coherent set of heretical teachings embraced by a succession of followers. Historians have now identified sets of alliances rather than genealogies as well as the polemical construction of “Arianism” by Athanasius and Marcellus. This separation of Arius from later “Arianism,” together with the continuing lack of consensus with regard to theological or philosophical genealogies as the source of his thought, encourages another look at the particular social and religious context of the initial local controversy. The central issues of monotheism, apophatic theology, incarnation, and changeability in fact map over traditional Christian apologetic theology and the literary and ecclesiastical legacies of the Great Persecution. Arius’s insistence on divine monotheism and transcendence together with his defense of a “living image” may echo the contemporary arguments with Celsus and Porphyry in Eusebius and Athanasius as well as a refutation of polytheism.

Chapter 8 presents angelification in the Christian apocalypse Zostrianos. Zostrianos is the mysterious reputed author of the longest tractate in the Nag Hammadi library (NHC VIII,8.1). The first known reception of this text was by Christians, one-time friends of Plotinus who tried to fit into his philosophical circle at Rome. Zostrianos ascends into four extra-cosmic dimensions in which he experiences successively higher forms of angelification. The text of Zostrianos is designed to lead its readers into contemplative ascent prefaced by a life of purifying virtues. These virtues completely cut one off from the structures of civic society in an effort to generate an angelic subjectivity on earth.

Chapter 7 turns to daimonification in the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (205–270 CE). Porphyry presented Plotinus as already a daimon while on earth. This presentation partially depends on Plotinus’s own teachings: the one who becomes a daimon in heaven already was one on earth. This presentist focus was shaped by a reading of Empedocles and Plato – the daimon is one’s higher consciousness into which one lives. In his theory of daimonification, Plotinus emphasized ethical and contemplative practices. Purifying virtues disengaged the higher consciousness from the “conglomerate” of the body and the lower mind. When one’s higher mind is free from bodily images, one can live at the level of the daimon.

After introducing Porphyry’s commentary, this chapter asks how Porphyry saw himself at the time of writing. Was it as a ‘Neoplatonist’ and pupil of Plotinus as usually presumed? Does he write as a mathematician and scientist or as a philosopher? Assuming he sees harmonics as a natural interest of the philosopher, what sort of philosopher does he represent himself as? He could claim to be embarking upon a ‘Pythagorean’ task rather than a ‘Platonist’ one, though the two were hard to distinguish in this era. Either would involve the Timaeus. His persona may have a bearing on the work’s date. The long discussion on logos and sensation is examined for indications of Porphyry’s sources and allegiance. This epistemology is distinctive, and the most distinctive features are independent of Plotinus. The section’s eclecticism and polymathy make it hard to associate with a single school, like Thrasyllus, Porphyry’s only named authority here. Porphyry’s persona is in fact complex, as much Pythagorean as Platonist, with an early dating feasible, allowing for debts to Longinus and to the mathematician Demetrius rather than to Plotinus. A Pythagorean’s interest in harmonics is natural.

This chapter argues against a commonly held assumption that Porphyry is (one of) Calcidius' (main) source(s), by comparing the fragments of the former's commentary on the Timaeus to Calcidius' approach, and analyzing more closely views attributed to Porphyry on the human soul, the transmigration of human souls into animals, matter, and Form.