Damascius

He was one of the neoplatonic philosophers who left Athens after laws confirmed by emperor Justinian I forced the closure of the Athenian school in c. 529 AD.

After he left Athens, he may have sought refuge in the court of the Persian King Chrosroes, before being allowed back into the Byzantine Empire.

[7] Horapollo, the head of the school at which Damascius had studied and taught rhetoric for nine years,[6] was arrested in 489 AD, causing Damascius and the neoplatonic philosopher Isidore of Alexandria to flee Alexandria and start on a journey to Athens with the aim of studying in the neoplatonic school in Athens.

[7] According to the 6th-century historian Agathias, soon after the school closed in 529 AD, Damascius, Isidore and the 6th-century neoplatonic philosophers Simplicius of Cilicia, Eulamius of Phrygia, Priscianus of Lydia, Hermias and Diogenes of Phoenicia left Athens and travelled to Persia, where they had heard that the intellectual climate might be more suited to them,[13][14] under the refuge of the Persian King Chosroes.

[20] His chief treatise is entitled Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles (ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις περὶ τῶν πρώτων ἀρχῶν).

In this treatise Damascius inquires into the first principle of all things, which he finds to be an unfathomable and unspeakable divine depth, being all in one, but undivided.