Fowler Ryan - Plato in the Third Sophistic

I would like to thank all the contributors to this volume, who worked hard to examine the use and impact of Plato in late antiquity in new and interesting ways: I appreciate all of your diligence and patience.

I would like to offer a heart-felt thank you to Professor Alain Gowing, who extended to me all the resources and support I could have possibly needed at the University of Washington as a Visiting Scholar for the 20132014 academic year. I owe a thank you as well to the Center for Hellenic Studies for a year-long Curriculum Fellowship. And I would like to offer my appreciation to Franklin & Marshall College for the office space and library access I needed in the last stretch of this project.

This volume would not have been completed if it werent for Michiel Klein Swormink and his colleagues at De Gruyter. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the series editors of Millennium-Studien: Wolfram Brandes, Alexander Demandt, Helmut Krasser, Hartmut Leppin, Peter von Mllendorff, and Karla Pollmann.

Lending his copyediting skills, Erik Hane worked quickly and often at a moments notice; Luke Madson as well helped me avoid errors and omissions in the volume; and Sean Mills provided essential help with the Prolegomena and Introduction.

Regarding translations, Jessica Crockett translated the contribution by Bernard Schouler; Kate Brooks translated the work of Michael Schramm.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Professor Robert Penella, who translated the piece by Claudia Greco, helped smooth out some of the translations (both modern and ancient) of a number of the contributions included in this volume, as well as offered his advice on a number of logistical and structural issues. The idea for this book really began during a long lunch with Professor Penella a number of years ago in a small Italian restaurant in the Bronx. This volume would not have been possible without his constant (and tireless) guidance, support, and inputreally, it should be listed as a co-edited volume. I thank him for all of these things from the bottom of my heart.

I would like to offer big thank you to Amy Elisabeth Singer for her support and help and all sorts of small things that can sometimes be forgotten or lost along the way. Her copyediting skills have again saved me from all sorts of embarrassing errors.

Last, I take responsibility for any errors in this volume.

Lancaster, April 2014

John F. Finamore (The University of Iowa)

Although there is certainly truth to Dodds claim that Iamblichus favored an approach to philosophical enlightenment that depended heavily on ritualistic and religious beliefs, there is also much more rationalism in Iamblichus writings than Dodds gave him credit for. Further, the concept of the irrational in Platonism does not begin with Iamblichus but has a long tradition. In this paper I will explore Iamblichus use of rationalism and irrationalism in his philosophy, especially as it is expressed in his De Mysteriis, and will show how it is part of a larger Platonic tradition. I hope to show that Iamblichus is not any more irrational than many of his Platonic predecessors and in many ways is more rational.

I wish to explore two areas of what 20th-century analytic philosophers would have considered irrational: demonology and the souls of the dead. As I hope to show by the end of this paper, one persons irrational is anothers serious philosophical concern.