Olympiodorus: Commentary on Plato's Gorgias

We believe there are respects in which Olympiodorus’ reading of the work anticipates modern concerns.

Olympiodorus’ work is also interesting insofar as he was an openly pagan teacher who was apparently able to practice within a suspicious and occasionally hostile Christian environment, although not without some concerns.Note the cautious and pessimistic personal remark at 45.2. He was able to continue his activities after the measures taken by Justinian to suppress pagan teaching (chiefly at Athens) in 529.On the so-called ‘closing of the Academy at Athens’ see Cameron (1969), Glucker (1978), pp. 322-29, Blumenthal (1978), Athanassiadi (1993). The Alexandrians’ less defiantly pagan stance, as witnessed by their relative lack of interest in metaphysical system-building, may have helped. So too there may have been greater astuteness and political sensitivity, and a more accommodating attitude to Christianity, facilitated by such moves as Olympiodorus’ strong emphasis on shared intuitions.See below, section 4, on the ‘common notions’. At any rate, the style of Neoplatonist exegesis associated with Olympiodorus continued to be practiced after his death by leaders of the school who were themselves Christians.

3. Olympiodorus’ Exegetical Approach

Tarrant has argued elsewhere (1997b) that the name of Olympiodorus often prompts images that he would not himself have thought appropriate. The term ‘Neoplatonist’ is an example: like others of his school, Olympiodorus did not think of himself as an adherent of any new or revised kind of Platonism. His study of the works of Plato aimed to bring them to life for his own students. He had no special sense of allegiance to Plotinus, whom we regard as the founder of Neoplatonism: Plotinus is mentioned a mere three times in the Gorgias-commentary, once in the Alcibiades-commentary, and three times in the Phaedo-commentary. It was the vision of Plato that Olympiodorus was trying to recreate.Note how Olympiodorus is interested in the details of Plato’s life, as can be seen in the biography in In Alc. and probably from the related biography in the anonymous Prolegomena; these are interesting for their differences from the rest of the biographical tradition. Even so, the term ‘Platonist’ was not strictly accurate. There was no difference, as far as he was concerned, between Platonist philosophy and