Plotinus, Platonopolis, and the ethics of escape

"Porphyry refers to Plotinus' unrealized project to found an ideal city, Platonopolis. But Porphyry's Life suggests that Plotinus was active almost entirely on the individual level, as a model and guide for his friends and followers. We may regard his activity of teaching and of writing as aspects of his ethics of giving. If the Enneads propose an ethics of escape to the reader, they are themselves the product of an ethics of giving."

-- Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads, Dominic J. O'Meara, 1993, p. 109.