Synesius of Cyrene (370 – 414) was a Neo-Platonic philosopher who later became bishop of Ptolemais. Synesius went to Alexandria for his higher education where he became a devoted disciple of the female philosopher Hypatia. He was the author of several, varied works, including many letters, mostly to his friends in Constantinople and Alexandria.
Quotes by Synesius of Cyrene…
Man is not some simple object, nor is he cast in one pattern, but God has made to dwell in the constitution of a single creature a host of forces mingled together and with full-toned voices. We are, I think, a monstrous animal more extraordinary than the Hydra and still more many-headed. For not with the same part of our nature, of course, do we think and desire or feel pain and suffer anger, nor is our fear from the same source as our pleasure. Again you will observe how there is a male element in these organs and a female, and that there is courage and also cowardice. There are, in sooth, all kinds of opposites within us and a certain medial force of nature runs through them which we call “mind.”