Although the Phaedrus was included in the standard Neoplatonic school curriculum and Iamblichus, Proclus and Damascius all wrote commentaries on it, only Hermias’ commentary survives. This in itself makes it important and, although it lacks the weight of Proclus’ Platonic commentaries, there is much of interest in it. However, relatively little has been published on it, and this volume is therefore very welcome. The book contains a short introduction and twelve essays. I shall give a brief indication of the content of each.
(1) D. Baltzly suggests that the Phaedrus can be viewed as a dialogue of journeys, the major one being Socrates and Phaedrus’ walk along the Ilissus. But as Hermias sees it, they are both engaged in far more important journeys. Socrates has descended from the intellectual level his soul normally occupies to help Phaedrus ascend to a higher level by attending to progressively superior forms of beauty. Remarkably for a modern reader, Hermias sees even the smallest details of the excursion along the Ilissus as symbolically representative of aspects of the pair's psychic journeys. Baltzly has an explanation for this ‘hermeneutic overkill’ (p. 8). Neoplatonic commentaries were produced within a teaching environment that, beyond the purely academic, aimed to render students godlike through the progressive acquisition of an ascending scale of virtues. Baltzly suggests that, once students had internalised their master's teaching, they would be able to apply it to their lives. They would, for example, be able to view and experience each journey in their lives ‘through the many-leveled journey Hermias has unveiled for them’ in the dialogue (p. 24).
(2) Hermias attributes a certain amount of material in his commentary to Iamblichus. J.M. Dillon asks whether additional Iamblichean material may be present. Most of his suggestions relate to the stated skopos of the dialogue (‘the beautiful at every level’) and the way in which the dialogue is said to be structured around this skopos, both of which repeat Iamblichus’ views. He speculates that the allegorisation of the setting, which was motivated by the perceived need to relate everything in a dialogue to the skopos, goes back to Iamblichus. He then looks for evidence of how and where Hermias, and therefore probably Iamblichus, took the various levels of the beautiful to be present in the dialogue. As it happens, although Dillon seems to have missed this, Hermias actually answers these questions for some levels, and in two cases his answers differ widely from Dillon's: Dillon takes it that ‘the beautiful in discourse’ is treated in Lysias’ speech, Socrates’ first speech and Socrates’ comments on them, while Hermias confines it to Lysias’ speech; Dillon thinks that the beauty in soul is dealt with in the palinode, Hermias in Socrates’ first speech (see 85.15ff. for Hermias’ interpretations). In what is perhaps his most important finding, Dillon argues that much of the material under the second lemma of Book 2, where Hermias explains how god-given enthousiasmos is the cause of beneficial manias and describes the levels of understanding that have been conferred on the human soul, is Iamblichean. Unfortunately, his argument for this seems to partly depend on his assignment of the treatment of beauty in the soul to the palinode, although this could perhaps be remedied.
(3) Hermias claims that, when Plato argues that the soul is immortal, he means just the rational soul. This is evident, he says, from his talking of ‘soul’ without further qualification; when earlier thinkers refer to the irrational soul, they either qualify ‘soul’ or use another term. Hermias lists six such terms. The origin and explanation of five is clear enough, but those of the sixth, ‘ensoulment of the pneuma’ (empsukhia pneumatos), which only occurs in the present passage, are not, and Finamore sets out to clarify them. After reviewing earlier uses of empsukhia and considering the evidence of a key passage in Hermias and of several passages in Proclus, Finamore concludes that ensoulment of the pneuma is equivalent to ensoulment of the pneumatic vehicle. This last is, for Neoplatonists from Syrianus onwards, the second of three embodiments of a soul that descends to earth. The first is a permanent ethereal vehicle. The pneumatic vehicle itself is acquired during its descent to earth and shed when it returns to the heavens. The third is this body of flesh and bone. The immortal soul ensouls each of these vehicles by its presence, in the case of the second and third by projecting a lower-level image (indalma) of itself, which is the non-rational soul.
(4) G. Gabor's topic is Hermias’ account of the role of dialectic, in particular collection and division, in the discussions of a variety of philosophical issues and of rhetoric in the Phaedrus. This is a worthwhile topic, and Gabor makes some good points, but unfortunately there are misunderstandings or mistranslations of Hermias’ words, some of them bizarre, on most pages of his essay, which sometimes vitiate his argument.
(5) Hermias adopts Iamblichus’ view that the skopos, or, unifying theme, of the Phaedrus is ‘beauty on every level’ together with his views on just how and where the different levels of beauty are discussed in the dialogue. Not everyone agreed with this diagnosis of the skopos, and Hermias combats rival suggestions in an introduction to his commentary. In modern times the debate has widened to include the question whether the Phaedrus actually shows the kind of thematic unity the Neoplatonists assumed. Q. Gardiner and Baltzly look at some of the contributions to the modern debate relevant to an assessment of Hermias’ position and at how Hermias makes use of his version of the skopos and conclude that, although Hermias’ chosen skopos cannot do everything the Neoplatonists would like, his reading of the text is ‘novel and insightful’ (p. 83) and makes better sense of it than some of the modern readings do.
(6) S. Gertz writes on ‘Hermias on the Argument for Immortality in Plato's Phaedrus’. As a preliminary, he gives his own analysis of Plato's argument, which, unlike many modern scholars, he believes to be essentially valid, or at least to contain the materials for a valid argument. He then examines Hermias’ analysis of Plato's proof and concludes that, although Hermias’ reading of Plato is not entirely convincing, it avoids some of the problems scholars have seen with Plato's proof, notably its failure to offer a demonstration that the idea of self-motion implies the idea of perpetual motion and its failure (as many read it) to offer a proof of the immortality of individual souls as opposed to soul stuff, as the wider context requires.
(7) Wear discusses Hermias 135.14–138.9, where Hermias comments on Phaedrus 246B5–D2. There, in the course of explaining how it is that living creatures can be said to be either mortal or immortal, Plato tells us that souls have the care of the inanimate both before and after descending to earth. Hermias has earlier pointed to what he sees as discussions of the soul's essence and its powers and claims that here Plato discusses its activities. Hermias comments on this short passage almost phrase by phrase, and Wear looks at each of the major topics he introduces (which include the question whether the soul can be subject to substantial change and both human and stellar soul vehicles), frequently citing parallels from other Neoplatonists, especially Syrianus and Proclus.
(8) Plato saw a self-moving soul as the ultimate source of motion, Aristotle an unmoved mover. Both Hermias and Simplicius sought to reconcile these seemingly incompatible positions. A. Longo examines and compares their arguments. Hermias, it turns out, is more inclined to bring Aristotle into line with Plato, Simplicius vice versa. Longo further shows that a key element of the conceptual framework that Hermias uses in interpreting the Phaedrus argument first appears in Syrianus and that Simplicius’ argument is more sophisticated than Hermias’.
(9) Manolea cites and comments on the principal passages in which Hermias makes use of Orphic material (translations would have been useful to many readers). Amongst other things, she suggests possible Iamblichean influence on one passage and points out that Hermias, in common with many middle and late Platonists, considered not only Orpheus but Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, the Chaldaeans and Parmenides to be divinely inspired poets and / or theologians. She also indicates a number of places where further research would be useful.
(10) C. Moreschini's topic is gods and demons in Hermias. He rejects the commonly held view that Hermias’ commentary is little more than a transcription of Syrianus’ seminars on the Phaedrus, suggesting that he differs from Syrianus, Proclus and Damascius in showing less interest in systematic philosophy than in religion and the soul. He then goes on to discuss Hermias’ use of Orphic material and of the Chaldaean Oracles, his demonology and his views on the nature and function of the pneumatic vehicle of the individual soul.
(11) C. O'Brien writes on Hermias’ theotaxonomy, gathering together what Hermias has to say about the hierarchical relationships, nature and functions of the gods. The gods concerned are mostly those of traditional Greek cult and of Orphism, the latter for the most part being the higher ranked. Much of the relevant material in Hermias is inspired by Plato's description of the procession of gods, daemons and souls around the heavens under the leadership of Zeus, but O'Brien also assembles material from elsewhere in the dialogue. The hierarchy turns out to be similar to those found in Syrianus and Proclus, and its basic structure goes back to Iamblichus.
(12) In the introduction to his commentary Hermias defends Plato against three charges: including speeches both against and for love like an ambitious youth; criticising and competing against Lysias’ speech like a malicious and contentious young man; using pompous, high-flown and overly poetic language. H. Tarrant first argues that these and similar criticisms probably go back to the early Peripatetics and then goes on to discuss the nature and effectiveness of Hermias’ rebuttals of them.
Collectively the essays cover most aspects of Hermias’ commentary and constitute a very useful contribution to Hermias studies that will doubtless inspire further work. The book is handsomely produced, and it has a useful index. I did notice a considerable number of misprints that might have been picked up during the editing process, and something has gone wrong in the second paragraph of the introduction, where we are told that Damascius was born in c. 458 but managed to study under Hermias, who we have just learned died in c. 450. Ideally help would have been given to the contributor with limited Greek and to the translator of Moreschini's article.
