Lycopolis

A city of Upper Egypt on the Nile, the 'city of wolves,' by tradition the birthplace of Plotinus around 204 CE. He never spoke of his origins, his student Porphyry said he seemed ashamed of being in a body at all, and left Egypt only in his late twenties, studying in Alexandria before making his way to Rome to teach the philosophy now called Neoplatonism.

Lycopolis stood on the Nile in Upper Egypt, a provincial town whose Greek name came from the jackal-headed god worshipped there. Plotinus would not discuss the place, or his parents, or his birthday, and refused to sit for a portrait on the grounds that carrying one likeness around was already enough. Porphyry had to work out his teacher's age from other evidence. The man who taught that the soul's task is to return to the One took no interest in where his body had started.