Guthrie: Vida de Plotino V

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 six years, as several questions had been cleared up in the lectures of Plo tinos, and at the urgent request of Amelius and myself that he write them down, he wrote two books to prove that.

PLOTINOS’S BOOKS OF THE SECOND PERIOD (THE PORPHRYRIAN PERIOD).

22. The One and Identical Existence is Everywhere Entire, I, vi. 4.

23. Second Part Thereof. vi. 5.

Then he wrote the book entitled:

24. The Superessential Transcendent Principle Does Not Think. Which is the First Thinking Principle? And Which is the Second? v. 6.

He also wrote the following books:

25. Of Potentiality and Actualization. ii. 5.

26. Of the Impassibility of Incorporeal Entities, iii. 6.

27. Of the Soul, First Part. iv. 3.

28. Of the Soul, Second Part. iv. 4.

29. (Of the Soul, Third; or, How do We See? ) iv. 5.

30. Of Contemplation. iii. 8.

31. Of Intelligible Beauty. v. 8.

32. The Intelligible Entities are not Outside of Intelligence. Of Intelligence and of Soul. v. 5.

33. Against the Gnostics. ii. 9.

34. Of Numbers. vi. 6.

35. Why do Distant Objects Seem Small? ii. 8.

36. Does Happiness (Consist in Duration?) i. 5.

37. Of the Mixture with Total Penetration. ii. 7.

38. Of the Multitude of Ideas; Of the Good. vi. 7.

39. Of the Will. vi. 8.

40. (Of the World). ii. 1.

41. Of Sensation, and of Memory. iv. 6.

42. Of the Kinds of Existence, First. vi. 1.

43. Of the Kinds of Existence, Second. vi. 2.

44. Of the Kinds of Existence, Third. vi. 3.

45. Of Eternity and Time. iii. 7.

Plotinos wrote these twenty-four books during the six years I spent with him; as subjects he would take the problems that happened to come up, and which we have indicated by the titles of these books. These twenty-four books, joined to the twenty-one Plotinos had written before I came to him, make forty-five.