Plotinus, who may have been a Hellenized Egyptian, had taken up the study of philosophy at the age of twenty-seven, around the year 232, and traveled to Alexandria to study.

There Plotinus was dissatisfied with every teacher he encountered until an acquaintance suggested he listen to the ideas of Ammonius Saccas, a Greek philosopher from Alexandria often referred to as the founder of the Neoplatonism.

Upon hearing Ammonius lecture, he had declared to his friend, "this was the man I was looking for," and began to study intently under his new instructor.

Besides Ammonius, the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Numenius, and various Stoics also influence Plotinus.

After spending the next eleven years in Alexandria, he decided to investigate the philosophical teachings of the Persians and the Indians around the age of thirty-eight.

Accordingly, he left Alexandria and joined the army of Gordian III as it marched on Persia.

However, the campaign was a failure, and on Gordian's eventual death in February 244, Plotinus found himself abandoned in a hostile land, and only with difficulty found his way back to safety in Antioch.

He had come to Rome in 244 and become head of an influential philosophical academy here, where he has begun to develop the Roman school of Neoplatonism.

Plotinus dislikes writing, but his students finally persuade him, at the age of fifty, to set his ideas to paper.