On Abstinence from Animal Food

inclined to it Continuing from the previous page, this refers to Porphyry's natural aptitude for rhetoric compared to his teacher, yet among those who flourished at that time, Longinus was easily the foremost.
A great wealth of his books survives, and they are held in such
admiration that if anyone found fault with something in the ancient
writers, he did not think he should settle on his own opinion until
the judgment of Longinus had also been obtained. Thus, when
Porphyry had been educated in this manner in his primary
studies, and had become conspicuous to all, he was seized by a great
desire to see Rome, so that he might take possession of the city of
wisdom. As soon as he arrived there, he entered into the company of
the divine Plotinus Plotinus (c. 204–270 AD) was the founding figure of Neoplatonism, focusing on the ascent of the soul to "the One"; forgetting all others, he devoted himself entirely
to him. Applying himself with insatiable greed to that discipline,
he spent some time drawing from those divine disputations as if
from a sacred spring. Later, however, overcome by the
magnitude of his contemplations, he began to pursue his own
body with hatred and to be distressed that he was a human
being. For this reason, when he had sailed to Sicily and
crossed the Strait of Charybdis The Strait of Messina, which separates Italy and Sicily; in mythology, it was the home of the whirlpool monster Charybdis, where Ulysses The Roman name for Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey
is also said to have traveled, he could not bear to see a city
nor hear the voice of men; so completely had he cast off every
sense of pain and pleasure. And so, having set out on a
steady journey toward Lilybaeum Modern-day Marsala, a strategic port on the western tip of Sicily, which is one of the three promontories of Sicily
and faces toward Libya, he cast himself down there; groaning
and enduring, he lay there refusing all food, and, as the
poet says, "avoiding the tracks of men" original: "hominum vestigia vitans"; an allusion to Homer’s Iliad (6.202) describing the melancholy of the hero Bellerophon. But it did not escape...