Note 1 — Chapter XIV · THE LATER AGE OF THE GREEK WORLD PART I PHILOSOPHY

At first the philosophy of Plato’s old age lived on in spirit in the Academy. Just as his pupils carried on his Pythagorean speculations about numbers, reduced his imaginative suggestions as to a daimonic nature intermediate between that of God and man to pedantic system, and elaborated the theological strain in his thought to a gloomy and burdensome deisidaimonia (witness esp. the Epinomis of Philippos of Opos and in addition all that we know of Xenokrates’ speculations)—so too they retained and respected for a time the Platonic doctrine of the soul and the ascetic tendency in his ethical teaching. For Philippos of Opos the aim of all human endeavour is a final and blessed emancipation from this world (which, however, is only possible for a few of those who are, in his special manner, “wise”—973 C ff., 992 C). He is a mystic for whom this earth and its life fall away into nothing: all serious interest is confined to the contemplation of divine things such as are revealed in mathematics and astronomy. Again, the Platonic doctrine of the soul, in its mystic and world-renouncing sense, lies at the bottom of the fabulous narratives of Herakleides Pontikos (in the Ἄβαρις, Ἐμπεδότιμος, etc.). This, too, accounts for the youthful attempts in this direction of Aristotle himself (in the Εὔδημος and probably also in the Προτρεπτικός). This side of his doctrine was as it seems systematized from the standpoint of the latest stage of Platonism by Xenokrates in particular. It may be merely accident that we do not hear very reliably of anything indicating an ascetic tendency or an “other-worldly” effort after emancipation of the soul in connexion with Xenokrates. Krantor (in his much-read book περὶ πένθους) was already capable of employing the Platonic doctrine of the soul and the imaginative fancies that could be attached to it simply as a literary adornment. And before him his teacher Polemon betrays a turning aside from the true Platonic mysticism. With Arkesilaos the last vestige of this whole type of thought disappears completely.