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472 however, seems to have transpired, for it is related that he first saw the light at Lycopolis in Egypt, AD. 205. At the age of twenty he went to study in Alexandria, which for long had been celebrated for its commercial prosperity, and for the variety and activity of its literary institutions. In the first centuries of the Christian era this city was the gathering-point of the learning of the East and of the West. Here were collected together, as in a vast reservoir, the Greek philosophy, the oriental mysticism, the ancient superstitions of heathendom, the rising power of Christianity, the heresies of gnosticism, and the doctrines of the Jewish kabala; and in the midst of the fermentation of these elements, the Alexandrian philosophy arose. Although not set up in express rivalry or antagonism to the new religion, it was no doubt inspired, in part at least, by the desire to question and reduce its pretensions. It was an effort on the part of expiring paganism to rally and organise her forces, in order to show the world that the heathen sages had not preached, and that the heathen devotees had not practised, in vain; that there was still some fire in the ancient ashes, still some life and health in the old philosophical and mythological traditions; and that they did not merit the hatred and contempt with which they were now frequently assailed.

3. When Plotinus came to Alexandria, Ammonius Saccas was at the head of this philosophy, was,