Ammonius Hermiae

Ammonius Hermiae
Bornc. 440[1] AD
Died517–526 AD
FamilyHermias (father)
Aedesia (mother)
Heliodorus of Alexandria (brother)
SchoolNeoplatonism

Ammonius Hermiae (/əˈmniəs/; Greek: Ἀμμώνιος ὁ Ἑρμείου, translit. Ammōnios ho Hermeiou, lit. "Ammonius, son of Hermias"; c. 440[1] – between 517 and 526)[2] was a Greek philosopher from Alexandria in the eastern Roman empire during Late Antiquity. A Neoplatonist, he was the son of the philosophers Hermias and Aedesia, the brother of Heliodorus of Alexandria and the grandson of Syrianus.[2] Ammonius was a pupil of Proclus in Roman Athens, and taught at Alexandria for most of his life, having obtained a public chair in the 470s.

According to Olympiodorus of Thebes's Commentaries on Plato's Gorgias and Phaedo texts, Ammonius gave lectures on the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Porphyry of Tyre,[2] and wrote commentaries on Aristotelian works and three lost commentaries on Platonic texts.[2] He is also the author of a text on the astrolabe published in the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum, and lectured on astronomy and geometry.[2] Ammonius taught numerous Neoplatonists, including Damascius, Olympiodorus of Thebes, John Philoponus, Simplicius of Cilicia, and Asclepius of Tralles.[2] Also among his pupils were the physician Gessius of Petra and the ecclesiastical historian Zacharias Rhetor, who became the bishop of Mytilene.[2]

As part of the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, the Alexandrian school was investigated by the Roman imperial authorities; Ammonius made a compromise with the Patriarch of Alexandria, Peter III, voluntarily limiting his teaching in return for keeping his own position.[2] This alienated a number of his colleagues and pupils, including Damascius, who nonetheless called him "the greatest commentator who ever lived" in his own Life of Isidore of Alexandria.[2]

  1. ^ a b Jackson, Robin; Lycos, Kimon; Tarrant, Harold (1998). Olympiodorus: Commentary on Plato's Gorgias. Leidon, The Netherlands: Brill. p. 2. ISBN 90-04-10972-2.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Watts, Edward J. (2018), Nicholson, Oliver (ed.), "Ammonius", The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-19-866277-8, retrieved 2020-10-15