# Enneads

- id: enneads
- original title: Ἐννεάδες / Enneades
- author: Plotinus
- language: Greek
- composed: 253–270, Rome
- field: philosophy

Plotinus' collected treatises, edited after his death by his student Porphyry into six groups of nine. In Arabic, selections from the last three Enneads circulated under the wrong name, as the Theology of Aristotle, and that error organized centuries of philosophy.

## The chain

- **c. 300–305** Greek -> Greek, edition [attested]
  Porphyry (editor)
  Porphyry arranged his teacher's treatises into six enneads, groups of nine, some thirty years after Plotinus died. Every later tradition received the book in this editorial shape.
  Evidence: Adamson 2025
  - **c. 833–842** Greek -> Arabic, adaptation as "أثولوجيا أرسطاطاليس" [attested]
    Ibn Na'ima al-Himsi (translator), al-Kindi (reviser), Ahmad ibn al-Mu'tasim (patron), Baghdad
    A rearranged, interpretively expanded paraphrase of selections from Enneads IV-VI, circulating as the Theology of Aristotle. The preface names the production team honestly; the Aristotle label may be a later addition rather than a forgery. Ibn Sina found the attribution 'somewhat suspect' and commented on the book anyway.
    Evidence: Adamson 2025 (the dedication to Ahmad dates the redaction to 833-842); Zimmermann 1986

## Worth knowing

The Theology opens with 'Aristotle' recounting, in the first person, Plotinus' out-of-body ascent: often have I been alone with my soul, and have doffed my body and laid it aside. For centuries Arabic readers believed the sober logician of the Organon had personally reported an ecstatic ascent to the intelligible world. The preface, honestly, names the real translator, the corrector and the patron all along.

## Sources

- Adamson, Peter (2025). The Theology of Aristotle. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Zimmermann, F. W. (1986). The Origins of the So-Called Theology of Aristotle. In Kraye, Ryan and Schmitt (eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages.

Confidence grades: attested (named in the medieval record or settled in scholarship), probable (standard view with real uncertainty), disputed (scholars disagree).