INTRODUCTION.

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.”

Porphyry also maintains a very distinguished rank among those great geniuses who contributed to the development of the genuine dogmas of Plato, after they had been lost for upwards of five hundred years; as I have shown in my above-mentioned History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology. Among these dogmas, that which is transcendently important is this,—that the ineffable principle of things, which is denominated by Plato the good and the one, is something superior to intellect and being itself. This, as we are informed by Proclus, was demonstrated by Porphyry, by many powerful and beautiful arguments, in his treatise Concerning Principles, which is unfortunately lost. And this dogma, which was derived principally from the 6th book of the Republic, and the Parmenides, of Plato, and was adopted by all succeeding Platonists, is copiously unfolded, and the truth of it supported by reasoning replete with what Plato calls geometrical necessities, by those two great philosophical luminaries Proclus and Damascius⁠[2]; the former of whom was the Coryphæus of the Platonists, and the latter possessed a profoundly investigating mind.

Of the disciples of Porphyry the most celebrated was Iamblichus, a man of an uncommonly penetrating genius, and who, like his master Plato, on account of the sublimity of his conceptions, and his admirable proficiency in theological learning, was surnamed the divine. This extraordinary man, though zealously attached to the Platonic philosophy, yet explored the wisdom of other sects, particularly of the Pythagoreans, Egyptians, and Chaldeans; and formed one beautiful system of recondite knowledge, from their harmonious conjunction⁠[3].

With respect to the works of Porphyry which are translated in this volume, the first, which is On Abstinence from Animal Food, is a treatise not only replete with great erudition, but is remarkable for the purity of life which it inculcates, and the sanctity of conception with which it abounds. At the same time it must be remembered, that it was written solely, as Porphyry himself informs us, with a view to the man who wishes in the present life to liberate himself as much as possible from the fetters of the corporeal nature, in order that he may elevate his intellectual eye to the contemplation of truly-existing being (το οντως ον,) and may establish himself in deity as in his paternal port⁠[4]. But such a one, as he beautifully observes, must divest himself of every thing of a mortal nature which he has assumed, must withdraw himself from sense and imagination, and the irrationality with which they are attended, and from an adhering affection and passion towards them; and must enter the stadium naked and unclothed, striving for the most glorious of all prizes, the Olympia of the soul⁠[5]. Hence, says he, “my discourse is not directed to those who are occupied in sordid mechanical arts, nor to those who are engaged in athletic exercises; neither to soldiers nor sailors, nor rhetoricians, nor to those who lead an active life⁠[6]; but I write to the man who considers what he is, whence he came, and whither he ought to tend, and who, in what pertains to nutriment and other necessary concerns, is different from those who propose to themselves other kinds of life; for to none but such as these do I direct my discourse⁠[7].” This treatise, also, is highly valuable for the historical information which it contains, independently of the philosophical beauties with which it abounds.

The Explanation of the Homeric Cave of the Nymphs, which follows next, is not only remarkable for the great erudition which it displays, but also for containing some profound arcana of the mythology and symbolical theology of the Greeks.

And the third treatise, which is denominated Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligibles, may be considered as an excellent introduction to the works of Plotinus in general, from which a great part of it is extracted, and in particular, to the following books of that most sublime genius, viz. On the Virtues⁠[8]; On the Impassivity of Incorporeal Natures⁠[9]; and On Truly-Existing Being, in which it is demonstrated that such being is every where one and the same whole⁠[10]. This Porphyrian treatise, also, is admirably calculated to afford assistance to the student of the Theological Elements of Proclus, a work never to be sufficiently praised for the scientific accuracy, profundity of conception, and luminous development of the most important dogmas, which it displays.

In the fourth place, Porphyry, in his treatise On the Cave of the Nymphs, having informed us, that Numenius, the Pythagorean, considered the person of Ulysses, in the Odyssey, as the image of a man who passes in a regular manner over the stormy sea of generation, or a sensible life, and thus at length arrives at a region where tempest and seas are unknown, and finds a nation

I have endeavoured, by the assistance of this intimation, to unfold, in the Appendix which concludes the work, the secret meaning of the allegory; and, I trust, in a way which will not be deemed by the intelligent reader either visionary or vain.

With respect to the translation of the treatises, I have endeavoured faithfully to preserve both the matter and manner of the author; and have availed myself of the best editions of them, and, likewise, of all the information which appeared to me to be most important, and most appropriate, from the remarks of critics and philologists, but especially from the elucidations of philosophers. This, I trust, will be evident from a perusal of the notes which accompany the translation.

Of all the other writings of Porphyry, besides those translated in this volume, few unfortunately have been preserved entire⁠[11], the greater part of what remains of them being fragments. Among these fragments, however, there is one very important, lately found by Angelus Maius, and published by him, Mediol. 1816, 8vo. It is nearly the whole of the Epistle of Porphyry to his wife Marcella, in which I have discovered the original of many of the Sentences of the celebrated Sextus Pythagoricus⁠[12], which have been hitherto supposed to be alone extant in the fraudulent Latin version of the Presbyter Ruffinus. And for an account of the other entire works and fragments that are extant, and also of the lost writings of Porphyry, I refer the reader to the Bibliotheca Græca of Fabricius, and to my before-mentioned History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology; in which latter work, in speaking of Porphyry’s lost treatise on the Reascent of the Soul, I have given a long and most interesting extract relative to that treatise, from Synesius on Dreams.

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