Ammonius Saccas

Ammonius Saccas taught philosophy in Alexandria in the first half of the third century and was the master under whom Plotinus studied for some eleven years. The surname 'Saccas' is often connected with a tradition that he had once been a porter or sack-carrier. He committed nothing to writing and is said to have bound his closest pupils to keep his teaching private, so that almost nothing of his own doctrine can be reconstructed; the indirect reports that survive are late and conflicting.

Ancient sources describe him as largely self-taught and credit him with reconciling Plato and Aristotle — a project that would define the later schools. A persistent confusion surrounds his pupils, since the name overlaps with that of a Christian writer, and it is disputed whether the Christian theologian Origen studied with the same Ammonius.

Plotinus is said to have searched among the teachers of Alexandria in dissatisfaction until a friend brought him to Ammonius, after which he declared, 'This is the man I was looking for.' Because so little of his own thought is recoverable, Ammonius functions almost as a threshold figure — the unwritten source from which the river of Neoplatonism is traditionally said to flow.