Roman Philosophy was rarely more than a pale reflection of the Greek, with occasional flares of literary brilliance, but with few innovative ideas. On the one hand, there was the continuation of a sensible, if somewhat plodding, stoic philosophy, bolstered to some extent by the tendency to eclecticism (e.g. Cicero). On the other hand, there was the growing movement towards a somewhat mystical philosophy, an outgrowth of Stoicism usually referred to as Neo-Platonism. Its best known proponent was Plotinus.

Plotinus (204-269) was born in Lycopolis in Egypt. He studied with Ammonius Saccus, a philosopher and dock worker and teacher of the church father Origen, in Alexandria. Plotinus left for Rome in 244, where he would teach until his death. He would have considerable influence on the Emperor Julian "the Apostate," who tried unsuccessfully to return the Roman Empire to a philosophical version of Paganism, against the tide of Christianity.

On a military campaign to Persia, he encountered a variety of Persian and Indian ideas that he blended with Plato's philosophy:

God is the supreme being, the absolute unity, and is indescribable. Any words (even the ones I just used) imply some limitation. God is best referred to as “the One,” eternal and infinite. Creation, Plotinus believed, is a continuous outflow from the One, with each “spasm” of creation a little less perfect than the one before.

The first outflow is called Nous (Divine Intelligence or Divine Mind, also referred to as Logos), and is second only to the One -- it contemplates the One, but is itself no longer unitary. It is Nous that contains the Forms or Ideas that the earlier Greeks talked about. Then comes Psyche (the World Soul), projected from Nous into time. This Psyche is fragmented into all the individual souls of the universe. Finally, from Psyche emanates the world of space, matter, and the senses.

Spirituality involves moving from the senses to contemplation of one’s own soul, the World Soul, and Divine Intelligence -- an upward flow towards the One. Ultimately, we require direct ecstatic communion with the One to be liberated. This made neo-Platonism quite compatable with the Christianity of ascetic monks and the church fathers, and with all the forms of mysticism that would flourish in the following 1800 years!

Another proponent of Neo-Platonism worth mentioning is Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415). A woman of great intellect, she became associated with an enemy of the Christian Bishop Cyril. He apparently ordered his monks to "take care" of her. They stripped her naked, dragged her from her home, beat her, cut her with tiles, and finally burned her battered body. The renaissance artist Raphael thought enough of her to include her in his masterpiece, The School of Athens.