292 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



233, in the reign of Alexander Severus. His early education was first 

 directed by a Christian preceptor, Origen, and afterwards in Athens by 

 Longinus, to which latter philosopher we may, perhaps, in a great 

 measure, ascribe the elegance of his style, the extent of his learning, 1 

 and his adoption of the opinions of Plotinus, of whom we find him a 

 disciple in Rome, about his thirtieth year. His attainments recom- 

 mended him to the especial favour of his master, whose tenets he 

 defended and explained, and whose writings he revised and corrected. 

 The morbid turn of mind, in which he indulged, may be inferred from 

 the circumstance which he relates, that Plotinus deterred him from a 

 resolution which he had taken, in his thirty-sixth year, of releasing 

 himself from the burthen of life. After the death of Plotinus, Porphyry, 

 who had passed from Rome to Sicily, appeared as one of the most 

 determined and formidable enemies of Christianity, against which he 

 wrote fifteen different treatises, of which, as they were destroyed by 

 the Emperor Theodosius, we have extant only such fragments as 

 remain in ecclesiastical writers. He was attacked with great zeal, 

 particularly by Methodius, Apollinaris, and Eusebius. On his return 

 to Rome, Porphyry publicly taught the tenets of his master, and 

 pretended to have received Divine communications, with a confidence 

 which is only to be ascribed to enthusiastical illusion, not unaccom- 

 panied, perhaps, with imposture. He died about the year 304, towards 

 the end of Dioclesian's reign.* 



d'expression de la battologie, de la prolixite reproche'e quelque-fois i Porphyre ? 

 Ni cette derniere hypothese, proposee par Gundling, ni les pre'ce'dentes imagine'es 

 par Sirmond, Holstenius, Tannegui Lefebvre, Heumann, &c., ne nous semblent assez 

 plausibles ; et nous trouverions une explication plus immediate du terme employe 

 par Saint Jerome, dans ce qui dit Etienne de Bysance, d'un bourg de Syrie, appele' 

 Batanea, et peuple d'une colone'e Tyrienne ; il se pourroit que, ne en ce lieu, Por- 

 phyre eut pris, pour se rehausser, ce nom de Tyrien, et que Saint Jerome 1'eut 

 replace' dans son bourg natal. Biog. Univ. Art. Porphyre. 



1 His learning was acknowledged. " Doctissimus philosophorum Porphyrius, 

 quamvis Christianorum acerrimus inimicus." S. August, de Civ. Dei, xix. 22 ; 

 Comp. Euseb. Praep. Evang. V. 14, &c. 



2 The life of Porphyry was written by Eunapius, and, in modem times, by Lucas 

 Holstenius, in his edition of Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras. Of the works of Por- 

 phyry, many of which are lost, his treatise De AbstinentiS. ab Esu Animalium ; De 

 Vita Pythagorae ; Sententise ad Intelligibilia ducentes ; De Antro Nympharum, 

 with a fragment, De Styge, found in Stobaeus, were printed at Cambridge in 1655, 

 8vo, with a Latin version. The Life of Pythagoras, of which the beginning and 

 end are wanting, was published under the name of Malchus, by Conrad Ritter- 

 shusius, in 1610, by J. Donatus in 1629, and by Lucas Holstenius in 1630. It 

 was afterwards published by Kuster, at Amsterdam, in 1707, and also by M. Theoph. 

 Keissling, together with that written by Jamblicus. The treatise On Abstinence 

 from the Flesh of Animals, is one of the best works of Porphyry : he endeavours 

 to prove that animal food is to be avoided, at least by those who aspire to a perfect 

 life, as soliciting too strongly the senses ; he treats of the origin and object of sacri- 

 fices, to answer the objection drawn from the immolation of animals ; he maintains 

 that animals are gifted with reason, and entitled to the same justice which is exer- 

 cised by men one to another ; and, lastly, he collects authorities, drawn from the 

 examples of persons and nations famed for wisdom, in favour of his reasoning, and 

 concludes by an exhortation to purity. (See the Abbe Ricard, (Euvres Morales de 



