Iamblichus
Syrian Neoplatonic philosopher (c. 245–c. 325), born in Chalcis (modern-day Qinnasrin, Syria) into a local aristocratic family claiming descent from Phoenician priest-kings and, according to some ancient sources, from Solomon himself, a disciple of Porphyry — who had himself been a disciple of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism — though he eventually broke significantly with his teacher's more rationalist positions to found his own school at Apamea, in Syria. Iamblichus represents a decisive turn within the Neoplatonic tradition: whereas Plotinus and Porphyry had held that the soul could rise toward union with the One through pure intellectual contemplation, Iamblichus argued that human nature had fallen so deeply into matter that reason alone was insufficient, and that the ritual practice of 'theurgy' (literally, 'divine work') was necessary — ceremonies, invocations and sacred rites he believed capable of bringing the human soul into direct contact with the divine forces permeating it through the hierarchical chain of the universe, a theory set out chiefly in On the Egyptian Mysteries, a work traditionally attributed to him. This theurgic turn, which systematically integrated traditional Greek, Egyptian and Chaldean religious practices within a rigorous Neoplatonic philosophical framework, exerted decisive influence on later Neoplatonism, especially on the Athenian school (Proclus, Damascius) that would dominate pagan philosophy until the closure of the Platonic Academy by the emperor Justinian in 529. Also the author of an elaborate doxographic and exegetical synthesis on Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism (On the Pythagorean Life), and of an ambitious systematic commentary on Plato's dialogues, of which only fragments survive, Iamblichus also exerted, through the emperor Julian the Apostate, one of his most fervent intellectual admirers, a direct influence on the last serious attempt to restore classical philosophical paganism against the unstoppable expansion of Christianity.