Mystical Scriptures
    Porphyry
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    Porphyry

    Porphyry(c. 234–c. 305 CE)

    Phoenician-born philosopher of the Neoplatonic school, educated in Athens and later the most important student and editor of Plotinus in Rome. He systematized Plotinus's treatises into the Enneads, shaped late antique Platonism through influential works on logic and interpretation (especially the Isagoge), and wrote widely on religion, ethics, and ascetic practice.

    Read by Emerson (see Emerson's Reading), Thoreau (see Thoreau's Reading) & Alcott (see Alcott's Library)

    1 title in the Cabinet

    on Abstinence from Animal Food. By T. Taylor

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    Select works of Porphyry; containing his four books On abstinence from animal food; his treatise On the Homeric cave of the nymphs; and his Auxiliaries to the perception of intelligible natures

    The Dial's edition: London, 1823

    A framing essay that situates Porphyry within late antique Platonism and introduces the ethical-ascetic and metaphysical stakes of the included treatises (notably vegetarian abstinence and the ascent toward intelligible realities). Translated by Thomas Taylor.

    Full textSurvives at Houghton Library

    Read by Emerson (see Emerson's Reading), Thoreau (see Thoreau's Reading) & Alcott (see Alcott's Library)

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