In the tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, I (then being twenty
years of age), left Greece and went to Rome with Antonius of Rhodes.
I found there Amelius, who had been following the courses of Plotinos
for eighteen years. He had not yet dared to write anything, except a
few books of notes, of which there were not yet as many as a hundred.
In this tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, Plotinos was fifty-nine
years old. When I (for the second, and more important time) joined
him, I was thirty years of age. During the first year of Gallienus,
Plotinos began to write upon some topics of passing interest, and in
the tenth year of Gallienus, when I visited him for the first time, he
had written twenty-one books, which had been circulated only among a
very small number of friends. They were not given out freely, and it
was not easy to go through them. They were communicated to students
only under precautionary measures, and after the judgment of those who
received them had been carefully tested.