11 Facts About Damascius

Damascius, known as "the last of the Athenian Neoplatonists", was the last scholarch of the neoplatonic Athenian school.

Damascius was one of the neoplatonic philosophers who left Athens after laws confirmed by emperor Justinian I forced the closure of the Athenian school in c 529 AD.

Damascius's surviving works consist of three commentaries on the works of Plato, and a metaphysical text entitled Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles.

Much of what is known about Damascius' life comes from his semi-autobiographical work called The Philosophical History, or Life of Isidore, and from a work called Vita Severi written by the 6th-century bishop and historian Zacharias Scholasticus.

Damascius, as his name suggests, was born in Damascus in c 462 AD, and travelled to Alexandria in the 480s AD to study rhetoric at the coeducational school of the late 5th-century Alexandrian professor Horapollo, where students of different religions and philosophies studied together.

Horapollo, the head of the school at which Damascius had studied and taught rhetoric for nine years, was arrested in 489 AD, causing Damascius and the neoplatonic philosopher Isidore of Alexandria to flee Alexandria and start on a journey to Athens with the aim of studying in the neoplatonic school in Athens.

That journey took eight months, and during that time Damascius writes that he lost interest in pursuing a profession as a rhetorician.

The last known trace of Damascius is an epigram carved in stele in Emesa that confirms Damascius returned to Syria in 538 AD, and that is the year scholars say he died.

Damascius composed a number of works, and a significant number of his works in fragments or derived from his writings survived, the more complete works being: the literary work Life of Isidore, or Philosophical History, preserved by Photius; and the philosophical works: Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles; Commentary on the Parmenides; Commentary on the Phaedo; and Lectures on the Philebus.

Damascius insists throughout on the unity and the indivisibility of God.

The rest of Damascius's writings are for the most part commentaries on works of Aristotle and Plato.