A Coincidence Eighteen Hundred Years in the Making

[sdi]

I found another translation of the Life of Plotinus (by Thomas Moore Johnson, in Bibliotheca Platonica, his other Platonic journal—seriously, you gotta love this guy), and this prompted me to re-read it. I discovered something funny.

Plotinus' most devoted student, and the most eminent after Porphyry, was Gentilianus Amelius. (He studied under Plotinus for twenty-four years and was the one who went all the way to Delphi to ask after Plotinus' soul.) Amelius is from the Greek ameleia, meaning "indifference" or "negligence."

When I registered a domain name to post my various spirituality-related things, I settled on amissio, the name of the geomantic figure of devotion. Literally, though, amissio is from the Latin, meaning "loss" or "deprivation;" and these, too, are meanings of the geomantic figure.

So, you see, Plotinus has two devoted-but-lacking students! :D