Damascius
Damascius (Greek: Δαμάσκιος; c. 458–c. 540 CE) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and the last scholarch, or head, of the Platonic Academy in Athens. Born in Damascus, he came to Athens to study philosophy and became associated with the late Athenian school, where he studied under the tradition that followed Syrianus and later succeeded him as head of the Academy.
As scholarch, Damascius oversaw a period of intense metaphysical and methodological refinement within late antique Neoplatonism.
Little of Damascius’s own work survives directly, and his exact doctrinal positions are reconstructed from fragments
In 529 CE, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I closed the Academy in Athens. Damascius is said to