The second Greek text in the library, after Diotima's speech. Read word by word the way the Arabic texts are, with public-domain English, an AI translation, and an Arabic branch. The background is Stefan Sperl's talk on Neoplatonism and Islamic tradition, which reads VI.9 beside the Quran and Ibn ʿArabī (docs/research/sperl-neoplatonism-islam-talk.md on the paths branch). Method: docs/EDITORIAL-METHOD.md.
| Work / author / dates | Plotinus, Enneads VI.9 (Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ἢ τοῦ ἑνός), no. 9 in Porphyry's chronological list; Plotinus c. 204/5–270 CE |
| Part added | the whole treatise, chapters 1–11 |
| Reader route | /read/plotinus-6-9 · about /read/plotinus-6-9/about · chapters #s-1 … #s-11 |
| Status | working edition · reviewed by: — |
1. Witnesses
| Siglum | Witness | Kind | Licence | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volkmann | R. Volkmann, Plotini Enneades vol. 2 (Leipzig: Teubner 1884), pp. 507–524 | edition | public domain | archive.org scans of the Teubner volumes |
| F | First1KGreek (Open Greek and Latin, Leipzig), tlg2000.tlg001.1st1K-grc1 (TEI; Volkmann's page numbers kept as <pb n="2.NNN"/>) | digital | CC BY-SA 4.0 | github.com/OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek |
| G | GLAUx corpus, document 2000-001 (A. Keersmaekers): the First1KGreek text with automatic lemma, morphology and syntax | digital, analysed | CC BY-SA 4.0 | github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux |
Consulted, not used: Henry–Schwyzer (OCT) and Armstrong (Loeb) are in copyright.
2. Base and why
Volkmann via First1KGreek: public domain, openly digitised, and the basis of GLAUx's annotation, so every token already carries its chapter (div_section 6.9.N). Henry–Schwyzer is the modern standard and differs in places; it is not used.
3. Collation
- The tokens are GLAUx's, in GLAUx's order, per chapter. No collation with Henry–Schwyzer was made.
- Script:
scripts/plato/build_plotinus.py. Volkmann's pages per chapter are recorded in the text file (pages).
4. Decisions
Words Volkmann deletes (14 tokens, marked {…} in First1KGreek, e.g. 1 {τὸ}, 7 οὐδενὸς {οὖν} {θεός}) are shown in square brackets, greyed, and are not analysed. The AI translation leaves them out; in a few places (6 [ἢ] ἑαυτόν, 7 [θεός], 8 [μόνον], 9 [δὲ], [καὶ], 10 [δὲ]) that changes the sense.
Possible transcription problems (to check against Volkmann's page images; noted by the AI translation, not corrected):
- 4:
καὶ παντὸς ἐκείνου καὶ παρʼ ἐκείνου, ὥσπερ πᾶν φῶς…looks as if a line has dropped out between the two ἐκείνου. - 4:
δέχεσθαι δυναμένοις μένοις: a doubled μένοις. - 5:
…καὶ θεοῦ καὶ ἐννοίας. ἑνός, καὶ ὁ λόγος: the full stop belongs after ἑνός. - 6:
γένεταιfor γίνεται; 11:καἰfor καί.
Corrections to the automatic analysis (GLAUx), listed on the About page with links to each word:
| Where | Form | GLAUx | Corrected to |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (×4) | οἰκία | οἰκίον | οἰκία "house" |
| 1 | πλάττουσα | πλήσσω "strike" | πλάσσω "mould" |
| 2, 4 | κρεῖττον, κρείττονα | κρατύς | κρείσσων "better" |
| 5 | ποσοῦ | πός | ποσός |
| 6 | μονὰς | μονή | μονάς "unit" |
| 6 | γένεται | γενέτης (noun) | γίγνομαι |
| 7 | νοοῦντα | νοόω | νοέω |
| 8 | τραπείη | τέρπω "delight" | τρέπω "turn" |
| 9 | ἀλλαξαμένη | ἀναλάζομαι | ἀλλάσσω |
| 9 | φωτὸς | φώς "man" | φῶς "light" |
| 11 | ἀπεῖπε | ἀπολέγω | ἀπεῖπον |
Left as GLAUx has them: πόρρω under πρόσω (LSJ's own headword for both), and ἄδυτον under the adjective ἄδυτος. GLAUx's reported accuracy is about 97% for morphology and 99% for lemmas; more errors should be expected.
5. Quotations
- 7: "οὐδενός … φησίν" ("he says"): the subject is left open once θεός is deleted.
- 7: Minos, who "consorted with Zeus" (Odyssey 19.178–9), as the model of the soul's converse with the god.
6. Accents and breathings
Volkmann's, fully accented, as First1KGreek encodes them (a few encoding slips: καθ̓ with a combining comma above is shown as καθʼ). The reader shows NFC in GFS Didot.
7. Segmentation and word IDs
- 11 passages, one per chapter; the margin shows "ch. N", and each is linkable as
#s-N(the paths use these anchors). - Word IDs are
<chapter>.<n>, n being the GLAUx token's position within the chapter, punctuation included (e.g.8.95). - The chapters are long (about 290–820 words), so there are no paragraph breaks inside them: First1KGreek has none.
8. Analysis layer
- Lemma and morphology from GLAUx (corrections in §4), decoded by
src/lib/greek.ts. - Dictionary: LSJ (Logeion's Perseus LSJ, CC BY-SA 4.0), 676 of 686 lemmas matched; the panel also says where LSJ cites VI.9.
- Etymology: Boisacq first (327 lemmas; see the Symposium record §8 for the method), LSJ's derivations (187), Wiktionary secondary (570); Beekes, Chantraine and Frisk cited only.
- Glosses: AI (Claude), one per lemma, reused from the Symposium where the lemma is shared (254) and written for this text otherwise (432), marked AI.
9. The Arabic branch and the readers
app/src/content/plato/plotinus-6-9-braid.json, 9 entries. VI.9 itself is not in the Arabic Plotinus (the so-called Theology of Aristotle adapts Enneads IV–VI, above all IV.8, IV.3–4, V.1, V.2, V.8 and VI.7), so every Arabic entry is a thematic parallel, marked "approximate", with the Enneads passage the Arabic actually adapts. English is AI and marked.
| Where (Dieterici, Arabic, Leipzig 1882) | Adapts | VI.9 ch. |
|---|---|---|
| mīmar 1, p. 8: "often I have been alone with my soul" | IV.8.1 | 9, 11 |
| p. 21: the soul one with Intellect without its essence perishing | IV.4.2 | 9, 10 |
| pp. 53–54: light in light; spiritual centres and circles are one | V.8.4 (the circle sentence not matched in the Greek) | 8, 10 |
| mīmar 8, pp. 114–115: one with the "lord", then two again | V.8.10–11 | 10, 11 |
| mīmar 9, p. 132: the First Cause as centre; radii return to it (muḥīṭ) | V.1.11 | 8 |
| mīmar 10, p. 136: "the pure One is the cause of all things and not like any of them" | V.2.1 | 3, 5, 6 |
| pp. 174–175, the list of questions: Good as centre, Intellect an unmoving circle, Soul a moving one | IV.4.16 | 8 |
- The Arabic OCR in the archive.org text layer is empty, so the pages were OCR'd with macOS Vision ((private copy)) and corrected by AI line by line against the scans; readings checked against Dieterici's German (1883). Page scan index: n = 432 − printed page.
- Ibn ʿArabī's circle (the passage Sperl cites): found verbatim. Futūḥāt ch. 47 (Būlāq I:260; OpenITI JK009237, lines 13835–13841): «فقد ظهرت الكثرة عن الواحد العين ولم يتكثر هو في ذاته», "manyness has become manifest from the One, without His becoming many in Himself". The OpenITI text omits a clause the Būlāq print has (the point is not multiplied by the lines); the entry quotes OpenITI and gives the Būlāq clause in its note. A second entry, ch. 372 (Būlāq III:451; lines 103479–103487), has the reverse: God as point and circumference, muḥīṭ. Aligned to chapters 8 and 10.
9a. Bridges
app/src/content/plato/bridges-plotinus.json, five bridges, each AI-labelled with a confidence and its grounds; Quran verses copied from the Tanzil text in the repo (data/raw/quran-uthmani.txt) and linked. The Diotima bridges (ἔρως, καλόν …) also apply where their words occur.
| Bridge | Confidence | In VI.9 |
|---|---|---|
| āya ↔ σημεῖον | medium | σημεῖον only as a geometrical point (5, 6); the "sign" sense is II.3.7 |
| kun ↔ λόγος σπερματικός | medium | λόγος 18×; σπερματικός absent (Stoic; Plotinus reports it in III.1.7, IV.4.39) |
| sakīna / ṭumaʾnīna ↔ ἡσυχία | medium | the noun is absent; ἡσυχῆ (11), ἥσυχος (5, 9), στάσις (3, 11) |
| qalam / lawḥ ↔ νοῦς / ψυχή | high | νοῦς 35×, ψυχή 45×; Futūḥāt ch. 371 names Intellect the Pen and Soul the Tablet |
| fanāʾ / baqāʾ ↔ ἕνωσις | medium | the noun is absent; ἑνόω (1, 5, 9, 11), ἑνίζω (6) |
10. Translation
- AI English (Claude), written for this reader from Volkmann's Greek without consulting any copyrighted translation, and marked AI. Fixed renderings: τὸ ἕν "the One"; τἀγαθόν "the Good"; νοῦς "Intellect"; ἐπέκεινα "beyond"; θέα "vision"; ἕνωσις "union"; ἡσυχία "stillness"; the last line "flight of the alone to the alone". Hard places, rendered tentatively: 4 (an anacoluthon), 8 (the centre and circle, elliptic), 10 (
ἀργεῖ τὴν θέαν), 11 (πρὸ τῆς θέας τὸ λοιπὸν ἐκ τῆς θέας ἀπαιτεῖ;περινόησις πρὸς ἐφαρμογήν;ἐπίδοσις αὑτοῦ). - Published English, divided by the translators' own chapter numbers (which match Volkmann's):
- MacKenna (1930), Plotinus on the One and Good (Medici Society), pp. 237–253: OCR cleaned by AI and checked word by word against Wikisource's proofread transcription. Public domain in the US (95-year term ended 2025). The volume's Acknowledgements say MacKenna translated VI.4–9 and B. S. Page revised them; if Page's revisions count as authorship, it is in copyright outside the US until 2063. Recorded like Lamb.
- Guthrie (1918), Plotinos: Complete Works vol. 1, pp. 147–172: Project Gutenberg #42930 checked against the scan (one dropped word restored); his 35 side-headings, which are his own summaries, removed. Public domain.
- Taylor (1817), Select Works of Plotinus, pp. 468–505: the 1895 reprint's OCR corrected to the 1817 readings. Public domain.
11. Rights and private layers
- Share-alike: First1KGreek, GLAUx, LSJ and Wiktionary are CC BY-SA 4.0, so the derived data files carry the same licence.
- OpenITI (the Futūḥāt) is CC BY-NC-SA: quoted briefly with credit and a line link, as the bridges do.
- Nothing in copyright is shown.
12. Open questions / to review
- Check §4's possible transcription problems against Volkmann's page images, and collate with Henry–Schwyzer when a library copy is at hand.
- Review the AI translation and glosses, especially 8, 10 and 11.
- Paragraph breaks inside the long chapters: Henry–Schwyzer's line numbers would give a finer unit.
- Audio: as for the Symposium (
docs/research/greek-audio-options.md).
13. Change log
- 2026-09-28: added: Greek, lemmas, LSJ, Boisacq, Wiktionary, AI glosses and translation, published English, the Arabic branch and five bridges.