Damascius

Damascius (; ; 462 – after 538), known as "the last of the Athenian Neoplatonists", was the last scholarch of the neoplatonic Athenian school. He was one of the neoplatonic philosophers who left Athens after laws confirmed by emperor Justinian I forced the closure of the Athenian school in c. 529 AD. After he left Athens, he may have sought refuge in the court of the Persian King Chrosroes, before being allowed back into the Byzantine Empire. His surviving works consist of three commentaries on the works of Plato, and a metaphysical text entitled Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles.

==Life== Much of what is known about Damascius's life comes from his semi-autobiographical work The Philosophical History, or Life of Isidore, and from a work called Vita Severi written by the 6th-century bishop and historian Zacharias Scholasticus. Damascius, as his name suggests, was born in Damascus in c. 462 AD, and travelled to Alexandria in the 480s to study rhetoric at the coeducational school of the late 5th-century Alexandrian professor Horapollo, where students of different religions and philosophies studied together. Zacharias reports that there was a close relationship between the neoplatonic communities of Athens and Alexandria, as Agapius of Athens and Severianus of Damascus, students of Proclus' neoplatonic school in Athens, also studied in neoplatonic schools in Alexandria. Damascius may have travelled to Athens shortly before Proclus died in 485 AD, to teach rhetoric, and travelled back to Alexandria before 488 AD. thumb|6th-century mosaic of [[Justinian I in the Basilique San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. Damascius was head of the last neoplatonic school in Athens when the laws of Justinian I forced its closure.|310x310px]] Late 5th-century Alexandria was a tumultuous place: there were conflicting factions of pro-Chalcedonian and Monophysite Christians, and a growing hostile sentiment towards neoplatonists and people of other non-Christian religions and philosophies that sometimes led to rioting and arrests of leaders of non-Christian schools, resulting in students having to flee and go into hiding. Damascius's account of these times paints a picture of a circle of intellectuals that was under siege, facing arrest and interrogation. They were sometimes courageous, but at other times capitulated. Horapollo, the head of the school at which Damascius had studied and taught rhetoric for nine years, was arrested in 489 AD, causing Damascius and the neoplatonic philosopher Isidore of Alexandria to flee Alexandria and start on a journey to Athens with the aim of studying in the neoplatonic school there.