Despite Lachmann's attempt to place them in the second century, it is now generally agreed that the Fables of Avianus cannot have been written before the late fourth or early fifth century. The linguistic and metrical evidence is decisive. For these matters I merely refer to the material collected in the prefaces to the editions of Ellis and Hervieux. Though these works appeared in 1887 and 1894 respectively, when the study of Late Latin was in its infancy, I suspect that (...) a fresh study with the aid of modern tools would serve only to confirm their conclusions. (shrink)

This article analyses the Plotinian reconsideration of the link between the definition of happiness and the homonymy of life. To safeguard Platonism, Plotinus inverts the Aristotelian discussions of homonymy and its metaphysical implications, and presents the prior-posterior relationship in terms of progressive degradation. Happiness does not consist of “life” in general nor of the “rational life” ; rather, it consists of the life that is situated in the ontologically first and most perfect degree, which is the life that pertains to (...) intelligence and is consubstantial with it, and of which the other lives are progressively degraded derivations. The man who possesses the first and perfect life of the intelligible in actuality, like the gods, can be considered happy. (shrink)