Select Works of Porphyry (On Abstinence, Cave of the Nymphs, Auxiliaries)

formably to truth, to disclose your errors through a refutation derived from an argumentative discussion.

2. For when I considered with myself what could be the cause of this alteration in your diet, I could by no means suppose that it was for the sake of health and strength, as the vulgar and foolish would say. On the contrary, you yourself, when you were with us, confessed that a 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 illegitimateb conduct, either through deceptionc—because you think it makes no difference with respect to the acquisition 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 transgression. For I should not say that you have despised the philosophical laws which we derived from our ancestors, and which you have so much admired, through intemperance or for the sake of voracious gluttony; or that you are naturally inferior to some of the vulgar, who, when they have assented to laws—though contrary to those under which they formerly lived—will suffer amputation rather than violate them, and will abstain from certain animals on which they before fed, more than they would from human flesh.

3. But when I was also informed by certain persons that you even employed arguments against those who abstained from animal food, I not only pitied but was indignant with you, that, being persuaded by certain frigid and very corrupt sophisms, you have deceived yourself and have endeavored to subvert a dogma which is both ancient and dear to the Gods.

b παρανομήματα (paranomēmata). Porphyry calls the conduct of Firmus illegitimate, because the feeding on flesh is for the most part contrary to the laws of genuine philosophy.

c The original in this place is, ἢ δι’ ἀπάτην οὖν, ἢ τὸ μηδὲν διαφέρειν ἡγεῖσθαι πρὸς φρόνησιν, κ.τ.λ.; but, for ἢ τὸ μηδὲν διαφέρειν, I read διὰ τὸ μηδὲν διαφέρειν. And this appears to have been the reading which Felicianus found in his manuscript; for his version of this passage is, "Vel igitur deceptione inductus, quod sive hoc sive illo modo vescaris, &c." original: "Either therefore induced by deception, because whether you eat in this or that way, etc."