PLOTISCS, according to his biographer and disciple, Porphyry, "seemed to be ashamed of being in a body and hence refused to tell anything about his parents, his ancestry, or his country." He is known, however, to have come from Egypt, and one ancient source claims that he was born at Lycopolis, now Asyut, in Upper Egypt. His parents evidently possessed some means, for at the age of eight Plotinus was attending a school of grammar. At Alexandria when he was twenty-eight Plotinus discovered his vocation as a philosopher. He had evidently been attending the schools and listening to the famous men of the city, then the intellectual capital of the world. But he failed to find any satisfaction until a friend, to whom he had unburdened himself, took him to hear the philosopher, Ammonius Saccas, known as the "God-taught." Porphyry records that as soon as he had entered and heard Ammonius, Plotinus exclaimed to his friend: "That is the man I have been seeking." For eleven years Plotinus was the disciple of Ammonius. It is possible that the master and his students led a kind of common life. Plotinus and two more of the group are known to have entered a compact to keep secret the doc- trine of their master. Ammonius himself left no writings, and his teaching was probably concerned more with establishing a way of life than in pursuing intellectual knowledge for its own sake. When Plotinus at the age of thirty-nine left Ammonius, it was with the decision to "obtain direct knowledge of the philosophy practised among the Persians and honored among the Indians." The emperor, Gordian, was then preparing to lead an expedition into Persia, and Plotinus arranged to travel with the army. He reached Mesopotamia, but his plans for study were cut short when the emperor was assassinated, and Plotinus with difficulty escaped to Antioch and then to Rome, where he arrived in 245.
