Abstract

It is surprising that Plotinus should have been neglected and underestimated, comparatively speaking, until the nineteenth century. It is more surprising still that the first really successful attempt to translate and interpret the Enneads intelligently should have been made by an Irishman who was neither a professional classical scholar nor philosopher, who had no university degree, who had, in fact, never even crossed the threshold of a university. That this translation should now be reissued after the lapse of nearly thirty years, and despite the appearance in the meantime of two authoritative and scholarly translations, Harder’s German and Cilento’s Italian, is a tribute to the all-round excellence of MacKenna’s work.