Isagoge

Porphyry Porphyry of Tyre — in Greek Porphýrios, a name adopted in place of his Semitic birth name Malchus (“king” in Phoenician) — was born around 234 CE in Tyre (on the coast of present-day Lebanon) and died around 305 CE. A caveat: he should not be confused with Porphyry of Gaza (5th century), a Christian bishop with the same name, nor with other late-antique figures bearing it. After studying in Athens with Cassius Longinus, in around 263 CE he joined the circle of Plotinus in Rome, of whom he became the most celebrated pupil. He served as editor of the Enneads (posthumously published c. 301), arranging the master’s writings into six groups of nine treatises and prefacing them with the Vita Plotini (Life of Plotinus) — a fundamental biographical source on Plotinus. His influence, however, reaches far beyond his editorial work: through the Isagoge, Porphyry shaped the entry of Aristotelian logic into the medieval world. ...