Ammonius Saccas

Plotinus's teacher in Alexandria, and a near-total blank. He wrote nothing, bound his students to secrecy, and is known almost only through the people he taught. Plotinus stayed with him eleven years and said afterwards, of no one else, "this is the man I was looking for."

The reminder that the deepest link in any chain of transmission may be a person who left no text. Every tradition on this bench has one.