Guthrie: Vida de Plotino XV

XV. PORPHYRY EARNED RECOGNITION AT THE SCHOOL OF PLOTINOS.

At a celebration of Plato s birthday I was reading a poem about the “Mystic Marriage” (of the Soul) when somebody doubted my sanity, because it con tained both enthusiasm and mysticism. Plotinos spoke up, and said to me, loud enough to be heard by every body, “You have just proved to us that you are at the same time poet, philosopher, and hierophant.” On this occasion the rhetorician Diophanes read an apology on the utterances of Alcibiades in Plato s “Banquet,” and he sought to prove that a disciple who seeks to exercise himself in virtue should show un limited “complaisance” for his teacher, even in case the latter were in love with him. Plotinos rose several times, as if he wanted to leave the assembly; never theless, he restrained himself, and after the audience had dispersed, he asked me to refute the paper. As Diophanes would not communicate it to me, I recalled his arguments, and refuted them; and then I read my paper before the same auditors as those who had heard what had been said by Diophanes. I pleased Plotinos so much, that several times he interrupted me by the words, “Strike that way, and you will become the light of men!” When Eubulus, who was teaching Platonism at Athens, sent to Plotinos some papers on Platonic subjects, Plotinos had them given to me to examine them and report to him about them. He also studied the laws of astronomy, but not as a mathematician would have done; he carefully studied astrology; but realizing that no confidence could be placed in its predictions, he took the trouble to refute them several times, in his work. (See ii. 3; iii. 1, 2, 4)