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CHAPTER I

Culture Wars

Who were these followers of “Adelphius and Aculinus” in the time of Plotinus? Porphyry says that they were Christian heretics, but also trained Platonists. Nothing is known about Adelphius or the authors of other texts (now lost) the heretics brandished, “Alexander the Libyan and Philocomus and Demostratus of Lydia.”¹ Aculinus appears to have enjoyed a reputation as a Platonist roughly contemporary with Plotinus.² Alexander the Libyan was known to Tertullian and Jerome as a Valentinian.³ These figures all bore normal names (i.e., epigraphically attested as used by everyday people), not pseudepigraphic, authoritative titles.⁴ They are Greco-Roman, showing that in this context, at least, the “heretics” identified themselves as Hellenes, who followed a Hellenic philosopher, Aculinus. Whence then the animosity of Porphyry and Plotinus? Porphyry’s remarks about these Christian Platonists and the works they read tell us that cult, culture, and authority were at stake. The followers of Aculinus and the rest are accused of having sailed from the safe harbor of Hellenism, “deceiving many others and themselves being deceived, actually alleging that Plato really had not penetrated to the depth of intelligible substance.”⁵ These thinkers began their careers as students of the Hellenic “ancient philosophy,” but came to betray it. He dubs them impostors, for they esteem the works of Oriental prophets over those of the Hellenes. Porphyry calls these works “apocalypses,” or “revelations,” a genre with which he was not unfamiliar, and lists the prophets who purportedly authored them—individuals with alien, foreign names like “Zoroaster and Zostrianos and Nicotheus and Allogenes and Messos.”⁶

What did it mean to challenge the authority of Plato with the invocation of alien authorities? Was “Oriental” wisdom prized or despised among ancient philosophers? What kind of people did one meet in these circles anyway? Where did they come from, and how did they feel about the ruling powers—the non-alien authorities of Hellenism and Rome? Answering these questions requires us to step back momentarily and ascertain the social environment in which the appeals to these foreign authorities took place. As we will see, analysis of contemporary Christian and Hellenic philosophical circles themselves sheds scarce light on the problem. Study groups in the second and third centuries were small, ad hoc affairs, about which it is difficult to generalize—except that their participants all came out of a deeply ideological rhetorical environment known today as the “Second Sophistic.”⁷ Modern research into this wider educational environment has blossomed, yielding important data for a “thick description” of members of a group like that of Plotinus—and the Christian Gnostics who belonged to it as well,⁸ thus providing the most extensive sociological information on the background of any known Gnostic group.⁹

PHILOSOPHY CLUBS

Gnostic literature itself says virtually nothing about the relationship of Gnosticism to contemporary philosophical circles, much less the culture informing them. References to philosophy in the Nag Hammadi corpus indicate that the Gnostics adopted stances about philosophical issues but excoriated contemporary philosophers, striving (like Tertullian), to distinguish themselves from contemporary Greek education. Such anti-philosophical polemic is striking.¹⁰ While recorded Gnostic groups did not proclaim adherence to any particular philosophical sect, the high philosophical import of their texts demonstrates that they must have spent quite a bit of time among the philosophical sects, particularly the Platonists.¹¹ Irenaeus referred to a school (διδασκαλεῖον) of Valentinus.¹²

Recalling the Judeo-Christian background of Gnosticism, one can turn to Jewish and Christian texts in hopes of finding something like a school in which Gnostics could learn philosophy. One looks in vain. Rabbinic sources are silent about the interaction between Jews and the Greek philosophical schools.¹³ We are left with Philo, whose account of the Therapeutae contrasts the sages’ allegorizing of scripture with the oratorical display of the sophists.¹⁴ Elsewhere, he refers to his own education as propaedeutic.¹⁵ Philo’s status as a Jewish Platonist is obviously not comparable to that of the Sethian traditions and thus provides no social context for them. His testimony indicates nothing more than small schools of exegesis of the Septuagint. Here he is very much in agreement with the greater movement in Hellenistic Judaism, as seen in the Letter of Aristeas, to defend the faith with the idiom of Greek philosophy without becoming a partisan of it.¹⁶

Christian literature offers more information. There certainly was a need for education in the instruction of catechumens, but anything resembling formal schooling in theology seems unknown prior to Pantanaeus’s “catechetical school” in Alexandria in the mid-second century CE.¹⁷ The school’s representatives, Clement and Origen, give us examples of exegetical education in their day (like Philo), but not of how or where they taught Platonism.¹⁸ Origen’s own homilies and commentaries never refer to Greek philosophical sources, and explicitly discourage instruction in rhetoric.¹⁹ Other sources give a different picture: Porphyry, not the most impartial of witnesses, says that the textbooks used in Origen of Alexandria’s school were essentially the same as those in Plotinus’s, which would mean Middle Platonic commentaries, chiefly those of Numenius, and a good dose of Stoics and Peripatetics.²⁰ Eusebius describes a wide curriculum ranging from the basic to advanced study, where Origen was so overwhelmed by classes that he assigned his student Heraclas to teach the “preliminaries.”²¹ Yet there is no conclusive evidence that the “school” was formal, was officially affiliated with the (proto)-orthodox community, or had a steady succession of teachers; rather, we see that a range of instruction, including both elementary education and introduction to philosophy, was available in a Christian context in the third century CE.²² However, this education was largely propaedeutic and in the service of ethical, hermeneutical, and apologetic concerns.²³ It is hard to imagine Parmenides commentaries or the Chaldean Oracles being read or composed there. If Plotinus’s opponents were educated in a Jewish or Christian milieu like that of Philo or the Alexandrian “catechetical school,” their texts do not show it. If we are to understand the background and significance of Plotinus’s Christian opponents and their claims to foreign authorities, we must look at the culture of the Greek schools themselves.²⁴

It is no comfort that our knowledge of the social makeup of philosophical circles in the Roman Empire is also limited.²⁵ However, the modus operandi of philosophical discourse at least appears to be clear: Platonists of the first two centuries CE seem to have preferred a medium akin to the modern reading group or philosophy club. The character of each group seems to have been dependent on that of each particular teacher, as well as attendant circumstances.²⁶ For instance, Ammonius taught at what looked like his home.²⁷ (The same has been suggested of Philo, Justin Martyr, and Origen.)²⁸ Plutarch organized a group (σχολή) in which he lectured and texts were read and debated.²⁹ Like Apuleius of Madaura,³⁰ Aulus Gellius attended a formal but improvised classroom—his instructor, Calvenus Taurus Gellius, would have students over for dinner and even supervise outings.³¹ Similarly, Iamblichus had his own school in Syria, where he set up a curriculum, lectured, and supervised journeys, in addition to taking his students to local festivals.³² Very little is known of Porphyry’s school, if he founded one at all.³³ If it existed, it could have been funded, like Plotinus’s school, by a wealthy matron.³⁴

Plotinus’s career in Rome may give us a good idea of how philosophers set up shop—it was ad hoc.³⁵ When he arrived in Italy, he held his salons in the homes of his wealthy patrons.³⁶ Everybody there was considered to be comrades, from the serious students, like Amelius, to the wealthy patrons dropping in and out, like Marcellus Orontius or even the emperor himself.³⁷ In their seminars, they debated and conducted exegesis on difficult passages in his favorite treatises.³⁸ Fellow teachers engaged the group by epistle and the occasional visit.³⁹

We see, then, that the philosophical reading groups were private, even if ostensibly open to anybody, which usually amounted to the philosophers’ patron(s), advanced students, and young nobles getting their feet wet or completing their educations.⁴⁰ This distinction was fluid: a patron or noble could abandon politics for philosophy.⁴¹ The bulk of serious students are said to have started their careers by studying in several groups before settling on a particular mentor within a particular school (αἵρεσις).⁴² The most earnest students would formally declare their devotion to the study of philosophy.⁴³ Once ensconced within the school atmosphere, the students formed extremely close, even devotional, relationships with their masters.⁴⁴ While these groups were clearly small (perhaps up to a dozen people at a time, allowing for a revolving door of veterans and new arrivals) and ad hoc, they still followed the schedule of the ancient school year.⁴⁵ Relatively formal (if equally small) rival institutes of advanced study do not appear in Athens and Alexandria until the later fourth century CE.⁴⁶

This brief survey of the evidence underscores how important Porphyry’s evidence is among the ancient philosophical sources but tells us little about what the Gnostics known to Plotinus were like. As scholars like Arthur Darby Nock have suggested, sophistic literature offers us great evidence for fleshing out a picture of the social context of ancient philosophy.⁴⁷ The logic of the move is simple: philosophers (or at least Platonists) were, presumably, educated individuals; education in the Roman world began with grammar school and led to rhetoric; rhetoric was taught by sophists.⁴⁸ Philosophers, then, came from similar backgrounds to those of sophists and spent a good deal of their formative years, if not their entire lives, around them. Indeed, many philosophers began as professional rhetoricians before moving to philosophy.⁴⁹ An analysis of the culture motivating rhetorical education in the Roman Empire might answer our questions about Plotinus’s Gnostic opponents and their interest in “foreign” authorities. Even Gnostics had to go to school, especially if they wanted to join the philosophy club.

GOING TO SCHOOL

Philostratus (early to mid-third century CE) understood himself to be part of a revival of the art of rhetoric traced back to the legacy of the classical sophist Aeschines, and distinguished from its more ancient counterpart today by the name “Second Sophistic.”⁵⁰ The term describes the rhetorical culture spanning the years 50–250 CE, with roots in the mid-first century and ebbing away in the Rome of Plotinus and the rhetor Longinus.⁵¹ This culture was no mere linguistic development in the history of rhetoric but a social movement that produced a concrete ideology.⁵² This culture was shared with contemporary philosophers, through their common experience in basic schooling, rhetorical training, and religious life—and it strongly contrasts with Gnostic thought.

The close association of sophism and philosophy is indicated foremost by the terminology used by the ancients themselves.⁵³ Philostratus says he is writing about both sophists and philosophers, and that his circle, whose matron was “the philosophical Julia,” included sophists, philosophers, and astrologers (γεωμετρίαι) in the 190s CE.⁵⁴While many intellectuals themselves sharply distinguished sophists and philosophers (“the lady doth protest too much”),⁵⁵ the professions were also occasionally confused.⁵⁶ Such confusion is not surprising, given that philosophical and sophistic texts often circulated in the same schools. Philosophy was part of the sophistic education, if only as one of many branches of study; the Platonic corpus itself loomed large in rhetorical study.⁵⁷ Moreover, sophists were interested in all the various philosophical sects, at times eschewing adherence to any particular one.⁵⁸ Finally, sophists and philosophers were bound in the legal sphere, occasionally sharing the privilege of exemption from taxation.⁵⁹ Such comparable civic status was to be expected, given the similarity of their civic roles.

These roles were deeply politicized. Some have emphasized that Greek philosophers under the empire were quietists, bystanders to the civic turmoil of their age. The “crises” of the imperial period, especially the third century,⁶⁰ have been repeatedly invoked in explaining not only the origins of Gnostic “anti-cosmism”⁶¹ but the pronounced turn to mysticism that seems to occur with Plotinus.⁶² This approach is unsound for several reasons. The concept of a general political crisis is far too general as a singular, blanket explanation for particular anecdotes (such as Aristides’ hypochondria). Gnosticism, supposedly a symptom of decline, is traceable to that “happiest of reigns,” Hadrian.⁶³ Finally, while the mid-third century CE did see a great deal of political instability, it did not necessarily affect the empire’s entire population, for whom localized breakdowns of military power were more tangible than political machinations in Rome.⁶⁴ Yet even without recourse to the clichés of dualism and anxiety, some persist in dissociating the period’s philosophy from social life and politics, and the Gnostic literature is no exception.⁶⁵

The concerns of contemporary politics were never far from the Platonists, for three reasons. First, basic training in rhetoric, a sine qua non of philosophical education, necessarily entailed the discussion and internalization of political topics. Second, the literature of the Second Sophistic reveals a clear awareness of and engagement with Roman politics; the classmates of the philosophers—and the Gnostics—were hardly quietists. Third, the socioeconomic background of the sophists as well as the philosophers was one of wealth and, often, political connections. As we will see, the deeply political background of philosophy in the second and third centuries CE is the proper frame for much of Plotinus’s anti-Gnostic rhetoric.

In antiquity, the rhetorical arts—and the education system which rested on them—were developed for political purposes.⁶⁶ The study of basic rhetorical exercises (progymnasmata) involved various exercises designed to prepare the student for advanced work in mock-deliberative and legal speech and eventually the use of oratory in public life.⁶⁷ This training was steeped in the classical texts of Greek history and epic poetry. Stock themes rehearsed for use in oratory included invented narratives (πλάσματα) and Greek political history, but especially Homer, the unifying reference for exercises ranging from learning the alphabet to composing a prose declamation.⁶⁸ In other words, much like an undergraduate humanities course today, students would have probably read about Achilleus and Peleus before getting to Plato, much less Parmenides commentaries. The education shared by philosophers and sophists readied them for public life and enabled them to speak the universal language of Hellenism.

Deep involvement in the civic sphere did not necessarily entail fondness of the Romans. Generally, the sophistic texts do not reject Roman rule, which seems to be tolerated as a fact of life.⁶⁹ Plutarch writes approvingly of it, and disparagingly of Greece’s infighting and decline.⁷⁰ The sophist Aelius Aristides, too, contrasts the Hellenic and Roman attempts at self-rule.⁷¹ Philosopher and master rhetorician Dio Chrysostom insists that the present age is not evil and never speaks out against the greater regime.⁷² The same is true of the historian Pausanias, and the famous doctor Galen.⁷³ Engagement with Roman politics was a marked improvement for the relationship between Greek thinkers and autocrats—the emperors Vespasian and Domitian appear to have despised philosophers, and “talking back” to a ruler is a cliché in Greek philosophy.⁷⁴ The Romans were hardly considered to be Hellenes themselves; rather, they are like barbarians who occasionally imbibe the draught of Hellenic education (παιδεία).⁷⁵ This is particularly evident in Plutarch’s Lives, where his Roman subjects rarely behave like sophisticates, and Political Advice, where Roman rule is tolerated only on the grounds of Greece’s own factionalism.⁷⁶ Yet even if the Romans themselves were considered uncultured, Rome was the best place to acquire—and demonstrate—one’s education.⁷⁷

The ambivalent attitude of Hellenophone intellectuals toward the government is in part explained by their privileged socioeconomic backgrounds and high standing in their communities. The sophists came from wealthy and often politically influential families.⁷⁸ They had friends in high places, commonly serving as intermediaries between their towns and the emperor himself.⁷⁹ Some sophists, like Polemo and Herodes, were personally beloved by the emperors.⁸⁰ Thanks to the crowds they could draw, crowds that included emperors, towns invited sophists to open shop in hope of stimulating the local economy.⁸¹ There even was a tertiary pilgrimage effect whereby great sophists traveled to meet other great sophists, of course with their entourage in tow.⁸² Aside from simply teaching and speaking,⁸³ sophists built monuments,⁸⁴ alleviated local factional politics,⁸⁵ officiated over civic cults and festivals,⁸⁶ served as administrators and military leaders,⁸⁷ and were general public benefactors.⁸⁸

This evidence coheres well with what we know of the social environment of the Platonists from the first to third centuries CE, which was also elite, public, and male.⁸⁹ Our information about the lives of the Middle Platonists is admittedly scarce, but Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, and Apuleius all assume that the philosopher has the ways and means to be active in public life, and expect him to do so.⁹⁰ Inscriptional evidence also testifies to the stature of philosophers in the public sphere.⁹¹ The word “philosopher” (φιλόσοφος) is also used in honorary inscriptions to designate morality and wisdom in public life; philosophy was thus considered an appropriate reference for a public life well lived.⁹²

The Neoplatonists mingled with politicians constantly and extolled political activity.⁹³ Plotinus’s benefactrix has already been mentioned; his circle included senators and politicians.⁹⁴ Although he discouraged some of his students from pursuing politics further, he also intervened in political disputes, joined the entourage of Emperor Gordian, befriended Emperor Gallienus, and attempted to found a Platonic city-state (“Platonopolis”).⁹⁵ Porphyry came from a wealthy, noble Syrian family—his name at Tyre was “Malkhus” (from the Phoenician/Punic for “king”), so Amelius nicknamed him “Basileus,” while Longinus dubbed him “Porphyrios” (“royal purple”).⁹⁶ While he, Plotinus, and Iamblichus certainly subordinated the political virtues to the contemplative, they nonetheless counted them as virtues, early but necessary steps for the embodied soul on the road to contemplation, not to be disparaged.⁹⁷ Similarly, Porphyry has only kind words for one of Plotinus’s politically ambitious students, Castricius Firmus.⁹⁸ Iamblichus too came from a royal family in Syria (and was named accordingly), whither he returned after completing his study in the West.⁹⁹ His school’s legacy was carried on by his patron, Sopater, who met an unfortunate end in court intrigue.¹⁰⁰ The Athenian academy of Proclus was funded by wealthy benefactors whose families remained involved with the school across generations.¹⁰¹ Proclus himself participated in local politics.¹⁰² Even in the dark, final days of the school, Damascius too advocated the philosophers’ political activism.¹⁰³

One can also observe significant differences between the public lives of sophists and philosophers. For instance, in the confines of imperial quarters, it was the duty of the sophist to flatter, as distinct from philosophical frankness (παρρησία).¹⁰⁴ Although philosophers served in the public sphere, the bulk of their “performances”—lectures, debates, writing, philosophizing—was generally in-house, although public debates did happen.¹⁰⁵ Rivalry between sophists was normal, at times puerile, and occasionally applauded and enjoyed by high society, and even the participants.¹⁰⁶ Meanwhile, philosophers had rivalries, but this never bled over into humiliation or, significantly, authoritarianism. Such differences notwithstanding, most philosophers tended to be influential citizens, pundits, public intellectuals, or beneficiaries of wealth.¹⁰⁷ At the same time, in all of these spheres, sophists, philosophers, and their coteries saw themselves working not on behalf of the Romans but the Greeks.

GOING TO SACRIFICE

The noun Ἑλληνισμός—an “imitator of the Greeks, Greek-ifier”—is first used in 2 Maccabees 4:13, but in the Second Sophistic the term becomes associated with a kind of pan-Hellenism, articulated under the aegis of παιδεία (“education,” or “culture”).¹⁰⁸ Moreover, it came to indicate adherence to the civic cults associated with the Greek and Roman pantheon, as in the literature of the emperor Julian the Apostate (mid-fourth century CE).¹⁰⁹ Thus the term “Hellene” is preferable to “pagan” to describe the Hellenophone intellectuals of late antiquity.¹¹⁰ These Hellenes we see portrayed in the literature of the Second Sophistic associated popular Greek religion and civic cult, a cultic conservatism that is also shared with the Neoplatonists. Like the political activism that philosophers took for granted, this cultic conservatism was also a crucial issue for Plotinus in his battle with the Gnostics.

The urban centers of the Second Sophistic were Athens, Smyrna, and Ephesus, yet for Philostratus, Hellas no longer had a strictly geographical sense but instead had a cultural one.¹¹¹ To the subject of his biography of Apollonius of Tyana (first century CE), he gives the line, “a wise man finds Hellas everywhere and a sage will not regard or consider any place to be a desert or barbarous.”¹¹² His hometown is “a Greek city nestled among the Cappadocians,” and Gadeira (modern Cadiz) is praised as a highly religious and “Hellenic” place.¹¹³ According to Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists, Timocrates came “from the Pontus and his birthplace was Heraclea, whose citizens admire Greek culture.”¹¹⁴ Herodes addresses his students and admirers simply as “Hellenes.”¹¹⁵ Hadrian (the sophist) is “escorted by those who loved Hellenic culture, from all parts of the world.”¹¹⁶ The extrageographical and ethnic definition of Hellas is paralleled by Dio Chrysostom’s account of the Borysthenians, who worship Achilles, wear beards, and are so “truly Greek in character” that a whole town turns out to meet the visiting sophist.¹¹⁷

Reflecting the period’s turn toward Atticism, the Greek language itself takes on an almost magical quality in Philostratus’s books.¹¹⁸ Favorinus’s Greek was so good that “even those in the audience who did not understand the Greek language shared in the pleasure of his voice; for he fascinated even them by the tones of his voice, his expressive glance and the rhythm of his speech.”¹¹⁹ Apollonius is portrayed as having spoken perfect Attic despite his Cappadocian rearing, speaking nothing else when traveling—which is easy, because everyone he meets who knows something of “philosophy” happens to speak Greek too.¹²⁰

Thus Hellenism in the Antonine and Severan periods was defined by possession of the lore of Hellas, and, for those not born with Apollonius’s supernatural mastery of the Pythagorean tradition, this was acquired through education. Yet the term παιδεία itself also came to mean “elite Greek culture” as much as simply “education.”¹²¹ In second-century legal texts, the educated (πεπαιδευμένοι) encompass grammarians, rhetors, and doctors, that is, the class of learned elites.¹²² The literature of the period also associates elite, culturally Hellenic identity with the status provided by education: Dio Chrysostom often contrasts common education with philosophy, the true παιδεία, emphasizing its practical (i.e., political) side.¹²³ The uniquely Hellenic background of παιδεία is paramount for Plutarch even at the lowest stages of education, as it is for Lucian.¹²⁴ Galen, too, valorizes education when describing how he earned fame among the elite at Rome.¹²⁵

The Hellenic valorization of παιδεία was publicly articulated not just in the sphere of rhetorical demonstration but in civic ritual as well, and the two often coincided, as at festivals.¹²⁶ The cultic sense of Hellenism is embodied in Philostratus’s portrayal of Apollonius, who spends time making sure that local priests are running the local cults in a sufficiently Hellenic fashion,¹²⁷ rebuking the sacrifices of Babylon, discovering Indian sages who worship Greek gods, and correcting the Egyptian rites.¹²⁸ He is typical of the flowering of participation in traditional Greek religion and popular civic cult that forms the ritual background of the Second Sophistic. Plutarch served as a priest of Delphi, leading a public ritual life that should not be subsumed under his critiques of superstition.¹²⁹ The same Delphic Apollo exhorted Dio Chrysostom to launch his peregrinations and thus his career as a Cynic.¹³⁰ Like Plutarch, Lucian praised local civic cults, despite reservations about superstition.¹³¹ Aelius Aristides devoted much of his life and writing to the service of Asclepius, as related in his Sacred Tales. The historian Cassius Dio practiced incubation and pilgrimage to temples across Asia and Greece, both in dreams and waking life.¹³²

This background of Pan-Hellenic culture in the spheres of education and religion is crucial for the social context of the development of Platonism, including its Gnostic variety. The philosophers continued to enshrine παιδεία, but internalized it as cultivation of the soul. Possession of it defines the virtuous life, as in sophistic literature: Porphyry quips that “lack of education (ἀπαιδευσία) is the mother of all evils.”¹³³ In the fourth century CE, Sallustius would assert that “in the educated (πεπαιδευμένος) all virtues may be seen, while among the uneducated (ἀπαίδευτος) one is brave and unjust.”¹³⁴ At the same time, the Neoplatonists absorbed culture into the greater philosophical enterprise, despite remaining informed by it. Plutarch says that it is “necessary to make philosophy the center of education.”¹³⁵ Two centuries later, in Plotinus’s thought, παιδεία is much more: the positive development of the soul itself.¹³⁶ No wonder, then, that he chides the Gnostics for speaking in a way that does not befit the πεπαιδευμένος.¹³⁷ In his Protrepticus, Iamblichus likens the acquisition of παιδεία to the blind man finding eyes to see.¹³⁸

Cultic conservatism was also shared by sophists and Platonists.¹³⁹ Adherence to the traditional cult is central to the proper (and legal) spiritual life as portrayed by Celsus (second century CE), writing an anti-Christian polemic.¹⁴⁰ Plotinus rejects the efficacy of astrology, but not magic per se, and never discourages participation in civic religious life.¹⁴¹ Porphyry’s On Abstinence, meanwhile, esteems vegetarianism and so attacks sacrificial institutions, a position difficult to harmonize with the rest of his corpus.¹⁴² Yet even when he is dismissive of a superstitious approach to cult,¹⁴³ he takes care to add that he does not oppose civic law regarding sacrifice, and sometimes discusses ritual with enthusiasm:¹⁴⁴

For this is the principal fruit of piety: to honor the divine in the traditional (i.e. Hellenic) ways (τιμᾶν τὸ θεῖον κατά τὰ πὰτρια), not because (God) needs it, but because He summons us by this venerable and blessed dignity to worship him. God’s altars, if they are consecrated, do not harm us; if they are neglected, they do not help us.… It is not by doing certain things or forming certain opinions about God that we worship Him properly. Tears and supplications do not move God; “sacrifices do not honor God; numerous votive offerings do not adorn God. Rather Intellect filled with God, firmly established, is united to God, for like must gravitate to like.” … But as for yourself, as has already been said, “let the intellect within you be a temple of God.”¹⁴⁵

Iamblichus proclaimed ritual the crown jewel of the philosophical life; one of his ancient admirers addressed him in a letter as “savior of the whole Hellenic world,” and Julian the Apostate based the theological content of his religious reforms on the philosopher’s work.¹⁴⁶ Iamblichus would probably not have minded, for he also supported the contemporary Hellenic cult.¹⁴⁷ He is pictured by Eunapius as performing miracles for his disciples on the way home from a civic festival, his participation in which would be consonant with his defense of animal sacrifice in the cultic treatise De mysteriis.¹⁴⁸ In the early fifth century, Macrobius insisted that the gods preferred to be worshipped by means of traditional, civic cultic imagery, despite its disparity with their transcendent essence.¹⁴⁹ As for Proclus, the title of his treatise on theurgic practice says it all: On the Hieratic Art of the Hellenes (περὶ τῆς καθ’Ἕλληνας ἱερατικῆς τέχνης).

Even in the second century, then, a social group of philosophers, rhetoricians, and teachers began to identify themselves as “Hellenes,” not by birth but by education, with παιδεία as their byword. To be sure, more specific self-identifications were negotiated by more specific markers; moreover, alignment with Hellenism was compatible with the layering of other local and ethnic identities, and being a Hellene meant different things in different parts of the empire.¹⁵⁰ What all these accounts have in common, however, is a manufactured heritage of Hellenic παιδεία with the shared ritual background of traditional Greek religion and civic cult. This is the heritage prized by Plotinus and Porphyry, and which their Christian Gnostic interlocutors challenged. However, a more specific heritage was also prized in the circles of philosophers—the pedigree of classical Greek philosophy. Plotinus’s group went so far as to celebrate the birthdays of Plato and Socrates.¹⁵¹ Philosophers expressed their Hellenic heritage with the tone and idiom of the Second Sophistic, but identified it foremost with the Platonic “golden chain” reaching back to Plato and Pythagoras, and, through them, to the Orient of hoary antiquity.

BARBARIAN WISDOM, ALIEN WISDOM

The rise of pan-Hellenic nationalism in educated circles coincides—paradoxically, it seems at first—with a surge of interest in the East as a source of primordial wisdom.¹⁵² Thanks in part to its nod to Judaism and its reception among the church fathers,¹⁵³ Numenius’s fragment from his dialogue On the Good remains the most memorable example: “With respect to this, the one speaking and providing an interpretation about something will go beyond the Platonic tradition and fuse it (ἀναχωρήσασθαι καὶ συνδήσασθαι) with the sayings of Pythagoras. Then, he must appeal to the justifiably famous nations, addressing their rituals, doctrines, and accomplishments, insofar as Brahmins, Jews, Magi, and Egyptians are in accord with one another, but only to the extent that they agree with Plato (συντελουμένας Πλάτωνι ὁμολογουμένως ὁπόσας Βραχμᾶνες καὶ Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ Μάγοι καὶ Αἰγύπτιοι διέθεντο).”¹⁵⁴ This passage has often been invoked in the context of Gnosticism, a movement that seems to meld some kind of Greek philosophical learning with Oriental revelation (to say nothing of dualism). The relevance of this problem for the social context of the Platonizing Sethian literature is obvious: the Sethian apocalypses bear the names of ancient Eastern sages. They discuss Greek metaphysics, but cite no Greeks, notably omitting Plato, to whom their debt is clear. Modern interpreters have therefore explained the Gnostic reliance on extra-Platonic sources, as reported in Neoplatonic testimonia, with recourse to the Antonine-Severan philosophical appeal to alien wisdom made famous here by Numenius.¹⁵⁵ Conversely, some argue that Numenius himself was in the thrall of “la gnose orientale.”¹⁵⁶

Alien wisdom was an issue, but not as formulated by Numenius. First, in much of the literature of the Second Sophistic and second-to-fourth-century Platonism, alien (or barbarian) wisdom is invoked in order to be subjugated by Hellenic παιδεία.¹⁵⁷ Second, the period also witnesses the rise of what I will refer to as “auto-Orientalizing” texts that contain Platonic teaching under the guise of an Eastern provenance. Together with a more general fetishization of Eastern wisdom that we find in Plato and Plutarch, we thus glimpse a diversity of “Platonic Orientalisms,” which evoke, distance, and assimilate a manufactured image of Eastern learning in order to stake out a position on the Hellenic identity that was so important for the context of philosophizing in the Roman Empire.

This turn to the East as a source of wisdom in Greek philosophy is commonly chalked up by historians of Roman religion to the infusion of new Oriental cults (of Serapis, Isis, Attis, and Cybele, etc.) into Roman religion;¹⁵⁸ the result, a quasi-philosophical cultic “syncretism.”¹⁵⁹ However, while these cults certainly were of great interest to those in educated circles and provided new points of reference in religious life, the Oriental cults are a red herring in the search for the significance of alien wisdom.¹⁶⁰ Rather, the reach to the Eastern civilizations as a source of wisdom is as old as Greek literature itself. By the first century CE, the idea of “the ancients” became bound to the idea that the Stoic λόγος (rational principle), and all the knowledge concomitant with it, is to some extent incarnate in all things.¹⁶¹ Plutarch fully articulated this view (regarding divine providence): “Wherefore this very ancient opinion (παμπάλαιος) comes down from writers on religion and from lawgivers to poets and philosophers; it can be traced to no source, but it carried a strong and almost indelible conviction, and is in circulation in many places among barbarians and Greeks alike, not only in story and tradition, but also in rites and sacrifices.”¹⁶² Beyond the ethnographer’s natural interest in the exotic, these texts display an appreciation for the pedigree of Eastern civilizations; by virtue of their age, they must know something.¹⁶³ Moreover, this single knowledge is consonant with that of the Greeks but expressed in variable myths and rites, humanity’s understanding of which is fading.¹⁶⁴

With the turn of the second century, however, one begins to glimpse the subordination of this discourse about alien wisdom to the primacy of Plato and Pythagoras.¹⁶⁵ At first glance, this subordination is masked by interest in discussing barbarian wisdom. The trope of scholarly pilgrimages to the Orient to obtain scientific and ritual knowledge is a fixture of the period’s literature. Diogenes Laertius relates that Thales spent time in Egypt with the priests and measured the pyramids.¹⁶⁶ Pythagoras reportedly studied with “Zaratas” (Zoroaster),¹⁶⁷ explored Egypt,¹⁶⁸ and is assigned many travels by Apuleius.¹⁶⁹ Porphyry has him study with the Phoenicians and Hebrews.¹⁷⁰ Plato himself reportedly traveled to Egypt and wished to visit Persia and India.¹⁷¹ In Philostratus, the Theban Dionysius travels to India, and Protagoras is said to have studied with the Persian magi during Xerxes’ invasion of Greece.¹⁷² A great deal of the Life of Apollonius is occupied with philosophical pilgrimages to Babylon, India, and Egypt.¹⁷³ Finally, Plotinus, too, tried to go to India—the only evidence of his interest in learning east of Egypt, hardly indicative of a debt to Indian thought.¹⁷⁴

The study-sabbatical abroad was recommended by Hellenists in the early empire for two reasons.¹⁷⁵ One is the presumption, based on Posidonius’s logos theology, that there exists a universal religion whose origin is prior to all contemporary civilization and whose evidence can be found among other, elder cultures.¹⁷⁶ For Dio Chrysostom, as for Plutarch, God’s existence and benign rule is “a conception of him common to the whole human race, to the Greeks and to the barbarians alike, a conception that is inevitable and innate in every creature endowed with reason.”¹⁷⁷ Lucian agrees that worship of the gods is universal, but adds that it originated among the Egyptians.¹⁷⁸ We see a somewhat different principle, however, in Pseudo-Apollonius and Philostratus. Hellenism is necessarily cosmopolitan and therefore often found outside the geographical confines of Hellas itself, sometimes in a purer state.¹⁷⁹ The question, then, is whether the universal religion is identified with Hellenism (as in Philostratus) or beyond it (with Plutarch et al.)

At the same time, second-century CE Greek philosophical literature remains deeply ambivalent about its relationship with Eastern teaching. In his Borysthentica, Dio Chrysostom details a myth composed by Zoroaster and preserved by the Magi both in song and “secret rites” (ἐν ἀπορρήτοις τελεταῖς), but also distances himself from the tale, on ethnic grounds;¹⁸⁰ presumably, he relates the story to tantalize the barbarian (yet Hellenophile) Borysthenians.¹⁸¹ Meanwhile, Diogenes Laertius introduces his doxography by rejecting barbarian claims to archaic wisdom, even asserting that the first civilization was Greek civilization.¹⁸² While the Chaldeans, druids, Indians, and Persians were all innovators in astronomy, allegory, and ritual worship, he says, the first to actually worship the gods were primordial Greek ancestors, Musaeus and Linius. Philosophy began with Anaximander and Pythagoras; “thus it was from the Greeks that philosophy took its rise; its very name refused to be translated into barbarian speech.”¹⁸³

Similar ambivalence is found in second-century Platonists—even Numenius, who as quoted above (fragment 1a) asserts that the wisdom of the barbarian nations is consonant with that of the Greeks.¹⁸⁴ Some have asked if he particularly esteemed Judaism, or was even a Jew;¹⁸⁵ after all, Numenius knew some Hebrew scripture, and probably read Philo.¹⁸⁶ Yet only a superficial knowledge of Judaism is evident here. His supposed quotation of Ex 3:14—that God is ὁ μέν γε ὤν (“he who is”)—has been widely taken as evidence of deep interest in Judaism, but is textually problematic.¹⁸⁷ However, Numenius elsewhere identifies Moses with “Musaeus,” Orpheus’s heir and founder of the Greek religion itself.¹⁸⁸ Fragment 1a (quoted at the beginning of this section), meanwhile, emphasizes that the nations should only be consulted after the Platonists and Pythagoreans, and then only insofar as they agree with Plato.¹⁸⁹ Most of Numenius’s extant fragments explicitly cite Hellenic authorities: Homer, Hesiod, the Orphic texts, Pherecydes, Parmenides, and the Eleusinian mysteries, and it is by the standard of these authorities that he judges other sources of wisdom.¹⁹⁰

Celsus, too, invokes “an ancient doctrine which has existed from the beginning” among the barbarians but not the Jews.¹⁹¹ Yet Celsus does not explicitly set the philosophy of the Greeks over that of the alien nations, instead excluding Christianity and Judaism from “barbarian philosophy.” It is worth noting, however, that Celsus compares Christian faith to the credulity of charlatans from the Orient, and that when he refers to “ancient traditions” (πάλαι δεδογμένα) as the foundation of his teaching, he provides a summary of Plato.¹⁹²

A similar range of views are in third-century sophistic and Platonic texts. Philostratus leaves open the possibility that Greeks can learn from other peoples, but never is Greek wisdom upstaged or altered, while the scope of interests of comparison remains firmly in the realm of Hellenic thought.¹⁹³ Pythagoras and the Egyptians obtained the doctrine of the transmigration of souls from India;¹⁹⁴ Egypt, India, and Pythagoras are all in agreement in the polemic against blood sacrifice.¹⁹⁵ Notably, Palestine is mentioned only to be disparaged.¹⁹⁶ Philostratus also makes explicitly negative references to barbarian wise men, mentioning Egyptian and Chaldean frauds who took advantage of the need for religious comfort after earthquakes west of the Hellespont.¹⁹⁷ With his subject charged with being a sorcerer (μάγος) on account of the pilgrimages to Persian and Egyptian magi (μάγοι), Philostratus claims, as did Diogenes Laertius, that Empedocles, Pythagoras, and Plato all learned from the Orientals without becoming μάγοι themselves.¹⁹⁸

Porphyry’s position on the Greek tradition in the context of ancient wisdom (παλαιά σοφία) is complex and at times appears contradictory. Some scholars focus on his derogatory comments about the Greeks as a relatively young and ineffectual culture in the face of ancient wisdom.¹⁹⁹ In On the Cave of the Nymphs, he traces the use of caves as the first temples back to the consecration of Zoroaster, recalls Numenius’s citation of Gen 1:2, and discusses Egyptian symbolism.²⁰⁰ Just as Porphyry sometimes refers to Jesus positively as one of many representatives of the “ancient wisdom,” he includes the Jews in the ranks of barbarian races that have tapped into universal truths.²⁰¹ Indeed, he appears to have sought a via universalis.²⁰² At other times, however, he suggests that the philosopher (assuming already the adoption of vegetarianism) ought to adhere to the cultic path of his or her native land,²⁰³ thus emphasizing the distinctive character of his own background—Greek thought.²⁰⁴ His Life of Plotinus provides a clue as to how to resolve these attitudes: the student Eustochius is said to have acquired “the character of a true philosopher by his exclusive adherence to the school of Plotinus.”²⁰⁵ Throughout his career, Porphyry is adamant about asserting the authority of the Platonic-Pythagorean tradition, particularly as manifest in the teaching of Plotinus. Like Numenius, he esteems barbarian wisdom but subjugates it, in the service of his own Greek tradition.

Iamblichus’s attitude toward barbarian wisdom is even more ambivalent. In On the Pythagorean Life, he asserts that Pythagoras obtained knowledge of geometry and astrology from Egypt, numbers from Phoenicia, and astrology from Chaldea, yet the sage’s trademark numerical theology is Orphic.²⁰⁶ Iamblichus demarcates Greek and barbarian in the same breath as humans and animals, philosophers and the common rabble.²⁰⁷ Disagreeing with Porphyry in his Timaeus commentary, he accuses his doctrines of being “alien to the spirit of Plato” or simply “barbarous.”²⁰⁸ On the other hand, in his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, he repeatedly sets the opinion of “all the ancients” (ἀρχαῖοι πάντες) against Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, or simply “Platonists and Pythagoreans.” Sometimes they agree, sometimes not, as when the “ancients” affirm that the souls of the pure are spared judgment, because they are pure already, while “the Platonists and Pythagoreans do not agree with the ancients on this matter, but subject all souls to judgment.”²⁰⁹ Writing in De mysteriis under the guise of an Egyptian priest, “Abammon,” he prioritizes “Assyrian” and ancient Egyptian wisdom as the sources of Pythagoras and Plato.²¹⁰ In the same work, he invokes the Dekadenztheorie that we have already observed in Plutarch: primordial wisdom is being forgotten, and who better to remind the Hellenes of its contents than an Egyptian priest?²¹¹ Yet one can also read this fetishization of Oriental wisdom as typical Hellenism, rather than a departure from Hellenism.²¹²

The incongruency between these attitudes, noted but not resolved by commentators, is difficult to explain.²¹³ Iamblichus could have simply changed his mind over the course of his life, affirming Hellenism at some times more strongly than others. Unverifiable, this thesis also suffers from the impossibility of determining a chronology of his corpus.²¹⁴ Second, he may have chosen his rhetoric according to polemical context; if the Vita of Pythagoras is an anti-Christian work, as some have suggested, perhaps Iamblichus amplified the Hellenic tone accordingly.²¹⁵ With Porphyry, on the other hand, he would have required a different approach: to assume the pose of an Egyptian priest (Mysteries) or tar his opponent with the brush of barbarism (Timaeus Commentary). Third, like many innovators, Iamblichus commonly delights in “condemning his predecessors”; his identification with the “ancients” of the East may be less ideological than simply rhetorical convenience.²¹⁶

After a review of this evidence, it seems clear that, under the early Roman Empire, classical clichés about universal learning and cultic practices of hoary, Eastern provenance underwent a dual change: intensification (hence increased frequency in the sources) but also reconsideration. With “ancient wisdom” universally present and accessible, the Greeks—identified with Plato, and especially his Pythagorean and Orphic sources—became, for some, first among equals. Dio Chrysostom’s coy invocation of the “barbarous” Zoroastrian myth to communicate typical Stoic cosmology anticipates this development, and Diogenes defends the Greek origins of learning more zealously than any other pre-Julianic thinker. Yet the most consistent approach, mediating the doctrine of alien wisdom and the Greek tradition as the best manifestation of it, is somewhat later and mostly Platonic: Numenius, Philostratus, and Porphyry.

This shift away from the classical universalism of Plutarch (and Plato) coincides, not surprisingly, with the Second Sophistic and its celebration of Hellenic identity in παιδεία and civic cult. A second context, crucial for the more philosophically inclined sources discussed here, is the rapid growth of the Neopythagorean movement and the identification of Platonists with it.²¹⁷ “Plato pythagorizes” became a new cliché.²¹⁸ Numenius argues that Plato and Socrates were both actually Pythagoreans.²¹⁹ Pythagoras became a Hellenic culture hero by which the Greeks both engaged and subdued barbarian wisdom.²²⁰ Third, the period witnesses the adoption of Orpheus, a barbarian by virtue of his Thracian heritage, as a Greek.²²¹ In earlier catalogues of sages, he is simply one of the ancient theologians of the barbarians;²²² but Diogenes claims Orpheus for the Greeks, Plotinus begins his anti-Gnostic work, the so-called Großschrift, with an allegorical reading of an Orphic cosmogony, Porphyry identifies Greek learning with Orphic hymns, and Iamblichus simply sets Pythagoras in the Orphic tradition.²²³ By the time we arrive at Proclus, a Thracian is the Greek theologian par excellence.²²⁴

ALIEN PLATONISTS (AUTO-ORIENTALISM)

Other Platonists rallied instead to the Chaldeans and Egyptians: Julianus the Theurgist and Hermes Trismegistus. The Middle Platonic, Greek hexameters known as the Chaldean Oracles were reportedly produced by one “Julian the Chaldean” or his son, “Julian the theurgist,” or both. Next to nothing else is known about them, and, despite, their association with the East, there is nothing in the Oracles that need be identified outside the realm of imperial Platonism.²²⁵ Its doctrines of a transcendent first principle, a feminine World-Soul, ascetic ethic, and emphasis on soteriology and ritual are all at home in Middle Platonism, probably belonging to the second century CE.²²⁶ Only Greco-Roman deities such as Zeus or Hecate are mentioned in the text, and the collection did not become known by its modern title—“Chaldaean Oracles of Zoroaster”—until the fourteenth century.²²⁷ The “Chaldaean” origin of these verses is a facade used to layer an exotic veneer over Greek philosophy in Greek verse, but its Oriental pose was precious to its readers—the Neoplatonists, beginning with Porphyry—and, clearly, its author(s).

The Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of Greek dialogues belonging to the larger body of philosophical dialogues (“Hermetica”) starring the ancient demigod Hermes Trismegistus, presents a more complicated case, due to disputed provenance and the internal diversity (and thus dogmatic inconsistency) of its contents.²²⁸ Accordingly, the Hermetica present dissonant views on Hellenism and alien philosophy, sometimes seeing learning and language as universal,²²⁹ but also belittling the wisdom of the Hellenes and their puny attempts to render Egyptian wisdom in the Greek tongue.²³⁰ As with the Oracles, however, the setting of the texts themselves—conversations between a decidedly Egyptian sage and other demigods—demonstrates that the texts seek to set themselves apart from contemporary Hellenophilia, even as they discuss Hellenic ideas. The pose was a success, and the Hermetica received a warm welcome among both Hellenic Platonists and Christian theologians.²³¹

It is no surprise, then, that the “Orientomaniac” pseudepigraphy, as I shall call it, of the Chaldean Oracles and the Corpus Hermeticum has been contextualized in the Numenian milieu of Middle Platonism that reaches to the Orient for authority.²³² Yet, as discussed above, Numenius and others actually cite alien authorities in order to subordinate them to the Platonic and Pythagorean traditions. Still other thinkers, like Plutarch, instead saw ancient wisdom as manifest in the teaching and ritual of all nations.²³³ The Oracles and Hermetic literature represent a third approach, which capitalizes on the prestige of ancient Oriental teaching to authorize a discourse composed in the Greek language about contemporary Greek metaphysics, by simply ignoring Hellas’s claim to authority.²³⁴ Some treatises among the Hermetica go further, and seem to actively rebel against Hellenic predominance by proclaiming the antiquity and superiority of alien speech and alien wisdom.

Each of these ways of negotiating the relationship between Greek philosophy and the traditions of older, Eastern cultures is a form of what James Walbridge calls “Platonic Orientalism,” the respect of Platonists for the authority of the wisdom of the East.²³⁵ The term retains much of the sense of Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism,” as an idea that does the work of defining the self (i.e., “the West”) through the creation of and reflection on an “other,” here a distillation of the manifold civilizations east of Greece and Rome (Numenius’s “justifiably famous nations”) to a set of teachings and rites whose actual relationship to any “Orient” is negligible.²³⁶ As argued above, the interest in the Orient as a primeval source of wisdom was nothing new in the second to fourth centuries CE. “Platonic Orientalism” simply describes the popularity of this interest among the Platonic thinkers of the time in conducting what Chapter 4 terms “ethnic reasoning,” the negotiation of their identities in decidedly ethnic terms, here in the context of Greek higher education.

Weighing their knowledge of the Orient against this Platonic tradition, thinkers reached diverse conclusions about which authorities to prize, and articulated their choice in the language of Hellenic identity developed during the Second Sophistic. Plutarch, on the cusp of this movement, eschews the language of παιδεία when talking about Egyptian mythology; Dio Chrysostom and Celsus engage the “barbarian wisdom” of the Orient while distancing themselves from it; Numenius, Diogenes Laertius, Philostratus, and Porphyry, all deeply invested in the language of Hellenism, take care to defend the priority of its canon over the Orient. “Julianus” and “Hermes,” finally, ignore the Greeks altogether, attempting to validate themselves by auto-Orientalizing. A champion of both the Oracles and Hermetica, Iamblichus auto-Orientalized within the context of discussing Greek philosophy, identifying his views on psychology and the afterlife as those of “the ancients” (as in De anima), or posing as an Egyptian ritual expert (in De mysteriis) with the same authority as the masters of Plato and Pythagoras. We might, then, ask which of this diversity of positions on the relationship between Oriental and Hellenic wisdom we see articulated by Plotinus—and which by his Gnostics.

CONCLUSION: A “THICK DESCRIPTION” OF PLOTINUS’S GNOSTICS AND THEIR TEXTS

The first of the “revelations” Porphyry mentions as read by the Christian Gnostics was purportedly authored by the famous Persian sage Zoroaster. We cannot know the contents of his “apocalypse,” but the pseudepigraphic currency of the name “Zoroaster” was strong indeed, even in Jewish and Christian circles.²³⁷ The founder of the Persian cult was at times equated with Nimrod, apocalyptic seers such as Baruch, Jeremias, and Balaam, and even Seth himself.²³⁸ Porphyry’s remarks—this Zoroaster was “spurious and contemporary”—show that the pseudepigraphic identification of authority with sources both remote and antique was, to Plotinus’s group, offensive, deceptive, and futile.²³⁹

The other four figures are associated with extant Sethian apocalypses from Nag Hammadi, and with the world of intertestamental Judaism. “Zostrianos” was known to the Greeks as the grandfather of Zoroaster.²⁴⁰ While the narrative pericope of the Nag Hammadi text Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1) seems to describe the eponymous sage as growing up in a community of Greeks and renouncing his paternity for another race—the “seed of Seth”—he must have been associated, by virtue of his famous grandson, with Armenia and Persia.²⁴¹ An Apocalypse of Nicotheus per se is not extant, but the name of the eponymous prophet is associated (in the Untitled Treatise found in the Bruce Codex) with the name Marsanes, which does adorn a Sethian apocalypse extant in Coptic (NHC X,1). Whether this treatise was present at Plotinus’s circle is uncertain, although the copy we know from Nag Hammadi shows signs of thought from the fourth century CE.²⁴² The characters of both Nicotheus and Marsanes are present in the Untitled Treatise, exhibiting “powers” through which they achieve visions of the “only-begotten Son” of the Father that impress even the local angelic beings in heaven.²⁴³ The figure of Nicotheus possessed considerable pedigree in the world of the Jewish apocalypses; according to Mani, he was in the same league as S(h)em, Enosh, and Enoch.²⁴⁴ “Hidden” and “unable to be found,” he was also associated by the fourth-century alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis with Zoroaster, Hermes, and others, as a mediator of knowledge about the celestial Adam.²⁴⁵ “Marsanios” (certainly another form of the name “Marsanes”) was known to Epiphanius as an Archontic (Gnostic) prophet who was “snatched up into heaven for three days.”²⁴⁶ Unlike that of Nicotheus, it is possible that his name is Semitic.²⁴⁷ Both figures thus recall contemporary Jewish traditions of rapt antediluvian seers.²⁴⁸

A Jewish background is also indicated for the treatises assigned to Allogenes and Messos. “Allogenes” is a common Hellenistic Jewish word for a “stranger” or “alien or foreigner,” for Seth, and apparently a common title for texts circulated by the fourth-century Gnostics known as the Archontics.²⁴⁹ As Epiphanius writes, “(the Archontics) have also portrayed certain books, some written in the name of Seth and others written in the name of Seth and his seven sons, as having been given by him. For they say that he bore seven <sons>, called ‘foreigners’—as we noted in the case of other schools of thought, viz. gnostics and Sethians.”²⁵⁰ It is impossible to say whether the treatises he mentioned are related to the Apocalypse of Allogenes known to Porphyry.²⁵¹

“Messos” is a name extant elsewhere only in the Sethian apocalypse from Nag Hammadi entitled Allogenes (NHC XI,3), appearing when the eponymous protagonist addresses the reader as “Messos, my son.”²⁵² There is no extant work entitled “Messos,” but the possibility of an existence of one in Plotinus’s circle cannot be ruled out.

For Porphyry, then, the source of the controversy between Plotinus and the local Christian “Gnostics” was the problem of how to weigh the authority of Plato against those of Jewish antediluvian sages and the apocalypses that bore their names. On the one hand, the adherents of Aculinus and others were educated interpreters of Plato. On the other hand, they thought that Plato was simply one of many teachers, some of whom were more ancient, geographically remote (i.e., Oriental), and hence more authoritative. Each of these teachers was associated with Judaism and Christianity, and, in several cases—Zostrianos, Allogenes, and Nicotheus—with extant, Platonizing Sethian apocalypses from Nag Hammadi.²⁵³

What this data shows is that the invocation of foreign, alien revelations in a group like Plotinus’s was sure to raise a few eyebrows, if not start a firestorm. Philosophers and sophists of the period, and it appears Gnostic thinkers as well, were male elites from wealthy backgrounds deeply invested in the prevailing socioeconomic order. Public participation in political affairs and observance of the civic cult were expected. Yet the framing, common to scholarship, of Gnostic mythos as inspired by (usually Jewish) revolt against the Romans clashes with the privileged social context that highly educated Gnostics moved in.²⁵⁴ Rather, Gnostic myth recognizes and inverts the hierarchy that nurtured such privileged groups;²⁵⁵ this inversion took place alongside the parallel development, within Sophistic and Platonic circles, of different ways of conceiving the Orient as a source of primordial wisdom—Platonic Orientalism. Many Orientalizing authors simultaneously fetishize and subordinate the status of Eastern sources to the authority of Plato and Pythagoras. Yet select groups, including Gnostics, preferred to “auto-Orientalize,” conjuring a visage of the East around their thought in order to differentiate themselves from, and even polemicize and rebel against, the Hellenophile environment of the Second Sophistic.²⁵⁶ The Gnostics with their apocalypses voiced this latter perspective, appearing hostile to Hellenism. Viewed against the backdrop of skirmishes over the value of Oriental authorities in the context of Greek thought, we see that Porphyry understood the Christian Gnostics to be firing shots in what would become a culture war.