Select Works of Porphyry

conformably to truth, to disclose your errors through a refutation derived from rational discussion.

2. For when I considered with myself what could be the cause of this change in your diet, I could by no means suppose that it was for the sake of health and strength—as the uneducated original: "vulgar and idiots"; in this context, "idiots" refers to the Greek idiotes, meaning private citizens or those without specialized philosophical training would say. On the contrary, you yourself, when you were with us, confessed that a meatless original: "fleshless" diet contributed both to health and to the proper endurance of philosophical labors; and experience testifies that in saying this you spoke the truth. It appears, therefore, that you have returned to your former unlawful conduct Porphyry calls Firmus’s conduct "unlawful" original: paranomēmata because the eating of meat is, for the most part, contrary to the laws of genuine philosophy. either through some deception The original Greek text here is: "either through deception, or through thinking it makes no difference to wisdom," etc. original: ἢ δι᾿ ἀπάτην οὖν, ἢ τὸ μηδὲν διαφέρειν ἡγεῖσθαι πρὸς φρόνησιν, κ.τ.λ.. I have followed the reading of the scholar Felicianus, who suggests the change was driven by the deceptive idea that diet does not matter., because you think it makes no difference to the attainment of wisdom whether you use this or that diet; or perhaps through some other cause of which I am ignorant, which excited in you a greater fear than that which could be produced by the impiety of your offense. For I would not say that you have rejected the philosophical laws which we inherited from our ancestors, and which you have so much admired, through a lack of self-control or for the sake of greedy gluttony. Nor would I say that you are naturally inferior to some of the common people, who, when they have committed themselves to certain laws—even those contrary to the ones under which they formerly lived—will suffer mutilation original: "amputation" rather than violate them, and will abstain from certain animals on which they previously fed more strictly than they would from human flesh.

3. But when I was also informed by certain persons that you were even employing arguments against those who abstained from animal food, I not only pitied you, but was