A Handbook of Platonism

Alcinous, Disciplinarum Platonius epitoma.

Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1472. Fol.

This ’Handbook of Platonism’ was written in the middle of the 2nd century. Alcinous held the world and its animating soul to be eternal. This soul was not created by God, but, as he describes it: awakened by Him as from a profound sleep, and turned towards Him ’that it might look out upon intellectual things and receive forms and ideas from the Divine Mind’. The Handbook outlines versions of Platonism dominant in the 2nd century, and it is significant that it also contains some references to Aristotle’s opinions. It contains some elements borrowed from the East, and perhaps derived from the Pythagorean system. It remained forgotten until Petrus Balbus took upon himself to translate this work from the Greek especially for Nicolas of Cusa.