INTRODUCTION

1. the Philosopher The most distinguished disciple of , his editor and close friend, was without doubt Porphyry. 1 Porphyry was born in Tyre2 in 232/233 A.D. 3 , that is, the same year in which Plotinus entered Ammonius' School in Alexandria. 4 It seems that Porphyry spent half of his life in stu­ dying and writing and the other half in writing and teaching. 5 Through his early studies in his native land, he became familiar with many Chaldean, Egyptian, Christian and Gnostic mystery doctrines. Later, he went to Athens to study with Longinus, the famous Platonist, and other notable philosophers, mathematicians and rhetoricians of that time. 6 In 263 A.D., while in his thirties and still thirsty for more wisdom, he left Athens for Rome where Plotinus had established his own School of about twenty years earlier. 7 It did not take long for the intelligent young Porphyry to win the favor of the great philosopher. In his Vita Plotini (18), Porphyry alludes to the first impressions and dif-

1 llop~upto~ is the name which he uses for himself in Vita 2, 33; 4, 2, and passim. Besides this name, his friends used two other names for him: MciJ..xo~ and BacnAtu~, both of which mean "king" in his native language and in Greek respectively (Ibid. 17, 5-15 ). For further biographical information about Porphyry, see Eunapius (102], pp. 352-360; Beutler [393), pp. 276-278, Lloyd [18], pp. 272-330, Holstenius [146], Wolff [357], and Bidez [35] passim. 2 Porphyry, as well as his friends, referred to himself as Tupto~ (Vita 7, 51), but his Christian opponents called him Bot"totlltW"tTIV, presumably in reference to his family roots in Batanea which Bidez described as a "region barbare situee aux confins du Hauran actual" [35], p. 5. 3 This date is easily calculated from Porphyry's testimony that "In the tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, I, Porphyry arrived from Greece with Antonius of Rhodes .... In the tenth year of the reign ofGallienus Plotinus was about fifty-nine years old. I, Por­ phyry, when I joined him was thirty" (Vita 4, 1-10). • In Vita 3, 7-13, we read: "In his twenty-eighth year he felt the impulse to study phi­ losophy and was recommended to the teachers in Alexandria who then had the highest reputation .... He went and heard him [Ammonius), and said to his friend, 'This is the man I was looking for.'" 5 According to Eunapius, [102], p. 357, "Porphyry returned to Rome [after Plotinus' death] and continued to study philosophical disputation, so that he even appeared in public to make a display of his powers; but every forum and every crowd attributed to Plotinus the credit of Porphyry's renown." Also, Bidez [35], p. 103, asserts that "A son tour' il devint chef d 'ecole." 6 For the identification of his teachers, see Beutler [393], pp. 276-277. In Eunapius' judgment, ""ti)v cixpotv t7tott8tut"to 7tott8dav," (102], p. 354. 7 Plotinus went to Rome in 244 A.D. at the age of forty, after Philip the Arab had become Emperor, Vita 3, 24-26. 2 INTRODUCTION ficulties that he had in adjusting to the new intellectual milieu. He says, for instance: His [Plotinus']lectures were like conversations, and he was not quick to make clear to anybody the compelling logical coherence of his discourse. I, Porphyry, experienced something of the sort when I first heard him. It appears that Longinus and Plotinus were competing teachers of phi­ losophy and had no great respect for each other. 8 They certainly held divergent views with regard to the fundamental (for the Neoplatonists) problem of the status of -ra V07J't"cX (intelligibles ). Briefly stated the question was this: Are the V07J't"cX outside or inside vout;;? If inside, are they identical with the Intellect or not? On this subject, Plotinus wrote a treatise (V. 5.) to support the thesis that -ra vo7J-ra are inside vout;; and identical with it.9 As a resident at the School of Plotinus, Porphyry found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to defend what he had learned from Longinus on this matter. But he had to abandon his previous views, after they had been repeatedly refuted by his friend and colleague Amelius who wrote under Plotinus' supervision. He describes the episode as follows: The result was that I wrote against him [Plotinus J in an attempt to show that the objects of thought existed outside the intellect. He made Amelius read this essay to him, and when the reading was finished smiled and said ''You shall have the task of solving these difficulties Ameli us. He has fallen into them because he does not know what we hold." Amelius wrote a lengthy treatise "In Answer to Porphyry's Difficulties;" I replied to what he had written; Amelius answered my reply; and the third time I with dif­ ficulty understood the doctrine, changed my mind and wrote a recantation which I read in the meeting of the school. After this I believed in Plotinus' writings, and tried to rouse in the master himself the ambition to organize his doctrine and write it down more at length; and I also stimulated Amelius' desire to write books. 10

8 To Plotinus, Longinus was perhaps a philologist "but certainly not a philosopher" (Vita 14, 19-20); whereas Longinus seems to have misjudged Plotinus' books because, as Porphyry says, "he did not understand Plotinus' usual manner of expressing himself' (Ibid. 20, 5-10). 9 On this controversy, see (250], I, p. 322, 24, Uoyd [18], pp. 286-7, and Dillon (88], pp. 95fT. 10 This is the only reported case of open confrontation between Porphyry and Plotinus. But there is no doubt that Porphyry had many ci-n:op£cx~ on many subjects which gave Plotinus much headache and a stimulus for discourse, as the following passage clearly indicates: "Once, I, Porphyry, went on asking him for three days about the soul's con­ nection with the body, and he kept on explaining to me. A man called Thaumasius came in who was interested in general statements and said that he wanted to hear Plotinus speaking in the manner of a set treatise, but could not stand Porphyry's questions and answers. Plotinus said, 'But if when Porphyry asks questions we do not solve his dif­ ficulties [ci-n:op£cx~] we shall not be able to say anything to put into the treatise'" (Vita 13, 11-18). Incidentally, this passage also indicates that Plotinus followed the Socratic dialec­ tic as the correct method of teaching. For pedagogical purposes, Porphyry employed the same technique in his extant elementary commentary on 's Categories which is "xcx'tdt -n:tuat\1 xcxt ci-n:6xptaw," PAC, p. 55.