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Simplicius

Simplicius

c. 480 CE–c. 560 CE · Athens

Simplicius of Cilicia (c. 480-c. 560 CE) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and one of the last great commentators on Aristotle. His detailed commentaries on works such as the Physics and On the Heavens are invaluable not only for their philosophical insight but because they preserve numerous quotations from earlier Greek thinkers, including the Presocratics, that would otherwise be lost. He was among the scholars who left Athens after the closing of the Platonic school there around 529 CE.

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AthensAttica (Greece)

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About Athens

Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.

In Athens at the same time

Proclus the Grammarian, Proclus, Marinus, 5th century, Damascius, Priscianus Lydus

Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Simplicius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Simplicius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(3)