Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

864 29. education in the roman empire
Christians, like John Philoponus, Elias and David. At any rate, relations
appear to have been less tense in Alexandria than in Athens, and the philosophical
school there was unaffected by Justinian’s purges in 529 and later.
A very large body of writings in Greek connected with philosophical
teaching survives from late antiquity, not all of which have been published.
They are mainly text-orientated rather than problem-orientated. Much
teaching took the form of commentaries on works of Plato or Aristotle, in
which the teacher discussed and explained the meaning of the text section
by section. These commentaries are partly addressed to beginners (e.g. the
Fifth Essay in Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Republic), and partly to
advanced students, who have already some acquaintance with philosophical
discourse, perhaps to students who hoped themselves to become professional
philosophers; an example is the Sixth Essay in the same commentary
of Proclus. As well as commentaries on earlier texts, Neoplatonist teachers
also wrote introductory works, prolegomena to philosophy, and elementary
treatises on logic, based on Aristotle’s logical works and Porphyry’s
Commentary on the Categories. These were addressed to a more general body of
students, most of whom may not have made any further study of philosophy.
All these works, advanced and elementary, are substantially the texts of
lectures given by teachers. Some are still divided into praxeis in surviving
manuscripts. The average length of a praxis is about 800–900 words. If each
praxis represents a lecture, then the lecture must have been delivered at dictation
speed. It is likely, though it can hardly be proved, that most of the
commentaries and similar works were delivered in this way, and that the texts
which we possess represent what some student had taken down from dictation,
rather than the master copy of the teacher’s lecture notes. At any rate,
their origin is to be sought in a teaching situation. The principal exceptions
are the commentaries on Aristotle by Simplicius. They were all composed
after he had ceased to teach in 529, and were intended from the first for
reading. This may explain their high philosophical quality and the richness of
their quotations from earlier philosophers, including the Presocratics. Were
it not for Simplicius and his enforced leisure, Empedocles and Parmenides
might be mere names for us. 28
For the late antique Neoplatonists, Plato was the philosopher par excellence,
and the study of a small selection of his works the culmination of philosophical
education. The study of Aristotle was seen as a kind of propaedeutic
to ‘the greater mysteries of Plato’. But as time went on, Aristotle came to
play a predominant role in their teaching, perhaps more in Alexandria than
in Athens. Syrianus and Proclus composed commentaries on dialogues of
Plato, and Damascius, the last head of the Academy in Athens, commented
on the Parmenides, the Philebus and the Timaeus. Simplicius, who had studied
28 On Simplicius’ life and works see Hadot (1990a).
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