Olympiodorus

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521194846.009

38 - Olympiodorus

from VI - Late Platonism

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2011

Jan Opsomer

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Lloyd Gerson

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Lloyd Gerson: Affiliation:
University of Toronto

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Summary

LIFE AND WORK

Not much is known about Olympiodorus’ life apart from what we can derive from the surviving works. A student of Ammonius the son of Hermias, but probably not his direct successor, he was active in Alexandria in the sixth century. If Olympiodorus heard Ammonius lecture his year of birth can hardly have been later than 505. He was still lecturing in March/April 565, the date of the passing of a comet mentioned in the Commentary on the Meteorologica (52.31).

The commentators David and Elias are held to be the pupils of Olympiodorus, because their works display the formal peculiarities of Olympiodorus’ commentaries; in addition their texts reproduce entire passages from Olympiodorus; David occasionally mentions him by name. The names David and Elias suggest a Christian background. This would make Olympiodorus the last representative of the non-Christian Platonic tradition. It is, however, not so clear whether David and Elias were really Christians: their works do not betray a commitment to specifically Christian doctrines, even where one would have expected this, and their names could also be mere parts of a disguise that allowed them to continue practising philosophy in an intellectual environment that was no longer hospitable towards non-Christians.

EXTANT WORKS

Olympiodorus’ surviving commentaries are all apo phōnēs, i.e., lecture notes by students. We have commentaries on two works of Aristotle and three Platonic dialogues (the latter are all transmitted through Marcianus gr. 196), more precisely commentaries on: Categories, Meteorologica, Alcibiades I (henceforth Alcibiades, considered genuine by the later Platonists), Gorgias, Phaedo (incomplete, the extant lectures are on Phaed. 61c–79e).

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity , pp. 696 - 710

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521194846.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2000

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