https://www.amazon.com/Life-Proclus-Concerning-Happiness-Biographical/dp/0933999259
Μαρῖνος ὁ Νεαπολίτης
Astronomer mathematician philosopher
Ethnicity:
Marinus of Neapolis was probably a Samaritan, but just possibly a Jew.
Marinus of Neapolis was born in Neapolis which is another name for the Biblical Shechem, now Nablus, Palestinian Territory around 450 A.D.
Marinus joined the Platonic Academy when Proclus, who dedicated his commentary on the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic to him, was its head.
After Proclus’ death in 485, Marinus became the Scholarch (President) of the Academy. During this period the professors of the old Greek religion suffered severe persecution at the hands of the Christians and Marinus was compelled to seek refuge at Epidaurus. According to Otto Neugebauer, "he lectured on Pappus's commentary to Book V of the Almagest (in particular his discussion of parallax); and there are still extant lecture notes on the Data of Euclid." Marinus wrote a commentary or rather introduction to the Data of Euclid. It is mainly taken up with a discussion of the question - what is meant by given? His chief work was a biography of Proclus, which is extant. It was first published with the works of Marcus Aurelius in 1559; it was republished separately by Fabricius at Hamburg in 1700 and re-edited in 1814 by Boissonade with emendations and notes. Other philosophical works are attributed to him, including commentaries on Aristotle and on the Philebus. It is said that he destroyed the latter because Isidore, his successor, expressed disapproval of it.
The exact date of Marinus is unknown but supposedly it was at the beginning of the 6th century.
Marinus' early religious beliefs are unknown but when he came to Athens he became a convert to the Hellenic Pagan way of life.
Marinus was evidently - and, as far as one can judge, rightly - considered the best representative of the views of Proclus, whom he praised and eulogized in an extant biography.
If one wants to assess the change in the philosophical climate since Plotinus’ death in a.d. 270, it is very instructive to compare Porphyry’s Life of Proclus, written two centuries later. Marinus, however, does not seem to have been merely a dogmatic follower of his systematizing predecessor; he did not hesitate to adopt an independent and more realistic, down-to-earth attitude wherever he deemed it necessary. In his exegesis of Plato, he rightly maintained, for instance, that Plato, when writing the Parmenides, had not, as Proclus’ other disciples thought, been concerned with gods but with εϊδη, “Forms.” Like other late Neoplatonists, he appreciated mathematics very highly: “I wished everything were mathematics.”
Marinus proposed a new solution to the Peripatetic-Academic problem of the Active Intelligence (vȏυς πoιητkóς) by localizing it, as did the great Aristotelian Alexander of Aphrodisias (ca. A.D. 200), in the superlunary world but no longer identifying it with the First Cause. He placed it below the First Cause, as an “angelic, spiritual” being, making it a kind of intermediary between the highest stage of man’s intellect and the unchanging superior world. His view became, in due course, important for Islamic Arabic philosophers and was, with slight modifications, adopted by two of the most outstanding among them, al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā.
It is not known whether Marinus was ever married or had any children.
