Communication, human and divine : Saloustious reconsidered

Saloustius would approve of summaries as this. While his neoplatonic handbook, the «Peri theon kai kosmou», is often ignored as a laughably lightweight guide to philosophy, this article aims to show that Salioustius is a champion of communication. It argues that the practical tenets of neoplatonism, in themselves first-classs tickets to communication with the gods, are proffered in a manner that exemplifies the virtue of communication with men. The article analyses three subject-areas of the treatise. Section I discusses the author's insistence on the impassibility of divine nature, and how he explains this within a sympathetic, communicative cosmos. Section II assesses the role of Saloustius' daemons in relation to men and the gods. Not only where they essential intermediaries between humans and the divine, but they partly defined what it meant to be a human individual; following an Iamblichean paradox, deamons are presented both as connective and as individuating cosmic powers. Section III investigates Saloustius' discussion of myth, the longest and most original section of the treatise. It is argued that while some philosophers rejected myths as obscene distortions, and others embraced as allegorical representations of the truth, Saloustius combined these two ideas: the veiling of the truth was itself a revelation, this paradox being the ultimate representation of divinity. Allegory was not merely a means of interpretation, but was the very nature of revelation, and this applied not just to myth but all existence. While this article aims to counterbalance the greater interest shown by scholars in Saloustius' historical identity than in his philosophy, it also offers an Appendix which re-evaluates all the available evidence on this matter and outlines the relevant arguments to date. It is hoped that this assessment will prove the likely identity of the elusive Saloustius