Categoria: Porfírio

II. SICKNESS AND DEATH OF PLOTINOS; HIS BIRTH DAY UNKNOWN. Plotinos was subject to chronic digestive disorders; nevertheless, he never was willing to take any remedies, on the plea that it was unworthy of a man of his age to relieve himself by such means. Neither did he ever take any of the then popular…

XVII. START OF THE AMELIO-PORPHYRIAN CON TROVERSY, OVER NUMENIUS. The Greeks insisted that Plotinos had appropriated the teachings of Numenius. Trypho, who was both a Stoic and a Platonist, insisted on this to Amelius, who wrote a book that we have entitled, “On the Differ ence Between the Teachings of Plotinos and Numen ius. ”…

XVIII. POLEMIC BETWEEN AMELIUS AND POR PHYRY; AMELIUS TEACHES PORPHYRY. I have quoted this letter in full to show that, even in the times of Plotinos himself, it was claimed that Plotinos had borrowed and advertised as his own teach ings of Numenius; also that he was called a trifler, and in short that he…

III. PLOTINOS’S EARLY EDUCATION. This is as much as we learned about him during various interviews with him. At eight years of age he was already under instruction by a grammarian, though the habit of uncovering his nurse s breast to suck her milk, with avidity, still clung to him. One day, however, she so…

XIX. HOW THE WORKS OF PLOTINOS WERE PUT INTO SHAPE. You may judge of the high opinion of Plotinos held by Longinus, from a part of a letter he addressed to me. I was in Sicily; he wished me to visit him in Phoenicia, and desired me to bring him a copy of the works…

IV. HOW PORPHYRY CAME TO PLOTINOS. FOR THE FIRST TIME, IN 253. In the tenth year of the reign of Gallienus, I (then being twenty years of age), left Greece and went to Rome with Antonius of Rhodes. I found there Amelius, who had been following the courses of Plotinos for eighteen years. He had…

XX. OPINION OF LONGINUS, THE GREAT CRITIC, ABOUT PLOTINOS. I have made this rather long quotation only to show what was thought of Plotinos by the greatest critic of our days, the man who had examined all the works of his time. At first Longinus had scorned Plotinos, be cause he had relied on the…

V. HOW PORPHYRY CAME TO PLOTINOS FOR THE SECOND TIME (A. D. 263-269). I remained with him this year, and the five follow ing ones. I had already visited Rome ten years pre viously; but at that time Plotinos spent his summers in vacation, and contented himself with instructing his visitors orally. During the above-mentioned…

XXI. RESULTS OF LONGINUS S CRITICISM AND VINDICATION OF PLOTINOS’S ORIGINALITY. From the above it will be seen that Plotinos and Amelius are superior to all their contemporaries by the great number of questions they consider, and by the originality of their system; that Plotinos had not ap propriated the opinions of Numenius, and that…