ABSTRACT
Biography Plotinus is said to have been born in 205, and, according to some testimonies extraneous to the Life of Plotinus, it would have been at Lyco, identi ed with Lycopolis, a town of Upper Egypt corresponding to modern Assiout.1 We know nothing about his family, which need not, however, have been of Egyptian origin. Plotinus is a name of Latin formation, and Plotinus himself displays a lack of knowledge of the workings of hieroglyphic writing (see Enn. V.8[31].6). His family must have been a wealthy, cultivated Roman family, which had relations at the highest level. At the time, the o spring of wealthy families were handed over to a nursemaid right from their birth, and this was the case with Plotinus. He received a good education: he went to a schoolmaster since the age of seven, and at twenty-seven he was in Alexandria with Ammonius, who was to be his philosophy teacher. All indications are that if Plotinus joined the court of the emperor Gordian III in his expedition
against the Persians, it was because his family (probably high civil servants) had strong connections with the imperial court. At the age of twenty-seven, Plotinus launched into philosophy (Plot. 3.6-14) at Alexandria. If he was indeed born in 205, this “conversion” must have taken place in 232. From this time on, he remained with Ammonius for a total of eleven years, thus until 243. Practically nothing is known of this Ammonius and his school, which can be explained by their “Pythagorean” attitude to communication: Ammonius wrote nothing (Plot. 20.36), and his disciples had to keep his doctrines secret (Plot. 3.24-7). Under Ammonius, who had taught Longinus (Plot. 20.36-8), Plotinus had Herennius and Origen as his fellow disciples, and all three had made a pact not to reveal the doctrines that Ammonius had set forth to them (Plot. 3.24-30).
