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15.

Once on Plato's feast I read a poem, "The Sacred Marriage"; my piece abounded in mystic doctrine conveyed in veiled words and was couched in terms of enthusiasm; someone exclaimed: "Porphyry has gone mad"; Plotinus said to me so that all might hear: "You have shown yourself at once poet, philosopher and hierophant."

The orator Diophanes one day read a justification of the Alcibiades of Plato's Banquet and maintained that the pupil, for the sake of advancement in virtue, should submit to the teacher without reserve, even to the extent of carnal commerce: Plotinus started up several times to leave the room but forced himself to remain; on the breaking up of the company he directed me to write a refutation. Diophanes refused to lend me his address and I had to depend on my recollection of his argument; but my refutation, delivered before the same audience, delighted Plotinus so much that during the very reading he repeatedly quoted: "So strike and be a light to men."

When Eubulus, the Platonic Successor, wrote from Athens, sending treatises on some questions in Platonism, Plotinus had the writings put into my hands with instructions to examine them and report to him upon them.

He paid some attention to the principles of Astronomy, though he did not study the subject very deeply on the mathematical side. He went more searchingly into Horoscopy; when once he was convinced ​that its results were not to be trusted he had no hesitation in attacking the system frequently both at the Conferences and in his writings.

16.

Many Christians of this period—amongst them sectaries who had abandoned the old philosophy, men of the schools of Adelphius and Aquilinus—had possessed themselves of works by Alexander of Lydia, by Philocomus, by Demostratus and by Lydus, and exhibited also Revelations bearing the names of Zoroaster, Zostrianus, Nikotheus, Allogenes, Mesus and others of that order. Thus they fooled many, themselves fooled first; Plato, according to them, had failed to penetrate into the depth of Intellectual Being.

Plotinus frequently attacked their position at the Conferences and finally wrote the treatise which I have headed Against the Gnostics: he left to us of the circle the task of examining what he himself passed over. Amelius proceeded as far as a fortieth treatise in refutation of the book of Zostrianus: I myself have shown on many counts that the Zoroastrian volume is spurious and modern, concocted by the sectaries in order to pretend that the doctrines they had embraced were those of the ancient sage.

17.

Some of the Greeks began to accuse Plotinus of appropriating the ideas of Numenius.

Amelius being informed of this charge by the Stoic and Platonist Trupho, challenged it in a treatise which he entitled The Difference between the Doctrines of Plotinus and Numenius. He dedicated the work to me, under the name of Basileus (or King). This really is my name; it is equivalent to Porphyry (Purple-robed) and translates the name I bear in my own tongue; for I am called Malchos, like my father, and "Malchos" would give "Basileus" in Greek. Longinus, in dedicating his work On Impulse to Cleodamus and myself, addressed us as "Cleodamus and Malchus," just as Numenius translated the Latin "Maximus" into its Greek equivalent "Megalos."

​Here follows Amelius' letter:

Amelius to Basileus, with all good wishes.

You have been, in your own phrase, pestered by the persistent assertion that our friend's doctrine is to be traced to Numenius of Apamea.

Now, if it were merely for those illustrious personages who spread this charge, you may be very sure I would never utter a word in reply. It is sufficiently clear that they are actuated solely by that famous and astonishing facility of speech of theirs when they assert, at one moment, that he is an idle babbler, next that he is a plagiarist, and finally that he bases the universe on the meanest of existents. Clearly in all this we have nothing but scoffing and abuse.

But your judgement has persuaded me that we should profit by this occasion firstly to provide ourselves with a useful memorandum of the doctrines that have won our adhesion, and secondly to bring about a more complete knowledge of the system—long celebrated though it be—to the glory of our friend, a man so great as Plotinus.

Hence I now bring you the promised Reply, executed, as you your- self know, in three days. You must judge it with reasonable indulgence; this is no orderly and elaborate defence composed in step by step correspondence with the written indictment: I have simply set down, as they occurred to me, my recollections of our frequent discussions. You will admit, also, that it is by no means easy to grasp the meaning of a writer who, like Plotinus, now arraigned for the opinion we also hold, varies in the terms he uses to express the one idea.

If I have falsified any essential of the doctrine, I trust to your good nature to set me right: I am reminded of the phrase in the tragedy: A busy man and far from the teachings of our master I must needs correct and recant. Judge how much I wish to give you pleasure. Good health.

18.

This letter seemed worth insertion as showing, not merely that some contemporary judgement pronounced Plotinus to be parading on the strength of Numenius' ideas, but that he was even despised as a word-spinner.

​The fact is that these people did not understand his teaching: he was entirely free from all the inflated pomp of the professor: his lectures had the air of conversation, and he never forced upon his hearers the severely logical substructure of his thesis.

I myself, when I first heard him, had the same experience. It led me to combat his doctrine in a paper in which I tried to show that The Intelligibles exist outside of the Intellectual-Principle. He had my work read to him by Amelius: at the end he smiled and said: "You must clear up these difficulties, Amelius: Porphyry doesn't understand our position." Amelius wrote a tract of considerable length, "In Answer to Porphyry's Objections"; I wrote a reply to the reply: Amelius replied to my reply; at my third attempt I came, though even so with difficulty, to grasp the doctrine: then only, I was converted, wrote a recantation and read it before the circle. From that time on I put faith in Plotinus' writings and sought to stir in the master himself the ambition of organising his doctrine and setting it down in more extended form. Amelius, too, under my prompting, was encouraged in composition.

19.

Longinus' estimate of Plotinus, formed largely upon indications I myself had given him in my letters, will be gathered from the following extract from one of his to me. He is asking me to leave Sicily and join him in Phœnicia, and to bring Plotinus' works with me. He says:

"And send them at your convenience or, better, bring them; for I can never cease urging you to give the road towards us the preference over any other. If there is no better reason—and what intellectual gain can you anticipate from a visit to us?—at least there are old acquaintances and the mild climate which would do you good in the weak state of health you report. Whatever else you may be expecting, do not hope for anything new of my own, or even for the earlier works which you tell me you have lost; for there is a sad dearth of copyists here. I assure you it has taken me all this time to complete my set of Plotinus, and it was done only by calling off my scribe from all his routine work, and keeping him steadily to this one task.

​I think that now, with what you have sent me, I have everything, though in a very imperfect state, for the manuscript is exceeding faulty. I had expected our friend Amelius to correct the scribal errors, but he evidently had something better to do. The copies are quite useless to me; I have been especially eager to examine the treatises on the Soul and on The Authentic-Existent, and these are precisely the most corrupted. It would be a great satisfaction to me if you would send me faithful transcripts for collation and return—though again I suggest to you not to send but to come in person, bringing me the correct copies of these treatises and of any that Amelius may have passed over. All that have reached me I have been careful to make my own: how could I be content not to possess myself of all the writings of a man so worthy of the deepest veneration?

I repeat, what I have often said in your presence and in your absence, as on that occasion when you were at Tyre, that while much of the theory does not convince me, yet I am filled with admiration and delight over the general character of the work, the massive thinking of the man, the philosophic handling of problems; in my judgement investigators must class Plotinus' work with that holding the very highest rank."

20.

This extended quotation from the most acute of the critics of our day—a writer who has passed judgement on nearly all his contemporaries—serves to show the estimate he came to set upon Plotinus of whom, at first, misled by ignorant talk, he had held a poor opinion.

His notion, by the way, that the transcripts Amelius sent him were faulty sprang from his misunderstanding of Plotinus' style and phraseology; if there were ever any accurate copies, these were they, faithful reproductions from the author's own manuscript.