Piecing together Polemo

Apart from Plutarch, whose work is often seen as atypical, there are no substantial pieces of extant writing from named Platonists between the death of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus in the 3rd century AD. Anybody intent on charting the course of Platonism must therefore be reconciled to working regularly with fragments: piecing them together as our archaeological colleagues would seek to reassemble an example of red-figure pottery. Where most fragments survive, the task ahead is easier, but in more challenging cases one must rely on an idea of what the artist was trying to depict, some comparative material, and the instincts acquired from repeatedly dealing with the same kind of material.