All the porphyry columns in Rome, the red porphyry togas on busts of emperors, the porphyry panels in the revetment of the Pantheon, as well as the altars and vases and fountain basins reused in the Renaissance and dispersed as far as Kiev, all came from the one quarry at Mons Porpyritis (" Porphyry Mountain ", the Arabic Jabal Abu Dukhan ), which seems to have been worked intermittently between 29 and 335 AD.

In his private life Longinus seems to have been amiable ; for although his pupil Porphyry left him, declaring that he would seek a better philosophy in the school of Plotinus, Longinus did not show him any ill-will, but continued to treat him as a friend, and invited him to come to Palmyra.

The most famous passages are those cited by Varro and Porphyry which suggest a dualistic view of progress.

According to Porphyry, the parents of Ammonius were Christians, but upon learning Greek philosophy, Ammonius rejected his parents ' religion for paganism.

* Neoplatonism: Plotinus ( Egyptian ), Ammonius Saccas, Porphyry ( Syrian ), Zethos ( Arab ), Iamblichus ( Syrian ), Proclus

He studied at Alexandria under Ammonius Saccas and Origen the Pagan, and taught for thirty years in Athens, one of his pupils being Porphyry.

By the third century criticism of Christianity had mounted, partly as a defense against it, and the 15 volume Adversus Christianos by Porphyry was written as a comprehensive attack on Christianity, in part building on the pre-Christian concepts of Plotinus.

Later, the Neoplatonist Iamblichus changed the role of the " One ", effectively altering the role of the Demiurge as second cause or dyad, which was one of the reasons that Iamblichus and his teacher Porphyry came into conflict.

His Commentary on Daniel was expressly written to offset the criticisms of Porphyry, who taught that Daniel related entirely to the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and was written by an unknown individual living in the 2nd century BC.

Against Porphyry, Jerome identified Rome as the fourth kingdom of chapters two and seven, but his view of chapters eight and 11 was more complex.

He reminds us that the Platonic writer Porphyry wrote in the 3rd century AD that the cave-like temple Mithraea depicted " an image of the world " and that Zoroaster consecrated a cave resembling the world fabricated by Mithras The ceiling of the Caesarea Maritima Mithraeum retains traces of blue paint, which may mean the ceiling was painted to depict the sky and the stars.

Porphyry reported that Plotinus was 66 years old when he died in 270, the second year of the reign of the emperor Claudius II, thus giving us the year of his teacher's birth as around 205.

An Imperial subsidy was never granted, for reasons unknown to Porphyry, who reports the incident.

Plotinus was unable to revise his own work due to his poor eyesight, yet his writings required extensive editing, according to Porphyry: his master's handwriting was atrocious, he did not properly separate his words, and he cared little for niceties of spelling.

Iamblichus of Calcis ( Syria ), a student of Porphyry ( who was himself a student of Plotinus ) taught a more ritualized method of theurgy that involved invocation and religious, as well as magical, ritual.

Porphyry says Milo's house at Croton was burned and the Pythagoreans within stoned.

The vita of Porphyry of Gaza, mentions the great god of Gaza, known as Marnas ( Aramaic Marnā the " Lord "), who was regarded as the god of rain and grain and invoked against famine.

Variations on his Athenian origin and his deformity are found in numerous ancient sources, including Diogenes Laertius, who said that the Athenians regarded him as deranged, and Porphyry, who labelled him " one-eyed ", and Justin, who believed that he was sent to the Spartans by the Athenians as a deliberate insult.

According to Porphyry of Tyros, the Egyptians used an X within a circle as a symbol of the soul ; having a value of nine, it was used as a symbol for Ennead.

Greek philosophers such as Porphyry, who claimed influence from Platonism, and the fathers of the Christian Church, held that the world was pervaded with spirits, the latter of whom advanced the belief that demons received the worship directed at pagan gods.

Purple was the color of royalty, and the " Imperial Porphyry " was a deep purple igneous rock with large crystals of plagioclase.

The road from the quarry westward to Qena ( Roman Maximianopolis ) on the Nile, which Ptolemy put on his second-century map, was described first by Strabo, and it is to this day known as the Via Porphyrites, the Porphyry Road, its track marked by the hydreumata, or watering wells that made it viable in this utterly dry landscape.

Porphyry was extensively used in Byzantine imperial monuments, for example in Hagia Sophia and in the " Porphyra ", the official delivery room for use of pregnant Empresses in the Great Palace of Constantinople.

Porphyry was used for the blocks of the Column of Constantine in Istanbul.

In the 1850s, the term was applied to a range of colors or hue, for example by Thomas De Quincey, who wrote " Porphyry, I have heard, runs through as large a gamut of hues as marble.

Formerly assumed to be identical with the Alexandrian grammarian and lexicographer Didymus Chalcenterus, because Ptolemy and Porphyry referred to him as Didymus ho mousikos ( the musician ), classical scholars now believe that this Didymus was a younger grammarian and musician working in Rome at the time of Nero ( Richter 2001 ).

This was an advance over the logica antiqua, which treated the Isagoge of Porphyry, Divisions and Topics of Boethius, the Categories and On Interpretation of Aristotle, and the Summule logicales of Peter of Spain.

According to Porphyry, in 232, at the age of 28, Plotinus went to Alexandria to study philosophy:

Of note here is that while Plotinus ' student Porphyry names Christianity specifically in Porphyry's own works, and Plotinus is to have been a known associate of the Christian Origen, none of Plotinus ' works mention Christ or Christianity.

His innermost circle included Porphyry, Amelius Gentilianus of Tuscany, the Senator Castricius Firmus, and Eustochius of Alexandria, a doctor who devoted himself to learning from Plotinus and attending to him until his death.

Porphyry makes note that the Enneads, before being compiled and arranged by himself, were merely the enormous collection of notes and essays which Plotinus used in his lectures and debates, rather than a formal book.

Plotinus intensely disliked the editorial process, and turned the task to Porphyry, who not only polished them but put them into the arrangement we now have.

Porphyry relates that Plotinus attained such a union four times during the years he knew him.

* Plotinus ( according to his student Porphyry ) ( d. 270 )

For Plotinus, and Iamblichus ' teachers Anatolius and Porphyry, the emanations are as follows:

The Six Enneads, sometimes abbreviated to The Enneads or Enneads (), is the collection of writings of Plotinus, edited and compiled by his student Porphyry ( c. 270 AD ).

Porphyry edited the writings of Plotinus in fifty-four treatises, which greatly vary in length and number of chapters, mostly because he split some original texts and joined others together to match this very number.

After correcting and naming each treatise, Porphyry wrote a biography of his master, Life of Plotinus, intended to be an Introduction to the Enneads.

He initially studied under Anatolius of Laodicea, and later went on to study under Porphyry, a pupil of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism.

Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry condemned " Gnosis " that would later characterize Gnosticism ( see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism ) for their treatment of the monad or one.

* Apuleius ; Celsus ; Iamblichus ; Julian ; Maximus Tyrius ; Pausanias ; Plotinus ; Porphyry ; and Proclus

According to his student Porphyry, Plotinus stated that he had this experience of God four times.

From Porphyry, who also states that Aspasius wrote commentaries on Plato, we learn that his commentaries on Aristotle were used in the school of Plotinus.