84 book reviews J. Dillon, The Roots of Platonism: the Origins and Chief Features of a Philosophical Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN 9781108426916. £19.99. xi+107. John Dillon can look back with justifiable pride on a storied career as a spe- cialist in the history of Platonism. His pioneering 1977 monograph The Middle Platonists is a standard publication in the field.1 For decades it remained the single most useful and comprehensive volume in English for early Platonism, just recently joined by George Boys-Stones’ invaluable sourcebook with com- mentary.2 Alongside many subsequent studies of “Middle” Platonism, Dillon is also the author of a book on the Old Academy that may be recommended as a first port of call for readers interested in Plato’s immediate successors.3 The slim volume under review here does not have pretentions of being quite so fundamental. Based on a series of lectures delivered in 2016 in Beijing, it relates to Dillon’s formidable earlier body of work the way that an after dinner sorbet relates to a meal of numerous courses. He is here returning to themes he has often discussed before, dealing with central topics in the early reception of Plato with a deft and light touch. There are at least three pitfalls that should be avoided by interpreter of the Platonic tradition between Plato and Plotinus. First, one must avoid the temp- tation to read history backwards, seeing all Platonists from the Old Academy to Plutarch and Numenius as simply preparing the way for Plotinus. Second, one must steer between an interpretive Scylla and Charybdis with regard to the use these authors made of Plato: they were his followers, but not his slavish follow- ers. Their ideas had some basis in the dialogues, but considerably elaborated on the master’s teachings (assuming indeed that he had “teachings”). Third, given the paucity of evidence for most of the figures in question, one must not push the evidence we do have too hard. We will inevitably remain ignorant of many details concerning the Old Academy, Skeptical New Academy, and so-called “Middle” Platonists like Eudorus and Atticus. But we can still devise satisfying historical narratives about Platonism before Plotinus. If these narra- tives are necessarily somewhat speculative, then so be it. As Dillon remarks, “if 1 J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists (London: 1977, second ed. 1996). 2 G. Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Mention should also be made of an earlier sourcebook, which covers Platonists in the same period alongside other schools: R. Sorabji and R.W. Sharples (eds), Greek and Roman Philosophy 100 BC-200 AD, 2 vols (London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, 2007). 3 J. Dillon, The Heirs of Plato: a Study of the Old Academy (374-274 BC) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/18725473-12341457 book reviews 85 one is not prepared to make (judicious) use of fantasy and imagination … in respect of the Old Academy and of Middle Platonism in general, one had bet- ter steer clear of the area all together” (41). Dillon does a good job of avoiding all three traps. Never in the book does one feel any sense that Plotinus represents a teleological culmination towards which Platonism was groping in previous centuries. To the contrary, one chap- ter suggests that there was a trend towards an “unequivocal onset of dualism” (30) with Plutarch in the late first century CE, that is, an acceptance of two in- dependent causal principles for the universe, one a source of evil and the other of good. Yet Plotinus turned his face against dualism, especially in the form ad- opted by the Gnostics. Throughout the book one is impressed by the range of positions that could be accomodated under the broad heading of “Academics” or “Platonists.” This is most obvious when it comes to the contrast betweem dogmatism and skepticism, with “dogmatism” here meaning simply the adop- tion of positive doctrine, and the ascription of such doctrine to Plato himself. But even here Dillon gives us a nuanced picture. He points out the concessions to positive belief made by the skeptical Academician Carneades, who had a theory of the “plausibility” or “probability” that Dillon thinks has some basis in the Socratic dialogues. Furthermore, he shows that the obviously dogmatic Platonist Plutarch made use of Carneades’ ideas: when it comes to the physical world we have to content ourselves with probable belief, with true knowledge being possible only for intelligibles.4 And within dogmatic philosophy, Dillon frequently mentions the blurry lines between Platonism and other schools, as with the appropriation of Stoicism by Antiochus and, less obviously, Philo of Alexandria. As for the resources Plato provided for these later authors, Dillon is sensi- tive to the way that the Old Academy already took a rather dogmatizing, or one might say “scholastic” approach. Faced with the chorus of philosophical per- spectives expressed by the characters in the dialogues, they tried to specify a canonical Platonist view, for instance that virtue is “far above” other goods and sufficient in itself, though other things may be good too. Obviously this stance has some basis in Plato’s works, but Dillon plausibly (as Carneades might say) concludes that as a “doctrine” this was “laid down by Xenocrates and Polemon, not immediately by Plato” (16). Again, as we have already seen, Dillon argues 4 Worth comparing here is a somewhat later figure, Galen, who also suggested that one may sometimes be content with merely persuasive or probable conclusions. See on this R. Chiaradonna, “Galen on What Is Persuasive (Pithanon) and What Approximates to Truth,” in P. Adamson, R. Hansberger and J. Wilberding (eds), Philosophical Themes in Galen (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2014), 61-88. The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 14 (2020) 65-108.