In Alcibiades I Socrates seeks to lure a youthful, ambitious Alcibiades away from a career in politics to the philosophical life, insisting that he is the only true lover of the much-adored Alcibiades. Part of the dialogue is taken up by the examination of the Delphic injunction ‘Know thyself’. Unlike modern scholarship, the ancient Neoplatonists never doubted the authenticity of the dialogue and gave it a prominent place in their curriculum as an appropriate starting point for the study of the Platonic corpus. On the one hand, the dialogue was believed to contain all other dialogues in a ‘seedlike’ form. The conclusion of the dialogue, that one’s true self coincides with one’s soul, on the other hand, encouraged students to turn away from the sensible realm and a love for worldly glory towards a life of introspection and the love of wisdom. Because of its prominent place in the Neoplatonic curriculum, this dialogue was frequently discussed and commented upon.

The present study engages with Proclus’ partially surviving commentary on this dialogue and that of Olympiodorus. In doing so, it fits within a broader trend of reappreciation of Alcibiades I by modern Platonic scholarship, which previously tended to neglect it because of its spurious status, and a growing body of publications on the late ancient Neoplatonist Olympiodorus, who was obscured by the towering figure of Proclus for a long time. In the present study A. approaches these two commentaries from a specific angle. He assumes, correctly, that the role of Socrates in the dialogue is mirrored by the Neoplatonic teacher (Proclus, Olympiodorus) who comments upon the text and that of the youthful Alcibiades by the student or reader of the commentary. Exploring the dialogue under the guidance of a teacher, the student is expected to be set on a path of self-discovery and trade youthful philotimia (‘love of honour’) for philosophia (‘love of wisdom’). A.’s ambition in this study is to place the spotlight firmly on this process of spiritual growth, which he refers to interchangeably as ‘psychoerotic metamorphoses’, ‘psychoerotic transformation’ and ‘psychotransformation’. In his own words he wishes ‘to bring the reader into the Neoplatonic lecture hall to catch a glimpse of the commentator at work on the Alcibiades as a pedagogue’ (p. 9). He does so by combining both commentaries into ‘a synthetic tapestry’, foregoing any possible conceptual differences between Proclus and Olympiodorus.

The book follows the structure of the Alcibiades I, with chapters successively addressing the proem, the elenctic, protreptic and maieutic sections through the lenses of the commentaries of Proclus and Olympiodorus. These chapters read as if A. intended to produce a sort of Neoplatonic commentary on Alcibiades I, almost as if he wished to act as a pedagogue in the footsteps of both Proclus and Olympiodorus, whom he clearly admires for their pedagogic qualities. As he puts it at the end of the book by way of conclusion: ‘Olympiodorus’ greatness, like that of Proclus and the other members of the late antique commentary tradition, lies therefore not just in the lengthy epistemological and metaphysical expositions for which these thinkers are typically known, but in a psychagogic intentionality witnessed in the classroom, each day, by philosophical initiates’ (pp. 208–9).

While this approach, which highlights the psychagogic dimension of these commentaries, yields a number of valuable insights, the resulting study is occasionally confusing and somewhat one-dimensional. Readers would have benefited from a brief introduction to the source text and its structural organisation before A. turns to a detailed discussion of the commentaries (as, e.g., M. Griffin does in the introduction to his excellent translation of Olympiodorus: On Plato’s First Alcibiades 10–28 [2017]). Moreover, one may also question the wisdom of combining Proclus’ and Olympiodorus’ commentaries. Olympiodorus can be seen to try to integrate various slightly different interpretations of elements of the dialogue by Proclus and others. This can be illustrated, for example, by Olympiodorus’ discussion of the issue of the aim (skopos) of the dialogue, when he sets out to harmonise Proclus’ and Damascius’ competing accounts. Although Proclus and Olympiodorus agree that the dialogue contributes to the student’s conversion towards philosophy, attention to the subtle differences between their interpretations would have yielded a more nuanced picture of their respective approaches. A.’s presentation of their commentaries as ‘a synthetic tapestry’ requires readers to move repeatedly between this study, Alcibiades I and the commentaries by Proclus and Olympiodorus.

While the book repeatedly promises to take readers to the Neoplatonic lecture hall or classroom, it does not completely deliver on that promise. For a proper understanding of these commentaries and for A.’s project to bring Neoplatonic psychagogy into focus, it might have been illuminating to study the Sitz im Leben of those texts. Damascius’ Life of Isidore or Philosophical History, for example, provides some illustrative cases of students of the Neoplatonic schools in Athens and Alexandria who were in the grip of philotimia, pointing to the enduring relevance of this text for late antique readers. More importantly, the very special, religious atmosphere that pervaded the late antique Neoplatonic educational institutions should have been given its proper due. A. starts the book discussing its epigraph, taken from the anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy. According to this text Plato is a δόξης ἀντιθέοιο καθηγητήρ. A. argues that it would be wrong to assume that this means that Plato is praised ‘for handing over to his readers and students a suprahuman wisdom’ (p. 1), on the assumption that δόξης cannot refer to wisdom. Yet this seems to overlook the oracular context of the passage, understood by the Neoplatonists as a form of revealed wisdom. The oracle, in fact, presents Plato as a divinely inspired seer. Olympiodorus, who may be the author of the anonymous Prolegomena, stresses the special, suprahuman nature of Platonic wisdom when he starts his commentary with an overview of instances of divine inspiration in Plato, listing passages from Timaeus, Republic, Phaedrus and Theaetetus.

In a similar way, the Neoplatonist professors of the Neoplatonic school of Athens were presented by their students as equally divinely possessed seers, who, because of their inspiration, were able to provide an inspired exegesis of these divine texts. Students may have been able to grasp their exegesis because the divine inspiration might have rubbed off on them. This is not to say that these Neoplatonic teachers were not at the same time busying themselves bringing their students to self-knowledge and philosophy. However, this conversion of students towards their own souls and the intelligible world reflected therein was a prerequisite for their fully partaking in the inspired exegesis of the inspired suprahuman wisdom of Plato.

To be fair to A., he does at times draw attention to the religious language in the commentaries and to the deep, personal master-pupil relationship that characterises these Neoplatonic textual communities (to borrow a helpful concept from D. Baltzly, ‘Plato’s Authority and the Foundation of Textual Communities’, CQ 64 [2014], briefly alluded to by A. [p. 73 n. 188]). A fuller account of Neoplatonic pedagogy might have emerged from a more systematic engagement with the wider context of late ancient psychology, epistemology, theology and religious practice. These reservations do not detract from the many insightful observations A. offers throughout the volume. Students of these texts will therefore undoubtedly benefit from his monograph.