Aedesius

Aedesius of Cappadocia was the foremost pupil of Iamblichus and, on his master's death, the heir to his school. Rather than remain in Syria he settled at Pergamon, where he founded the influential 'Pergamene' branch of Neoplatonism; his life is known chiefly from the Lives of the Philosophers of Eunapius.

He preserved and transmitted the more religious, ritual-minded Platonism of Iamblichus, in which philosophy and theurgy are joined. Cautious by temperament, he is said to have hesitated over the bolder theurgic practices that some of his pupils embraced.

His circle of students — among them Maximus of Ephesus, Chrysanthius, Eusebius of Myndus, and Priscus — became the teachers of the emperor Julian, so that through Aedesius the Iamblichean line reached the imperial throne and the last great pagan revival.