Problems Concerning First Principles

...has nowhere been indicated, as far as I have found. But if Marinus died in c. 490 A.D. at Athens, as Brucker suspects in Vol. II of Hist. crit. philos., p. 345, followed by others, and if this Marinus trained Damascius in philosophical studies at Athens, it follows that our author was born at least by c. 480. After he had been given a childhood education in his native city, he went to Alexandria in Egypt for the sake of cultivating his talent, where, under the guidance of the sophist Theon, he devoted himself to liberal studies and also to the art of oratory. The success with which he practiced this is evident not only from this work, but also from the fact that he himself directed schools of rhetoric for nine years.

But since, in those same years of his early studies, he had heard Ammonius, the son of Hermias, expounding and illustrating mathematical and astrological disciplines, as well as the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, along with other Alexandrian teachers most famous for philosophy, and since he himself was carried toward contemplation and divine matters by the disposition of his soul and the force of nature, it happened that, as his love for this wisdom grew day by day, he grew weary of the art of oratory, left his school, and applied himself entirely to philosophy original: "2".

I do not place much confidence in Brucker, yet I am certain from a comparison of the times and events mentioned regarding other philosophers of the same age that the birth year of Damascius, which I have posited, does not deviate much from the truth; indeed, I think our author saw the light of day a few years after 480 A.D.

2. Photius, Codex 181, p. 412, and Codex 242, p. 1062. "The occupation of oratory is terrible, turning all study around the mouth and tongue, while turning it away from the soul and the blessed and God-beloved hearings that cleanse it," etc.