ABSTRACT
Middle Platonism is a name that, since Praechter, has been conveniently assigned to the period spanning the rst century bce and the beginning of the third century ce that witnessed the long transition (beginning with Antiochus of Ascalon) from the so-called sceptical phase of Plato’s Academy to a more systematic kind of Platonism represented by Plotinus and his successors (Praechter 1909: 524; Dillon 1996a; Sharples & Sorabji 2007; Bonazzi & Opsomer 2009; Männlein-Robert & Ferrari forthcoming). Despite its usefulness, the label also constitutes a challenge for scholars because it covers such a wide range of authors, methodological approaches and views. Even the chronological boundaries of this period are uid. For instance, the work of Porphyry, Plotinus’ pupil, harks back to a number of features typically associated with this earlier strand of Platonism (Zambon 2002), and that of Calcidius, a fourth-century Latin author of a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, adopts a perspective that re ects a similar mode and owes a special debt to Numenius. And although a very important anonymous commentary on Plato’s eaetetus can be dated to this period with some con dence, the date of the anonymous commentary on Plato’s Parmenides is much more contested, though it is o en associated with Porphyry (Bechtle 1999) or with late Neoplatonism (Linguiti 1995).
