Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century

Synesius was born some thirty-five years later than Basil and Gregory, contemporary rather with Augustine in the West and John Chrysostom in the East; in fact, his birthplace in what is now Libya lies roughly equidistant between those of Augustine in North Africa and Chrysosotom at Antioch, all of them in areas which were strongly Christian by the end of the fourth century. It is possible that Synesius was born into a Christian family but one which also appears to have claimed descent from Heracles and apparently originated from Sparta; Synesius grew up with strong ties to his Greek past and to Greek culture generally. He did not study at Athens, however, but at Alexandria, a more cosmopolitan city than Athens with powerful Jewish and Christian traditions alongside the pagan. Here he continued his Classical education under the guidance of Hypatia, the teacher of mathematics and Neoplatonist philosophy, and increased his familiarity with the Neoplatonic philosophy according to the theories and principles of which he was to lead the rest of his life. For even though Synesius' familiarity with Christianity also grew, especially during his time at Constantinople, even though he married a Christian and was prevailed upon to become bishop of Ptolemais in the last years of his life, he never relinquished a Neoplatonic world-view and seems to have accepted Christianity only in so far as he could make it accord with Neoplatonism and interpret it in Neoplatonic terms.