Select works of Porphyry

Porphyry, the celebrated author of the treatises translated in this volume, was dignified by his contemporaries, and by succeeding Platonists, with the appellation of the philosopher, on account of his very extraordinary philosophical attainments. He is likewise called by Simplicius, the most learned of the philosophers, and is praised by Proclus for his ιεροπρεπη νοηματα, or conceptions adapted to sanctity; the truth of all which appellations is by the following treatises most abundantly and manifestly confirmed.

A few biographical particulars only have been transmitted to us respecting this great man, and these are as follow. He was born at Tyre, in the twelfth year of the reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus, and in the two hundred and thirty-third of the Christian era; and he died at Rome, when he was more than seventy years old, in the latter part of the Emperor Dioclesian’s reign. He was also a disciple first of Longinus, and afterwards of the great Plotinus, with whom he became acquainted in the thirtieth year of his age; and it is to Porphyry we are indebted for the publication of the inestimable and uncommonly profound works of that most extraordinary man. For, as I have observed in my History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology, it was a long time before Plotinus committed his thoughts to writing, and gave the world a copy of his inimitable mind. That light which was destined to illuminate the philosophical world, as yet shone with solitary splendour, or beamed only on a beloved few; and it was through Porphyry alone that it at length emerged from its sanctuary, and displayed its radiance in full perfection, and with unbounded diffusion. For Porphyry, in the language of Eunapius, “like a Mercurial chain let down for the benefit of mortals, unfolded every thing with accuracy and clearness, by the assistance of universal erudition.”

We are likewise informed, by the same Eunapius, that Porphyry, when he first associated with Plotinus, bade farewell to all his other preceptors, and totally applied himself to the friendship of that wonderful man. Here he filled his mind with science, as from a perennial and never-satiating fount. But afterwards, being conquered, as it were, by the magnitude of his doctrines, he conceived a hatred of body, and could no longer endure the fetters of mortality.—“Hence,” says he[1], “I formed an intention of destroying myself, which Plotinus wonderfully perceived; and as I was walking home, stood before me, and said, Your present design, O Porphyry, is not the dictate of a sound intellect, but rather of a soul raging with an atrabilarious fury. In consequence of this he ordered me to depart from Rome; and accordingly I went to Sicily, having heard that a certain worthy and elegant man dwelt at that time about Lilybæum. And thus, indeed, I was liberated from this perturbation of soul; but was, in the meantime, hindered from being with Plotinus till his death.”