Chapter 47. The Last Philosophers and the Last Pagan Emperor: Neoplatonism, Theurgy, Julian and the End of the Old Gods

Part 5 has followed the Greco-Roman world through its civic cults, mysteries, philosophical schools and gnostic sects. This last chapter of the part deals with paganism’s final synthesis and how it ended. Neoplatonism, begun by Plotinus, became the intellectual core of late paganism. Under Iamblichus it took on a ritual form, and under Julian (361-363) it was briefly the creed of the Roman state. Within a generation, sacrifice had been banned, the Serapeum pulled down and Hypatia killed. The library’s sources describe these events very differently. Christopher P. Jones describes a gradual “Christianization from above”, John Lamb Lash a “genocide of Pagan culture”, and Mitchell Heisman a conquest of Rome by “Jewish-based God memes”.

Plotinus and Porphyry

Greenwood dates Plotinus to c. 204-270 CE, calls him “the most influential Neoplatonist”, and says he was “educated in Alexandria and supported by Emperor Gallienus” [Greenwood, A Conceptual History of Psychology, #25954, “Neoplatonic Influences on Early Christianity”]. Nock calls him “an Egyptian by birth but in the purest Greek tradition, a mystic”. In Nock’s words he “resented dogma, but he was above all the disciple of Plato and, after the flesh, of Ammonius Saccas”. A footnote, citing Dodds, adds his “indebtedness to Moderatus” [Nock, The Development of Paganism in the Roman Empire, #60218, “Neoplatonism”, pp. 441-442]. Hergenhahn sums up the doctrine as an escape from the material world through meditation toward union with eternal things, an idea that went on to shape Christian thought [Hergenhahn, An Introduction to the History of Psychology, #30761, “Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought”].

Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus opens: “Plotin, filozoful trăitor în zilele noastre, părea că se ruşinează fiindcă [trebuia să vieţuiască] în trup” (“seemed ashamed of being in the body”) [Porphyrios, Viața lui Pitagora; Viața lui Plotin, #84080, ch. 1]. The Romanian editors note that Plotinus studied with Ammonius, who “left no written work”, from 232 to 243 [#84080, n. 26]. Porphyry records that Gallienus and Salonina “greatly honoured” Plotinus, who asked them to revive a ruined city of philosophers in Campania under Plato’s laws, the planned Platonopolis [#84080, ch. 12]. The editors also write that Plotinus experienced ecstasy four times in six years, reaching “in the language of the mysteries” the degree of epopteia. Porphyry arranged the treatises into the Enneads “in a systematic order for pedagogical purposes” [#84080, introduction].

Porphyry wrote in two very different registers. His Isagoge, published in the library’s Romanian edition with Boethius’ Latin, sets out genus, species, difference, property and accident. Its example is “man” as species, “rational” as difference and “capable of laughing” as property [Porphyry of Tyre, Isagoga, #368596, § 2]. Through Boethius it became the starting point of medieval logic. His Against the Christians is, for the editors of the Life, “the second alarm signal” after Celsus against the danger that Moses and Jesus would replace Homer and Plato [#84080, introduction]. Nock notes that the Church’s ranks came to include “those who cared for classical culture, and these naturally included Neoplatonists”, and he discusses how much of the polemic survives. He also records the opposite front: Neoplatonism against the gnostics “whom Plotinus attacked”, who “professed to be in cultural rebellion against Hellas” [Nock, #60218, pp. 441-442].

Iamblichus, theurgy and the charge of magic

Liz Greene describes “the chain of ‘hieratic’ or ‘priestly’ Platonism – Platonic philosophical ideas translated into ritual action”. It runs “from Plotinus and Porphyry through Iamblichus to the later Neoplatonists”, and she cites De mysteriis 4.12 and Shaw’s Theurgy and the Soul [Greene, Jung’s Studies in Astrology, #81101, ch. 4 “The chain of hieratic Platonism”]. Luke A. Myers instead stresses the differences between the schools. Iamblichus, “a pupil of Porphyry”, led the Syrian school, which “at first … was distinct from those established by Plotinus and Porphyry, both of whom considered the knowledge of practical Theurgy as dangerous to the majority of men”. Iamblichus, Myers says, shows “the strongest connections to the mystical occult works of the Egyptian, Chaldaean, and Gnostic mysteries” [Myers, Gnostic Visions, #70923, ch. 3 “Mysteries of Pagan Philosophy: Iamblichus”].

The theurgists themselves denied that they practised magic. An essay in Daughters of Hecate states that “as far as they were concerned, it was certainly not magic, goetic or otherwise”, and that Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, “our first (and best) Platonist treatise on the subject”, draws exactly that distinction. Modern scholars have tried “with … no consensus” to divide theurgy into a “low” form close to magic and a “high” form of “mystical union with the One” (Sheppard, Dodds, Shaw) [Daughters of Hecate, #39449, Part III and n. 46]. Contemporaries were less careful. Iamblichus’ pupil Sopater, a counsellor at Constantine’s court, was ruined on the charge of having “magically fettered the winds”, a charge that, Jones notes, “readily clung to Neoplatonists” [Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, #67425, p. 17]. Samuel Dill judged that in the circle around Julian “Neoplatonism lost its philosophic purity”, as “the theurgic virtues, miracle and magic, overshadowed” the earlier idealism [Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, #60233, “Degeneracy of Neoplatonism in the reign of Julian”].

Julian: Hellenism as state religion

According to Lemerle, Constantius II issued “a series of ordinances that limited the activity of pagans”. His successor Julian, given his education, knew paganism and Christianity equally well. “He had been baptised, which later allowed the Church to give him the epithet of Apostate.” As emperor he reopened the temples, restored sacrifice and reorganised the pagan priesthood on the Christian model. He did not persecute Christians, but he removed them from high office and barred them from teaching. Lemerle calls his paganism “very elevated”, far from the “gross superstition” Christians imputed to it [Lemerle, Istoria Bizanțului, #19180, “Sfârșitul păgânismului”].

Jones writes that Julian “ruled for a mere eighteen months from 361 to 363”. He judges that Julian “was more fanatical than most of the Christian emperors, with the possible exceptions of Theodosius I and Justinian”, and calls the reign “an interlude, of greater importance in historiography than in history”. He quotes Libanius’ joy that “the altars again received their offerings of blood … even though only a few people were left who understood them” [Jones, #67425, pp. 23-24]. Julian let Athanasius return from exile [#67425, p. 25]. The Encyclopedia of World History adds that Athanasius was expelled again and that “the death of Julian the same year permitted his return” [Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, “Athanasius”]. Koster stresses the solar side of Julian’s religion: he “reverted back to the former, older frank Sun-worship, calling himself a ‘follower of King Sun,’ being a devotee of Mithras” [Koster, Come Out of Her My People, #86909].

Laws, the Serapeum and Hypatia: two narratives

Jones calls the law codes an index “requiring cautious treatment”. Laws often went unenforced, and persecution “was often at the local level, the action of ordained clergy or monks”. In Alexandria, “Theophilus, the ruthless bishop … aided by the governor, … destroyed the chief temple of Alexandria, the Serapeum”. “A generation later Theophilus’s nephew and successor, Cyril, took a large part in the notorious lynching of the Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia.” Jones quotes Socrates: they “killed her with scraps of pottery, and after tearing her limb from limb … destroyed them by fire” [Jones, #67425, pp. 24, 29-30]. He also records a bishop whom pagans killed “by throwing him on a bonfire” during a temple seizure [#67425, p. 94].

Lash frames the same events as extermination: “In 386, when Hypatia was sixteen, Pagan rituals were outlawed by state decree” [Lash, Not in His Image, #53938, ch. 2]. He writes of “the brutal suppression of the Mysteries, the destruction of Gnostic writings, and the wholesale genocide of Pagan culture in Europe”, concealed by “a cover-up” that “continues to this day”. He quotes a historian on Theodosius I and II as “two of the most cruel and powerful Christians of any time” [#53938, ch. 1 “The Murder of Hypatia”]. Jones describes restrictions on practice that were often unenforced; Lash describes deliberate cultural murder.

In the East the end came under Justinian. Babuș writes that “already in the years 527-528 Justinian had issued severe laws against heretics and had closed the temples of Isis and Amon in Egypt”, and that the temple of Amon at Audjila became a church [Babuș, Aspecte ale istoriei și spiritualității Bizanțului, #13066]. Jones adds the 529 law: relapsed baptised Christians faced “extreme penalties”, while the unbaptised had to undergo catechism or be “stripped of all their possessions”. Even so, “forced conversion is the penalty for pagan sacrifice, not for pagan belief” [Jones, #67425, pp. 28-29].

Interpretations and the four options

Heisman: “Just as Roman conquerors penetrated the territorial-sociobiological boundaries of the ancient Jewish state, the Jewish-based God memes of Christianity penetrated the ancient Roman world.” In his view Christianity, like Jesus, “was born through violation of the sociobiological boundaries”, and it “economized the ethics of the West”, turning politics from “the arena of highest human virtue to the arena of the lowest human virtue” [Heisman, Suicide Note, #38252, parts 177, 193]. In Heisman’s framing, Christianity reversed the direction of Roman conquest: Rome had penetrated the Jewish state, and Jewish-derived ideas then penetrated Rome [ibid., part 177]. Nock instead sees “a long gradual transformation” between Augustus and Constantine. He notes a structural difference: “in Christianity initiates were not, as in the Oriental mystery-religions other than Mithraism, an inner circle” [Nock, #60218, “Conclusion”].

Key points

• Nock, citing Dodds, traces Plotinus to Ammonius Saccas and Moderatus. Greenwood names Gallienus as his patron, and Porphyry records the Platonopolis plan.
• Porphyry’s Isagoge founded Latin logic through Boethius. His Against the Christians was the “second alarm signal” after Celsus.
• Greene calls the line from Plotinus and Porphyry through Iamblichus to the later Neoplatonists “hieratic” Platonism. Myers says Plotinus and Porphyry thought theurgy dangerous for most people.
• De Mysteriis separates theurgy from goetic magic, and modern scholars disagree over “high” and “low” theurgy.
• Julian, baptised and educated in both traditions, restored the temples and sacrifice (Lemerle). Jones calls the reign an interlude, and Koster calls Julian a solar and Mithraic devotee.
• Jones documents the laws, Theophilus’ destruction of the Serapeum and Cyril’s “large part” in Hypatia’s lynching. Lash calls the same events genocide.
• Babuș dates the closure of the Isis and Amon temples to 527-528, the end of the Egyptian cults treated in Chapter 43. Heisman reads the outcome as Jewish “God memes” conquering Rome.