 In Ennead I, 2, Plotinus holds that virtues bearing the same names (that is the four cardinal virtues of Plato’s Republic: wisdom, temperance, courage and justice) exist in different grades at different levels: the lower level is that of the so-called civic or political virtues, whereas the higher degrees include the soul’s purification and the result of it, that is the contemplation of Intellect on the part of the soul. In Sentence 32, Porphyry draws on Plotinus and offers a classification of virtues: these are divided into civic, purificatory, contemplative and paradigmatic virtues. Iamblichus’ lost treatise On virtues was certainly based on these previous discussions and offered a systematic discussion that laid the ground for later Neoplatonist accounts of the so-called scala virtutum. The late anonymous Prolegomena to Plato’s philosophy ascribes the distinction of five levels of virtues to Iamblichus: natural, moral, political, purificatory, and contemplative (see Prolegomena § 26.30–36). This distinction is connected to the order or reading of Plato’s dialogues: so the Gorgias focuses on the political virtues, the Phaedo on the purificatory. All this is most likely to derive from Iamblichus, who then associated his canon of twelve Platonic dialogues with the different levels of the scala virtutum (see above,  Section 2.2).  While crucial, the testimony of the Prolegomena is nonetheless partial: we know from Damascius and Marinus of Neapolis that Iamblichus’ distinction had two further levels at the top: those of “paradigmatic” and “theurgic” or “hieratic” virtues. Iamblichus, therefore, probably distinguished seven levels of virtues: natural, moral, political, purificatory, contemplative, paradigmatic, theurgic or hieratic. The views about the soul and theurgy outlined above help explain why Iamblichus, unlike Plotinus and Porphyry, posited theurgic or hieratic virtues at the top of his classification: such virtues are the highest degree of the soul’s ascension to the divine, which human beings cannot achieve merely through their intellect.