Plotinus was born in Egypt about A.D. 205. His nationality is unknown. He received his education in Alexandria--grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy,--and adopted the teaching of the last as a profession. He sought in vain, however, for a system that could satisfy him, till he met with Ammonius "the Sack-bearer," whom he at once recognized as his master. This Ammonius had been reared as a Christian, but had apostatized on becoming acquainted with philosophy. His Christian education, however, had not been altogether lost on him; for he had carried over into philosophy a religious spirit, and not a few of the esoteric ideas then current in certain Christian sects. It was this, apparently, that enabled him to give a new direction to philosophy, and to found a new school, whose influence upon subsequent, even Christian, thought, it would be difficult to overestimate. His school was the Neoplatonic, which, more than any other, united profound thought with mystic theosophy (θεωρία). Plotinus listened to Ammonius for eleven years, and, on the death of the latter, paid a visit to Persia, with the view of studying the religion of that country. He shortly returned, however, and, after a brief sojourn at Antioch, betook himself, in his fortieth year (A.D. 244), to Rome, where he spent the remainder of his life as a teacher of philosophy. His saintly character and his deep, religious thought drew round him a considerable number of earnest men and women, including even members of the imperial family. He made some attempt to found in Campania a Platonopolis, so that his principles might be realized in a social life, in a theosophic community; but this was never carried out. He died in A.D. 270. Plotinus was the only truly great, original ancient thinker after Aristotle.