SOURCE: Clark, Gillian. Introduction to Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals, pp. 1-28. London, Eng.: Duckworth, 2000.

[In the following excerpt, Clark offers background information on the dating, composition, and influences on Porphyry's On the Abstinence of Animal Food, before presenting a detailed analysis of his arguments for vegetarianism and the just treatment of animals.]

1. ON ABSTINENCE FROM KILLING ANIMALS

On Abstinence from Killing Animals, written in the last third of the third century ce, is a treatise in the form of an open letter from Porphyry of Tyre to his friend Firmus Castricius. Both were philosophers, but Castricius had ‘reverted to consuming flesh’ (1.1.1): that is, he had abandoned the vegetarian diet which he and Porphyry had both thought essential for a committed philosopher. To reconvert him, Porphyry offers an impressive repertory of debate and observation about animals, humans and gods. Biology and theology, ethology and anthropology, are called in to support philosophy; food for the body and food for the soul are equal concerns. Are animals non-rational beings, and thereby excluded from any human community, to be used as humans see fit—exploited as workers, killed for food or medicine or pleasure, or sacrificed to the gods? Do true gods demand the sacrifice of living creatures, or is what passes for religion only a cover for human greed and demonic manipulation? Why do humans acquiesce in the somnolent, desire-driven life of the body, ignoring the evidence that they are immortal souls, and what should they do to break free?

Porphyry and Castricius probably met in Rome, when Porphyry joined (in 263 ce) the group which studied with the philosopher Plotinus. Forty years later, Porphyry described the group in the Life of Plotinus which he prefixed to the Enneads, his edition of the philosophical writings of Plotinus.¹ This preface gives the most vivid picture we have of a late-antique philosopher among his students. The members of the group varied greatly in their choice of lifestyle. Plotinus, who came from somewhere in Egypt, would not talk about his home or family, had no property (he lodged in the house of a Roman lady, Gemina), was celibate and vegetarian, and ate, drank and slept little. Yet he accepted the social responsibilities of friendship. He acted as arbitrator in legal disputes, and took seriously his financial and educational duties as guardian for children whose father had died.² Some of his students had heavier domestic, political and business commitments. There were Roman senators, doctors (from Palestine, Arabia and Alexandria), and even a professional public speaker who was also a moneylender. Castricius had estates in Campania, the best farming land in Italy, and probably decided on a political career. The senator Rogatianus, in contrast, abandoned a political career for the study of philosophy. He refused to act as praetor (a very senior post with special responsibility for law) even when his official escort came to summon him, and he stayed with friends instead of being accessible in his own great house. Rogatianus, Porphyry, Castricius, and probably others, were vegetarian.³

As Porphyry said (Abst. 1.48.1), most philosophers approved of a frugal diet, but vegetarianism meant more than that. The title of this translation, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, tries to convey some of Porphyry's purpose. His book is conventionally known as On Abstinence, or by the Latin title de Abstinentia, but its full title is On Abstinence from Animates: in Greek, Peri apokhês empsukhôn. This is difficult to translate into Latin, or into English.⁴apokhê is ‘holding back’, empsukha are not just living creatures (zôia) but creatures with souls. According to Porphyry, animals (unlike plants) have rational souls, less rational than human souls but still recognisably kin to humans. Animals can be seen to recognise and assess their situation, plan for the future, respond to each other and to humans, communicate with each other and (so far as human understanding allows) with humans. It is therefore wrong to kill animals for any reason other than immediate self-defence. It is especially wrong if the purpose is only to provide people with meat, a kind of food which for most people is both unnecessary and unhealthy. Porphyry of course approves of frugality and of kindness to animals, but these are not his only reasons for abstinence from killing and eating animals.

Most philosophers agreed that commitment to philosophy requires a disciplined and moderate lifestyle. Porphyry and Castricius were Platonist philosophers, and for Platonists it was especially important to minimise the distraction caused to the soul by the desires of the body. They believed that the true self is the intellectual soul, which has temporarily fallen away from contemplating God because it is involved with the mortal body. Platonists (like Plato himself) had different ideas about the cause of this involvement: it might be inherent weakness, or excessive self-confidence, or natural affinity of souls for bodies, or a god-given mission to illuminate the material world.⁵ Whatever the cause, the soul now inhabits a world which is mortal, corporeal and changeable, at the furthest remove from God, and the mortal body demands the soul's attention. But the soul is able to turn back towards God, and philosophers must work to purify body and soul from the contaminating effects of existence in the material world. The philosopher aims to ‘become like God’ (Plato, Theaetetus 176b), that is, ‘to be just and holy with wisdom’ so that the true self may rise towards God even in this life and be ready for return to God after death.

Porphyry argues that the philosopher should concentrate on feeding the intellect with contemplation and thoughts about God. The body also must be fed, but not on meat. Meat requires expensive and distracting preparation (1.46.2); it obstructs the soul by weighing down the body and stimulating desire (1.47.2); and it cannot be acquired without doing harm. Killing animals harms them because it takes away their souls (2.13.1), whereas God, who is wholly good, does no harm to anything (3.26.11). That is a challenge to traditional Graeco-Roman belief about the relationship of humans, animals and gods.

Meat-eating was closely linked to the Graeco-Roman mode of animal sacrifice, in which the inedible parts of the victim were burned for the gods, and the edible parts were eaten by the worshippers or sold off by the priests for others to eat. The everyday Mediterranean diet was based on grain made into bread or porridge and enlivened with whatever was available as a ‘relish’ (opson): oil, olives, herbs and vegetables, cheese, sometimes fish. For most people, only special occasions made it worth killing an animal for food. Such occasions—religious festivals and major life-events—also required the animal to be offered to the gods, in honour or thanksgiving or hope of benefit (2.24.1). This is not to say that meat was unobtainable without sacrifice. In town markets it was always available, and had not always been ritually butchered and offered.⁶ But Porphyry still had to counter the religious argument that by authorising sacrifice, the gods have authorised meat-eating by humans.

The standard definition of ‘human’ (used by Porphyry in his Introduction to Aristotle's Categories) was ‘mortal rational animal’. We are below the gods because we are mortal like the other animals, but above the other animals because we are rational like the gods. This status is acknowledged when we offer sacrificial animals to gods, who need no food, and eat the meat ourselves. But according to Porphyry, gods, humans and animals are all rational. Animals are less rational than humans, but are still too close kin for us to kill them unless it is in immediate self-defence, as we would kill a dangerous human (2.22.2). Humans are less rational than gods, but are still capable of assimilation to the divine when freed from the body (perhaps even in brief experiences of union in this life), and should try to be as much like the gods as human life allows. We should therefore understand that gods do no harm and have no needs, least of all for dead flesh. They welcome simple bloodless offerings, such as grain or barley-cakes or flowers, which manifest the respect of ordinary unphilosophic people. From the philosophic few, the proper offering is contemplation and pure thought uncontaminated by the concerns of the body (2.34.2-3).

When Porphyry heard that Castricius had lapsed from the beliefs they had shared, he knew it could not be from simple greed or from mistaken ideas about health, and he was anxious about the possible motives for this change (1.1.1-2.2). Why should he be anxious? As On Abstinence progresses, some reasons become clear. Castricius might have been convinced by philosophic arguments that it is impossible, or simply mistaken, to treat animals as if they were humans, that is, to regard them as part of our society and kill them only in self-defence (1.4.1-4). But he might instead have been persuaded by Gnostics among the students of Plotinus that his enlighted soul was not affected by the experiences of his body (1 chs 41-2). Their position could seem to be supported by Plotinus' belief (which was, as he knew, untraditional in Platonism) that there is a part of the soul which never fully descends from the divine to the material world.⁷ Or Castricius might have been convinced by other philosophers, or even by social and political pressure, that the gods do require traditional sacrifice and that refusing it would mean harm to the individual and the community (2 chs 41-3). Porphyry tells us that he was the devoted assistant of Amelius, who worked with Plotinus for twenty years, and that Amelius was a lover of sacrifices.⁸

If Castricius accepted any of these persuasions, he would be free to participate fully in Roman social and political life. But from Porphyry's perspective, he would be putting his true self at risk by his failure to understand the natures of body, soul and God. Except when it is wholly engaged in contemplation, the soul must supervise and regulate the body's concerns, so body and soul must both be purified; and to suppose that divine power can do harm is, for Porphyry as for Plato, as much a contradiction as supposing that heat can cool (2.41.2). Porphyry was unimpressed by reports of the arguments Castricius had offered (he did not repeat them, but said later (1.26.4), that they were covered by his preliminary survey). There was, he said, a much stronger tradition of anti-vegetarian writing than Castricius had realised. In the interests of friendship and of rational persuasion, he would collect these arguments, then refute them (1.3.2-3). The result is On Abstinence.

2. CASTRICIUS AND PORPHYRY

Castricius is known to us only from what Porphyry says in On Abstinence and in the Life of Plotinus: ‘the greatest lover of beauty of our time, who revered Plotinus, assisted Amelius [the long-term colleague of Plotinus] in everything like a good house-slave, and behaved to me, Porphyry, in all respects like a true-born brother.’⁹ Castricius' estates at Minturnae in Campania helped to provide for Plotinus, who had no property of his own. Porphyry's biography also depends almost entirely on what he chooses to tell us in the Life, but scholarly imagination, ancient and modern, has been tempted to supplement it. The key date is his arrival in Rome, aged 30, in the tenth year of Gallienus, i.e. 263 ce.¹⁰ He came from Tyre in Phoenicia, and was named Malkos, ‘king’, after his father. Ancient Phoenician wisdom (or what was thought to be ancient wisdom) was respected in the early centuries ce, and Porphyry mentions the Phoenicians several times in On Abstinence, but he never claims to be one. His chosen identity, and his perspective on the world, is Greek. He never admits knowledge of any other language, not even Latin, and he tells his readers his original name only in order to demonstrate that references to ‘Basileus’ mean him, Porphyry. ‘Basileus’ (Basil) is the Greek equivalent of Malkos, ‘king’. ‘Porphyry’ is an ingenious and enduring nickname: porphurios, purple, was worn by kings and came especially from Tyre.¹¹

Before he came to Rome, Porphyry had worked at Athens with the great scholar Longinus, and they kept in touch. Plotinus and Longinus knew each other's work, though each had doubts about the other. Plotinus said that Longinus was a scholar not a philosopher, philologos not philosophos, and Longinus claimed that he must have been given defective and therefore unintelligible copies of Plotinus' writings.¹² After five years in Rome, Porphyry went to Lilybaeum in Sicily in 268 (Life 6.1-3), and was still away when Plotinus died in 270 (Life 6.15). The Life of Plotinus does not tell us anything after that, except, of course, that Porphyry edited the writings of Plotinus and grouped them into the Enneads, to which the Life is a preface. That leaves a gap of thirty years. Porphyry cites a letter in which Longinus urged him to return from Sicily to Phoenicia, where Longinus then was, but says that he could not accept the invitation. Amelius did visit Longinus, and was at Apamea in Syria when Plotinus died.¹³

We do not know when Porphyry returned to Italy, but he stayed on in Sicily long enough for hostile Christians to call him ‘Porphyry the Sivilian’ (with the implication that native Sicilians are not educated Greeks).¹⁴ The Life does not suggest that the group which had worked with Plotinus continued to meet in Rome, with or without Porphyry's guidance. He married, relatively late in life, Marcella, widow of another student of Plotinus, and thereby took responsibility for seven stepchildren; he may have remained celibate in marriage, and is not known to have had children of his own.¹⁵ According to the Souda (a tenth-century encyclopedia) he was still alive in the reign of Diocletian, who abdicated in 305.¹⁶

Eunapius, who wrote biographies of philosophers at the end of the fourth century, said (456-7) that Porphyry taught in Rome and was said to have died there, but gave no information about his students. This in itself suggests that Porphyry did not move back to the Eastern Mediterranean, because Eunapius was much better informed about philosophical networks there.¹⁷ He clearly did not know how Porphyry's reputation in the west was maintained by translation into Latin. In City of God Augustine assumes that both Christian and non-Christian readers will acknowledge Porphyry's status as the best-known recent philosopher.¹⁸ Pierre Courcelle concluded that, although On Abstinence probably survived only in the Greek east, Porphyry's works on the soul and on Aristotelian logic made him the most important representative of Greek philosophy in the west: ‘the master of western thought’.¹⁹

3. DATE AND CONTEXT

Dating any work of Porphyry is a problem. Only the Life of Plotinus is securely dated, by an internal reference, to 301 or later (Life 23.13).²⁰ Nor is it possible to deduce Porphyry's philosophical development from his works and to locate On Abstinence within the range.²¹ We have the titles of approximately seventy works, but only a few have survived. Debates continue on authenticity, on how many are separate works or alternative titles, and on identifying fragments in later authors who, like Porphyry himself, took over arguments from their predecessors.²² Sometimes he cited verbatim, sometimes (see below, section 6) he modified or selected from his texts, thereby changing the effect without warning his readers.²³ Other authors used the same tactics on him, and Christian writers particularly liked to use this notoriously anti-Christian philosopher as a resource for attacking Graeco-Roman philosophy and religion. So, for instance, when Joseph Bidez began the immense task of collecting fragments (completed eighty years later by Andrew Smith), almost all his fragments of Cult-Statues were citations from Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, and all those of The Return of the Soul were citations from Augustine, City of God. Similarly, the fragments of the Philosophic History, with the exception of the almost-complete life of Pythagoras, are passages chosen by Christian authors, some to discredit Socrates and some to show how close Plato was to Christianity.²⁴ Fellow-Platonists also selected what they wanted to discuss. Thus the lost Letter to Anebo, on religion and theurgy, survives mostly in the reply by Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, and it would not be safe to suppose that he gave full weight to Porphyry's questions.²⁵

The net result is that perhaps eleven of Porphyry's works survive in full, or almost complete. On Abstinence is the longest of these, but the end of its final book is missing,²⁶ and much of it is (as Porphyry said it would be) report and discussion of other people's arguments, deployed to win an argument rather than to explore all the implications. A comment by Bidez is widely cited: ‘in all that remains of his writings, there is not a thought or an image of which we can say with certainty that it is his own.’²⁷ Strictly speaking, that is correct, but there are phrases, concerns and philosophical structures which can be ascribed to Porphyry if not with certainty, at least with reasonable confidence.²⁸ But it is still not possible to reconstruct Porphyry's philosophical, and especially his religious, development.

Commentators have often accepted that Porphyry followed the simple trajectory suggested by Bidez: from oriental superstition to a critical attitude inspired by Longinus to a more spiritual religion inspired by Plotinus. These categories are questionable in themselves,²⁹ and besides, philosophers may be expected to modify their beliefs, at any stage of their lives, in response to argument and further thought. Porphyry himself described how when he first studied with Plotinus, he wrote a paper arguing (as Longinus had taught him) that the intelligibles exist outside the intellect, then reversed his opinion after two exchanges of papers with Amelius and a third attempt to understand what Plotinus meant.³⁰ He had a reputation for changing his mind or seeing both sides of the question, and of course he cited opinions with which he did not necessarily agree. His various opponents made the most of this. Eusebius gleefully juxtaposed his discussion (in the fragmentary Philosophy from Oracles) of an oracle on the right way to sacrifice animals with his declaration in On Abstinence (2 chs 37-43) that it is bad daimones, not gods, who want animal sacrifice. Augustine exploited the evidence for changes of position on theurgy and on reincarnation, and Iamblichus claimed that Porphyry was in doubt (as well he might be) on the relationship of universal soul to individual soul.³¹

All that can be said with certainty is that On Abstinence shows the influence of Plotinus, and is therefore later than 263. The favoured (but still unprovable) dating is soon after Plotinus' terminal illness and death in 268-70, while Porphyry was still in Sicily.³² This would explain why he had news of Castricius from visitors (1.1.1-2), if that is not a literary device. The appealing story of the partridge whom ‘I myself reared at Carthage’ (3.4.7) also fits this context, because Carthage, mother-city of Lilybaeum and daughter-city of Tyre, is only a short sea-crossing away. (It seems almost unkind to point out that Porphyry sometimes takes over first-person narrative from the source he is transcribing.³³) More generally, On Abstinence offers an extreme and isolationist version of philosophical asceticism, in which suicide recurs as a theme (see below); and Porphyry was in Sicily because he had thought he was making a rational choice to liberate his soul from the constraints of the body, but Plotinus had diagnosed a melancholic illness and recommended a change of scene (Life 11.11-16).

Why, then, does Porphyry never mention Plotinus, not even as a reproach or an example to the devoted Castricius? It could be argued that Plotinus did not provide adequate support for Porphyry's case: that he taught and practised a less rigorous detachment from the world than Porphyry wanted (see below), and that the Enneads show him thinking about animal souls and animal reason in relation to human souls, but not about animal lives or human treatment of animals. In discussing providence, for instance, he observes that humans fight each other and the ‘other animals’ eat each other, and speculates ‘it is necessary that animals should eat each other; these eatings are transformations into each other of animals which could not stay as they are for ever, even if no one killed them’.³⁴ There is no comment on humans eating animals. Plotinus accepted that if a rational soul became too much involved with the desires of a human body, the soul might after the body's death transmigrate to an animal body which would be a more appropriate home; but Porphyry (see below) did not want to use transmigration as an argument for abstinence from animals.³⁵ Nevertheless, he could have used Plotinus as an example of philosophic conduct, for Plotinus did not himself eat animals or use medicines with animal content (Life 2.3-5). It is possible that Plotinus was among the individual testimonies' to abstinence in the lost ending of book 4; but there is no evidence for this, and no mention of Plotinus where we might expect it, in the opening address to Castricius and in the perorations on the true philosopher.

The explanations that come to mind are, like so much else, unprovable. Perhaps Porphyry did not, at the time of writing On Abstinence, think it right to make public the teachings of Plotinus; he may have preferred to use Plato's Phaedo, a key text for On Abstinence (see below, section 5) as an indirect tribute to another philosopher who, like Socrates, has now escaped the constraints of the body. Certainly the writings of Plotinus needed editorial work. Moreover, his reputation may have been too much in dispute (Life 18.1-6) to be helpful. Even his own students could have been unsure. The Life, after all, gives the perspective of thirty years later, and even then remembers instances of dissatisfaction and of puzzlement. Whatever the reason, Plotinus is not named in On Abstinence. When Porphyry discusses the soul in relation to God, he has many phrases and images in common with Plotinus, and these may well have been immediately recognisable to anyone who had worked with Plotinus. But the named philosophical heroes of On Abstinence are Plato, Pythagoras and Empedocles.

4. ARGUMENTS FOR ABSTINENCE

Porphyry says in his opening paragraphs that Castricius was a committed follower of Pythagoras and Empedocles. To a Greek or Roman reader, these linked names immediately suggested what is now called vegetarianism.³⁶ Porphyry calls it abstinence from animate (empsukhos) food. According to Aristotle, all living things are animate, but plants have only ‘nutritive’ soul: that is, they are alive and grow. The Stoics declined even to call this animating principle soul, psukhê, and said that plants cohere by phusis, nature. Porphyry agrees with Aristotle, but still calls plant foods apsukha, inanimate: abstinence from animate food therefore means abstinence from eating animals.³⁷

Present-day vegetarians are often challenged with the argument that eating plants also takes life, and a committed follower of Pythagoras and Empedocles might indeed feel qualms about eating plant foods, because both claimed to remember that their souls had once been joined to plants.³⁸ (Manicheans, according to Augustine, were taught that it is murder to kill or harvest plants; so disciples incurred the guilt and the Elect ate the food and prayed for the disciples.³⁹) But mortals must eat to stay alive. Porphyry argues that harvesting does not kill plants (2.13.1), which let their fruits and seeds fall whether or not humans collect the crops. (He does not discuss the further problem of vegetables.) Animals are different. Even the Stoics agreed that animals have soul in that they are self-moving: that is, their movements are prompted by their perceptions and impulses, whereas plant movement is merely response to stimulus. Animals also differ from plants in that they cannot be used as food unless they are killed, because people will not eat animals that have died naturally of age or illness (3.18.2). Are humans so different from animals that they may rightly kill the ‘other animals’ for food?⁴⁰

Those who answered ‘yes’ could argue that the other animals are fundamentally unlike humans because their souls lack reason. This is the first anti-vegetarian argument that Porphyry reports (1.4.1-2), and it has had the greatest influence in western tradition. Seventeen centuries later, we can scan brain activity in animals, but we are still debating whether animals have consciousness and are able to communicate. To say that animals lack reason, logos, is to say that they cannot talk to us and therefore cannot make social contracts with us, and moreover that their awareness of their own experience and of other inhabitants of the world is different from ours. They react, whereas we can assess and choose to do right. As Plotinus once (probably) said, animals are angry because of their temperaments, not because they think that an injury has been done to them.⁴¹ Animals do not belong to the human community, and there is no possibility of treating them with justice, so we should use them according to our needs and interests. Humans, like gods, belong to the community of rational beings, but animals cannot reason to first principles or reflect on who and what they are.⁴² Greek religious tradition held that the gods themselves had instituted the form of animal sacrifice in which the worshippers offer an animal to the gods and share the meat. Biology and theology alike supported meat-eating.

Those who answered ‘no’ could argue that animals are fundamentally like human beings. Their bodies have the same basic components, and their physical and emotional responses are recognisably like ours. They can communicate with each other and to some extent with us (3 chs 3-6). We can see that they assess their situation and make provision for the future, show practical wisdom and learn from experience, and some can be trained in complex skills or corrected by punishment (3 chs 7-15). None of this would be possible without logos. Animals are not as rational as humans are, but that does not mean they lack reason entirely (3.8.7-8). Porphyry does not suggest that they can reason to first principles, but he does argue that their close connection with the gods is acknowledged in myths, cult-titles and cult-images (3.16.1-17.2, 4 ch. 9).

Pythagoras and Empedocles made the strongest possible claim: that the soul currently joined with the body of a non-human animal may have been reincarnated from, or may yet be reincarnated in, a human being. Consequently, to use such a creature for food is murder. Anyone who eats an animal is contaminated in body and soul. Nor could an animal possibly be an appropriate sacrifice to the gods, and anyone who thinks it is must have a wholly unworthy concept of god. Porphyry wholeheartedly agrees with these conclusions, but the transmigration of souls is not part of his case, and according to Augustine he did not accept it. Transmigration recurs at several points in the text, but Porphyry says at the outset (1.3.4) that he will not discuss arguments directed specifically against Empedocles, and he is also unwilling to reveal esoteric (presumably Pythagorean) doctrine.⁴³ Like Seneca's teacher Sotion, himself the student of a Pythagorean, Porphyry thinks that the case for vegetarianism is strong enough even without a belief in transmigration.⁴⁴

From a present-day perspective, On Abstinence misses many opportunities because Porphyry does not provide this kind of survey of arguments and positions. The anti-vegetarian arguments he reports are all countered somewhere in the four books, but Porphyry's working methods impede any full and consistent discussion. He makes extensive use (see section 6 below) of excerpts from other writers, and though he sometimes restates and paraphrases what they say, he does not cross-refer or make comparisons.⁴⁵ Thus, for instance, his preliminary survey of anti-vegetarian arguments in book 1 includes a brief statement of the Stoic claim that justice extends only to rational beings and a much longer Epicurean account of justice as a social contract. He does not ask how these positions differ. His challenge to the Stoic claim is postponed to book 3 (which is heavily dependent on Plutarch: see below, section 6). In the course of book 3 Porphyry offers another counter to Epicurean argument: there could be a non-verbal contract between humans and domestic animals (3.13.1-2). In his peroration (3.26.9-10) he shifts to a quite different, Platonic account of justice as harmlessness (i.e. doing no injury) achieved because each part of the soul does its proper job. These connections and contrasts are not made explicit.⁴⁶ Similarly, Porphyry collects arguments to show that animals have both reason and passions, but he does not discuss in detail the Stoic claim that animals cannot have either because their phantasiai, ‘impressions’, are different from those of humans. According to the Stoics, human impressions are thoughts: they have a propositional content to which we can give or refuse assent. Animal impressions do not have a propositional content, and the animal can neither assent to them nor refuse assent.⁴⁷

It is not easy to summarise Porphyry's sequence of arguments (especially in book 3), but at least it is possible to show the range. The first half of Book 1 provides a survey of anti-vegetarian arguments from the major philosophical schools and the ‘plain man’. First, Peripatetic and Stoic arguments are briefly indicated (chs 4-6; 1.4.4-6.1 is a citation from Plutarch). Civilisation and justice would collapse if we attempted to treat animals as our kin, for only rational beings can act justly and be treated with justice, and humans are kin to gods but not to animals; civilised human life requires the use of animals. Moreover, if plants also have souls, cutting down a tree would be as bad as slaughtering an animal.

Porphyry does not discuss these arguments here (he waits until book 3), but moves on to Epicurean arguments about justice (chs 7-12, from Hermarchus, successor of Epicurus). The Epicureans say that the laws which forbid us to kill humans, but allow us to kill other animals, rest on consensus not on enforcement. This is because the laws are in the interest of humans. Animals endanger us either directly, because they are predators or poisonous, or indirectly because if they are not kept down they will multiply and eat all the food. They cannot make agreements with us or be frightened by the threat of punishment. Justice is an agreement for mutual advantage, and justice between humans and animals is simply not possible. Human advantage requires the death of animals.

Chs 13-26 add (from Heracleides Ponticus and/or Clodius the Neapolitan) a miscellany of (still familiar) arguments by the ‘plain man’. Humans have eaten meat ever since they had fire to cook it. We are at war (admittedly not total war) with the beasts, and kill them in self-defence. Eating meat does not damage the body or the soul: no philosopher, including Socrates, has followed the example of Pythagoras. We must cull animals for their sake as well as ours. We need medicines derived from animals. If it is unjust to deprive animals of soul, is it just to eat plants, or to take milk or honey or wool? If animal souls will be reincarnated in humans, surely we do them a favour by releasing them from the animal body? The gods have made it clear that they approve the use of animals for food and that they want animal sacrifice.

The second half of book 1 (chs 27-57) is concerned especially with temperance, sôphrosunê, which allows the true philosopher to approach God in purity of soul and body. Porphyry addresses only those who have recognised that their true self is the intellectual soul, and who have chosen the life of philosophy over the drowsy pleasures of the material world (1.27.1-5). It is impossible, he argues, to combine philosophy with participation in civic life, in politics and scandal and dinner parties. The intellectual soul cannot (as the Gnostics claimed) remain unaffected by all these: only in contemplation can the soul escape from supervision of the body's concerns. The philosopher who seeks to return to God should live so as to minimise involvement with the body and maximise alertness of intellect. Meat may be required by those who lead a physically strenuous life, but all serious philosophers (including Epicureans, chs 48-55) approve of a simple, trouble-free diet. At the end of this book (1.57.4) Porphyry raises a new question. He has talked of abstinence as holiness, hagneia, but in Greek religious tradition, abstinence is a preparation for animal sacrifice, which is also thought to be holy. Book 2, therefore, is concerned with piety, eusebeia, and in particular with sacrifice.

Book 2 begins with a brief clarification. It may be necessary to kill some animals in self-defence; it may even be proper for some animals to be sacrificed. It does not follow that other animals may be killed or that sacrificed animals must be eaten. Again, it may be necessary for some people to eat meat: it does not follow that everyone should. Porphyry now (chs 5-32) borrows extensively from Aristotle's successor Theophrastus to argue that animal sacrifice is a perversion of the true Greek religious tradition. The earliest humans ate, and sacrificed, plant foods, first gathered and then cultivated. Starvation led them to cannibalism, so they sacrificed humans; animal sacrifice was first a substitute for human sacrifice, then a manifestation of greed. The gods prefer simple sacrifices made by worthy people, but (as comparison of different cultures shows) humans sacrifice what they want to eat.

The second half of book 2 (chs 33-61), like that of book 1, is concerned with the true philosopher. He is the priest of the true God: what sacrifices should he make? Porphyry's response draws on a range of esoteric material: the teachings ascribed to Pythagoras, the poems ascribed to Orpheus, the Chaldaean oracles which were believed to convey the ancient wisdom of Babylon, the Hermetic treatises which were said to be revelations by Hermes Trismegistus (the Egyptian god Thoth). Porphyry argues that the god who is above all wants nothing material, and pure unvoiced thoughts are the appropriate sacrifice. This god's offspring, the intelligible gods who sustain the human intellect, should be offered some of that food for the intellect, in the form of hymns (2.34.2-4). Offerings of crops and other simple inanimate foods are welcomed by the gods who sustain this world, but demands for animal sacrifice come from greedy daimones who pretend to be gods (chs 36-43). Even if animals must be sacrificed to protect against demonic attack, eating them attracts bad daimones and contaminates body and soul (chs 44-54); the history of human sacrifice shows that victims need not be eaten (chs 54-7). Tradition shows some right understanding of the gods, and the philosopher need not try to reform the state, but he must himself stay clear of bad customs whatever the cost (chs 58-61).

Book 3 moves on from temperance and piety to two other cardinal virtues, namely justice (dikaiosunê) and wisdom (phronêsis).⁴⁸ It responds to the Stoic argument, briefly stated in book 1, that justice can extend only to beings like ourselves, that is rational beings, and that animals are not rational. Porphyry borrows selectively from Aristotle, and extensively from Plutarch (acknowledged only for 3.18.3-24.6, see below), to argue that animals are rational, even if less rational than humans: they have phronêsis at least in the sense of practical wisdom, and they have both expressive logos, language, and internal logos, thought. He begins with expressive logos. Animals make complex and diverse expressive sounds. Humans find them hard to understand, but most humans also find other human languages meaningless. Animals can communicate with others of their species, and to some extent with humans, and they can learn from each other and from humans (chs 3-6). Porphyry now moves to internal logos, arguing (chs 7-8) that the bodily differences between humans and animals are a matter of ‘more and less’, like the differences among humans who are weaker or stronger, better or worse, than one another. The soul is affected by the body's condition, but not to the point of changing its own nature. Animals are less rational than humans, but that does not make them a quite different, non-rational kind of creature, any more than a partridge is a flightless bird because falcons fly so much better. Animals and humans have in common both illnesses (pathê) that affect the body and experiences (also pathê) that affect the soul, especially perception.

Now (3.9.1) Porphyry needs to show that animals have a rational soul and wisdom. His arguments are cumulative rather than sequential. Animals are aware (ch. 9) of their strengths and weaknesses and of everything that is to their advantage. This is not merely natural (instinctive) behaviour (ch. 10): animals can learn and remember. They can also behave badly, though they often behave better than humans. They manifest characteristic virtues, including justice (ch. 11). Animal behaviour cannot be dismissed as non-rational just because we do not understand how an animal reasons (3.11.3). Many animals need and are part of human society, and those that attack humans do so only because they need food or territory; people under similar stress would be far more ferocious (ch. 12). It might be argued (ch. 13) that animals are rational, but still have no relationship with humans: but the original argument was that animals have no relationship with humans because they are not rational. The absence of a social contract does not prove that they are not rational, for there are people who have not made a contract. Animals have, by wisdom (sophia) and justice, made their masters into their servants. Their vices (for instance, sexual jealousy) manifest rationality; but there is one vice they lack: unlike humans, they are loyal to benefactors. Their rationality (ch. 14) is shown by their response to traps, and (ch. 15) by their ability to learn human skills. They do not have assemblies, or cities, or lawcodes, but that does not prove lack of reason. Human greed refuses to acknowledge animal reason, but in religious tradition animals are honoured and associated with gods (chs 16-17).

Porphyry now moves to a further sequence of argument (3.18.1). If animals are rational, although less rational than humans, humans can treat animals justly; and justice does not extend to plants, so humans need not do harm in order to live. In the context of an argument that animals have logos, whereas plants do not, Porphyry (citing Plutarch) makes a claim which is fundamental for present-day vegetarians: ‘it is the nature of animals to have perceptions, to feel distress, to be afraid, to be hurt, and therefore to be injured’ (3.19.2). We have a closer relationship with the animals that share our lives than we do with anti-social humans. The Stoic Chrysippus was wrong (ch. 20) to argue that animals are for our use: some animals (such as mosquitoes and crocodiles) are useless to us, though we are useful to them. Human treatment of animals, whether unjust or kind, is a training in treatment of humans. Animals cannot lack reason: they could not survive unless they recognised what is appropriate for them or alien to them, and that cannot be done by perception alone (chs 21-2). They care for their offspring, and even Stoics recognise such care as the beginning of concern for others and therefore of justice (3.22.7). Theirs is a weak and cloudy rationality in comparison with humans, but they still have it. Even their failings show that they have reason, just as illness or impairment implies a capacity (chs 23-4). Finally, Porphyry borrows again from Theophrastus, to argue that humans are related in body and soul to the other animals (ch. 25).

Book 3 is half the length of the first two books, because its concluding evocation of the true philosopher occupies only two chapters (26-7). Abstinence increases justice: people who do not kill animals will be less likely to kill members of their own species. The philosopher behaves justly because he does no harm. He does not pursue pleasure, but is ruled by reason, and he has spiritual riches which allow him to feed his intellect instead of serving his body.

Book 4 promises (ch. 1) refutation of some remaining arguments, particularly the argument from human advantage and the belief that no people and no philosopher has abstained from meat-eating, which are still on the agenda from book 1. Porphyry offers examples of collective abstinence which also show that abstinence is advantageous, and which allow him to counter other arguments. In primitive Greece (ch. 2) abstinence produced health and peace. In the society devised by Lycurgus for Sparta (4.3.1-5.2), abstinence produced freedom from corruption and ostentation. When abstinence is practised by a spiritual elite, they are serene and healthy, and their closeness to the gods benefits the community as a whole. This is exemplified by Egyptian priests, Jewish Essenes, Persian Magi and Indian Brahmans (chs 6-18). Finally, a citation from Euripides on Cretan initiates (ch. 19) returns to Greece and leads into a general discussion (ch. 20) of the underlying principle: purity is isolation, whereas contamination is the mixing of opposites.

It is puzzling that book 4 does not include the Pythagoreans among the examples of spiritual elites. Greek culture did not supply Porphyry with examples of ascetic priesthood: it is difficult to find anything more demanding than a few days' abstinence from sex or from specific foods in preparation for an annual ceremony. Pythagorean initiates undertook not to reveal esoteric teaching, and Porphyry occasionally hints that he is bound by this rule.⁴⁹ But there was much material about Pythagorean tradition and lifestyle which was in the public domain, and which was perfectly suited to Porphyry's argument. The true philosopher of On Abstinence lives as befits a priest of the true God (2.49.1); the Pythagoreans, a Greek spiritual elite who draw on the best of Greek and non-Greek tradition, live so that they are always physically and morally pure, ready at any time to offer worship in a form appropriate to their profound understanding of God. They also benefit the cities which they help to govern, and if animal sacrifice is really necessary for the protection of cities, they are allowed to participate, within limits. Porphyry collected these traditions in the life of Pythagoras which formed part of his lost Philosophic History (this, as usual, is undatable both absolutely and in relation to his other works); and Iamblichus developed the material in On the Pythagorean Life, using either Porphyry or the same sources as Porphyry, into an account of the ideal philosophic community. Porphyry appears to have made some use of Pythagoras in the lost final section of book 4 (see below), but more cannot be said.

Book 4, like the preceding books, begins with argument and example, then advances to general discussion of the philosophic life. The first section (chs 1-19) is shorter even than book 3, but it is impossible to tell whether the concluding section, like that of book 3, was also very short. After the impressive chapter (20) on purity, Porphyry moves to his remaining questions. Some peoples eat only meat, but that is because they cannot grow crops; some peoples eat their aged parents, but that does not mean Greeks should do the same. The text ends mid-sentence in chapter 22, when Porphyry has just begun on individual testimonies to abstinence, with the laws of Triptolemos and of Drakon. Jerome, who drastically summarised On Abstinence for use against the only moderately ascetic Jovinian, gives reason to suppose that Porphyry went on to Orpheus, Pythagoras and Socrates. Jerome himself proceeds to the Cynic heroes, Antisthenes and Diogenes, but they are much less useful to Porphyry's case.⁵⁰ Probably there was a peroration on the true philosopher.

5. PHILOSOPHY AND ASCETICISM

Porphyry's true philosopher, one of a minority even among philosophers, is engaged in the purification of body and soul in order to rise towards God, ‘alone to the alone’ (2.49.1). Solitude and isolation are constant themes. ‘Purification is separation from all these, purity is singling out’, as Porphyry says in his interpretation of traditional purity rules (4.20.9). Augustine said that Porphyry's rallying cry was ‘avoid all body’,⁵¹ and that seems particularly apt for On Abstinence. Porphyry takes for granted the Platonist account of human life. The human soul is rational, incorporeal and immortal. It is connected with the divine intellect, but the experiences of the corruptible mortal body in the impermanent material world are at the furthest remove from the divine. The soul has fallen away from God because of its attraction to the body. In this life, it can be tied down by bodily desires and demands, or it can be liberated by detachment to ascend in thought towards God as it waits for release from the body.

It was Plato who characterised the philosophic life as ‘practising for death’ (Phaedo 67E; cf. 1.51.3), and his Phaedo supplies Porphyry with guidelines and images for what the philosopher should do in the meantime. The body, according to Plato's Socrates, is extremely distracting. We have to feed it, it gets ill, it fills us with appetites and fears and fantasies, and we have to get possessions (the origin of conflict) to supply its needs. So we must have as little as possible to do with it, and ‘we must purify ourselves from it until God himself releases us’ (Phaedo 67A). Purification, katharsis, is (67C) ‘the separation, so far as possible, of soul from body […] released as if from chains’. ‘So far as possible’ is a constant refrain of On Abstinence. Porphyry is always aware of the limitations imposed by a mortal body, especially if its chains are made heavier by preoccupation with sensation and passion. Plato provides more of Porphyry's themes: the philosopher who practises for death should achieve calm, follow reason, contemplate the divine and be fed by it; and when he dies he should go to his kin, that is to the divine (Phaedo 84A). Porphyry also directly quotes (1.36.3-4) Plato's Theaetetus on the philosopher who is uncontaminated by the life of the city because he has no experience of it, who cannot even tell you the way to City Hall, let alone keeping up with the gossip; and it is the Theatetus (176B) which supplies a central theme of On Abstinence, namely ‘becoming like God’: ‘we must try to escape from here to there [i.e. to the gods], as quickly as possible. Escape is assimilation to God [homoiôsis theôi], and assimilation is to be just and holy in wisdom.’

But Porphyry's version of philosophical asceticism, that is, of being in training (askêsis) of body and soul, is more extreme than Plato's. On Abstinence seems almost obsessively concerned to protect the body from contamination incurred by taking in food and by social contacts of any kind. Plato's Socrates is always among friends in Athens. Plotinus lived among friends in Rome, teaching, celebrating Plato's birthday, arbitrating disputes and listening to his wards practise their lessons. But Porphyry's spiritual elites seek distance from the city, solitude and silence even within their communities, and finally death. In On Abstinence, physical death is not just a metaphor for the end of disruptive desire: it is a longed-for release. Porphyry made it clear in his Sentences that physical death, which releases the body from the soul, is different from philosophic death, which releases the soul from the body. On Abstinence acknowledges that suicide is a violent act which ties the soul to the body instead of detaching it.⁵² But in book 4 the examples of abstinent elites culminate in the Samanean who, in good health and without troubles, ‘commits his body to fire so as to separate the soul in its purest state from the body, and dies accompanied by songs of praise’ (4.18.3). Porphyry is here transcribing Josephus, who used the Samaneans in a speech supposedly made by the Jewish leader Eleazar as he heartened his followers at Masada to collective suicide in the face of defeat.

How are we to interpret this concern for isolation and death? If On Abstinence does indeed belong to the time of Plotinus' terminal illness, Porphyry's own experience is obviously relevant. He accepted, in retrospect, that Plotinus had recognised (in modern terms) a suicidal depression, which he had rationalised as a wish to release his soul from the constraints of his body. The solitude of the true philosopher may be all too close to the experience of leaving Rome, and then having friends and fellow-students scattered by Plotinus' death. But whereas personal experience may explain why On Abstinence, the fullest surviving text of philosophical asceticism, offers so extreme a version, it does not explain away the philosophical position which Porphyry developed from Plato.

It may be helpful here to compare the asceticism of Porphyry's Christian contemporaries, which was still in an experimental stage. Porphyry's examples of ascetic individuals and communities show the expectations, and the fantasies, which contributed to its eventual shape.⁵³ This is not to say that Porphyry intended On Abstinence as a challenge to Christian claims of holiness. Christians saw him as the great enemy of their faith, but we cannot assume that opposition to Christianity was a specific and permanent concern for him. His immense output included fifteen books against the Christians, which were notorious for a detailed attack on the Christian scriptures. These books may have been part of a larger work on religion, not a specifically anti-Christian treatise.⁵⁴ Porphyry was receptive to texts which claimed antiquity and were compatible with Platonism, in particular the Chaldaean Oracles (a compilation of the second century ce). He was hostile to texts, including the Christian scriptures, which claimed antiquity and whose supporters challenged Plato: he also wrote a detailed attack on the supposedly ancient Zoroastrian texts used by the Gnostics among the students of Plotinus.⁵⁵On Abstinence does not mention or allude to Christians, unless a handful of shared images can be counted as allusion.⁵⁶ Its targets are people who speak Greek and share Greek culture but fail to understand the Platonist tradition, who think they can call themselves philosophers when their social life shows a soul in the grip of desire and their religious practice shows an unworthy concept of the gods.

Porphyry's asceticism (and his religious beliefs generally, as Augustine noted) had much in common with Christianity, but there are revealing differences of emphasis.⁵⁷ Christian ascetic texts often shock present-day readers by their insistence on the dangers of sexual desire. These texts warn against any human contact, even with other ascetics, because desire may instantly result. Many social and psychological explanations have been offered, but there is an obvious practical consideration: the target audiences were often the committed young. The women (or girls) had renounced the role of marriage and childbearing that biology and society had prepared for them, the men (or boys) had renounced the role of householder and citizen. Both were taught to interpret sexual feeling, and its physical manifestations, as a sign of their continuing distance from God. According to their scriptures, the first man and woman turned away from God through their own disobedience, and the immediate result was awareness of each other as sexual beings, dominated by desire, in a world which must be sustained by reproduction. It is not surprising that sex, which pulls would-be ascetics back into the world of families and house-holding, is the dominant concern in these texts. Food is discussed chiefly in terms of fasting to control desire.⁵⁸

Porphyry had the specific purpose of reconverting Castricius to the physical and spiritual purity of vegetarianism, so On Abstinence is preoccupied with the kind of food that people eat and the social situations in which they eat it. For Porphyry, it is the need for food, for constant refuelling of a mortal body, which is the sign of separation from God (4.20.13-15). Food is necessary for life, sex only for reproduction. Philosophers, the Stoic Musonius remarked, have to struggle with gluttony twice a day for life; but Porphyry can use sexual relationships as a reductio ad absurdum: ‘if you can be concerned with the immaterial while eating gourmet food and drinking vintage wine, why not when having intercourse with a mistress, doing things it is not decent even to name?’ (1.41.2). Sexual desire features as one among many bad consequences of overeating (1.47.2). Porphyry does not say that celibacy is essential for philosophers; he acknowledges (1.41.4) that concessions must be made to the ‘necessity of generation’, which means not just reproduction, but life in the material world of generation and corruption. But he also argues (4.20.3) that all sexual intercourse contaminates the soul, and thus dismisses the traditional distinction between sex for pleasure and sex for the procreation of lawful heirs. There is no sign of a wife and children to disturb the solitude of the philosopher (and no suggestion that the philosopher might be female). It is the preparation of food which is likely to take up his time and attention, and it is the need to eat, not the need for sex and human contact, which ties him to the material world.

Porphyry risks appearing to be merely negative and self-protective. He, and a tiny minority of philosophers (1.27.1), may be saved by opting out of human society, which will continue unchanged. He offers nothing to ordinary people, except the suggestion that they may please the gods by simple offerings: they appear only as a contrast to the true philosopher, and their irrationality, ignorance and material values are described with open contempt (1.52.4, 4.18.4-10).⁵⁹ But his attack on human exploitation of animals, and on the sacrifice of animals to the gods, goes far beyond a wish to avoid contamination. He calls for an awareness of ourselves in relation to the other rational beings—gods and animals—which is unclouded by human greed and sloth. We need to show justice and fellow-feeling towards the other ensouled creatures with whom we share the world, and to recognise their abilities and experiences. We also need to work on our understanding of our true selves in relation to God, to wake up from the sleepy acquiescence in demonic delusions which traps us in the material world.

Porphyry's ascetic motivation is clearest in the image he borrows from Plotinus (1.30.2): we are in exile from our homeland, and must try to remember its language and customs in preparation for our return. How could anyone who recognises his true identity settle for the inferior, impermanent, destructive pleasures of material existence? Augustine linked Plotinus' image with Jesus' story of the Prodigal Son who recognises that he has abandoned his inheritance for ‘the husks that the swine did eat’.⁶⁰ Christian writers elaborated the Platonic theme of sexual love (erôs) redirected from the earthly beloved to the divine. Porphyry (followed by Augustine in the Confessions) elaborated the theme of food. Proper food for the body—simple, inanimate, non-violent food—also allows the soul to be fed, and what we must do is to fatten up the soul on intellect (4.20.11).

6. BORROWING FROM OTHER WRITERS

Porphyry wrote On Abstinence for a purpose which was of profound importance to him. Because of his working methods, the text has often been used not as philosophy, but as a quarry for fragments of other writers. Porphyry was a widely read and industrious scholar, who drew on texts ranging over a millennium, from Homer to his own contemporaries. Unacknowledged, or scarcely acknowledged, borrowing was common practice, though plagiarism was an equally common charge. Amelius wrote a book arguing that Plotinus had not plagiarised Numenius. Porphyry, in his Lecture on Literature, narrated a discussion held in the house of Longinus at Athens, at a dinner to celebrate Plato's birthday. The speakers accuse many Greek authors, including ‘our hero Plato’, of plagiary, bluntly called ‘theft’. There may have been a defence: the extracts we have were chosen by Eusebius to show that, according to Porphyry, Greeks were thieves.⁶¹

Eusebius himself was exceptional. In Preparation for the Gospel, he carefully delimited and documented the citations he used to show that Porphyry and other pagans themselves revealed the faults of pagan religion.⁶² But Porphyry welded his sources into a persuasive sequence of argument, with only occasional doublets or awkward joins, and with referencing which (though not particularly bad by Graeco-Roman standards) is very frustrating for the present-day hunter of fragments. He names an impressive range of authorities whose works do not now survive complete: Hermarchus the Epicurean, Heracleides Ponticus and Clodius the Neapolitan; Empedocles, Theophrastus, Plutarch, Chrysippus; Dicaearchus and Chaeremon and far more obscure historians (Euboulus and Pallas, Euphantus and Neanthes and Asclepiades), not to mention the quotations, probably derived from an anthology, from lost plays of Sophocles and Euripides, and of Menander and Antiphanes and other, unnamed, writers of New Comedy. But it is not easy to determine the extent of a prose fragment.

In book 1, Porphyry waits until ch. 26 to acknowledge his sources so far, and then does it only by naming Hermarchus, Heracleides Ponticus and Clodius the Neapolitan. He leaves out Plutarch, from whom he copied a short but important section (1.4.4-6.1). The extract from ‘the Epicureans’, that is Hermarchus, is marked at the beginning and end of chs 7-12, but Heracleides and Clodius are not marked, and Porphyry may well be using Heracleides via Clodius or yet another intermediary. Even more frustrating is the acknowledgement of material from unidentified ‘ancients’ in books 2 (2.4.4) and 3 (3.1.4, 3.18.1), and from ‘some Platonists’ in 2.36.5. Book 2 names Theophrastus at the beginning of material taken from him (ch. 5), and when Porphyry stops using him (ch. 32) he says so and notes that he has made some additions and omissions, but he does not identify the beginning and end of citations. In book 3, Porphyry names Plutarch at the beginning (3.18.3) and end (3.24.6) of a citation, but not in the final chapter which is heavily indebted to Plutarch; and it would not be at all surprising to find an equal debt, to works of Plutarch now lost, in the rest of the book.⁶³ Theophrastus is named at the beginning of a citation (3.25.1) but not at the end.

Book 4 comes closest to adequate referencing, but still not very close. Porphyry acknowledges Dicaearchus (4.2.1) as his source for primitive Greece. Plutarch is named (4.3.8) half way through a citation on Lycurgan Sparta, but is not acknowledged in 4 ch. 20. Chaeremon is named (4.6.1) as the source for Egypt, but it is not clear where the citation ends. 4.11.2 suddenly gives a flurry of book-references to Josephus without saying which one Porphyry is in fact copying. 4.15.2-4 explicitly quotes from Asclepiades of Cyprus, and 4.22.2-4 from Hermippus On Legislators, but both quotations may be derived from another source.

More important to the fragment-hunter is Porphyry's habit of unacknowledged modification. When his text can be compared with the original, as it can be for Josephus (4 chs 11-13) and for some of his transcriptions from Plutarch (1.4.4-6.1, 3.20.7-24.5, 4 chs 3-5), it is evident that he makes short or long omissions, or adds phrases, which sometimes alter the effect of the passage. (He does not do this when directly quoting Plato in 1.36.3-4, except for shortening Plato's own quotation from Pindar.) He also likes to restate and summarise, or elaborate, the arguments of his source; and his efforts in book 3 to make Aristotle a supporter of animal reason show great skill in selective quotation. Unless the text copied is available for comparison, it would be most unwise ever to suppose that he has reproduced exactly and in full what his source said. It would, of course, be equally unwise to suppose that authors who cite Porphyry have reproduced exactly and in full what he said (especially Augustine, who used or provided a Latin translation).

7. STYLE AND TRANSLATION

The style of On Abstinence is inconsistent, because of the long extracts from other authors. The ‘long genealogy’ of Hermarchus (1 chs 7-12) is particularly cumbersome, and there is a noticeable increase in liveliness when Porphyry moves to Heracleides and/or Clodius in ch. 13. The sections which are most likely to be Porphyry's own composition are the introductory paragraphs of the four books (1 chs 1-3, 2 chs 1-4, 3 ch. 1, 4 ch. 1), and the long accounts of the ‘true philosopher’ in books 1 and 2 (1 chs 27-57, 2 chs 33-61) which interconnect with problems he discussed in other works. He had a favourite tactic, also used in the Life of Plotinus, of quotation (or near-quotation) followed by a paraphrase imposing his own interpretation (e.g. 1 chs 36-7).

Porphyry could write clear narrative Greek, but he does not do so in On Abstinence. The sentences often read awkwardly, with many subordinate clauses and long postponements. Porphyry liked infinitive phrases, and also liked to use participles as nouns. Both idioms are difficult to render in English, especially when combined with ta kata to deina, ‘things to do with such-and-such’. There is a risk of unfair judgement here, in that present-day classicists are trained on the Greek of classical Athens, which was written about seven hundred years earlier and became the standard of elegant and educated style, and much less work has been done on the Greek of the third century ce.⁶⁴ But third-century Greeks were also trained on the classics, and it seems not to have helped Porphyry very much. When he quotes from Plato (1.36.4-5) the contrast is to his disadvantage, and the elegantly lucid Attic of his teacher Longinus stands out in the Life. Longinus would no doubt have agreed with this comment, but we have it on his authority (cited by Porphyry) that Amelius was much more long-winded than Porphyry.⁶⁵ Longinus was also sufficiently unimpressed by the style of Plotinus to say that he must have been given defective copies, and no doubt Amelius was too busy to proof-read. According to Porphyry, the copies were correct: the problem was that Longinus did not understand Plotinus' characteristic mode of expression, and Porphyry had not been able to go and explain it.⁶⁶ …

Notes

1. English translation of the Life by Hilary Armstrong in the first volume of his Loeb edition of Plotinus (see Works cited); French translation, with very full commentary, in Brisson 1992.

2. Plotinus' ‘care for orphans’ is touching, but is often overinterpreted: these were orphans with trust funds, and Greek orphanos means a child who has lost a father, not a child who has lost both parents.

3. On the lifestyles of Plotinus and his students, see further Clark 2000; for Castricius, see Abst. 1.1.1.

4. Felicianus entitled the first Latin translation (1547) de abstinentia ab esu animalium, ‘on abstinence from eating animals’; his contemporary Petrus Victorius (Pietro Vettori, 1548) used the title de non necandis ad epulandum animantibus, ‘on not killing animates for feasting’. Colloquial English ‘laying off animals’ is almost right.

5. Plotinus surveyed theories in Ennead 4.8.1; see Abst. 1.30.6-7 notes.

6. Hence it was difficult for Christians in first-century Corinth to know whether they were eating ‘food offered to idols’: 1 Corinthians 8, with Meggitt 1994.

7. Ennead 4.8.8: ‘if one may venture to express more clearly one's own opinion, opposed to that of others, even our soul does not altogether come down, but there is always something of it in the intelligible world; but if the part which is in the perceptible world takes control, or rather if it is itself controlled and disturbed, it does not allow us to perceive what the upper part of the soul contemplates.’ See further Abst. 1 chs 41-2 and notes.

8. Amelius was, or became, philothutos, Life 10.33 (Armstrong neatly translates as ‘ritualist’); Castricius assisted Amelius in everything ‘like a good house-slave’, Life 7.25-6. For Castricius' motives, see Abst. 1.1.1.

9. Life 7.25-8; see further 1.1.1 and note.

10. Life 4, with Brisson 1982: 190-1. For speculation on his early life, see Bidez 1913.

11. Life 17.6-10; for P.'s various names, and for his cultural identity, see further Millar 1997; Clark 1999.

12. Longinus keeping in touch, Life 19.4-6; Plotinus on Longinus, ib. 14.18-20, with Pépin 1992 on whether philologos is a compliment; Longinus on Plotinus, Life 20.4-5.

13. Longinus' invitation, Life 19.4-5, 21.20-2; Amelius, Life 20.6, 2.32.

14. Return, Life 2.12. Porphyrius Siculus: Augustine, Agreement of the Evangelists 1.15.23; Retractations 2.25.1.

15. P.'s letter to his recently-married wife is often dated to the 290s, on the strength of a comment (1.1) that he had not married in the expectation of care ‘as I decline into old age’. This does not prove that he was so declining.

16. But perhaps the compilers of this encyclopedia entry associated Porphyry the anti-Christian with Diocletian the persecutor? On the tempting, but unprovable, theory that Porphyry advised Diocletian before the Great Persecution of 303, see Barnes 1994.

17. On Eunapius, see further Fowden 1982, Miller 1998.

18. nobilissimus philosophus paganorum, Augustine, City of God 22.3; Porphyry first appears at 7.25, is the main target of book 10, and recurs in books 13, 19 and 22. In Confessions 8.2.3 Augustine says that Marius Victorinus translated the ‘Platonist books’, Platonicorum libri, that he was given at Milan (ib. 7.9.13); there is much debate on what exactly these were, but they certainly included some Porphyry (see further O'Donnell 1992.II: 421-4).

19. ‘maître de la pensée occidentale’, Courcelle 1943: 440; ib. 394-9 for a summary of P.'s influence in the west.

20. The critical sentence reads, in literal translation, ‘I, Porphyry, declare that I once drew near and was united [to God], being in my sixty-eighth year.’ Commentators differ on whether this was his age when he made the declaration or when he had the experience.

21. Smith 1987: 723.

22. Bidez 1913 listed 77 titles; R. Beutler (RE [Realencylopaedie der Klassischen Alterumwissenschaft] 22.1 cols. 275-313, Porphyrios 21), listed 68, but with several queries about duplicates and inauthentic works. Debate continues especially on whether The Return of the Soul and Against the Christians are titles of separate works, or descriptions of (partial) content: see further Beatrice 1992. On the problems of identifying and assigning fragments, see Smith 1993: v-xvii. He lists 69 titles, with a further 6 doubtful or spurious.

23. For a sympathetic account of P.'s relation to other authors, in the context of third-century culture and practice, see Romano 1979.

24. Bidez 1913: 10*-23* (Cult-Statues), 27*-44* (Return of the Soul). Fragments of the Philosophic History ed. Nauck 1886: 3-16; discussion and translation by Segonds in des Places 1966: 163-97, and see Clark 2000. For other scholars who contributed to editing the fragments of Porphyry, see Smith 1993: vii.

25. Fragments of To Anebo ed. Sodano 1958.

26. See on 4.22.7.

27. Bidez 1913: 133. ‘Dans tout ce qui nous reste de ses écrits, il n'y a pas une pensée, pas une image dont on puisse affirmer a coup sûr qu'elle est de lui.’

28. See especially Hadot 1968; Smith 1974; Edwards 1990.

29. Fowden 1986, Millar 1997.

30. Life 18, with the note by J. Pépin in Brisson 1992: 279-81; Life 20.91-9 for Longinus. For Plotinus on self-intellection, see further Crystal 1998.

31. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.9. Theurgy: Augustine, City of God 10.9. Reincarnation: Smith 1984: 217-84; the soul, Porphyry fr. 441 Smith (and see Smith 1974: 47-55; Carlier 1998).

32. So Bernays 1866: 4-6, followed by Bidez 1913: 99 and Bouffartigue 1977: xviii-xix. Smith 1987: 721 is properly cautious. On the argument that P. also, while in Sicily, wrote Against the Christians, see Barnes 1994.

33. See on 3.4.7.

34. Ennead 3.2.15, tr. Armstrong.

35. Plotinus on reincarnation: see, for instance, Ennead 6.7.6-7. Porphyry did not accept the argument for reincarnation: see further Abst. 1.6.3 note and Smith 1984.

36. See on 1.3.3.

37. For plant souls, see on 3.19.2.

38. See on 1.6.3.

39. Augustine, City of God 1.20; Catholic and Manichean Morals 2.17.

40. P. often uses ‘the other animals’ rather than the standard expression ‘irrational animals’ (but see 2.2.3 note), as a modern writer might use ‘non-human animals’ in preference to ‘animals’.

41. Ennead 4.4.28.33-4; ‘temperaments’ translates kraseis, a disputed reading.

42. Augustine takes it for granted that animals cannot pray: see further Clark 1998.

43. Arguments from reincarnation: 1.6.3, 1.19.1-3, 4.16.2; Augustine City of God 10.20. Religious silence, 2.36.4; but allusions to Pythagorean teaching need not imply that P. belonged to a Pythagorean community (as suggested by Bouffartigue 1977: xxii). Platonists also had a tradition of esoteric teaching (Cherlonneix 1992, O'Brien 1992). See on 1.1.1, and see further Clark 2000.

44. Seneca, Letter 108.13-22.

45. See section 6 below for the general question of Porphyry's borrowings; specific borrowings are discussed in the notes on the relevant sections.

46. On the Epicurean argument, see 1.12.6 note.

47. 3.1.4 note.

48. The cardinal virtue andreia, courage or manliness, has no separate treatment, but P. characterises the philosopher as enduring, disciplined, self-controlled and resolute, and follows Plato (Rep. 589A7) in contrasting the ‘inner male’ with the soul feminised by submission to desire (1.34.2, 1.57.3, 4.20.3). In Sent. 32 (p. 25.3-5 Lamberz) he says that philosophic andreia is being unafraid of detachment from the body.

49. See above, n. 43.

50. See on 4.22.7. Cynics were frugal omnivores not vegetarians, their motivation was not Platonist, and P.'s only mention of them (1.42.5) is hostile.

51. omne corpus esse fugiendum, City of God 10.29.

52. Natural and philosophic death: Sent. 9 (p. 5 Lamberz). Suicide: Abst. 1.38.2, 2.47.1.

53. On the experimental phase of Christian asceticism, see Rousseau 1994.

54. Beatrice 1992, Barnes 1994. ‘Their great later philosopher Porphyry, the most bitter enemy [acerrimus inimicus] of the Christian faith’: Augustine, sermon 241.7.

55. Chaldaean Oracles, see on 2.34.3; Zoroastrian texts, Life 16; see further Clark 2000 on P. and Christianity, 1999 on P. and ‘barbarian wisdom’.

56. Bouffartigue 1977: 37-41.

57. City of God 10.26-9; on philosophic and Christian asceticism see further Clark 2000. Chadwick 1959: 97-106 illustrates how much the two traditions had in common.

58. On Christian fasting, see further T. Shaw 1998.

59. Augustine, in City of God 10.30, says that P. acknowledged his failure to find a ‘universal way’ of liberating the soul. This does not mean salvation for everyone: the ‘universal way’ is contrasted with culture-specific ways, and salvation is still for a spiritual elite.

60. Confessions 1.18.28; Luke 15.11-32. The difference between the Platonist and the Christian comparison is that the Prodigal Son's father runs to meet the returning exile as soon as he is visible.

61. Amelius, Life 17.1-6, 16-22. Lecture on Literature (philologos akroasis): fr. 408F-410F Smith). Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 10.3.1) headed his citations ‘Porphyry says that Greeks are thieves’.

62. Similarly, in his Church History, he cited relevant documents verbatim to support his case.

63. See on 3.18.1.

64. See further Goulet-Cazé 1992.

65. Life 20.78-80, paraphrased 21.16-18

66. Life 19.22-4, 20.5-7.

Bibliography

Abbreviations

DK: H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. W. Kranz, Berlin 1951

FGH: Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, Berlin 1922-

FHSG: W. Fortenbaugh, P. Huby, R. Sharples, D. Gutas (eds), Theophrastus of Eresus: sources for his life, writings, thought and influence, 2 vols, Leiden 1992

LS: A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols, Cambridge 1987

SVF: H. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 4 vols, Leipzig 1903-24

Editions

Porphyre: De l'abstinence. Paris, Les Belles Lettres (Budé series)

Vol. 1 (book 1): introduction by J. Bouffartigue and M. Patillon, text and translation J. Bouffartigue, 1977

Vol. 2 (books 2 and 3): book 2 ed. and tr. J. Bouffartigue, book 3 ed. and tr. M. Patillon, 1979

Vol. 3 (book 4): ed. and tr. M. Patillon and A. Segonds, with assistance from L. Brisson, 1995

Porphyrius philosophus platonicus: opuscula selecta ed. A. Nauck. 2nd ed. Teubner, Leipzig, 1886; reprinted Olms, Hildesheim and New York, 1977 (Contents: fragments of the Philosophic History, Life of Pythagoras, The Cave of the Nymphs, On Abstinence, To Marcella)

Porphyry on abstinence from animal food tr. Thomas Taylor (1823): repr. by The Prometheus Trust, 1994; ed. E. Wynne Tyson, Centaur Press, London 1967

Porphyre: Vie de Pythagore; Lettre à Marcella ed. E. des Places SJ, with appendix by A. Segonds. Paris, Les Belles Lettres (Budé series) 1982

Porphyrius, Fragmenta, ed. A. Smith, Teubner 1993

Porphyrius, Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes, ed. E. Lamberz, Teubner 1975

A. R. Sodano, Porfirio, Lettera ad Anebo, Naples 1958

A. R. Sodano, Porphyrii in Platonis Timaeum Commentariorum Fragmenta, Naples 1964

K. Kalbfleisch, Die neuplatonische fälschlich dem Galen zugeschriebene Schrift ‘Pros Gauron peri tou pôs empsuchoutai ta embrua’, Anhang zu den Abhandlungen der königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Berlin 1895

Aristotle, History of Animals books VII-X (Loeb vol. XI) ed. D. Balme, Harvard 1991

Iamblichus De vita Pythagorica liber ed. L. Deubner (1937), rev. U. Klein (1975). Teubner, Stuttgart; translated by G. Clark, Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean Life, Liverpool 1989, and by John Dillon and Jackson Herschbell, Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean way of life, Atlanta 1991. (Texts and Translations 29, Graeco-Roman Religion Series 11; Society of Biblical Literature, Scholars Press, Atlanta)

Iamblichus, Les Mystères d'Egypte (De Mysteriis), ed. E. des Places SJ, Paris, Les Belles Lettres (Budé series) 1966

Numenius ed. E. des Places SJ, Paris, Les Belles Lettres (Budé series) 1986

Philo de animalibus: A. Terian (ed.) Philon d'Alexandrie: Alexander, vel de ratione quam habere etiam bruta animalia (De animalibus) e versione armenica, Paris 1988

Plotinus, Enneads: text and translation A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, 7 vols 1966-88

Plutarch: Animal Cleverness (de sollertia animalium), Gryllus (Bruta animalia ratione uti) and Flesh-Eating (de esu carnium) ed. H. Cherniss and W. Helmbold, Loeb vol. XII, Harvard 1957; Fragments ed. F. H. Sandbach, Loeb vol. XV, Harvard 1969

Sextus Empiricus ed. R. G. Bury, 4 vols, Harvard 1933-49 (Loeb vols I-IV)

Synesius: Synesii Cyrenensis opuscula ed. N. Terzhagi, Rome 1944

Secondary Literature

T. D. Barnes, ‘Scholarship or propaganda? Porphyry Against the Christians and its historical setting’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 39, 1994, 53-65

P. F. Beatrice, ‘Towards a new edition of Porphyry's fragments against the Christians’, in M. Goulet-Cazé (ed.), Sophiês Maiêtores: chercheurs de sagesse, Paris 1992, 347-55

J. Bernays, De pietate. Theophrastos Schrift über Frommigkeit, Berlin 1866

J. Bidez, Vie de Porphyre, le philosophe néoplatonicien, Gent 1913 (repr. Hildesheim 1964)

L. Brisson (ed.), Porphyre: La Vie de Plotin. Vol. 1 Travaux préliminaires et index grec complet; vol. 2 Etudes d'introduction, texte grec et traduction française, commentaire, notes complémentaires, bibliographie. Paris, vol. 1 1982, vol. 2 1992

J. Carlier, ‘L'après-mort selon Porphyre’, in A. Charles-Saget (ed.), Retour, repentir et constitution de soi, Paris 1998

J. Cherlonneix, ‘L'intention religieuse de l' “ésotérisme platonicien”’, in Brisson 1992: 385-418

G. Clark, ‘Porphyry and Iamblichus: philosophic Lives and the philosophic life’, in T. Hagg and P. Rousseau (eds), Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, Berkeley 2000

P. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en occident, Saint-Amand 1943

I. Crystal, ‘Plotinus on the structure of self-intellection’, Phronesis 43, 1998, 264-86

G. Fowden, ‘The pagan Holy Man in late antique society’, in Journal of Hellenic Studies 102, 1982, 33-59

G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: a historical approach to the late pagan mind, Cambridge 1986

P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols, Paris 1968

F. Millar, ‘Porphyry: ethnicity, language and alien wisdom’, in J. Barnes and M. Griffin (eds), Philosophia Togata II, Oxford 1997, 241-62

P. C. Miller, ‘“Differential Networks”: relics and other fragments in late antiquity’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, 1998, 113-38

D. O'Brien, ‘Plotin et le voeu de silence’, in Brisson 1992: 419-59

D. O'Brien, ‘Plotinus on matter and evil’, in L. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Cambridge 1996, 171-95

J. J. O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, 3 vols, Oxford 1992

J. Pépin, ‘Le symbolisme néoplatonicien de la vêture’, in Augustinus Magister I, Paris 1955, 293-306

J. Pépin, ‘Philologus … philosophus’, in Brisson 1992: 477-501

F. Romano, Porfirio di Tiro: filosofia e cultura nel III secolo d.C., Catania 1979

T. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: fasting and sexuality in early Christianity, Minneapolis 1998

A. Smith, Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition, The Hague 1974

A. Smith, ‘Did Porphyry reject the transmigration of souls into animals?’, Rheinisches Museum 127, 1984, 277-84

A. Smith, ‘Porphyrian studies since 1913’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.36.2, 1987, 717-73