IV

Rather more rancor appears a generation later, in the treatise of Atticus, the dominant Athenian Platonist of the next generation (fl. A.D. 175—possibly because he was then appointed Regius Professor of Platonism by Marcus Aurelius), entitled, belligerently, Against those who claim to interpret the doctrine of Plato through that of Aristotle .^[20] I have suggested elsewhere^[21] that Atticus was not necessarily always as bad-tempered as this but was provoked by the attempt of a contemporary Peripatetic—perhaps Aristocles, in his History of Philosophy (quoted by Eusebius just before his quotations from Atticus)—to subsume Plato under Aristotle by arguing for their essential agreement, but with Aristotle presented as the perfecter of Plato's doctrines. In fact, in launching this attack Atticus is out of line with the majority of Platonist opinion. Antiochus, Plutarch, Taurus, and Albinus all accepted the broad agreement of Plato and Aristotle, though with Aristotle properly subordinated to Plato; any of them would probably have bristled at a complementary move toward annexation on the part of an Aristotelian, though none of them, perhaps, would have gone as far as Atticus.^[22]

Atticus's name is regularly linked by later Neoplatonists with that of Plutarch, since they both maintained the doctrine of the creation of the world, but in fact on most questions they were far apart. Atticus's attack on Aristotelian ethical theory is also an attack on previous Platonists, such as Plutarch and Taurus. He

[20] Fragments preserved in Eusebius's Praeparatio evangelica and collected now in a new Budé edition by E. Des Places (1977) (previous Budé ed. by J. Baudry, 1931). Atticus's position is well discussed by M. Baltes, in Die Weltentstehung des Platonischen Timaios nach den antiken Interpreten , vol. 1 (Leiden, 1976), 45-63.

[21] Middle Platonists , 249-50.

takes a strong line on the issue of the self-sufficiency of virtue for happiness, excoriating Aristotle for making happiness dependent on bodily and external goods, as well as spiritual ones (fr. z Des Places, 894C ff.):

His first disagreement with Plato is in a most general, vast and essential matter: he does not preserve the condition of happiness nor allow that virtue is sufficient for its attainment, but he abases the power of virtue and considers it to be in need of the advantage accruing from chance, in order with their help to be able to attain happiness; left to itself, he alleges, it would be quite incapable of attaining happiness.

Now Plutarch does not actually take a position on this in On Moral Virtue , since the question does not come up, but in the course of a polemic against Chrysippus, in Comm. not . 1060C ff., he attacks him for not admitting bodily and external goods as forming an essential part (sumplerotika ) of happiness, although nature commends them to us. So his attitude is not in doubt, and Atticus is in direct conflict with it.

Taurus, too, was critical of the Stoic position in ethics. We have a most interesting passage in Aulus Gellius (NA 12.5), where Taurus, after reminding his hearers of his disagreement with the Stoa, gives an account of Stoic ethical theory. He does not, however, give his own view, apart from criticizing the Stoic ideal of freedom from passion (apatheia , 10); but I think it is safe to assume that he agreed with Plutarch, since preference for moderation in passions (metriopatheia ) over apatkeia seems to go together with acceptance of the role in happiness of bodily and external goods.

Even on the question of the interpretation of Timaeus 35A if. (the description of the creation of the World Soul, which is bound up with their doctrine on the creation of the world), Atticus is not entirely at one with Plutarch, as has been well shown recently by Werner Deuse.^[23] They both believe in a pre-cosmic maleficent

[23] (N. 11 above), 51-61.

soul, but Atticus appears to retreat from Plutarch's radical distinction between soul and intellect into a more orthodox position. Plutarch had taken the "undivided essence" of Tim . 35A to be nous , but the evidence of Proclus (via Porphyry) is that Atticus took it to be "divine soul" (theia psuche ).^[24] This might seem to be a slender foundation on which to build a difference of opinion, but, as Deuse shows, the interpretation of this passage by Galen in his Compendium oft he Timaeus ,^[25] chap. 4, shows that, while interpreting it as a literal creation in agreement with Plutarch and Atticus, he takes the "undivided essence" to be, not nous , but "that soul which is of the nature of that which always remains in one and the same state," which is plainly not intellect itself but, rather, rational divine soul; while the "divided essence" he interprets as a disorderly soul immanent in matter. The inference is reasonable, I think, that Galen is influenced here by Atticus's Commentary on the Timaeus , rather than by Plutarch.

If this difference between Plutarch and Atticus is not a mirage, what is the significance of it? Presumably Atticus disliked Plutarch's theory that soul in its essence is nonrational, a doctrine harder to justify Platonically than that of the existence of a mal-eficent soul as well as a rational one. But if Atticus did make this alteration, he seems to have made it without much fanfare. On the general question of the creation of the world, however, he is just as defensive as Plutarch (fr. 4, 801C):

At this point, we would ask not to be harassed by those from our own hearth [sc . fellow-Platonists], who hold the view that the world is uncreated according to Plato. They must pardon us if, in interpreting the doctrines of Plato, we rely on what he, as a Greek, is saying to us as Greeks, in clear and straightforward idiom.

[24] In Tim . 2.153, lines 25ff.= fr. 35 Des Places.

[25] Available only in Arabic translation (Compendium Timaei Platonis , ed. R Kraus and R. Walzer [London, 1951]), Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi, Plato Arabus I .

He then goes on to quote Tim . 30A3-6. We must remember that in the interval between himself and Plutarch, Taurus in his Commentary had come to the defense of the nonliteral interpretation of the Timaeus account, in particular with the subtle distinction of various possible meanings of generated (genetos ). Atticus's emphasis on "we Greeks" sounds rather like a sneer at over-subtle Levantines like Taurus (who came from Beirut), whose Greek may not be of the purest.^[26]

Atticus's reason for postulating the creation of the world is actually rather different from Plutarch's. He is concerned with the preservation of divine providence, which he sees Aristotle as undermining, not least by his postulation of the uncreatedness of the world (fr. 4, 801C), on the ground that that which never came into being would not be in need of providential care to maintain itself in being. This forms no part of Plutarch's argument in On the Creation of tile Soul , though he would doubtless not have dissented from it.

The question must now be asked, does Atticus's strong opposition to Peripateticism qualify him for the epithet orthodox ? For some historians of philosophy, Atticus is a paradigm of orthodoxy. Philip Merlan, for instance, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (p. 73) says, correctly: "Atticus is opposed not only to any kind of eclecticism or syncretism. He objects even to what in later Platonism will become standard, viz. treating Aristotle's philosophy as a kind of introduction to Plato." Karl Mras, in an article in Glotta ,^[27] rejects the epithet eclectic applied to Atticus by his earlier Budé editor, Baudry, in his Introduction (pp. viii-xxxii). I agree with Mras in

[26] The suggestions of C. Moresehini ("La posizione di Apuleio e della scuola di Gaio nell' ambito del medioplatonismo," Ann. d. Scuola Norm. Sup. di Pisa 33 [1964], 35) that the School of Gaius is being referred to, and of K. Mras (n. 27 below), 188, that Numenius is the villain are to my mind less likely. In fact, Numenius seems, on the evidence of Calcidius In Tim . chap. 295, to hold to a theory of the creation of the world.

[27] "Zu Attikos, Porphyrios und Eusebios," Glotta 25 (1936), 183-88.

rejecting the epithet, but I agree with Baudry in his presentation of Atticus's position. Baudry shows very well how Atticus's opposition to Peripateticism again and again involves him in taking up positions that are frankly Stoic.

In ethics, although he could find some justification in a ten-dentious interpretation of certain passages of Plato (e.g., Meno 87E-88E, Rep . 9.580D-583A, or Laws 1.631B-D, all of which, however, could be equally well adduced in support of the opposite position) for his doctrine of the self-sufficiency of virtue, Atticus can only attack Aristotle by going over wholeheartedly to Chrysippus.

Again, in the area of metaphysics, we get a passage like this (ft. 8,814A ff.):

Further, Plato says that the soul organizes the universe, penetrating through all of it, ... and that nature is nothing else but soul—and obviously rational soul—and he concludes from this that everything happens according to providence, as it happens according to nature.

Now, this passage uses terminology found in the Cratylus (diakosmein , cf. 400A9) and the Phaedrus (dioikeisthai , cf. 246C2), but the overall tone is Stoic, the rational soul filling the role of the logos , or indeed of god himself (cf., e.g., SVF 2.1029 [from Hippolytus], 1035 [from Clement], 1042 [from Proclus]).

In the area of logic, again, the game of attacking Aristotle's Categories , in which we know from Simplicius that Atticus joined with a will, involved one almost inevitably in adopting principles and formulations of Stoic logic.

The truth is, of course, that no later Platonist, starting from Speusippus and Xenocrates, could be strictly "orthodox," since Plato did not leave a body of doctrine which could simply be adopted, but, rather, a series of guiding ideas, replete with loose ends and even contradictions, which required interpretation.^[28] By

[28] On this see the excellent discussion of Harold Cherniss in The Riddle of the Early Academy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1945), chap. 3, "The Academy: Orthodoxy, Heresy, or Philosophical Interpretation?"

the second century A.D. , one in effect had the choice of adopting Aristotelian or Stoic terminology and concepts to give formal structure to one's interpretation of what Plato meant, and there was no central authority such as a Platonic Academy to make ex cathedra pronouncements on how far one could go. Nor, I think, was Platonism any the worse for that.