## 1. Life



Damascius, in his *Philosophical History* (aka *Life of
Isidore*) describes Syrianus as a strikingly handsome and tall man
with impressive intellectual powers. The son of an otherwise unknown
Philoxenus, he grew up in Alexandria, where he must have received an
education in rhetoric and perhaps some philosophy. In the second half
of the 4th century, Alexandria had become increasingly
burdened by strife between her pagan elite and a notoriously
quarrelsome Christian populace. The mathematician Theon of Alexandria
(c. 335-405) and his daughter Hypatia, who was killed by
agitating Christians in 415, were the most prominent pagan
intellectuals in Alexandria during Syrianus' life. We do not
know when exactly Syrianus decided to go to Athens to study with
Plutarch and to dedicate himself to philosophy; it appears, however,
that Syrianus spent the rest of his active life in Athens as a close
associate of Plutarch and, eventually, as his successor. If the
attribution of the commentary on Hermogenes is correct (see section 3b
below), we may infer that Syrianus was married, since that commentary
is dedicated to its author's son Alexander. Archeological
evidence suggests that Plutarch and Syrianus, and later Proclus, lived
and taught in a complex of houses near the theater of Dionysus at the
south slope of the Acropolis, not at the site now known as the
original location of Plato's Academy outside the ancient
city's walls. According to Marinus (in his *Life of
Proclus*, 36), Syrianus was buried on the slopes of Mount
Lycabettus in Athens.



During his lifetime, the political and cultural landscape of the Roman
Empire changed dramatically and irrevocably for pagan intellectuals,
and it did so in disturbing ways. Politically, the Roman Empire was
shaken to its foundation by the massive incursion of Gothic tribes
into northern Greece (Thrace) and their decisive victory over the
imperial army at Adrianople (modern Edirne) in 378. Under Theodosius
I, who reigned from 379 to 395, Christianity became the state
religion, and in order to strengthen the adopted Nicene orthodoxy, the
emperor sought to curtail heresy of any form, both Christian and
pagan.



In 425, a few years before Syrianus assumed leadership of the Academy,
emperor Theodosius II and his wife Eudocia (a well-educated Christian
convert and daughter of Leontius, a pagan educator at Athens who was
in a sense a colleague of Syrianus') founded what came to be the
University of Constantinople. In consequence, higher education in
Rhetoric, Law and Philosophy was thereby placed under the
patronage--and supervision--of the court. The survival of a
private institution such as the Athenian School, in contrast, depended
much on the capability, personality, and commitment of its individual
members. It is in this context that we have to understand the sense of
excitement and relief that prevailed (as Marinus relates in his
*Life of Proclus*) when Proclus (410/2-485), a young
committed pagan intellectual, arrived in Athens to join the school in
431. At first, Syrianus was suspicious of the new arrival, but when he
observed Proclus openly worshiping the Moon, he agreed to accept him.
Eventually, Marinus says, Syrianus "found in him the disciple
and successor he had long been looking for" (*Life* 12).
Proclus succeeded Syrianus as head of the School in 437, at the mere
age of about twenty-six, while Syrianus' other, most talented
student Domninus, who was Jewish, returned to his home town
Larissa.



From Marinus we can gather some further evidence about Syrianus as a
teacher. Whereas Plutarch had introduced the "freshman"
Proclus to somewhat more accessible works such as Aristotle's
*De anima* and Plato's *Phaedo*, Syrianus, once he
had taken over instruction from Plutarch, subjected Proclus to a much
more rigorous and systematic philosophical training. In quick
succession, they read practically the entire Aristotelian corpus
together ("Aristotle's treatises on logic, ethics,
politics, physics and ... theology," presumably in that
order) in preparation for the study of Plato and, eventually, the
Orphic Poems and Chaldaean Oracles. Syrianus gave Aristotle a firm
place and function in the philosophical-theological curriculum of a
student of Platonism; however, as we shall see, this yoking together
of Aristotle to Plato did not entail endorsement of the doctrine that
the views of the two ancestral philosophers were in complete harmony.



## 2. Testimonia of Syrianus' literary work



Apart from the texts written by Syrianus that survive and are
discussed in more detail under (3) below, there is evidence for a much
wider literary output. According to the *Suda*, a
10th century Byzantine encyclopedia, Syrianus wrote seven
books of commentary on Homer, four on Plato's *Republic*,
two on the theology of Orpheus as well as treatises on the Homeric
Gods, on the agreement of Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato on the subject
of oracles (in no less than ten books), and other exegetical works.
This list is evidently not complete because it fails to mention any
work on Aristotle; nor do we have any means of verifying the
attribution of these works to Syrianus. As such, it would not be
unusual at all for a Platonic philosopher to write commentaries on
Homer and Orphic poetry, given that these early literary texts were
thought to be replete with hidden meaning and arcane revelations.
Moreover, shortly before his death Syrianus offered Proclus and
Domninus a course on either the Chaldean Oracles or the Orphic
Poems.



Syrianus' commentaries were greatly admired by later generations
of Neoplatonists (Isidore and Damascius regarded him as one of the
best exegetes), and he is therefore often referred to and quoted.
Collecting these references, R.L. Cardullo (1985) inferred that, apart
from the extant work on the *Metaphysics*, Syrianus commented
on Aristotle's *Categories*, *De interpretatione*,
*Prior Analytics*, *Physics*, *De caelo*, and
*De anima*. Asclepius of Tralles (mid 6th century),
in his commentary on the *Metaphysics*, preserves two fragments
of Syrianus' exegesis of book VII (Z) of that work. There is
also evidence (in Proclus) that Syrianus commented on Plato's
*Timaeus* and *Parmenides*, but it is not clear whether
these comments were formally composed, or circulated merely within the
school as transcripts of his lectures.


## 3. The surviving works


### 3.1 Commentary on Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, Books III, IV, XIII, XIV



Syrianus' work on Aristotle's *Metaphysics* is
transmitted in some 18 manuscripts dating from the 15th and
16th centuries, two of which, *Parisinus Graecus*
1896 and *Hamburgensis phil. gr.* 2, are superior to the
others. The extant text does not offer a unified and comprehensive
interpretation of the *Metaphysics*. For one thing, the
commentary covers only four of the fourteen treatises that now make up
the collection of work that came "after the
*Physics*". In addition, Syrianus' work is a
collection of three separate essays of quite different character and
purpose, one essay on the aporetic book III (=*Beta*), one on
book IV (=*Gamma*), and one on books XIII and XIV (=*Mu*
and *Nu*). Already the titles of these separate parts
(regardless of whether they are Syrianus' own) indicate the
differences:



The first essay is entitled "Syrianus, the Son of Philoxenus,
about the Logical Difficulties and Topics Requiring Discussion in Book
*Beta* of Aristotle's *Metaphysics*". It
begins, unusually, with hardly any introductory remarks at all. There
is only a swift recapitulation of the subject-matter of books I and II
(A and little a) of the *Metaphysics*. This
suggests that Syrianus had covered those books in earlier lectures.
Typically of him, Syrianus goes through the *aporiae* raised by
Aristotle on the subject-matter and methodology of 'first
philosophy', one by one, and in each case explains briefly how
he himself thinks these difficulties ought to be resolved,
*not* how Aristotle resolves them in subsequent books of the
*Metaphysics*.



The second, very short essay is entitled "A Course
(*ephodos*) by Syrianus, the Son of Philoxenus, on Book
*Gamma* of Aristotle's *Metaphysics*". This
book of the *Metaphysics* begins with an exposition of first
philosophy as dealing with being in general, that is, with what is
insofar as it has being, as well as the properties that belong in and
of itself to anything that has being. Aristotle then continues with a
defense of the Law of Non-Contradiction (for any proposition
*P*, it is not the case that both *P* and
not-*P*) being one of these properties. Syrianus discusses each
of these main topics of the book, but keeps his own comments short
because, as he says, the book "has already been sufficiently
elucidated by the most diligent Alexander (of Aphrodisias)" (54,
12f).



The third treatise is entitled "Investigations
(*episkepseis*) by Syrianus, the Son of Philoxenus, into the
Difficulties Aristotle Raises About Mathematics and Numbers in Books
*Mu* and *Nu* of the *Metaphysics.*" This
long defense of Platonism and Pythagoreanism against Aristotle's
incisive criticism is by far the most instructive part of
Syrianus' work. It is worth quoting the introduction to this
polemical essay in full because it throws some light on the careful
way in which Syrianus calibrates his opposition to Aristotle. Syrianus
writes *In metaph* 80, 4-81, 6:



> 
> I am not a natural controversialist, nor yet would I count myself as a
> disciple of Aristotle on merely a few or trivial topics; rather, I am
> one of those who admire both his logical methodology overall and who
> accept with enthusiasm his treatment of ethical and physical
> questions. And that I may not make a bore of myself by enumerating in
> detail all the excellent aspects of this man's philosophy, let
> me just ask why every intelligent person might not justly marvel at
> the apt remarks, accompanied by demonstrations of the highest quality,
> to be found in this most excellent treatise on the subject of both
> forms in matter and definitions, and on the subject of the divine and
> unmoved transcendent causal principles of the whole cosmos--even
> though they are beyond the reach of any synthetic treatment and very
> detailed exposition--and declare the author of such a
> philosophical enquiry a benefactor of human life. For all he is owed
> the warmest thanks both from us and from all those who can appreciate
> his sagacity.
> 



> 
> However, it is the fact that, for whatever reasons, both in other
> parts of his theological treatise and especially in the last two
> books, 13 and 14, he has indulged in a good deal of criticism of the
> first principles of the Pythagoreans and the Platonists, without
> saying anything pertinent or adequate against them, and in many
> instances, if one may state the truth quite frankly, not even meeting
> them on their own ground, but rather basing his objections on
> hypotheses propounded by himself. Because of this it seemed reasonable
> (in fairness to the less sophisticated students, that under the
> influence of the well-deserved reputation of the man they may not be
> seduced into contempt for divine realities and the inspired philosophy
> of the ancients) to examine his remarks critically and at the same
> time impartially as best we can, and to demonstrate that the doctrines
> of Pythagoras and Plato about the first principles remain free of
> disproof or refutation, while the arguments of Aristotle against them
> for the most part miss the mark and pursue lines of inquiry quite
> irrelevant to those divine men, while on the few occasions when they
> seek to make a direct attack on them, they are unable to bring to bear
> any refutation, large or small. And necessarily so; for 'truth
> is never refuted', in the words of that divine man (i.e. Plato,
> cf. *Gorg.*, 473B), and in assimilating their arguments about
> first principles to the realities, the fathers of those arguments
> established them 'as firmly and unshakably as it is proper for
> arguments to be' (*Tim.*, 29B7-8). Now that is
> enough by way of preface. (transl. Dillon and O'Meara, modified)
> 



It is necessary to decode some of these remarks in order more fully to
understand the delicate position Syrianus is in: "Less
sophisticated students" (presumably the sons and daughters of
the educated class that became increasingly tempted by the new
religion) have at least been clever enough to notice that Aristotle
appears to make short work of some fundamental Platonic commitments
about first principles; this in turn could "seduce" them
into disparaging the "inspired philosophy of the ancients"
(i.e. paganism). In order to defend paganism, Syrianus finds that he
has to attack Aristotle, and he is clearly not comfortable doing this.
What precisely was at stake for him?



The later Platonists shared an important commitment with orthodox
Christianity, viz. to understand and explain the world in its entirety
on the assumption of one principle only, not two principles that could
be thought to be in opposition or conflict with one another
(Gnosticism). Christians and Platonists also agreed on the assumption
that the first principle itself cannot be part of the natural world
but must be a transcendent entity whose existence is wholly
independent of and prior to this world, and upon which the
world's existence wholly depends. But unlike Christian thinkers,
the Platonists did not think that the world came to be at one point in
its distant history, nor that the world's *first*
principle would have manufactured it like a craftsman, or spoken it
into existence. Rather, the Platonists thought that the first
transcendent principle sustained a set of further immaterial
principles and forms from which derive the diversity of the natural
biosphere and which, through the agency of divine souls and forming
principles (*logoi*--principles that form matter at
different times and places in its various ways), unfold themselves in
space and time. This view of an interconnected and complex hierarchy
of being was beautifully suited to accommodate and support traditional
polytheism (a feature spelled out in particular by Iamblichus and
Proclus), but it of course also led to a host of difficult questions
the Platonists struggled to clarify, drawing in some instances for
assistance on many aspects of Aristotle's and the Stoics'
philosophies of nature: What precisely is the content of the
intelligible world? What is the function of soul? How do immanent
*logoi* operate? What is the ontological status and function of
matter? etc. But the most fundamental and formidable difficulty was to
explain precisely how an absolute unity (the first principle) could
give rise to the obvious diversity of the intelligible and perceptible
worlds. The answer the Platonists developed (the roots of which they
thought reached back to Plato and his immediate successors in the
Academy) was to postulate that the two most fundamental intelligible
principles produced by the hyper-intelligible One should be the
principle of unity and the principle of diversity as such. Already
Plato had apparently spoken about the 'Monad' and the
'unrestricted Dyad'; together, these principles not only
bring forth an entire realm of mathematical principles and numbers,
but also account for any kind of unified individuality and diversity
throughout the hierarchy of being. As Plotinus put it in the
characteristic manner of his style: "Being, when it awoke, stood
in multiplicity as number and offered provision for the beings, as it
were, a preliminary sketch of unities that held place for the beings
which were to be founded on them" (*Enn.* VI 6, 10).



Now Aristotle, in the two last books of his *Metaphysics*, had
forcefully repudiated the Platonic notion of some such ideal existence
of numbers and their principles, and if Aristotle were right, the
entire Platonic edifice would have been undermined. Roughly, it was
Aristotle's view, expressed repeatedly in the *corpus*,
that mathematical entities such as numbers or geometrical figures are
not themselves substances, that is, basic realities, at all, as these
later Platonists required. They are derivative existences, in the
sense that the mathematician's mind in knowing them conceives of
them *as if* they were substances, by looking at the physical
world in an abstract way. In other words, mathematical entities do not
at all exist independently or prior to the objects they are the number
or figures of, but are only hypostatizations of aspects of such
objects. In books *Mu* and *Nu* he amplifies this view
with a searing attack on the early Platonists' conception of
mathematics and their theory of Forms.



What was needed, then, was a sophisticated refutation of Aristotle
from a Platonist point of view. In order to give a flavor of
Syrianus' defense of Platonism, both early and late, it may
suffice to survey his responses to two points raised by
Aristotle's celebrated criticism of Platonic forms: (1) the
Aristotelian view that objects of mathematics are arrived at by
abstraction; and (2) the so-called "Third Man"
argument.



(1) Aristotle had argued (*Metaph.* XIII 3, 1078a5ff) that the
work of a geometer is comparable to that of a biologist studying
'male' and 'female': 'male' and
'female' are gender attributes of animals that one can
discern in isolation when one abstracts from all sorts of other
(irrelevant) attributes animals happen to have; just so, the geometer
studies his subject-matter by disregarding all irrelevant attributes
*bodies* happen to have, except for points, lines, planes, and
their positions and quantities. Moreover, Aristotle argues, the
biologist does not suppose that 'male' and
'female' exist as separate ideal entities (substances)
over and above and prior to the concrete living substances that are
either male or female, nor *should* he suppose such a thing. In
a similar vein, the points, lines, planes, and solids the geometer
studies are neither physical attributes of bodies nor do they enjoy a
separate existence independent of them; rather, they exist in the mind
of the geometer by virtue of his powers of abstraction. Now Syrianus
objects to this line of reasoning that the required kind of
abstraction would be impossible unless we assume that the human mind
is already equipped with an *a priori* grasp of precise
mathematical entities and principles. He writes:



> 
> In general, in response to (Aristotle's) overall view it must be
> said that we also do not observe all shapes or all numbers as being
> inherent in sensible objects, that is to say, all those with which the
> mathematical sciences concern themselves, nor is it possible that
> things that derive from sense-objects should enjoy such precision. And
> if he were to explain that we ourselves add to them what is lacking
> and thus make them more exact and then contemplate them as such, he
> will have to tell us first of all whence we are able to confer
> perfection on these; for we would not find any other truer cause of
> this than that propounded by the ancients, that the soul in its
> essence has prior possession of the reason-principles of all things.
> (95, 29-37; trans. Dillon/O'Meara)
> 



Syrianus' explanation of mathematical reasoning approaches the
problem from a (typically Platonic) top-down perspective. He does not
say that the kind of quasi-universalizing abstraction Aristotle has in
mind is impossible, only that it will not have the required scope and
accuracy--unless one assumes that we already possess a clear
conception of mathematical accuracy. What in fact happens, according
to Syrianus, is that this is impossible unless the human intellect
possesses an innate understanding of mathematical principles and
concepts which it projects onto the plane of our imagination from
above in order to grasp them rationally as the substances that they
are: "... geometry aims to contemplate the soul's
partless reason-principles (*logoi*) themselves but, being too
feeble to employ these intellections, which are free of images, it
extends these principles into imagined and extended shapes and
magnitudes, and thus contemplates the former in the latter"
(*In metaph.* 91, 31-34; trans. Dillon/O'Meara,
modified). The place of mathematical objects is in our imagination,
Syrianus suggests *In metaph.* 186, 17-23, and the case
is comparable to matter receiving form, except that matter "does
not know what it is receiving, nor can it hold on to it,"
whereas the imagination, when it receives the mathematical blueprint
from above, holds on to it to some extent and acquires an
understanding of it.



(2) At *Metaphysics* XIII 4,1079a11-13, Aristotle briefly
invokes the "Third Man" argument as a well-known problem
for proponents of the theory of forms; already Plato, in the
*Parmenides* (132a-133a), had raised the same issue. If
the Form of Man not only fully expresses the characteristic of
"what-it-is-to-be-a-man" (say "humanity"), but
also is a perfect instance of that characteristic (i.e., the
"Form-of-Man" is a man, more perfect than any physical
man), then it would seem that there must be a resemblance between the
Form of Man and the physical copy of that form (which, *ex
hypothesi*, are both "men"). This requires the
postulate of a "Third Man" by virtue of which it is
possible to determine and predicate such resemblance. Syrianus points
out correctly (*In metaph.* 111, 27-33) that this kind of
argument could go on *ad infinitum* and then retorts (111,
33-112, 6) that it is a mistake to suppose that the predicate
"man" is used in the same sense in the two cases:
"If the point is that, because the Essential Man is synonymous
with men in this realm, as Alexander states in his exegesis of this
passage, and all synonyms come to be synonyms by virtue in their
participation in some Form, a 'third man' will manifest
itself as being predicated of both the Form and the things in this
realm, then the argument becomes ridiculous; for it is not the case
that the things in this realm are synonymous with the relevant
Form" (111, 33-37; trans. Dillon/O'Meara). If that
were the case, one should--absurdly--expect to find a liver,
a spleen and each of the other internal organs present in the Form of
Man, as Syrianus points out further down (113, 34f). In the end,
Syrianus' solution to the conundrum may not be entirely
satisfactory, but it was by Syrianus' time the standard one
among Platonists. He does not deny self-predication, but he contends
instead that the predication of "man" in the case of the
Form and in the case of the natural human being, even if it involves
homonymy, does so not in the usual sense, but "in the way that a
model (*paradeigma*) is related to an image of itself, and
specifically when the model generates the images in virtue of its
essence, and causes them to revert to it" (115, 1-3). That
is to say, the "Form of Man" is a man in the sense that it
is productive of natural substances of a certain kind, i.e. human
beings, which deserve the same predicate to the extent that they
actively instantiate the essential characteristic of that form (i.e.
'revert to it').



There has been some discussion about Syrianus' originality
because we possess a commentary of books 6-14 of
Aristotle's *Metaphysics* that claims to be by the hand
of Alexander of Aphrodisias and which shares numerous passages with
Syrianus' work (concordances in Luna and Dillon/O'Meara).
Even though the commentary is most certainly not by Alexander, it
still remains essentially unclear which author is dependent on whom.
Most scholars accept the view, however, that the commentary by
Ps.-Alexander was produced during the Byzantine Renaissance, most
likely by Michael of Ephesus (early 12th cent.), and is
therefore dependent on Syrianus.


### 3.2 Commentary on Hermogenes



These scholia on the popular rhetorical treatises of Hermogenes of
Tarsus (c. 160-225) are attributed to "Syrianus the
Sophist," i.e. the rhetorician. References to and citations from
philosophical works abound (Plato, minor Platonists, Aristotle), and
there are no good reasons to doubt that this commentary was in fact
written by Syrianus the Neoplatonist, most probably before he assumed
full leadership of the Academy. The work is addressed to the
author's favorite son Alexander (2, 3f.), who was presumably
being honed to become an orator (rather than a philosopher). The work,
although containing no philosophical argument, deserves closer study
as it is full of references to major and minor authors, providing good
evidence for the vitality of the literary tradition as a backdrop for
pagan philosophy in late antiquity.


## 4. Influence



Since most of Syrianus' work is lost, it is not easy precisely
to gauge the reach and depth of his influence, but it is safe to
assume that it was considerable. Syrianus had two important pupils who
determined the philosophical culture in Alexandria and Athens
respectively. One of these was Hermias of Alexandria, the father of
Ammonius, a most influential later commentator on Aristotle. Hermias
did not stay in Athens but returned to Alexandria to teach philosophy
there, passing away prematurely in his forties. By him we possess a
transcript of lectures (scholia) on Plato's *Phaedrus*,
and it is generally supposed that the work draws on the lectures of
Syrianus which Hermias attended, although Hermias nowhere mentions
Syrianus by name (a not uncommon practice). As already stated above,
the other pupil of Syrianus was the eminent Proclus, a student of
Syrianus' at roughly the same time as Hermias. In contrast to
the latter, Proclus frequently acknowledges Syrianus in his writing.
Proclus possessed an unusually powerful ability to synthesize and
systematize Platonism, and it seems reasonable to suppose that many a
doctrine he subscribed to he had learned from Syrianus.



Copies of Syrianus' commentary on the *Metaphysics* were
available in Alexandria several generations after his death and used
by Asclepius of Tralles and, if the attribution of the commentary on
the *Metaphysics* of Ps.-Alexander to Michael of Ephesus is
correct (see above), his work was available in Constantinople in the
12th century. The first Renaissance Latin translation of
Syrianus was produced by Bagnoli and published in Venice in 1558.