  The interpretative tradition of the Neoplatonic commentators stretches well beyond the 11th century, when John Italos defended what he took to be Aristotle’s position, namely that rational soul alone is immortal, against Ps.-Philoponus’ interpretation of the above-mentioned Platonic dictum (quaestiones nos. 36; 50). This is also what Sophonias argued at the turn of the 14th century in his paraphrase of De anima 3.2. Thus both he and Italos conformed to the same scheme as Philoponus and Ps.-Simplicius. In the same vein, Nikephoros Blemmydes, in his De anima (c. 1263), made extensive use of the analogy of the pilot of a ship as interpreted by the Neoplatonists. First he used it to show that Aristotle thought the rational soul was separable and immortal; then he developed it into an image of the turmoil experienced by the rational soul as long as it is connected with the body. And in the early 12th century, Michael of Ephesus pointed out, when commenting on Aristotle’s dictum that the activity of the better part of us is more serious, that the intellect which is part of us comes into its own only after being separated from the body, which shows, he says, “that those who claim that Aristotle was of the opinion that the soul is mortal were fundamentally wrong” (In NE 10, 576.25–33).