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We may first consider two marginal instances in which Plotinus makes use of Homeric images in such a way that an interpretive statement is implied but not developed. In Enn . 6.5, On the Universal Entire Presence of

, Plotinus evokes the magnificent moment in book 1 of the Iliad when Athena restrains Achilles by grasping his hair from behind, so that his movement is arrested:

Achilles was astounded, turned around and immediately knew
Pallas Athena—her eyes blazed terribly.

(Il . 1.199-200)

Apart from any implied interpretation of the passage, Plotinus's allusion is another good example of his use of Homeric evocations to provide richly imaginatively charged, yet anthropomorphized and immediately accessible, comparisons to help his reader grasp the spiritual experience he wants to communicate. In this instance he is working toward a statement concerning the individual's participation in, and identity with,

.
He has just asserted that "we and everything constitute a single en-

[41] Il . 3.342, 4.79, 23.815, 24.482; cf. Od . 3.372.

[42] I have classified the fifteen instances into (1) passages interpreting broad patterns or stories from Homer: Enn . 1.6.8.16 and 18; 3.3.5.42-43; 5.8.13.1-2; and 5.9.1.21, (2) passages interpreting Homeric expressions: Enn . 1.1.12.31; 4.3.27.7-13; 5.1.2.27; 5.5.3.20-22; 5.8.3.26; 5.8.4.1; 6.5.12.31-32; 6.7.30.28; and 6.9.7.23-24; and (3) marginally interpretive passages: Enn . 5.5.8.6 and 6.5.7.10-11.

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tity,"^[43] but that as long as we continue to focus our attention outside ourselves, we are like a creature with many faces surrounding a single brain, each face unaware of the others and of his identity with them.

Were one able to be spun around, either by his own effort or through the good fortune of being yanked by Athena herself, he will find himself face-to-face with the god, with himself, and with the universe. He will not at first perceive what he sees as the universe, but when he finds that he is unable to locate and define himself and his limits, then, abandoning the definition of himself as something separate from the entire

, he will enter the total universe without making a single move, but by remaining there, where the universe has its foundations.^[44]

The unforgettable Homeric moment becomes a metaphor for the very experience the Iliad passage, with its archaic abruptness, endeavors to communicate. The difference is that that experience itself—the divine epiphany, the moment of revelation—has been redefined in terms of an ontology utterly foreign to Homer. The Homeric moment lends a physical presence to the abstract concept of Plotinus. It is an image combining physical immobility in a context of dynamic action with a violent wrenching of normal perceptions leading ultimately to the hero's redefinition of his own relationship to the world around him. This is the primary function of the image in Plotinus's essay, and the shift he demands—that we think in terms of turning our eyes not simply over our shoulders but within ourselves—is easily made.

Implied in Plotinus's use of the Homeric passage, however, is an important element in the earlier history of its interpretation. The Olympians as individual personalities are of little or no interest to Plotinus— Athena is not mentioned elsewhere in the Enneads —and this passage in particular had lent itself to interpretation along the familiar lines of the claim that Athena represents the restraining force of wisdom, reason, or mind, calming the impulsive emotions. The treatment of Athena as an essentially allegorical figure representing mind is probably Stoic in origin. With reference to the present passage, it is reflected in a scholion^[45]

^[43][44]

[45] The T scholion on Il . 1.199-200; Schol. in Il ., ed. Erbse, vol. 1, p. 65, lines 44-45.

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and in Eustathius.^[46] To Plotinus and to his audience, it must have been immediately clear that the passage evoked represented not only a universally known and striking archaic image for a deeply felt spiritual breakthrough, but simultaneously also a complex image for the powers of mind—conceived as a universal acting upon individuals—over actions and events. It is against the background of this previous history of interpretation, which it implies and assumes, that this and other Plotinian evocations of Homeric passages should be viewed.

Bearing in mind the fact that in evoking a Homeric image, Plotinus is undoubtedly evoking a long history of interpretation as well, we may go on to another anomalous instance of Homeric allusion in the Enneads , which points to another implicit attitude lying behind Plotinus's use of Homer, and indeed behind all his statements regarding the physical universe. As already mentioned, this universe is for Plotinus merely the insubstantial expression of higher true realities. This is not to reduce it to the level of the utterly contemptible; in his tract against the Gnostics (Enn . 2.9) and elsewhere, Plotinus is explicit that the material cosmos, though teetering on the edge of nonexistence, is not to be viewed as inherently evil or the product of an evil creator. It is redeemed by the fact that it expresses higher realities. Implied in this attitude is the belief that the material universe itself constitutes a system of meaning, a language of symbols that, properly read, will yield a truth that transcends its physical substrate. We are close in spirit here to a Cotton Mather's search for transcendent meaning in the physical world and to an Ishmael interrogating the hieroglyphics on the whale's back. Any statement about this world may, on a higher plane, mask a statement about some true existent, not because of the nature of the statement, but because of the inherently symbolic structure of the universe to which it refers.

In his discussion of the relationship of the objects of cognition(

) to mind

in Enn . 5.5, Plotinus characteristically evokes a Homeric image to serve as the basis for an assertion about non-spatial reality. Again, the central concept is immobility, and Plotinus is making the point he was making with reference to Athena and Achilles—that the experience of higher reality is attained not by physical displacement but by the journey inward:

Thus one must not seek it out, but rather remain at peace until it makes its appearance, preparing oneself to contemplate it as the eye awaits the rising of the sun, which lifts itself above the horizon—"out of Ocean," the poets say—and delivers itself to the contemplation of

[46] Eust. In Il., ad loc ., 81-82 (vol. 1, p. 69).

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the eye. But this reality, which the sun mimics, where will it rise from? What horizon will it lift itself over to make its appearance?^[47]

This instance of Plotinian exploitation of an epic image is in many ways typical and can be read as entirely non-interpretive: its primary function is undoubtedly the placing of the imaginatively charged diction of Homer at the service of the intellectual and imaginative demands Plotinus places upon his audience, to provide a substantial and physical image of extraordinary scale and beauty beyond which Plotinus can strive to make his own point. Only the reminder that the sun—the physical sun in this physical universe—is the mimic, the imitation of a higher reality, implies anything further, but it does indicate, however subtly, that when the poets say, "the sun rose out of Ocean," they are describing a process that, because of the very nature of the world, and not because of the nature of their own imaginative act, mirrors the process by which

reaches the perception of mankind. Thus the poems as systems of meaning mimic the structure of meaning of the physical reality in which they participate, and there are indeed elements in their meaning that go beyond the intentions of the poets.

The remaining Plotinian allusions to the meaning of Homer's poetry break down into those that reflect upon the meaning of a Homeric word or phrase and those that explore the meaning of some broader aspect of the poems, some Homeric myth. The former category is somewhat larger, but most of the nine instances can be dismissed with only very few comments.

When Plotinus talks about the traditional gods, sometimes echoing Homeric language, he feels the need—as did most "theologians" in Greek pagan tradition—to make explicit the relationship between the traditional accounts and his own system. He never explores this relationship in detail, inasmuch as the traditional gods are of little use to him, yet the explicit elucidation of qualities attributed by Homer to the gods comes through at several points. In Enn . 5.8, On Noetic Beauty , Plotinus meditates upon the life of the gods: "They 'know everything' and what they know is not things of human concern but divine things that are properly

^[47]

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their own, and all that

perceives."^[48] This is clearly not the force of the Homeric claims for the universality of divine wisdom, which is taken to be a knowledge comparable to human wisdom but differing in scope because it is unbounded by time and space. What Plotinus is striving to communicate, however, is the hierarchy of states of consciousness that correspond to the hypostases. Homer's formulation is accurate, but requires interpretive elaboration. A few lines later another Homeric stock phrase is evoked and interpreted briefly but unmistakeably: "There is where 'living at ease' is."^[49] The simple assertion that the Homeric cliché refers in fact to a realm other than the material—to an

eternally distinct from the world of everyday experience

—though it could hardly be called an exercise in Homeric exegesis, still communicates clearly the way in which Homeric statements about the divine had evolved in later Platonism to adapt to an idealist cosmology with no apparent relevance to the world-model of the creators of the Homeric poems.

It is clear from another interpretive passage both that Plotinus considered Homeric anthropomorphism to be metaphorical and that he equated the structures of meaning of the Platonic myths with those of the early poets, including Homer. He is asking whether the concept of pleasure

can have any relevance to experience on the level of

and concludes that this is true only in the sense that every activity, state, or existence can be either impeded or unimpeded, and that the latter situation is clearly more desirable and to be chosen over the former:

It is because they consider this latter sort of state of the

more pleasant and preferable that they speak of it as having an element of pleasure mixed into it, for lack of an appropirate term, just as the poets use metaphorically the names of things we ourselves love and use expressions like "being drunk on nectar" and "feasting and banqueting" and "the father smiled" and thousands of other things of the sort.^[50]

^[48][49][50]

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They apply the terms metaphorically, "carrying over"

^[51] words that properly refer to human experience to talk about the experience of the gods. Thus when Homer's Zeus smiles (Il . 5.426 =15.47), this constitutes a claim that the gods know pleasure, but only in the very narrowly limited sense just explained. The fact that "drunk on nectar points not to the poets but to the myth of Diotima in the Symposium (203b5) seems unavoidably to indicate that Plotinus makes little distinction between the myths of Homer and those of Plato. Both poet and philosopher apparently use mythic language in the same way to hint at a higher reality.^[52]

In the more complete Neoplatonic analysis of Homeric anthropomorphism that reaches us through Proclus, it becomes clear that much of what Homer says about the gods could be salvaged by imposing upon the Homeric myth the exegetical superstructure of a complex demonology. Proclus populated the universe with chains of spiritual, physical, and mixed beings extending from the

to the material world and found conveniently that certain Homeric statements about the gods that were objectionable with reference to noetic beings could acceptably be thought of as applying to lowly

in their "processions."^[53] The argument is at least as old as Apuleius, a contemporary of Numenius's.^[54] Plotinus takes his place in the development of this approach to Homer's gods, distinguishing between the highest god, toward which the entire universe turns, and those other gods that appear to individuals: "These are the gods that 'wander through the cities in many disguises.' "^[55] This verse from the Odyssey is, in a sense, a strange choice as a basis for the distinction, since Plato had specifically rejected the line.^[56] Given the fact that Plotinus could not be unaware of Plato's judgment, we must conclude that this is an instance—however mild—of defensive interpreta-

[51] The term is Aristotelian. See below, pp. 202-3.

[52] The last example, "to feasting and banqueting," is likewise traced to Plato (Phdr . 247a8) by Henry and Schwyzer, and although the ultimate source of the image is Homeric, the familiar passage in the Phaedrus may well be the context Plotinus has in mind.

[53] See ch. 5A and B below.

[54] Cf. Aug. Civ. Dei 9.7.

^[55]

[56] Rep . 2.381d.

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tion. Plotinus is anticipating the later Neoplatonic reconciliation of Homeric and Platonic statements about the gods by asserting that some Homeric statements apply properly only to certain lower classes of beings. This is to say that Homer's assertion remains essentially sound, though Plotinus, from his perspective, is able to make certain finer distinctions.

When he makes the point that there is continuity among the hypo-stases, Plotinus asserts that in the higher realm, the metaphor of kingship is a weak one, since a king (here) rules over creatures distinct from himself.

But the king there is not a ruler over creatures separate and different from himself, but has the most just, the true kingship, rooted in the nature of things in that he is king of truth and by nature lord of his countless offspring and of a divine assembly and more justly called "king of a king" or "king of kings" or "father of gods," whom Zeus mimics even in this, unsated by the contemplation of his own father and looking beyond him to his father's father as an action accomplishing the existence of being.^[57]

The juxtaposition of the familiar Old Testament epithet with the Homeric one is a hint that this may be one of the passages in which Plotinus followed Numenius closely.^[58] At any rate, the method resembles that of Numenius, and the implication is that the cumulative evidence of the primitive revelations to be gleaned from such sources supports a certain conception of the divine.

In some instances Plato is clearly the intermediary in the spiritualization of a myth ultimately derived from Homer, as in the discussion of accomplishing the inward journey to revelation and returning to tell others: "Perhaps it was because he had such communion that Minos was called 'companion of Zeus,' and with this in his mind he established laws in its image, having been, so to speak, pumped full by contact with

^[57][58]

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the divine for the establishment of laws."^[59] Plotinus's apparent source here is the Minos , especially 319a-320b, where Socrates examines in detail and analyzes the Homeric references to Minos; the myth is again evoked at the beginning of the Laws . Still, the Plotinian interpretation remains original to the extent that the spiritual discipline to which the myth is taken to refer is far more explicitly elaborated, and the myth that has served as a key to it emerges as a very crude representation at best.

The description of the physical universe previous to the arrival of soul borrows the Homeric phrase "hated of the gods" (

,
Il . 20.65): "The [material] heavens have become a worthy thing when occupied by soul, having previously been a dead body, earth and water, or rather darkness of matter and nonexistence and, as someone says, 'what the gods hate.' "^[60] The Homeric phrase occurs only to describe Hades and once again (in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 246) to describe old age. In the Plotinian context, it functions here primarily as a decorative epithet to reinforce the assertion that matter deprived of soul is utter void. Yet there is, behind its use here, a kind of Plotinian anthropomorphism, a suggestion that, if there were gods in the epic sense, who could be thought of as hating something, what these gods would hate would not be the obvious human "ills"—death and old age—but the only true death, the condition of soulless matter, lying just beyond the limits of being. In a strange way, and certainly without intending it, Plotinus here opens up a possible line of defense of Homer against Plato's condemnation of him for the presentation of death as an evil, a defense that would seem somewhat less absurd against the backdrop of the later Neoplatonic conception of the Troy tale as a metaphor for the entry of souls into matter and their departure back to their true home.^[61]

The discussions of Homer's description of Heracles in the first nekyia of the Odyssey ,

After him I noticed Heracles in all his strength—
A mere image, for he himself [was] with the immortal gods . . .

^[59][60]

[61] Cf. Enn . 5.1, quoted in n. 73 below, on the role of Rhea in the genealogical myth of the Theogony .

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(Od . 11.601-02)

fall between the elaborations of Homeric expressions and the interpretation of broader myths. The focus of concern is doubtless the myth, yet the words themselves take on special importance because of the problem of making sense of a single anomalous bit of information. The problem of Homer's ambivalence in the description of Heracles' soul had previously been noted by many commentators.^[62] Cilento refers to the great temptation to extract doctrinal statements from Homer in support of such unusual Plotinian doctrines as that of the soul and its

,^[63] and the earlier of the two discussions of this passage does stand out as a rather awkward attempt on Plotinus's part, if not to enlist the prestige of Homer, then at least to draw the Homeric passage and its meaning into line with his own thought.

In attempting to come to conclusions concerning the nature of the respective memories of the two aspects of the soul—the "more divine" soul and its expression in the universe—Plotinus evokes these lines and asserts, with very little foundation in the Odyssey as we have it, that Heracles'

is depicted as having a memory only of his most recent life on earth, in the persona of Heracles, whereas other souls, being entire, could perhaps add an element of moral judgment

inaccessible to him (Enn . 4.3.27).

The second discussion, from one of the essays of Plotinus's last year (Enn . 1.1), centers on the problem that we are told of sins, sufferings, expiations, and so forth on the part of the soul, and yet this is difficult to reconcile with a unified, eternal, and good soul. The problem is one that occupied him earlier in Enn . 4.4.16, where he expressed his desire to bring his own view into line with a traditional one, clearly Pythagorean: "For we have these things from those who in antiquity philosophized best concerning the soul and it is appropriate that we should try to make the present account harmonious, or at least non-contradictory, with that one."^[64] Plotinus thus shrinks from contradicting the Pythagoreans, and

[62] Cf. Ps.-Plutarch De vit. Hom . 123; also Plut. De fac . 944-45 and Dodds's comments on the relationship of the Plutarch essay to Plotinus's treatment of the passage, in Cilento, "Mito e poesia," (discussion) pp. 315-16.

[63] Cilento, "Mito e poesia," p. 278.

^[64]

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in this he echoes Numenius. It is striking that in his last treatment of the same problem, he attempts to rationalize the Homeric account of Heracles and does so by imposing a model reminiscent of the myth of Er in the Republic .

The

is the lower expression of the higher soul, but, being in contact with the material world, it is subject to error. It will ultimately cease to exist in the natural course of events, when the entire soul has again become absorbed in the contemplation of that which lies in its true home, "there"

. It is clear from the outset that the soul of Heracles is the only one in Homer's underworld that is described in a way compatible with Plotinus's model, which seems in turn to be based on the antithetical heavenly rewards and subterranean sufferings of the souls in the myth of Er. Neither Homeric nor Platonic myth can ultimately offer Plotinus an adequate account of this matter, and he thus bases his assertions on the Homeric anomaly, Heracles, participating simultaneously in the reward cycle and in the punishment cycle. The

Odysseus saw in Hades, Plotinus implies, will eventually wither away as the higher soul, already among the gods, forgets the experience of the material world. That Heracles should be so divided is particularly appropriate:

The statement rapidly becomes credible when thus interpreted: Heracles was judged worthy to be a god, being possessed of practical virtue, on account of his goodness . . . but, because he was a man of action and not of contemplation, such that he might be entirely there .

, he is above and there is yet something of him below.^[65]

One is reminded of the soul in the myth of Er who made the wrong choice of a new life because he was spoiled for decision making by a cycle of reward obtained through a previous embodiment during which participation in a good society, and not contemplation or philosophy, made him worthy (Rep . 10.619c). The description of this soul in the Republic is immediately preceded by a sermon inserted by Socrates into the myth, the force of which is that philosophy is the only key to the correct choices, guaranteeing permanent reward (Rep . 10.618b-619b). The myth of Er seems to provide a source for the values as well as the model of the fate of souls that Plotinus imposes upon the Homeric account of Heracles. The "Pythagorean" punishments for erring souls are, if anything,

^[65]

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rather an embarrassment for Plotinus, and he is isolated from certain Platonists, as from most Christians, by his belief in the universal human potential for full union with the divine. The myth of Er is Plato's substitute for Homer's corrupting account of the sufferings of the dead. Though bound to both, Plotinus would clearly like to dispense with both. For him, the departure of the soul from the body can be nothing but a cause for rejoicing. The double soul that is so remarkable and idiosyncratic an element in the teaching of Numenius may well have provided Plotinus with the basis for a compromise. If so, the passages in question, with their seeming attempt to reconcile the Homeric and Platonic accounts, may well be traceable to a Numenian original.

Thus far we have been examining Plotinus's attitudes toward Homeric phrases and concepts, as well as to some details of myth that may be considered distinctively Homeric. The remaining Homeric allusions are to the broad lines of the story of the Iliad and Odyssey , and although there is no doubt that Plotinus approaches most of the material as distinctively Homeric, we have now passed beyond the level where evidence of close attention to the text makes it possible to assert that we are dealing with the interpretation of poetry and not simply of myth.

That Plotinus was capable of distorting a traditional myth into a form capable of bearing a meaning compatible with his model of reality is best illustrated by his treatment of myths that are properly Hesiodic and not Homeric.^[66] The adaptation and interpretation of the Pandora story (Enn . 4.3.14) is, as Emile Bréhier noted, uncharacteristic of Plotinus, but it is at the same time in many ways typical of the imaginative expansions by which the tradition of allegorical interpretation enriched the inherited texts.^[67] Zeus's malicious revenge on humanity fades entirely from the picture. Prometheus, identified with providence

, is the creator of Pandora. She is herself a symbol of the material cosmos, endowed with so many blessings (gifts,

) from the spiritual realm. If Epimetheus rejects Pandora, it is because contemplation (or perhaps afterthought) perceives that, given the choice, it is better to remain in the higher sphere and not to enter the material universe. Prometheus in chains is the creator locked in his own creation, but the story of his re-

[66] The Pandora story as Plotinus recreates it is so far removed from Hesiod's account (Works and Days 60-89, Theogony 570-616) that one might question whether this was, in fact, his source. However, several echoes of Hesiod's actual words guarantee that Works and Days was at least among the sources on which Plotinus was drawing.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 632