Plotinus was born in Upper Egypt, more

specifically in Lycopolis in 204 CE. When he was

twenty-eight he moved to Alexandria to study

philosophy. While in Alexandria, he was

tremendously influenced by Plato and Aristotle

and therefore studied their works immensely.

Subsequent to working under Ammonius for

approximately ten years, he joined the Emperor

Gordian’s campaign against the Parthians

(Persians) in 243 AD. He joined the campaign,

partly because he was somewhat intrigued by the

Persians’ philosophies, but mainly because he was

greatly interested in the philosophers of India and

Persia. Plotinus’s plan failed: the emperor was

assassinated in Mesopotamia and he was coerced

to escape to Antioch in order to save his life.



In 244 AD, he made his way to Rome and started

his own school of philosophy. He was such a

distinguished teacher, that he received rave

reviews from highly eminent people, including the

Emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina. Not long

after the school was founded, he thought up the

idea for a model city, Platonopolis, in a city called

Campania in Southern Italy. His idea was for the

city to live according to the laws of Plato. Even

though Gallienus was completely supportive of

this plan, the other "imperial counselors" were not;

therefore, the idea did not go any further. He

continued to teach at his school in Rome until 268

AD. From that point, he retired to a rural estate of

one of his disciples in Campania. During the last

few years of his life, he began to put down in

writing, his responses to the most common

questions that were raised during his seminars.

These responses were written in essays, primarily

because the extent of most of the answers could not

fully be answered in depth in the seminars. It was

there where he died, in 270, of what was thought to

be leprosy.



Although Plotinus wrote several of these essays,

he did not publish them. Porphyry, one of his

students, fifty four of these essays in six

"Enneades." He put them in "logical order" and

"chronological sequence." Marsilio Ficino in

Florence printed the "Enneades" in Latin in 1492.