Rome, the Greek World, and the East: Volume 3: The Greek World, the Jews, and the East

13. Porphyry: Ethnicity, Language, and Alien Wisdom

  Porphyry: Ethnicity, Language, and Alien Wisdom* Porphyre connaissait bien l’Orient. Il devait parler l’idiome de son pays, peut-être même se piquait-il de comprendre l’hébreu. Il était versé dans les mystères de la Chaldée, de la Perse et de l’Égypte. On levoit décrire et interpréter une sorte d’hiéroglyphe, et manier les livres sacrés et la littérature profane des Juifs comme des Phéniciens. —J. Bidez, Vie de Porphyre (),  Porphyry was born in about , the year when Plotinus started to study philosophy at Alexandria. His parents were well-to-do Syrians, and he spent most of his boyhood, so far as we know, in the busy Phoenician city of Tyre. Even if he did not travel he had ample opportunity there to make the far from superficial acquaintance with the mystery cults and magical practices of the Middle East and beyond which his writings were to show. He probably knew several languages by the time he came to the West. —C. Lloyd, ‘‘Porphyry and Iamblichus,’’ in A. H. Armstrong, ed., Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (),  Porphyry did not have to make up these exegeses himself. He came from Tyre, and his native language was Syriac. He got his exegesis of *First published in J. Barnes and M. T. Griffin, eds., Philosophia Togata II: Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford, ), –. I am indebted for very valuable comments and corrections to Jonathan Barnes, Gillian Clark, and Leofranc Holford-Strevens.   Jews and Others Daniel from Syrian exegetes, perhaps Jews as well as Christians. Unfortunately the first Syrian writer on Daniel whose work has survived was Aphrahat, whose fifth Demonstration was composed in .. . —M. Casey, ‘‘Porphyry and the Origin of the Book of Daniel,’’ JThSt  (): –, on  A Problem of Identity Does Porphyry, the important Neoplatonist of the third century, really belong in a volume dedicated to ‘‘Plato and Aristotle at Rome’’? Should we not instead interpret his works as the product of an ‘‘oriental’’ culture and mentality , which produced a significant re-formulation of the legacy of classical Greek philosophy? The answer cannot be simple, and the texts cited above ought to be sufficient to illustrate how preconceptions about the ‘‘Orient’’ have been used as the starting point for interpretations of Porphyry’s works. Yet, on the other hand, there is much, both in the nature of his works and even in the plain facts of his biography, to suggest that we can and should see him as a late Platonist who belonged, literally and figuratively ‘‘in Rome.’’ Porphyry was the pupil and successor of Plotinus, and after Plotinus’ death was recognised as the leading philosopher of his time. He was a Platonist by profession, but he held that Aristotle’s thought could largely be reconciled with Platonism, and wrote numerous commentaries on Aristotle’s works, which had an immense influence on all subsequent scholarship. All his works were written in Greek, and there is no categorical proof that he knew, or could write in, any other language. If he did know any other languages, the most probable candidate is Latin. For, as we shall see below, his native city, Tyre, had been a Roman colony since the s. All his works were written between the s and the early years of the fourth century, either in Rome or in Sicily. Yet all modern scholars who have studied the works of Porphyry have rightly felt that we ought if possible to understand his original local context, and to ask if there is something distinctively ‘‘oriental’’ in his thought. In themselves, these presuppositions are wholly justified, and are supported by the fact that two other important Greek philosophers of the mid-imperial period also came from the same region: Numenius, in the later second century , from the major city of Apamea on the Orontes, and Iamblichus from the small cityof Chalcis,which lay between Apamea and Beroea,on the edge of the Syrian steppe. All three, however, wrote solely in Greek; whether there is evidence Porphyry  that any of them had any knowledge of any language other than Greek remains to be seen. The interpretation of the thought of any one of them in terms of the influence of a local culture, language, or intellectual tradition is something which has to be conducted with extreme care. The three...