Ammonius Hermiae (; ;
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,
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.
Life
Ammonius' father Hermias died when he was a child, and his mother Aedesia raised him and his brother Heliodorus in Alexandria. When they reached adulthood, Aedesia accompanied her sons to
Athens where they studied under
Proclus. Eventually, they returned to Alexandria where Ammonius, as head of the Neoplatonist school in the city, lectured on
Plato and
Aristotle for the rest of his life. According to Damascius, during the persecution of the
paganism at Alexandria in the late 480s, Ammonius made concessions to the
Christianity authorities so that he could continue his lectures.
[Damascius, Philosophos Historia, 118B, Athanassiadi] Damascius, who scolds Ammonius for the agreement that he made, does not say what the concessions were, but they may have involved limitations on the doctrines he could teach or promote. He was still teaching in 515; Olympiodorus heard him lecture on Plato's
Gorgias in that year.
[Olympiodorus, in Gorgias, 199, 8–10] He was also an accomplished astronomer; he lectured on
Ptolemy and is known to have written a treatise on the
astrolabe.
Writings
Of his reputedly numerous writings, only his commentary on Aristotle's
De Interpretatione survives intact. A commentary on Porphyry's
Isagoge may also be his, but it is somewhat corrupt and contains later interpolations.
In De Interpretatione, Ammonius contends that divine foreknowledge makes void the contingent. Like Boethius in his second Commentary and in The Consolation of Philosophy, this argument maintains the effectiveness of prayer. Ammonius cites Iamblichus, who said "knowledge is intermediate between the knower and the known, since it is the activity of the knower concerning the known."[
Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, Curzon Press, John Inglis, 2002, pg. 128.]
In addition, there are some notes of Ammonius' lectures written by various students which also survive:
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On Aristotle's Categories (anonymous writer)
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On Aristotle's Prior Analytics I (anonymous writer)
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On Aristotle's Metaphysics 1–7 (written by Asclepius)
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On Nicomachus' Introduction to Arithmetic (written by Asclepius)
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On Aristotle's Prior Analytics (written by John Philoponus)
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On Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (written by John Philoponus)
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On Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption (written by John Philoponus)
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On Aristotle's On the Soul (written by John Philoponus)
There is Greek-language work called Life of Aristotle, which is usually ascribed to Ammonius, but "is more probable that it is the work of Joannes Philoponus, the pupil of Ammonius, to whom it is ascribed in some Manuscript."[Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, The biographical dictionary of the Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge, Volume 2, Part 2, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1843, p. 487.]
English translations
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Ammonius: On Aristotle Categories, translated by S. M. Cohen and G. B. Matthews. London and Ithaca 1992.
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Ammonius: On Aristotle's On Interpretation 1–8, translated by D. Blank. London and Ithaca 1996.
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Ammonius: On Aristotle's On Interpretation 9, with Boethius: On Aristotle's On Interpretation 9, translated by D. Blank (Ammonius) and N. Kretzmann (Boethius). London and Ithaca 1998
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John Philoponus: On Aristotle On Coming-to-be and Perishing 1.1–5, translated by C. J. F. Williams. London and Ithaca 1999
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John Philoponus: On Aristotle On Coming-to-be and Perishing 1.6–2.4, translated by C. J. F. Williams. London and Ithaca 1999.
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John Philoponus: On Aristotle On the Soul 2.1–6, translated by W. Charlton. London and Ithaca 2005
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John Philoponus: On Aristotle On the Soul 2.7–12, translated by W. Charlton. London and Ithaca 2005
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John Philoponus: On Aristotle On the Soul 3.1–8, translated by W. Charlton. London and Ithaca 2000
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John Philoponus: On Aristotle On the Intellect (de Anima 3.4–8), translated by W. Charlton. London and Ithaca 1991.
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Ammonius: Interpretation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Five Terms, translated by Micheal Chase. 2020
Notes
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Andron, Cosmin. "Ammonios of Alexandria", The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists, eds. Georgia Irby-Massie and Paul T. Keyser, New York: Routledge, 2008.
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Jones, A., Martindale, J., Morris, J. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pages 71–72.
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Karamanolis, George E. Plato and Aristotle in agreement? : Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
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Seel, Gerhard (ed.), Ammonius and the Seabattle. Texts, Commentary, and Essays, in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Schneider and Daniel Schulthess; Ammonius on Aristotle: De interpretatione 9 (and 7, 1–17) Greek text established by A. Busse, philosophical commentary by Gerhard Seel; essays by Mario Mignucci and Gerhard Seel, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001.
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Sorabji, Richard. The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD. A Sourcebook, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.
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Verrycken, Koenraad. The Metaphysics of Ammonius son of Hermias, in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and their Influence, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, p. 199-231.
External links
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Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Vol. 4 parts 2–6, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, Edita consilio et auctoritate Academiae litterarum regiae borussicae (1882).
