The Enneads

«Plotinus, the philosopher active during our 1 own lifetime, gave the impression of being embarrassed about having a body; this disposition meant that he could not stand talking about his race, his parents, or his» — Porfirio abre la Vida, §1, con el rasgo que lo explica todo en su retrato: Plotino parecía avergonzado de tener cuerpo, y por eso no soportaba que se hablara de su raza, de sus padres ni de su tierra. El tramo corta donde el troceo mete la columna de números de línea del margen; sigue *original homeland*, y la cifra 1 después de *our* es una llamada de nota.

«He so disliked the idea of being painted or sculpted that when Amelius asked him to allow an image to be made, he even said: ‘Isn’t it enough to carry around the image that nature has clothed me with?’» — la negativa de Plotino a dejarse retratar, en boca suya según Porfirio: la imagen con que la naturaleza lo vistió ya le basta.

«Did he have to consent to leave behind a longer-lasting image of this image as if it were something worth looking at?» — Porfirio remata el argumento de Plotino: el cuerpo ya es imagen, y un retrato sería imagen de esa imagen.

«Since he forbade it for this reason and refused to sit for a portrait, Amelius got Carterius – the best painter of his generation and a friend of his – to come to Plotinus’ seminar and meet him. (Anyone who wanted was allowed to attend these seminars.) Amelius had him concentrate on looking at Plotinus so that, over time, he acquired a vivid mental impression of him; he then drew a picture from the image thus laid down in his memory. Amelius corrected the sketch to make it as true to life as possible; and in this way, the skill of Carterius furnished us with a very close likeness of Plotinus and Plotinus knew nothing about it.» — y cómo Amelio burló la negativa, según Porfirio: llevó al pintor Carterio al seminario a mirar a Plotino hasta retenerlo de memoria, retocó el boceto y sacó un parecido muy fiel sin que Plotino lo supiera.

«He often suffered from bowel trouble but would not tolerate having an enema; he said it was not appropriate for an old man to undergo that sort of therapy.» — §2 de la Vida: Porfirio consigna la negativa de Plotino a los lavativas, dicha por él como impropia de un viejo.

«He would not agree to take medicines derived from wild animals either; he did not, he said, want to derive nourishment from the bodies even of domesticated animals.» — y la segunda negativa: ni remedios de animales salvajes, por no alimentarse del cuerpo ni siquiera de los domésticos.

«He stayed away from the baths but used to be rubbed down daily at home until, during a severe outbreak of plague, the people who rubbed him down were among those who died. He gave up such treatment then, but soon afterwards became afflicted with terrible throat infections.» — el régimen de Plotino según Porfirio: sin baños públicos y con fricciones diarias en casa, hasta que la peste se llevó a quienes lo frotaban.

«This meant that his friends, of whom he always wanted to ask questions,3 had to be turned away, so he left the city for Zethus’ estate in Campania.» — la consecuencia de la enfermedad: Plotino deja Roma por la finca de Zeto en Campania.

«When he was on the verge of death, Eustochius was slow in getting to him (as he told us) because he was staying in Puteoli: ‘I have been hanging on for you,’ said Plotinus.» — la escena de la muerte, con la frase que Porfirio pone en boca de Plotino al ver llegar tarde a Eustoquio.

«He breathed his last with the words ‘Try to elevate the god within you to the divine in the universe’; and a snake slid under the bed in which he lay and disappeared into a hole that happened to be there in the wall.» — las últimas palabras que Porfirio le adjudica a Plotino —elevar el dios de uno mismo a lo divino del universo— y el prodigio de la serpiente que se desliza bajo el lecho y desaparece en un agujero del muro.

«It was towards the end of the second year of Claudius’ reign, and he was sixty-six, so Eustochius said.» — la fecha y la edad de la muerte, y Porfirio nombra a quien se las dio.

«When he died, I, Porphyry, happened to be staying in Lilybaeus; Amelius was in Apamea, in Syria, and Castricius was in Rome. Only Eustochius was with him.» — Porfirio consigna dónde estaba cada uno del círculo cuando Plotino murió, y que solo Eustoquio estuvo presente.

«Counting backwards sixty-six years from the second year of Claudius’ reign [ce 270], Plotinus’ birth falls in the thirteenth year of the reign of Severus [ce 204]; but he never revealed to anyone the month of his birth, or when his birthday was, since he did not think that anyone should sacrifice or hold a feast for his birthday – although he would himself sacrifice and hold feasts for his companions on the traditional birthdays of Plato and Socrates, when he would require those who could to read out a discourse in front of everyone present.» — de la edad Porfirio deduce el año del nacimiento, y a la vez consigna que Plotino nunca dijo el mes ni el día: no quería sacrificios ni fiesta por su cumpleaños, aunque él sacrificaba y daba banquete en los de Platón y Sócrates, con lectura de un discurso.

«He, however, often quite spontaneously offered information about himself when he was in our company, such as the fact that he used to go to his nurse, bare her breasts, and ask to suckle even when he was seven years old and going to school. He was, however, shamed into stopping when he once heard himself called an obnoxious brat.» — §3: el dato que Plotino contaba de sí mismo, que a los siete años seguía pidiéndole el pecho a su nodriza hasta que lo avergonzó oírse llamar así.

«He was attracted to philosophy at the age of twenty-seven, and went to the best regarded philosophers in Alexandria, but he came away from their lectures depressed and miserable.» — la edad en que Plotino se volvió a la filosofía y el resultado de oír a los filósofos mejor reputados de Alejandría.

«He told one of his friends what was wrong, and the friend, who understood what his soul was yearning for, took him off to hear Ammonius, whom he had not yet tried. When Plotinus went and heard him, he said to his friend: ‘This is the man I was looking for!’» — el encuentro con Amonio, que Porfirio cuenta como reconocimiento: el amigo entendió lo que el alma de Plotino buscaba, y al oírlo Plotino lo dijo con esa frase.

«When the emperor Gordian was about to lead a campaign against the Persians, he signed up for it and went with him. He was thirty-eight then, having been studying with Ammonius for eleven years. Gordian was wiped out in Mesopotamia, and Plotinus only just escaped to safety in Antioch. Philip took power, and Plotinus, then aged forty, went up to Rome.» — el episodio militar: Plotino se enrola en la campaña de Gordiano contra los persas a los treinta y ocho años, escapa a duras penas a Antioquía tras el desastre de Mesopotamia y a los cuarenta sube a Roma.

«Erennius, Origen, and Plotinus had made pacts not to reveal the doctrines that Ammonius expounded in his lectures, and Plotinus, although he took pupils of his own, took care to keep the doctrines of Ammonius to himself. Erennius was the first to violate the pact, and once he had done so Origen followed suit – though Origen wrote nothing except the treatise On Daemons, and a treatise dedicated to Gallienus called That the King Is the Only Creator.» — el pacto de silencio sobre las doctrinas de Amonio y su ruptura: Erennio primero, Orígenes después. Porfirio le adjudica a ese Orígenes solo dos escritos, uno sobre los daimones y otro dedicado a Galieno.

«Plotinus wrote nothing for a long time, though he gave talks based on his seminars with Ammonius. And so, he spent ten whole years running seminars of his own, but writing nothing.» — los diez años de seminario sin escribir nada, apoyado en lo oído a Amonio.

«Since he encouraged those who attended to ask questions, his talks were, as Amelius told us, very disorderly and unstructured.» — cómo eran esos seminarios según Amelio, citado por Porfirio: desordenados y sin estructura, porque Plotino animaba a preguntar.

«Amelius went to Plotinus during his third year in Rome, in the third year of Philip’s reign [ce 245/6] and stayed until the first year of Claudius’ [ce 268/9] so that he was with him for twenty-four whole years.» — el censo cronológico de la estancia de Amelio con Plotino, con los años de reinado como referencia.

«When he arrived, he had a disposition shaped by the seminars he had taken with Lysimachus; but he was more hard-working than any of his contemporaries, shown by the fact that he had written out and assembled pretty well the whole of Numenius – and learnt most of it by heart.» — de dónde venía Amelio y qué medida da Porfirio de su aplicación: había copiado casi todo Numenio y se lo sabía de memoria.

«He wrote commentaries based on Plotinus’ seminars, and composed a hundred or so books of notes, which he bestowed upon Hostilianus Hesychius of Apamea, his adopted son.» — la obra de Amelio según Porfirio: comentarios sobre los seminarios y unos cien libros de notas, legados a su hijo adoptivo.

«In the tenth year of the reign of Gallienus [ce 262/3], I, Porphyry, came from Greece with Antony of Rhodes, and got to know Amelius, who was by then in his eighteenth year with Plotinus. (He had not yet found the ambition to write anything except the notes, and they did not yet extend to 100 books.» — §4: Porfirio fecha su propia llegada y dice con quién vino, y de paso rebaja las notas de Amelio en ese momento.

«In the tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, Plotinus was around fifty-nine. When I, Porphyry, first met him, I was thirty. Plotinus had turned to writing on topics that occurred to him in the first year of Gallienus’ reign; by the tenth year of Gallienus’ reign, when I, Porphyry, first got to know him, he had written twenty-one books. I found out that even they had not been circulated widely.» — las tres edades que Porfirio pone una junto a otra: Plotino cerca de los cincuenta y nueve, él mismo de treinta, y veintiún libros ya escritos que casi no circulaban.

«While I was with him, he never showed symptoms of anything of the sort, but after I went away he got the illness so badly that, when I got back, Eustochius – a friend who was with him until he died – told me that he lost the clarity and depth of his voice, his sight» — Porfirio declara el límite de su propio testimonio: la enfermedad grave le llegó a Plotino cuando él ya no estaba, y lo que cuenta se lo dijo Eustoquio. El tramo termina donde la plana cambia; sigue *was blurred, and his feet and hands ulcerated*.

«a philosophical disposition that he became keen to try and learn the philosophy practised among the Persians, too, and the system perfected by the Indians.» — de la permanencia con Amonio Porfirio deriva el impulso siguiente: querer conocer también la filosofía de los persas y el sistema de los indios. El tramo arranca después de la columna de números de línea que el troceo mete a media frase; lo que precede es *He acquired such*.

«time, he did not find it an easy matter to give out copies. He felt a sense of responsibility, and would not do it just like that, without a second thought, but only after a careful assessment of the recipients.» — Porfirio consigna la reserva de Plotino al repartir copias de sus escritos: solo tras valorar a quién iban. El tramo arranca donde la frase viene cortada de la plana anterior: *At this*.

«He did not give these works titles, and they were known by various titles given by different people. The following are the generally accepted titles (I shall also give the opening words of the books, so that each of the books listed here will be easily recognized from its opening):» — el dato de atribución mayor de la Vida: Plotino no puso título a sus obras, y los títulos corrientes se los pusieron otros. Por eso Porfirio añade el íncipit de cada libro, para que se reconozca.

«1. On Beauty (1.6): Beauty is found for the most part in what is seen . . . 2. On the Immortality of the Soul (4.7)» — arranca el catálogo cronológico de Porfirio: el primero que Plotino escribió es el que la ordenación porfiriana coloca como 1.6, On Beauty, con su íncipit.

«3. On Fate (3.1): All things that come into being . . . 4. On the Substantiality of the Soul (4.2)» — el tercero del orden de composición es el que la ordenación coloca como 3.1, On Fate.

«9. On the Good or the One (6.9): All beings are beings due to unity . . . 10. On the Three Primary Hypostases (5.1)» — el noveno tratado en orden de composición es el que cierra la colección entera en el orden de Porfirio, 6.9, y su íncipit enuncia la tesis de que todo ser lo es por unidad.

«12. On the Two Kinds of Matter (2.4):6 All who have arrived at a conception of so-called matter . . . 13. Various Considerations (3.9)» — una de las entradas donde el título del catálogo de Porfirio no coincide con el del cuerpo del volumen: aquí On the Two Kinds of Matter, con llamada de nota; el cuerpo imprime On Matter.

«6 The title of the treatise in the body of the text is ‘On Matter’. 7 The title of the treatise in the body of the text is ‘On the Motion of Heaven’.» — dos de las notas con que el traductor de la Vida, George Boys-Stones, avisa de esas discrepancias de título entre el catálogo de Porfirio y el cuerpo del volumen.

«These are the twenty-one works that he was found to have written when Porphyry first came to him. Plotinus was then fifty-nine.» — Porfirio cierra el primer bloque del catálogo con la cuenta de lo escrito antes de su llegada.

«I, Porphyry, was with him for this year and the following five years without a break – for I came to Rome a little before the end of Gallienus’ first ten years in power. (It was summer, and Plotinus was not working; but he still held gatherings.) In these six years, we explored many topics in our seminars. Amelius and I asked him to write, and he wrote:» — §5: Porfirio fecha sus seis años continuos con Plotino y declara que lo que sigue se escribió a petición de Amelio y suya.

«These works, twenty-four of them, he wrote in the six-year period when I, Porphyry, was with him, taking his topics from questions he was engaged with at the time, something I made clear in my key-point summaries for each work. Added to the twenty-one works he wrote before we arrived, that makes forty-five in all.» — la cuenta del segundo bloque y su suma con el primero; Porfirio adjudica los temas a las cuestiones que Plotino traía entre manos y remite a sus propios sumarios.

«While I spent time in Sicily (I went there around the fifteenth year of Gallienus’ reign [ce 267/8]), Plotinus wrote these five works [1.4; 3.2; 3.3; 3.5; 5.3], and sent them to me:» — §6: Porfirio fecha su estancia en Sicilia y dice que Plotino le mandó allí cinco obras.

«So he sent me these in the first year of the reign of Claudius. At the beginning of the second, shortly before he was to die, he sent these» — la última remesa, poco antes de la muerte de Plotino.

«The first two blocks make up forty-five works, bringing the number to fifty-four. Some of them, then, were written when he was young, others when he was at the height of his powers, and others when he was physically unwell.» — la cuenta total de la obra de Plotino según Porfirio, cincuenta y cuatro tratados, repartidos en tres momentos de su vida.

«Plotinus’ Enneads is a work which is central to the history of philosophy in late antiquity.» — la solapa editorial del volumen, no voz de la obra, sitúa las Enéadas en la historia de la filosofía de la antigüedad tardía.

«Led by Lloyd P. Gerson, a team of experts present up-to-date translations based on the best available text, the editio minor of Henry and Schwyzer and its corrections.» — la solapa nombra al equipo y declara sobre qué texto griego se traduce: la editio minor de Henry y Schwyzer con sus correcciones.

«The translations are consistent in their vocabulary, making the volume ideal for the study of Plotinus’ philosophical arguments.» — la solapa hace de la uniformidad del vocabulario el rasgo que vuelve útil al volumen para seguir los argumentos, y no de la elegancia de cada tratado.

«This second edition includes a number of corrections, as well as additional cross-references to enrich the reader’s understanding of Plotinus’ sometimes very difficult presentation of his ideas.» — la solapa dice qué añade esta segunda edición: correcciones y referencias cruzadas, y llama a la exposición de Plotino a veces muy difícil.

«It will be invaluable for scholars of Plotinus with or without ancient Greek, as well as for students of the Platonic tradition.» — la solapa declara para quién es el libro: estudiosos de Plotino con griego antiguo o sin él, y estudiantes de la tradición platónica. La editorial nombra la escuela por Platón, no por el prefijo neo.

«Lloyd P. Gerson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.» — el dato biográfico de la solapa sobre el editor del volumen.

«When citing this work, please include a reference to the doi 10.1017/9781009604987» — la página de derechos fija cómo se cita este volumen, por su identificador digital.

«Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.» — el descargo editorial sobre las direcciones de internet citadas, en la misma página de derechos.

«Contents Preface to the Second Edition page ix General Introduction to the Translations 1 Porphyry’s Arrangement of the Enneads 8 List of Textual Changes to Henry-Schwyzer Editio Minor 10 On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books by Porphyry of Tyre» — el Contents reparte el volumen en sus bloques y da el folio impreso de cada uno: el Preface en romanos y todo lo demás en arábigos, con la Vida de Plotino de Porfirio como primera pieza de texto antiguo.

«Ennead One 41 1.1 (53) What Is the Living Being and What Is the Human Being? 43 1.2 (19) On Virtues 56 1.3 (20) On Dialectic 65 1.4 (46) On Happiness 71 1.5 (36) On Whether Happiness Increases with Time 88 1.6 (1) On Beauty 93 1.7 (54) On the Primary Good and on the Other Goods 106 1.8 (51) On What Evils Are and Where They Come From 110 1.9 (16) On Exiting from the Body 126» — el Contents de la primera Enéada. Detrás de cada número porfiriano va entre paréntesis el número del orden cronológico que Porfirio fijó, de modo que 1.6 (1) On Beauty es el primer tratado que Plotino escribió y 1.7 (54) el último.

«Fragment: Plotinus on Voluntary Death, by Elias 128» — cierra la primera Enéada una pieza que no es de Plotino: un fragmento sobre la muerte voluntaria transmitido por Elias.

«Ennead Two 129 2.1 (40) On the Cosmos 131 2.2 (14) On the Motion of Heaven 142 2.3 (52) On Whether the Stars Are Causes 147 2.4 (12) On Matter 166 2.5 (25) On ‘Potentially’ and ‘Actually’ 185 2.6 (17) On Substance or On Quality 192 2.7 (37) On Complete Blending 198 2.8 (35) On Seeing, or On How It Is That Distant Things Appear Small 204 2.9 (33) Against the Gnostics 208» — el Contents de la segunda Enéada, la del cosmos, el movimiento del cielo, las estrellas y la materia; el último de sus tratados, 2.9 (33), lleva por título Against the Gnostics.

«Ennead Three 239 3.1 (3) On Fate 241 3.2–3 (47 and 48) On Providence 251 3.4 (15) On Our Allotted Daemon 285» — arranque del Contents de la tercera Enéada: el destino, la providencia en dos tratados que Porfirio numeró 47 y 48, y el daimon que a cada quien le toca.

«3.5 (50) On Love 293 3.6 (26) On the Impassibility of Things without Bodies 307 3.7 (45) On Eternity and Time 334 3.8 (30) On Nature, Contemplation, and the One 355 3.9 (13) Various Considerations 370» — el resto de la tercera Enéada en el Contents: el amor, la impasibilidad de lo incorpóreo, la eternidad y el tiempo, y la naturaleza junto con la contemplación y el Uno.

«Ennead Four 377 4.1 (21) On the Substantiality of the Soul 2 379 4.2 (4) On the Substantiality of the Soul 1 381 4.3–5 (27, 28, and 29) On Problems of the Soul 1–3 387 4.6 (41) On Sense-Perception and Memory 484 4.7 (2) On the Immortality of the Soul 490 4.8 (6) On the Descent of Souls into Bodies 513 4.9 (8) On Whether All Souls Are One 526» — el Contents de la cuarta Enéada, entera sobre el alma: su sustancialidad en dos tratados, los tres de problemas del alma, la percepción y la memoria, la inmortalidad, el descenso a los cuerpos y la unidad de todas las almas.

«Ennead Five 533 5.1 (10) On the Three Primary Hypostases 535 5.2 (11) On the Generation and Order of the Things Which Come after the First 552 5.3 (49) On the Knowing Hypostasis and on That Which Is Transcendent 556 5.4 (7) How That Which Is After the First Comes from the First, and on the One 580 5.5 (32) That the Intelligibles Are Not Outside the Intellect, and on the Good 585 5.6 (24) On the Fact That That Which Transcends Being Does Not Think and on What the Primary Thinking Is and What Is Secondary 602 5.7 (18) On Whether or Not There Are Ideas of Individuals 609 5.8 (31) On the Intelligible Beauty 613 5.9 (5) On Intellect, Ideas, and Being 629» — el Contents de la quinta Enéada, la de las tres hipóstasis primarias, lo que viene después de lo Primero, la belleza inteligible y el Intelecto con las Ideas.

«Ennead Six 643 6.4–5 (22 and 23) That Being, One and Identical, Is Simultaneously Everywhere Whole 1–2 6.1–3 (42, 43, and 44) On the Genera of Being 1–3 645 741» — el Contents de la sexta Enéada. Aquí la capa de texto entrevera las columnas: saca 6.4–5 delante de 6.1–3 y deja las dos cifras de folio juntas al final, de modo que en este tramo no se puede leer cuál corresponde a cuál.

«6.6 (34) On Numbers 777 6.7 (38) How the Multiplicity of the Ideas Came to Exist, and on the Good 802» — sigue el Contents de la sexta Enéada con los números y el tratado sobre cómo llegó a existir la multiplicidad de las Ideas. Las cifras dentro del verbatim son los folios impresos que el Contents imprime en su segunda columna.

«6.8 (39) On the Voluntary, and the One’s Wishing 855 6.9 (9) On the Good or the One 884» — los dos últimos tratados del orden porfiriano: lo voluntario y el querer del Uno, y el que cierra la colección entera, On the Good or the One. Las cifras son los folios impresos del Contents.

«Greek Glossary of Key Terms 903 English Glossary of Key Terms 910 Bibliography of Principal Editions of Secondary Sources 932» — el Contents cierra con los dos glosarios de términos clave, el griego y el inglés, y con la bibliografía de ediciones principales de fuentes secundarias. Las cifras son los folios impresos del Contents.

«These divide mainly into: (a) corrections to the translations; (b) additional fontes; (c) additional cross-references; (d) typographical errors.» — Gerson clasifica en cuatro lo que la segunda edición añade: correcciones de traducción, fontes nuevos, referencias cruzadas nuevas y erratas.

«It should also be added that teaching Plotinus in English both to graduate and undergraduate students provides a unique opportunity to see whether a translation conveys the sense of the text.» — Gerson pone la enseñanza como prueba de la traducción: oír a un estudiante explicar la versión inglesa muestra si esa versión transmite el sentido del griego.

«It is both illuminating and humbling to hear a student express his or her understanding of an English translation of a Greek sentence and to be jolted into the realization that that is not what the Greek means, and fnally to realize that the fault lies not with the student but with the translator.» — y saca la consecuencia sin ahorrársela: cuando el estudiante entiende otra cosa, la falla es del traductor. La capa de texto imprime *fnally* por *finally*.

«As mentioned in the introduction to the frst edition, the search for Plotinus’ sources cannot ever be supposed to be complete, both because so much material is lost and because Plotinus almost always relies on memory for his references to philosophers who have preceded him.» — el límite que Gerson pone a la caza de fuentes de Plotino: no puede darse nunca por completa, porque se ha perdido demasiado material y porque Plotino cita casi siempre de memoria. La capa de texto imprime *frst* por *first*.

«He will sometimes make a claim or concoct a phrase that is almost certainly an amalgam of his reading of many sources.» — de esa memoria Gerson deriva un rasgo del texto: Plotino compone frases que son amalgama de muchas lecturas y no de una sola.

«On a few occasions – such as his reply to Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima – it is obvious that Plotinus has the text of that work before him.» — la excepción que Gerson admite a esa regla: en la respuesta al comentario de Alejandro de Afrodisias sobre el De Anima de Aristóteles, Plotino sí tiene el texto delante y se le puede seguir línea por línea.

«The present edition adds perhaps 200 additional fontes, many of which are drawn from the ongoing proliferation of detailed scholarly work on Plotinus.» — la cifra con que Gerson mide el aparato de fuentes añadido en esta segunda edición.

«The advantage is that cross-references in the notes to other passages in other treatises could be easily accessed by readers.» — la razón que Gerson da para haber puesto toda la obra en un solo tomo: que las referencias cruzadas entre tratados se puedan seguir sin cambiar de volumen.

«Even if Armstrong’s excellent translation of the Enneads did contain cross-references – it actually contains very few – it would be unrealistic to expect the reader to search across all seven volumes of that translation in order to see the parallel passages.» — la comparación con la traducción de Armstrong, que Gerson llama excelente y a la vez señala con pocas referencias cruzadas y repartida en siete tomos.

«The reader should be cautioned that these are rarely exhaustive, although some effort was made to be relatively complete in the cross-references to central Plotinian doctrines variously expressed throughout the treatises.» — la cautela que Gerson pone a su propio aparato: las referencias cruzadas rara vez son exhaustivas.

«A cross-reference does not indicate that the editor or authors think that Plotinus is necessarily saying exactly the same thing in all the passages referenced.» — y la segunda cautela, que separa el aparato de la exégesis: una referencia cruzada no dice que Plotino sostenga exactamente lo mismo en los dos pasajes.

«Sometimes he is doing just that; but sometimes there might be a slight variation in emphasis; and sometimes he might be thought to be inconsistent.» — el abanico que Gerson deja abierto entre dos pasajes remitidos: a veces es lo mismo, a veces varía el énfasis, y a veces puede leerse como inconsistencia.

«The adjudication of matters of consistency is a matter for commentary and exegesis.» — y dónde deja Gerson esa decisión: adjudicar la consistencia es asunto de comentario y exégesis, no del aparato.

«In particular, the outstanding commentaries of Paul Kalligas (Princeton, 2014 [Enneads 1–3] and 2023 [Enneads 4–5]) have been immensely helpful in the identifcation of parallel passages. It is hoped that the third volume of his commentaries on the Enneads (for Ennead 6) will soon appear in an English translation.» — Gerson nombra la obra de la que más se sirvió para las referencias cruzadas nuevas, los comentarios de Paul Kalligas, y dice que el tomo sobre la sexta Enéada todavía no existe en inglés.

«All told, there are roughly 1,000 additions and corrections to the first edition.» — la cuenta con que Gerson cierra el balance de la segunda edición.

«Each original translation was read and commented on by two other members of the team. Ultimately, editorial exigencies required the imposition of consistency in the translation of technical and semi-technical terms. The goal was to simulate a work by a single hand corresponding to the original Greek text itself. Achieving this goal inevitably required sometimes sacrificing the elegance or conciseness of a free-standing translation of a single treatise for overall consistency of terminology and expression.» — cómo se hizo la uniformidad del volumen: cada traducción la leyeron otros dos del equipo y se impuso un vocabulario común, con la meta declarada de simular una obra de una sola mano. Gerson dice también el precio: sacrificar a veces la elegancia o la concisión de cada tratado suelto.

«One further caution. The line numbers in the margins of the translations do not correspond perfectly with the line numbers in the Greek for a reason that should be obvious. But they should be close enough to allow for easy use of the cross-references which are themselves keyed to the Greek text.» — la advertencia sobre los números de línea al margen de la traducción: no corresponden exactamente a los del griego, solo se acercan lo bastante para usar las referencias cruzadas, que están amarradas al texto griego.

«An index fontium for this volume has been prepared by Dr Rares¸ Marinescu. It is available for consultation or download online from Cambridge University Press at: www.cambridge.org/9781009605021» — el índice de fuentes del volumen no se imprime dentro del libro: Gerson lo adjudica a Dr Rares¸ Marinescu y lo remite a la página de la editorial. El nombre va tal cual lo imprime la capa de texto.

«This translation into English of the Enneads of Plotinus is a ‘successor’ to two great monuments of scholarship, the translations by Stephen MacKenna (1917–1930) and A. H. Armstrong (1966–1988)» — los editores colocan su traducción en una serie: sucesora de las de Stephen MacKenna y A. H. Armstrong, y no reemplazo de ellas. El tramo corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«It is not a replacement for those works, which can still be consulted with considerable profit.» — y lo dicen sin rebaja: las dos traducciones anteriores se siguen consultando con provecho.