Platonic Academy
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For the Raphael painting, see The School of Athens
The Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Athens. It persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a sceptical school, turning dogmatic again following the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC. After a short-lived revival by Cassius Dionysius Longinus in the 3rd century AD, the Academy was re-established in AD 410 as a center of Neoplatonism, persisting until AD 529 when it was finally closed down by Justinian I.
The Platonic Academy may be compared to Aristotle's Lyceum.
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[edit] Site
Before the Akademia was a school, and even before Cimon enclosed its precincts with a wall,[1] it contained a sacred grove of olive trees dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, outside the city walls of ancient Athens.[2] The archaic name for the site was Hekademia, which by classical times evolved into Akademia and was explained, at least as early as the beginning of the 6th century BC, by linking it to an Athenian hero, a legendary "Akademos".
The site of the Academy was sacred to Athena and other immortals; it had sheltered her religious cult since the Bronze Age, a cult that was perhaps also associated with the hero-gods the Dioscuri (Castor and Polydeuces), for the hero Akademos associated with the site was credited with revealing to the Divine Twins where Theseus had hidden Helen. Out of respect for its long tradition and the association with the Dioscuri, the Spartans would not ravage these original "groves of Academe" when they invaded Attica,[3] a piety not shared by the Roman Sulla, who axed the sacred olive trees of Athena in 86 BC to build siege engines.
Among the religious observations that took place at the Akademeia was a torchlit night race from altars within the city to Promtheus' altar in the Akademeia. Funeral games also took place in the area as well as a Dionysiac procession from Athens to the Hekademeia and then back to the polis.[4] The road to Akademeia was lined with the gravestones of Athenians.
The site of the Academy was located near Colonus. The walk from Athens to the Academy was 6 stadia (1 mile) from the Dipylon gates (Kerameikos).
The site was rediscovered in the 20th century, in modern Akadimia Platonos; considerable excavation has been accomplished and visiting the site is free.[5]
[edit] Old Academy
Plato's immediate successors as "scholarch" of the Academy were Speusippus (347-339 BC), Xenocrates (339-314 BC), Polemo (314-269 BC), and Crates (c. 269-266 BC).
Other notable members of the Academy include Aristotle, Heraclides Ponticus, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Philip of Opus, and Crantor.
[edit] Middle Academy
Around 266 BC Arcesilaus became scholarch. Under Arcesilaus (c. 266-241 BC), the Academy strongly emphasized Skepticism. This phase is known as the Second (Diogenes Laërtius) or Middle (also, New) Academy.
Arcesilaus was followed by Lacydes of Cyrene (241-215 BC), Euander and Telecles (jointly) (205-c. 165 BC), and Hegesinus (c. 160 BC).
[edit] New Academy
The New or Third (Diogenes) Academy begins with Carneades, in 155 BC, the fourth scholarch in succession from Arcesilaus. It was still largely skeptical, denying the possibility of knowing an absolute truth.
Carneades was followed by Clitomachus (129-c. 110 BC) and Philo of Larissa ("the last undisputed head of the Academy," c. 110-84 BC).[6][7] Around 90 BC, Antiochus of Ascalon founded a rival "Old Academy," rejecting Skepticism and advocating Stoicism.
[edit] Neoplatonic Academy
- Further information: End of Hellenic Religion
After a lapse during the early Roman occupation, the Academy was refounded[8] as a new institution of some outstanding Platonists of late antiquity who called themselves "successors" (diadochoi, but of Plato) and presented themselves as an uninterrupted tradition reaching back to Plato. However, there cannot have actually been any geographical, institutional, economic or personal continuity with the original Academy in the new organizational entity (Bechtle).
The Neoplatonic Academy was re-institutionalised by Plutarch of Athens in 410. Plutarch was followed by Syrianus, Proclus, Marinus, Isidore, and finally Damascius. The Neoplatonic Academy reached its apex under Proclus (died 485).
The last "Greek" philosophers of the revived Academy in the 6th century were drawn from various parts of the Hellenistic cultural world and suggest the broad syncretism of the common culture (see koine): Five of the seven Academy philosophers mentioned by Agathias were Syriac in their cultural origin: Hermias and Diogenes (both from Phoenicia), Isidorus of Gaza, Damascius of Syria, Iamblichus of Coele-Syria and perhaps even Simplicius of Cilicia (Thiele).
At a date often cited as the end of Antiquity, the emperor Justinian closed the school in 529 A.D. (Justinian actually closing the school has come under some recent scrutiny[9]). The last Scholarch of the Academy was Damascius (d. 540). According to the sole witness, the historian Agathias, its remaining members looked for protection under the rule of Sassanid king Khosrau I in his capital at Ctesiphon, carrying with them precious scrolls of literature and philosophy, and to a lesser degree of science. After a peace treaty between the Persian and the Byzantine empire in 532 guaranteed their personal security (an early document in the history of freedom of religion), some members found sanctuary in the pagan stronghold of Harran, near Edessa. One of the last leading figures of this group was Simplicius, a pupil of Damascius, the last head of the Athenian school. The students of the Academy-in-exile, an authentic and important Neoplatonic school surviving at least until the 10th century, contributed to the Islamic preservation of Greek science and medicine, when Islamic forces took the area in the 7th century (Thiele). One of the earliest academies established in the east was the 7th century Academy of Gundishapur in Sassanid Persia.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Plutarch Life of Cimon xiii:7
- ^ Thucydides ii:34
- ^ Plutarch, Life of Theseus xxxii
- ^ Paus. i 29.2, 30.2; Plut. Vit. Sol. i 7
- ^ greeceathensaegeaninfo.com[unreliable source?]
- ^ Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996), s.v. "Philon of Larissa."
- ^ See the table in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 53-54.
- ^ Cameron 1965
- ^ see also Victoria Erhart, The Context and Contents of Priscianus of Lydia's Solutionum ad Chosroem, Catholic University of America, 1998 [1]
[edit] References
- H. Cherniss, The Riddle of the Early Academy, CUP (1945).
- R. E. Wycherley, Peripatos: The Athenian Philosophical Scene. Greece & Rome, parts I (1961) and II (1962).
- J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (1978).
