Plotini Opera Omnia cum Ficini commentariis

τὸν πρῶτον λόγον ἀνελθὼν καὶ τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ὑπερμαχῶν ἢ ἀνθιστάμενος having ascended according to the first reason and fighting for or resisting those things before, where I find nothing more annotated about this force of the word than in other lexicons, which consequently can be supplemented from here. Theodore Metochita also uses the word in ch. 70, p. 454, and ch. 110, p. 729 (Miscellanea, ed. Müller and Kiessling).

p. 45, 9. εἰς χρῆσιν προσφέρει τῇ φρονήσει he brings it into use for practical wisdom] Marsilio, with his two Medicean codices, reads προφέρει he brings forward. Porphyry's and Alcinous's passages contribute to these and the following. For the former, in Sententiae p. 237, where he treats of the four kinds of virtues—political, purgative, intellectual, and exemplary—speaks thus: Ἄλλο οὖν γένος τρίτον ἀρετῶν μετὰ τὰς καθαρτικὰς καὶ πολιτικὰς, νοερῶς τῆς ψυχῆς ἐνεργούσης. σοφία μὲν καὶ φρόνησις ἐν θεωρίᾳ ὧν νοῦς ἔχει. δικαιοσύνη δὲ καὶ οἰκειοπραγία ἐν τῇ πρὸς τὸν νοῦν ἀκολουθίᾳ, καὶ τὸ πρὸς νοῦν ἐνεργεῖν. σωφροσύνη δὲ εἴσω πρὸς νοῦν στροφή. ἡ δὲ ἀνδρεία ἀπάθεια· καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν τοῦ πρὸς ὃ βλέπει, ἀπαθὲς ὂν τὴν φύσιν· καὶ ἀντακολουθοῦσί γε αὗται ἀλλήλαις ὥσπερ καὶ ἄλλαι. "There is then a third genus of virtues after the purgative and political, when the soul acts intellectually. Wisdom and practical wisdom consist in the contemplation of what the mind possesses. Justice and acting one's own part consist in the following of the mind and acting toward the mind. Temperance is the turning inward toward the mind. Courage is impassivity, according to a likeness to that which it looks upon, being by nature impassive; and these follow one another just as the others do." Alcinous, On the Doctrine of Plato ch. 28, p. 518; ch. 29, p. 521: τῶν δὲ εἰδῶν αὐτῆς (τῆς ἀρετῆς) αἱ μὲν λογικαὶ, αἱ δὲ ἄλογοι.— ὅθεν καὶ ἀντακολουθεῖν ἡγητέον τὰς ἀρετάς. ἡ γὰρ ἀνδρεία δόγματος ἐννόμου διασωστικὴ ὑπάρχουσα, λόγου ὀρθοῦ διασωστική ἐστι· τὸ γὰρ ἔννομον δόγμα ὀρθός τις ἐστὶ λόγος, ὁ δὲ ὀρθὸς λόγος ἀπὸ φρονήσεως γίνεται. καὶ μὴν καὶ ἡ φρόνησις μετὰ ἀνδρείας ὑφίσταται. ἐπιστήμη γάρ ἐστιν ἀγαθῶν. οὐδεὶς γὰρ δύναται τὸ ἀγαθὸν ὁρᾷν ὑπὸ δειλίας ἐπισκοτούμενον καὶ τῶν συνακολουθούντων τῇ δειλίᾳ παθῶν. "Of the forms of it (virtue), some are rational, some irrational.—Whence we must believe that the virtues follow one another. For courage, being a preserver of lawful dogma, is a preserver of right reason; for lawful dogma is a kind of right reason, and right reason comes from practical wisdom. Moreover, practical wisdom also exists together with courage. For it is the knowledge of goods. For no one can see the good when obscured by cowardice and the passions following upon cowardice." Therefore the virtues are said to follow one another (ἀντακολουθεῖν), where one follows from another in turn; and the reciprocal following (ἀντακολούθησις) of them is their mutual succession, such that if this exists, that also exists, and if that, also this. Synesius uses the noun in Dion p. 49 D (Petav.), and Proclus in Alcibiades ch. 97, p. 319, where I also warned in the annotation that this was the opinion of the Stoics: the virtues follow one another, also citing Schweighäuser on Epictetus III, p. 243.

— 16. Ὅλως γὰρ ἡ φυσικὴ ἀρετὴ, καὶ ὄμμα ἀτελὲς καὶ ἦθος ἔχει For generally the natural virtue also has an imperfect eye and character] Proclus cites these word for word in Alcibiades I, § 46, p. 133 (our ed.). David the Armenian, a philosopher, also looks to these Plotinian matters in his Commentary on Aristotle's Categories ch. VI, § 7, in some Paris and Munich manuscripts. Ἐν οἷς (i. e. ἐν τοῖς περὶ δυνάμεως ζητουμένοις Krabingerus) τὸ δεύτερον κεφάλαιον, ἐν ᾧ δείκνυται, ὅτι καὶ διὰ ψυχῆς κεχώρηκε καὶ σώματος δύναμις καὶ ἀδυναμία καὶ τοῦ συναμφοτέρου. διὰ μὲν ψυχῆς, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν φυσικῶν ἀρετῶν καὶ ἠθικῶν· αὐταὶ γὰρ ὠδίνουσι τὰς πολιτικὰς, καὶ ὁ ἔχων μίαν τούτων διὰ τῆς τοῦ λόγου προσθήκης (προθήκης alii) εὐχερῶς κτᾶται τὰς πολιτικὰς, περὶ ὧν εἴρηται. περὶ μὲν τῶν φυσικῶν, τὸ γὰρ φύσει ἀκράτιστον· (κράτιστον al.) περὶ δὲ τῶν ἠθικῶν· ἔχει γάρ τι καὶ τὸ τραφῆναι καλῶς· καὶ ὅτι Πλάτων ἀνδραποδώδεις αὐτὰς εἶναι λέγει, Πλωτῖνος δὲ ἀτελεῖς. "Among which (i.e., in the questions concerning power, Krabinger) is the second chapter, in which it is shown that both power and powerlessness have passed through the soul and body and the combination of both. Through the soul, as in the case of the natural and ethical virtues; for they are in travail with the political ones, and he who has one of these, through the addition (or deposit) of reason, easily acquires the political ones, concerning which it has been spoken. Regarding the natural ones, for that which is by nature is not the strongest; regarding the ethical ones, for being well raised has something; and that Plato says they are servile, but Plotinus says they are imperfect."

BOOK IV.

p. 55, 7. ON HAPPINESS] Porphyry reports in the sixth chapter of his Life of Plotinus (p. 103, Fabricius) that this book is one of the five sent to him by Plotinus while he was staying in Sicily around the fifteenth year of the reign of Gallienus. As regards the order in which they were written one after another, this one itself holds the forty-sixth place, and is to be reckoned among those which were edited and brought to light while the philosopher was already aging. But its subject matter is of such a kind that from the birth of philosophy it was treated competitively by very many. For, to pass over the barbarian philosophers, the Greeks from Pythagoras onward labored in explaining it, and according to the difference of their families, defined that Blessedness in different ways. Nor were there lacking peculiar books by philosophers, which were inscribed On Happiness or something similar, in which, to use this as an example, the lost work of Theophrastus was not the last. And from the many, Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics I, 3 sqq.), Cicero—mostly in the books On Ends, On the Nature of the Gods, and Tusculan Disputations—Seneca, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and others, up to John Stobaeus, carried the more significant decrees into their own commentaries. Stobaeus, indeed, when in his books of Eclogae here and there—especially book II, ch. VII, p. 54 sqq. (Heer.)—and in the one hundred and third title of his Florilegium (p. 552 sqq., p. 333 sqq. ed. Gaisford), received not a few sentiments of ancient writers, primarily philosophers. And since Plotinus follows this custom, as he touches upon the tenets of other philosophers while omitting the names of the authors, we will hereafter give notice of the more important ones to individual passages, as far as the brevity of this annotation will allow. Here, however, in advance...