href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@42930@[email protected]#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor pginternal" id="FNanchor_12" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">12) once came among his audience; Plotinos blushed, and started to rise. Origen, however, besought him to continue. Plotinos, however, answered that it was only natural for lecturers to cease talking when they were aware of the presence, in the audience, of people who already knew what was to be said. Then, after having spoken a little longer, he rose.

XV. PORPHYRY EARNED RECOGNITION AT THE SCHOOL OF PLOTINOS.

At a celebration of Plato's birthday I was reading a poem about the "Mystic Marriage" (of the Soul) when somebody doubted my sanity, because it contained both enthusiasm and mysticism. Plotinos spoke up, and said to me, loud enough to be heard by everybody, "You have just proved to us that you are at the same time poet, philosopher, and hierophant." On this occasion the rhetorician Diophanes read an apology on the utterances of Alcibiades in Plato's "Banquet," and he sought to prove that a disciple who seeks to exercise himself in virtue should show unlimited "complaisance" for his teacher, even in case the latter were in love with him. Plotinos rose several times, as if he wanted to leave the assembly; nevertheless, he restrained himself, and after the audience had dispersed, he asked me to refute the paper. As Diophanes would not communicate it to me, I recalled his arguments, and refuted them; and then I read my paper before the same auditors as those who had heard what had been said by Diophanes. I pleased Plotinos so much, that several times he interrupted me by the words, "Strike that way, and you will become the light of men!" When Eubulus, who was teaching Platonism at Athens, sent to Plotinos some papers on Platonic subjects, Plotinos had them given to me to examine them and report to him about them. He also studied the laws of astronomy, but not as a mathematician would have done; he carefully studied astrology; but realizing that no confidence could be placed in its predictions, he took the trouble to refute them several times, in his work.13

XVI. PLOTINOS'S POLEMIC AGAINST THE GNOSTICS.

At that time there were many Christians, among whom were prominent sectarians who had given up the ancient philosophy (of Plato and Pythagoras), such as Adelphius and Aquilinus. They esteemed and possessed the greater part of the works of Alexander of Lybia, of Philocomus, of Demostrates and of Lydus. They advertised the Revelations of Zoroaster, of Zostrian, of Nicotheus, of Allogenes, of Mesus, and of several others. These sectarians deceived a great number of people, and even deceived themselves, insisting that Plato had not exhausted the depths of intelligible "being," or essence. That is why Plotinos refuted them at length in his lectures, and wrote the book that we have named "Against the Gnostics." The rest (of their books) he left me to investigate. Amelius wrote as much as forty books to refute the work of Zostrian; and as to me, I demonstrated by numerous proofs that this alleged Zoroastrian book was apocryphal, and had only recently been written by those of that ilk who wished to make people believe that their doctrines had been taught by Zoroaster.