Alcinous - The Handbook Of Platonism

In Byzantine times, in the Italian Renaissance, and even up to 1800, it was regarded as an ideal introduction to Plato's thought. In fact it far from being this, but it is an excellent source for our understanding of Platonism in the second century AD. It presents a survey of Platonist doctrine, divided into topics of Logic, Physics, and Ethics, and pervaded with Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines, all of which are claimed for Plato.

John Dillon presents the first English translation of Alcinous's Handbook of Platonism, accompanied by an introduction and a philosophical commentary that reveal the intellectual background to the ideas in the work. The Handbook purports to be an introduction to the doctrines of Plato, but in fact gives us an excellent survey of Platonist thought in the second century A.D.