The Enneads: Abridged Edition

Plotinus is the last great philosopher of antiquity, although in more than one respect, a precursor of modern times. The Enneads bring together Neoplatonism--mystic passion and ideas from Greek philosophy--together with striking variants of the Trinity and other central Christian doctrines, to produce a highly original synthesis.
Plotinus (AD 204–70) was the main expositor of Neoplatonism, the last great movement of Classical Greek philosophy. As well as reviving Platonism, Plotinus’ work blended Plato, Aristotle and earlier Greek philosophy into a new religious formulation, and his massive work of synthesis, The Enneads, is one of the classics of western mysticism.
Stephen Mackenna was born in Liverpool in 1872 and worked in Dublin as a bank clerk before becoming a journalist in London. He then moved to Paris, where he became friendly with the playwright, J. M. Synge, and other political and literary Irish exiles. A visit to Greece to fight the Turks began his lifelong love of Greek literature and philosophy. He became European correspondent of the New York World and, while covering the 1905 Revolution in St Petersburg, he discovered The Enneads of Plotinus, which he resolved to translate. After giving up his job in disgust at popular journalism and retiring first to Dublin and then, after 1921, to England (where he lived until his death in 1935), he devoted himself to the translation helped by the generosity of an English businessman, Sir Ernest Debenham.
John Dillon was born in 1939 and educated at Downside School and Oriel College, Oxford. From 1966 to 1980 he taught Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, returning from there to become Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin. His publications include The Middle Platonists (1977), A Classical Lexicon to Finnegans Wake (with Brendan O’Hehir, 1977), Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria (with David Winston, 1983), a translation of Proclus’ Commentary on the Parmenides (1987), Alcinous’ The Handbook of Platonism (1993) and two volumes of collected essays, The Golden Chain (1991), and The Great Tradition (1997).