Exegesis

Curriculum is central to the ancient classroom and it was during the reign of Tiberius, if we are to believe the work of Harold Tarrant (1993), that Platonism started to be transmitted in terms of a cycle of reading the dialogues. Here again we see how influential the imperial method of studying ancient philosophy has proved to be, since even today the standard Greek text of Plato’s dialogues (the Oxford Classical Text) is printed according to the tetralogic classificatory scheme of Thrasyllus. Hence in the Oxford edition nine tetralogies comprise the total of 36 dialogues that Thrasyllus considered genuinely Platonic.

For his detective work, Tarrant makes use of a passage in Diogenes Laertius (3.5661), which functions as an introduction to reading a specific collection of the dialogues (that of Thrasyllus). The details of the groupings are difficult to follow, involving as they do both Pythagorean number theory and a strange mechanism, whereby one member of the tetralogy functions as the ‘‘odd man out’’ (Tarrant 1993: 85-107, esp. 95). Thrasyllus grouped the dialogues under headings such as ‘‘ethical,’’ ‘‘logical,’’ and ‘‘maieutic,’’ evidently trying to shape and mold the intellect of the potential reader in a pattern that closely followed Plato’s own provisions for the Guardians of his Republic. Preparation of the student involves basic inculcation of ethics, study of mathematics, followed by the final three stages of a sacred transmission of wisdom: the highest vision of the Ideas, preparing others for the same visions, and likeness to god (Rep. 540a6-c2).

The idea that Plato’s dialogues are to be read in a fixed order is preserved in another introduction to the reading of Plato, the so-called Anonymous Prolegomena to the Study of Plato, written in the sixth century, but containing evidence for the curricula used in the third (Westerink 1962; cf. Tarrant 1998: 11-15). The Prolegomena list a considerably scaled-down reading program, tending to exclude the aporetic dialogues as incomplete and lacking sufficient doctrinal content. We know that Porphyry’s younger colleague, the Syrian-born lamblichus, promoted this curriculum, which correlated closely with the Neoplatonic system of ranking kinds of virtue. The Alcibiades (a dialogue hardly recognized as genuine among scholars today) came first in the schedule, since it promoted self-knowledge. It was followed by the Gorgias (constitutional virtues) and the Phaedo (purificatory virtues). The first decad of dialogues was crowned by the Philebus (study of the Good), a theological dialogue, and followed by the two ‘‘perfect’’ dialogues, the Timaeus (all reality via physics) and the Parmenides (all reality via metaphysics).

Two dialogues that had particular importance in the history of exegesis were Plato’s Timaeus and Parmenides. So important are these two dialogues for the development of imperial philosophy that one could realistically claim to find them at the center of virtually every philosophical or religious sect in Late antiquity. Unfortunately, there is no space here to discuss the import of these dialogues for the development of Gnostic or Hermetic traditions. Much less is there space to discuss the Jewish Alexandrian philosophy of Philo Judaeus, whose commentary on Genesis, On the Creation of the World (De opificio mundi) leans heavily on the account of creation found in the Timaeus. I can try instead only to give some brief indications of the importance of exegesis for the development of imperial philosophy as a whole.

Above I mentioned the lamblichean commentary on the Pythagorean saying, ‘‘avoid the highway.’’ The context for this passage speaks volumes for how Platonic philosophy was conceived in Apamea, the town in Syria that had long developed a reputation for esoteric studies. lamblichus finds an esoteric Plato connected to Pythagorean tradition, as we have seen in the passage already quoted. In fact, lamblichus, Numenius, and Moderatus thought that anything of value in Plato had already been taught by Pythagoras. Insofar as Plato was an original philosopher, he could only be approached as a renegade Pythagorean.

Recently, Michael Frede (1987) has again drawn our attention (after Dillon and other pioneers in the field) to a wonderfully amusing work by the Middle Platonist/ Pythagorean Numenius, a colleague of Julianus the Theurgist and predecessor of lamblichus. On the Divergence of the Academy from Plato is yet another history of the Academy, this time presented from a Pythagorean point of view:

Socrates asserted the existence of three gods, and philosophized about them in expressions suited to each single auditor... Plato, who followed Pythagoras, knew that Socrates had derived his teachings from no one else. But Plato did not [teach] in the ordinary way nor did he [reveal his Pythagorean doctrines] openly. (Numen. fr. 24 des Places, abbreviated)

Numenius says that Plato is actually a combination of Socrates and Pythagoras (fr. 24), which is why he confused his auditors and why the chain of Pythagorean transmission had to break down in the Academy. It is a little confusing as to which ‘‘three gods’’ Numenius refers to in the teaching of Socrates. Does he mean the Middle Platonist system of Being, Creator, and Creation, or some similar triad? This triadic theology already anticipates the work of Plotinus, generally considered the founder of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria.

Rather than presenting themselves as innovators or original thinkers, ancient philosophers tended to present themselves as exegetes of previous texts or doctrines, and the Neoplatonists were no exception (on Plotinus as exegete of Plato, see most recently Gatti 1996). Perhaps the most famous example of this traditional claim to orthodoxy is found in Ennead 5.1.8, Plotinus’ doxography concerning his doctrine of the three primary hypostases: ‘‘our present doctrines are an exegesis of those [ancient teachings], and so the writings of Plato himself provide evidence that our doctrines are of ancient origin’’ (Enn. 5.1.8.11-15). What exactly does Plotinus mean when he calls his doctrines an exegesis of Plato’s text, especially in the context of Ennead 5.1? To answer this question is to gain a theoretical foothold in the often abstract world of Neoplatonic metaphysics.

The Neoplatonists held that Plato’s Parmenides was a theological disquisition that charted not only the fundamental principles of reality but also the emergence of any possible form of being from one transcendent source. Plotinus launched the tradition. As we have just seen, in Ennead 5.1 he interprets the three initial hypotheses in the second half of Plato’s Parmenides as adumbrating his own metaphysical doctrine, according to which reality has different levels: the One, Intellect, and Soul. Plotinus refers the first hypothesis (‘‘if the one is,’’ Prm. 137c4) to the One beyond being, the transcendent source of all. The second hypothesis refers to a subsequent stage of reality, the level of Being/Intellect (the intelligible world that consists of intellects each contemplating all the other intellects, rather like a hall of mirrors). Transitory being (Greekgenesis or ‘‘becoming’’) originates in the third hypostasis, at the level of Soul, which is present both on a cosmic level and within individuals as the entryway into the life of the One. Plotinus left it for his followers to iron out the details of precisely how the entire dialogue mapped onto the universe as a whole. Proclus Diadochus, the fifth-century scholarch of the Platonist academy in Athens, left a catalogue of these attempts in Book 6 of his Commentary on the Parmenides (col. 1052.31-1064). There he set forth in astonishing detail the evolution of this exe-getical tradition, ending with the interpretation of his own teacher, Syrianus (Morrow and Dillon 1987: xxiv-xxxiv; Saffrey 1968).

Likewise the cosmological and theological debates of the imperial period survive in his Commentary on the Timaeus, written when Proclus was 28. This work documents centuries of an interpretive tradition that no doubt began as soon as the Timaeus was written. Proclus refers back to the lost commentaries of a number of predecessors, including Plotinus’ disciples, Amelius and Porphyry, the Academic Crantor, the Middle Platonist Moderatus, and the Neoplatonists lamblichus and Syrianus, the latter Proclus’ own teacher. The proemium of the Timaeus ( Ti. 27d6-29d5) forms the basis for the bulk of Proclus’ discussion. In Plato’s text, we find ‘Timaeus’ asking a timeless cosmological question: ‘‘Has the world always been in existence...or did it arise, taking its origin from some beginning?’’ (28b5-7). ‘‘Timaeus’’ answers his own question in the next line: ‘‘It came into existence,’’ he says (gegonen, 28b7). But this use of the word gegonen (‘‘came into existence,’’ ‘‘was generated’’) is actually problematic for the Platonists, since the orthodox Neoplatonist position held that the world was eternal, a point that they disputed hotly with their Christian contemporaries. Proclus’ predecessors grappled mightily with this exegetical problem. Proclus cites Alcinous/Albinus, some anonymous Platonists, and Porphyry and lamblichus, all on this particular Greek word.

In fact, Neoplatonists kept lists of exegetical solutions to those contradictions of Plato’s text which seemed to suggest that the world did begin from a certain point in time. An earlier, more strictly Platonic explanation of the text assumes that by ‘‘generated’’ Plato must mean composite. Or again, the world could be generated in the sense that it was dependent on a higher, external cause. Or, once more, one could distinguish between eternity and sempeternity (or indefinite duration as opposed to unchanging existence). Proclus concludes that the world is ‘‘in virtue of its body, wholly becoming, and yet Plato bestows on it another aspect, its quality of being not originated, since the world is also a god’’ (in Ti. 1.276; for a discussion of these lists, see Sorabji 1987; J. F. Phillips 1997: 173-96).