From the third century AD on, the actual target of Neo-Platonist philosophers has been to reach personal understanding of and unification with the higher spheres of reality. In their metaphysics, no room is given to the principle of evil. For these thinkers, of whom Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus are regarded as the most important, neither matter nor evil is posited to be real.
If matter and evil were real, they, in Neo-Platonism, would deserve an equally independent reality as they do in Manichaeism, which, as far as I can see, is a more consistent philosophico-religious system than Neo-Platonism. According to Manichaeism, there are two ultimate principles of being. One is good; the other is evil. This means that both good (represented by God and the soul) and evil (represented by Satan and the body) are real, or really existent, in terms of metaphysical dualism.
In 415 AD, Hypatia, head of the Neo-Platonist school in Alexandria, is made a martyr of philosophy [never mentioned by name in Severinus Boethius' book 'De consolatione philosophiae' from 524/6 AD]. She is publicly tormented and murdered by the fanatical Christian mob; "the they", so to speak, were instigated by their equally fanatical or even more barbarous leaders, the bishop of Alexandria not excluded.
Hypatia, who never did anybody any harm, was murdered by having her skin stripped off with sharp sea-shells; what remained of her was consigned to the flames.
Let us say that evil really exists. Spectacular violence, as a form or manifestation of the primal evil, cannot be said to be non-existent. Crowd behaviour is unanimously described as being action-oriented. Characteristically, it lacks moral responsibility. "Anything goes."