Ammonius Saccas

Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria is the philosophical teacher whom ancient tradition credits as the founder of the Neoplatonic school and, by way of his pupil plotinus, as the transmitter through whom the Platonic inheritance reached the Roman and early Christian worlds. He wrote nothing, or nothing that survives; he is known entirely through the testimonia of porphyry, Longinus, and the Church historians, and through the philosophical shape he gave to the student who became the tradition’s central voice.

Plotinus studied with him for eleven years in Alexandria — the encounter Porphyry reports as the moment Plotinus cried out “this is the man I was seeking” — before leaving for Rome to teach on his own. What Ammonius transmitted, so far as later doxography preserves it, was the reconciling program later called Neoplatonism: a reading of plato informed by Aristotle and the Stoics, oriented toward the contemplative ascent of the soul. For the Seba lineage, Ammonius stands behind plotinus as Plotinus stands behind the Hermetic-alchemical tradition and Jung.

Relationships

• plotinus
• porphyry
• plato