Select Works of Porphyry (On Abstinence from Animal Food, etc.)

ΤΟ THE REV. WILLIAM JOHN JOLLIFFE, AS A TESTIMOMY OF GREAT ESTEEM FOR HIS TALENTS AND WORTH, AND A TRIBUTE OF THE WARMEST GRATITUDE FOR HIS PATRONAGE, ‘THIS WORK IS DEDICATED BY THE TRANSLATOR, THOMAS TAYLOR. INTRODUCTION. Porpryry, 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 attain- ments. He is likewise called by Simplicius, the most learned of the philosophers, and is praised by | Proclus for his ssgorgern νοηματὰ, or conceptions adapted to sanctity; the truth of all which appel- lations is by the following treatises most abun- dantly 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 Alex- ander 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 b vi INTRODUCTION. b vi INTRODUCTION. age; and it is to Porphyry we are indebted for the publication of the inestimable and uncom- monly 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 Por- phyry alone that it at length emerged from its sanctuary, and displayed its radiance in full per- fection, and with unbounded diffusion.…