Page:Life of plotinus by porphyry.pdf/10

 Thus he was able to live at once within himself and for others; he never relaxed from his interior attention unless in sleep; and even his sleep was kept light by an abstemiousness that often prevented him taking as much as a piece of bread, and by this unbroken concentration upon his own highest nature.

9.

Several women were greatly attached to him, amongst them Gemina, in whose house he lived, and her daughter, called Gemina, too, after the mother, and Amphiclea, the wife of Ariston, son of Iamblichus; all three devoted themselves assiduously to philosophy.

Not a few men and women of position, on the approach of death, had left their boys and girls, with all their property, in his care, feeling that with Plotinus for guardian the children would be in holy hands. His house therefore was filled with lads and lasses, amongst them Polemon, in whose education he took such interest as often to hear the boy recite verses of his own composition.

He always found time for those that came to submit returns of the childrens' property, and he looked closely to the accuracy of the accounts: "Until the young people take to philosophy," he used to say, "their fortunes and revenues must be kept intact for them." And yet all this labour and thought over the worldly interests of so many people never interrupted, during waking hours, his intention towards the Supreme.

He was gentle, and always at the call of those having the slightest acquaintance with him. After spending twenty-six entire years in Rome, acting, too, as arbiter in many differences, he had never made an enemy of any citizen.

10.

Among those making profession of Philosophy at Rome was one Olympius, an Alexandrian, who had been for a little while a pupil of Ammonius.

This man's jealous envy showed itself in continual insolence, and