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Enneads

The "Six Enneads" is a book whose title is sometimes abbreviated to "The Enneads" or "Enneads," and was written by the Neo-Platonists Plotinus, and edited and compiled by his last student Porphyry, in the short period after circa 253A.D, after the death of Plotinus. Plotinus was a Platonists philosopher, being possibly a 12th to 14th generation student of the Greek philosopher Plato. Plotinus claimed his Platonist education was passed to him by the Platonist Ammonius Saccas of the Egyptian city of Alexandria and one of the founders of Neo-Platonism. "The Enneads" was written circa 250 A.C.E. This "Six Enneads" entry refers to the version translated into modern english, by Stephen Mackenna and B. S. Page.

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/plotinus. This edition is the Mackenna and Page translation.">

A full transcript of the english translation of "The Six Enneads" can be found at on the webpage of http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/plotinus. This edition is the Mackenna and Page translation.

NOTE:

The copy found at http://classics.mit.edu/Plotinus/enneads.html., is a badly abridged version of the Mackenna and Page translation.

It is interesting to notice that the "The Six Enneads" is divided into six chapters (called an ennead) and each chapter is subdivided into nine subchapters (each called a Tractate, and that these numbered enneads and tractates are all multiples of the mystical number "3" (three), being that the Ennead were the nine most important gods and goddesses in Egyptian mythology, .


Title: "The Enneads" and variously titled "Enneads" or "The Six Enneads".

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[based on the complete copy posted at " class="external">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/plotinus]