1
Plotinus, the philosopher of our times, seemed ashamed of being in the body. As a result of this state of mind he could never bear to talk about his race or his parents or his native country. And he objected so strongly to sitting to a painter or sculptor that he said to Amelius, who was urging him to allow a portrait of himself to be made, ‘ Why, really, is it not enough to have to carry the image in which nature has encased us, without your requesting me to agree to leave behind me a longer-lasting image of the image, as if it was something genuinely worth looking at?’
8
When Plotinus had written anything he could never bear to go over it twice; even to read it through once was too much for him, as his eyesight was not strong enough. In writing he did not form the letters with any regard to appearance or divide his syllables correctly, and he paid no attention to spelling. He was wholly concerned with the thought; and, which surprised us all, he went on in this way right up to the end. He worked out his train of thought from beginning to end in his own mind, and then, when he wrote it down, since he had set it all in order in his mind, he wrote as continuously as if he was copying from a book. Even if he was talking to someone, engaged in continuous conversation, he kept to his train of thought. He could take his necessary part in the conversation to the full and at the same time keep his mind fixed without a break on what he was considering.
When the person he had been talking to was gone he did not go over what he had written, because his sight, as I have said, did not suffice for revision. He went straight on with what came next, keeping the connexion, just as if there had been no interval of conversation between. In this way he was present at once to himself and to others, and he never relaxed his self-turned attention except in sleep: even sleep he reduced by taking very little food; often not even a piece of bread, and by his continuous turning in contemplation to his Nous.
9
Many men and women of the highest rank, on the approach of death, brought him their children, both boys and girls, and entrusted them to him along with all their property, considering that he would be a holy and godlike guardian. So his house was full of young lads and maidens, including Potamon, to whose education he gave serious thought and often even listened to his revision exercises. He patiently attended to those who submitted accounts of the children’s property and took care that they should be accurate; he used to say that as long as they did not take to philosophy their properties and incomes must be kept safe and untouched for them. Yet though he shielded so many from the worries and cares of ordinary life, he never, while awake, relaxed his intent concentration upon Nous.He was gentle, too, and at the disposal of all who had any sort of acquaintance with him. Though he spent twenty-six whole years in Rome and acted as arbitrator in very many people’s disputes, he never made an enemy of any of the people of the city [or officials].
10 (end)
When Amelius grew ritualistic and took to going round visiting the temples at the New Moon and the feasts of the gods and once asked Plotinus to come with him, Plotinus said, ‘They ought to come to me, not I to them.’ What he meant by this exalted utterance we could not understand and did not dare to ask.
11 (end)
He once noticed that I, Porphyry, was thinking of removing myself from this life. He came to me unexpectedly while I was staying indoors in my house and told me that this lust for death did not come from a settled rational decision but from a bilious indisposition, and ordered me to go away for a holiday. I obeyed him and went to Sicily.
13-14
13. In the meetings of the school he showed an adequate command of language and the greatest power of discovering and considering what was relevant to the subject in hand, but he made mistakes in certain words: he did not say anamimnesketai, but anamnemisketai, and made other slips which he also committed in his writing. When he was speaking his intellect visibly lit up his face: there was always a charm about his appearance, but at these times he was still more attractive to look at: he sweated gently, and kindliness shone out from him, and in answering questions he made clear both his benevolence to the questioner and his intellectual power. Once I, Porphyry, went on asking him for three days about the soul’s connexion with the body, and he kept on explaining to me. A man called Thaumasius came in who was interested in general statements and said that he wanted to hear Plotinus speaking in the manner of a set treatise, but could not stand Porphyry’s questions and answers. Plotinus said,’ But if when Porphyry asks questions we do not solve his difficulties we shall not be able to say anything at all in your set speech.’
14. In writing he is concise and full of thought. He puts things shortly and abounds more in ideas than words; he generally expresses himself in a tone of rapt inspiration, and is guided by his own experience rather than by tradition. His writings, however, are full of concealed Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines. Aristotle’s Metaphysics, in particular, is concentrated in them. … In the meetings of the school he used to have the commentaries read, perhaps of Severus, perhaps of Gronius or Numenius or Gaius or Atticus, and among the Peripatetics of Aspasius, Alexander, Adrastus, and others that were available. But he did not just speak straight out of these books but took a distinctive personal line in his consideration, and brought the mind of Ammonius to bear on the investigations in hand.
23
So to this godlike man, who often raised himself in thought, according to the ways Plato teaches in the Banquet, to the First and Transcendent God, that God appeared Who has neither shape nor any intelligible form, but is throned above intellect and all the intelligible. I, Porphyry, declare that once, in my sixty-eighth year, I drew near and was united to Him. To Plotinus ‘the term ever near was shown’ : for his end and term was to be united to, to approach the God above all things. Four times while I was with him he attained that term, in an unspeakable actuality and not in potency only.