in opposition. Plotinus moved from Alexandria, where he had been part of a
network including Christian philosophers, to teach at Rome under aristocratic
patronage, and attempted unsuccessfully to establish a utopian community,
called Platonopolis, in Campania (south of Rome) for his followers; his disciple
Porphyry attempted to maintain the school, but was away from Rome (perhaps
back in Egypt or Syria) a good deal in his later years (CHLG, 1967: 202, 284).
The later Neoplatonists, from Iamblichus to Proclus, show every sign of
attempting to organize their own religion as a pagan counterpoint to Christi-
anity, primarily in Syria and Asia Minor (especially Pergamum).
When Christianity became the state religion, pagan philosophers made a
concerted effort to revive at least one of the old schools. In the generations
around 400 c.e., the Platonic school reappeared as an institution at Athens
(Glucker, 1978: 153–158, 306–315). With this new Athenian base, Neopla-
tonism, which after the end of Plotinus’ Roman school had been propagated
largely as an occultist movement, once again developed as systematic philoso-
phy, leading up to the major synthesis of Proclus, scholarch around 450.
At Alexandria, too, Neoplatonism was introduced at about the same time
(CHLG, 1967: 314–315). There were formal successions of scholarchs down
through 529, when Justinian banned pagan philosophy in the empire. The
Alexandrian philosophers converted to Christianity before the Athenians, who
held out to the bitter end.
Syncretisms in Time of Organizational Weakness
Strong positions subdivide, weak positions combine: this is the inner dynamic
of intellectual politics. For about 10 generations after the collapse of the
Athenian schools, the organizational basis of intellectual life was in disarray.
It would become firmly reshaped only with the consolidation of the Christian
Church and its bid for power around 250, just at the time when a pagan united
front emerged around the Neoplatonism of Plotinus. Let us briefly view the
pattern of the intervening centuries.
The doctrines of all existing schools had undergone changes at the time of
the organizational collapse, even (in their limited range) the Epicureans. Some
version of all the major positions survived, but now without self-confidence;
instead of polemical attacks and staunch defenses, the tendency was to syn-
cretize (see Figure 3.6). There was a telltale sign already at the time of Philo
of Larissa (ca. 110 b.c.e.), who started the shift away from the skeptical
Academy and also began the migration of philosophers to Rome. Philo recon-
ciled philosophy and rhetoric (Rawson, 1985: 146), a seemingly innocuous
step, but one which ended a long-standing rivalry. Antagonism between the
two learned professions went back to the opposition between the types of116 •^ The Skeleton of Theory