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Introduction
by choice of terminology, his conceptualization of his new approach to
technical illustration as at the level of what the senses see, the surface
appearance, while suggesting that the approach found in his sources is at
a higher level of abstraction.
The validity of this interpretation is strengthened not only by the
nature of the illustrations in Vat. gr. 1605, but also by overt references in
the texts. The Anon. Byz. (3:9–14) cites Porphyry (ı polÁw §n sof¤&), on
Plotinus (ı m°gaw), that Plotinus was “concerned only with the concept
and the things. For he knew that reality is tripartite: words, concepts,
and things” (mÒnou toË noË ka‹ t«n pragmãtvn §xÒmenow. Trittå går tå
ˆnta ±p¤stato, n te fvna›w noÆmas¤ te ka‹ prãgmasi). The phrase “and
the things” (ka‹ t«n pragmãtvn) is not in any manuscript of the cited
passage of Porphyry’s Vita Plotini and has apparently been added here by
the Anon. Byz. to the citation. The view of reality as tripartite is found
in the sixth-century Neoplatonists Olympiodorus and Elias. 27 The sentence
also seemingly reflects what S. Gersch 28 has described in another
context as the extensive Neoplatonic controversy about the subject of
Aristotle’s Categories, 29 whether it classifies “words” (fvna¤), “things”
(prãgmata), or “concepts” (noÆmata), and which as Gersch notes was
commented on by Porphyry and is, among extant works, best documented
in Simplicius. The Anon. Byz. next argues (3:18–22) that one
who errs about “things,” his worst-case scenario, falls into Plato’s “double
ignorance,” êgnoia (“knowing that one knows and not understanding
that one is ignorant”). Thus the Anon. Byz. cites Plato and Neoplatonists
by name, deliberately supplements the text of the Vita Plotini to mark a
contrast between “concepts” and “things” (noÆmata and prãgmata), shows
a specific, if unsophisticated, 30 knowledge of Neoplatonic epistemology,
27 See Olymp. Phil., Proll. 18:25–27, and Elias Phil., In Cat.129:9–11.
28 From Iamblichus to Eriugena (Leiden, 1978), 96 n. 76.
29 On the centrality of Aristotles’ Categories and Porphyry’s commentary thereon
in Byzantine philosophical education, as well as the growing interest in Neoplatonism
in the late 9th and 10th centuries before the “renaissance” associated with M. Psellos,
see R. Browning, The Byzantine Empire, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C., 1992), 138, and
Lemerle, Byzantine Humanism, 251–55.
30 The Anon. Byz. appears to use two levels of reality, that of sense perception and
a level above, which he uses of both noÆmata and mathematical objects §n fantas¤&,
levels that are often distinguished by some Neoplatonists (see, e.g., the distinction
between fantas¤a and diãnoia in Syrianus below, note 31). Gersch, however, observes
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