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Simplicius also touched on some more notable opinions of this Plotinian book in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics; e.g., p. 249a (Aldine ed.), where it says: "For the passions, as Plotinus says, are sensations, or at least not without sensations. And having spoken earlier generally about the states of the soul, that these also are perfections and in relation to something, being certain symmetries and asymmetries. And that they happen as the sensitive faculty is altered, he finally divides the virtues of the soul into moral and intellectual. And in each he shows how they are in relation to something. And how neither is an alteration, nor is there an alteration of them; but it happens as certain things are altered. And that moral virtue comes to be as the sensitive faculty is altered, he shows from the fact that all moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasures and pains, as has been demonstrated in the Ethics. But bodily pleasures and pains happen as the sensitive faculty is altered by the sensible objects. So moral virtue comes to be as the sensitive faculty is altered by sensible objects. That pleasures and pains happen as the sensitive faculty is altered, he shows from division, etc." Regarding what is written about Marinus, see I. A. Fabricius annotating Porphyry On the Life of Plotinus, p. 140, note c, and especially the same man’s excellent arguments on the quaternary number of virtues from the doctrine of Greek philosophers, in the Prolegomena to Marinus’s Life of Proclus, p. 38 et seq. (Boissonade ed.). Marinus praises Proclus for the quaternary number of virtues, just as Julius Firmicus praises Plotinus himself, and others praise others. See Fabricius’s Bibliotheca Graeca, Vol. V, p. 695 (Harles ed.). The three chapters from Alcinous’s Introduction to Plato also pertain to the argument of this book which we are treating: namely, chapter XXVII on Goods, the Highest Good, and Virtues; chapter XXVIII, Definition of Virtue and Distinction; and chapter XXIX, On Virtues and Vice and how individuals are distinguished. Plotinus himself has repeatedly touched on the same argument in other books, e.g., On Beauty, p. 55, which passage I cited because I have partly cited and partly used the passages of others and of our author himself for it in the annotations to the edition of this book, Heidelberg 1814, 8vo, p. 284 et seq. But how both Proclus and Olympiodorus shaped this same doctrine of virtues for themselves and explained it in words, one will be able to know sufficiently who wishes to unroll the passages under the title περὶ ἀρετῆς on virtue, p. 348 of the index in Initia Philosophiæ ac Theologiæ ex Platonicis Fontibus Ducta Beginnings of Philosophy and Theology drawn from Platonic Sources (Frankfurt am Main 1820—1822, 8vo), noted by us; to which add the arguments of Brucker in Critical History of Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 460 et seq., and Tennemann in his German book History of Philosophy, VI, 47 et seq., who compares the decrees of both on virtues, as he compares the entire method of Plato and Plotinus, at p. 48 et seq. and p. 159 et seq.

— 8. ἐξ ἀνάγκης by necessity] Plato in Theaetetus, p. 176 a, b, p. 247 (Bekker ed.): "But it is not possible that evils should perish, Theodorus, for it is necessary that something should always be opposite to the good; nor that they should be established among the Gods, but they wander around the mortal nature and this region by necessity. Therefore, one must try to flee from here to there as quickly as possible. And flight is becoming like to God as much as possible. And becoming like is to become just and holy with wisdom." The same philosopher has similar things about ὁμοίωσιν θεῷ likeness to God in various places, e.g., Republic X, p. 613 A, cf. VI, p. 500 C, Laws IV, p. 716 B, C. Cf. on these passages Morgenstern On Plato’s Republic, p. 153 et seq.; Heindorf on Theaetetus, l. 1, p. 400; Wyttenbach on Phaedo, p. 285 et seq.; the same on Plutarch de S. N. V., p. 15 and p. 27, and on Sept. Sapientt. Conviv., p. 975 (Oxford minor ed.), where the same learned man shows that Suidas compiled what this lexicographer presents in φευκτέον to be fled from this passage of Plotinus and also from chapter 3, p. 13. I will omit here the other passages of other writers I have touched upon in the annotations on Plotinus On Beauty, p. 289 et seq.; I will present two in this place not cited elsewhere: Porphyry On Virtue in Stobaeus’s Florilegium, Tit. I, p. 55 (Gaisford ed.): "The state according to the political virtues is contemplated in moderation of passions, having as its end to live as a human being according to nature. But that according to the contemplative is in apathy; the end of which is likeness to God. Since purification, etc." Alcinous On the Doctrine of Plato, chap. 27, p. 515 et seq. (Dan. Heinsius ed., Leiden 1614): "To all of which Plato set as a consequent end 'likeness to God as much as possible.' And he handles this in various ways. For sometimes he calls likeness to God being prudent, just, and holy, as in the Theaetetus; therefore also one must try to flee from here to there as quickly as possible; and flight is becoming like to God as much as possible, and becoming like is to become just and holy with wisdom. Sometimes he calls it only being just, as in the last book of the Republic—In the Phaedo, he calls likeness to God being temperate at the same time and becoming just in such a way, etc." Concerning this tenet of likeness, by which...