Select works of Porphyry

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 philo...

3. The following passages in the epistle of Porphyry, are from Sextus: Ο δε αξιος ανθρωπος θεου, θεος αν ειη, (p. 30) _i.e._ “The man who is worthy of God, will be himself a God...

14. But he who forbids men to feed on animals, and thinks it is unjust, will also say that it is not just to kill them, and deprive them of life. Nevertheless, an innate and jus...

32. But this departure [from sense, imagination, and irrationality,] may be effected by violence, and also by persuasion and by reason, through the wasting away, and, as it may...

48. And this neither requires monition, nor demonstration, on account of the evidence with which it is immediately attended. Hence, not only those who endeavour to live accordin...

4. For these things not being confused, but distinguished in a proper manner, most of the opposing arguments will be found to be vain. For the greater part of them endeavour to...

20. But that God is not delighted with the amplitude of sacrifices, but with any casual offering, is evident from this, that of our daily food, whatever it may be that is placed...

36. The Pythagoreans, therefore, diligently applying themselves to the study of numbers and lines, sacrificed for the most part from these to the Gods, denominating, indeed, a c...

52. Nevertheless, we permit those whose life is rolled about externals, having once acted impiously towards themselves, to be borne along to that to which they tend; but we righ...

[60] Conformably to this, the Pythagorean Demophilus beautifully observes, Γυμνος αποσταλεις σοφος, γυμνιτευων καλεσει τον πεμψαντα· μονου γαρ του μη τοις αλλοτριοις πεφορτισμεν...

8. See, however, whether all the passions of the soul in brutes, are not similar to ours; for it is not the province of man alone to apprehend juices by the taste, colours by th...

20. But, by Jupiter, the assertion of Chrysippus is considered by our opponents to be very probable, that the Gods made us for the sake of themselves, and for the sake of each o...

To these, also, such arguments as the following may be added. For he who says that the man who extends the just as far as to brutes, corrupts the just, is ignorant that he does...

4. That he might also in a still greater degree oppose luxury, and take away the ardent endeavour to obtain wealth, he introduced a third, and most beautiful political instituti...

11. But among those who are known by us, the Jews, before they first suffered the subversion of their legal institutes under Antiochus, and afterwards under the Romans, when als...

18. But they are so disposed with respect to death, that they unwillingly endure the whole time of the present life, as a certain servitude to nature, and therefore they hasten...

[100] Proclus, however, in his Scholia on the Cratylus of Plato, gives a much more theological account of the derivation of the name of Proserpine, as follows:—“Socrates now del...

6. This world, then, is sacred and pleasant to souls who have now proceeded into nature, and to natal dæmons, though it is essentially dark and _obscure_; [ηεροειδης], from whic...

But the growth of the olive in such a situation, is not fortuitous, as some one may suspect, but contains the enigma of the cavern. For since the world was not produced rashly a...

What is here said by Plato is beautifully unfolded by Olymipiodorus, in his MS. Commentary on the Gorgias, as follows:—“Euripides (in Phryxo) says, that to live is to die, and t...

30. None of the hypostases which rank as wholes, and are perfect, is converted to its own progeny; but all perfect hypostases are elevated to their generators as far as to the m...

36. Truly-existing being is neither great nor small, for magnitude and parvitude are properly the peculiarities of bulk. But true being transcends both magnitude and parvitude;...

Hence, if all things are instantaneously perceived by it, its perceptions have nothing to do with the past and the future, but subsist in an indivisible untemporal _now_; so tha...

The next adventure of Ulysses is that of the Cyclops, whom he deprived of sight, and irritated by reproaches. But according to Porphyry, in the above-mentioned excellent treatis...

But as he is now earnestly engaged in departing from sense, he must unavoidably be pursued by the anger of Neptune, the lord of generation and a sensible life, whose service he...

But by what leading stars shall we direct our flight, and by what means avoid the magic power of Circe, and the detaining charms of Calypso? For thus the fable of Ulysses obscur...