ABSTRACT
When Porphyry told his readers about these versions of his name, it was not because he wanted to make a point about cultural identity in the late third century. He wanted them to know that it was he who had, years before, been the leading light in the seminar of Plotinus, and was therefore the best interpreter of his philosophy. His edition of Plotinus came out in 301, thirty years after Plotinus died, in the context of Diocletian’s efforts to reaffirm Graeco-Roman traditional religion. There had probably been an earlier edition, but Porphyry rearranged the various writings of Plotinus into enneads, groups of nine, arguing that this made it easier to follow Plotinus’ thought (Saffrey 1992:31-64). To justify this forceful editorial activity, he gave the Enneads a preface, ‘On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of his Writings’, which includes an account of the seminar as he knew it in 263-8, its final years. The seminar of Plotinus raises, and helps to answer, questions about Roman citizenship and Greek culture in relation to languages, traditions and religions which were neither Roman nor Greek.
