SOURCE: Lamberton, Robert. “Plotinian Neoplatonism: Porphyry.” In Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, pp. 108-33. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1986.

In the following excerpt, Lamberton examines Porphyry's sometimes conflicting treatment and interpretation of Homer in his Homeric Quotations and in his essay on the cave of the nymphs in the Odyssey.

Porphyry and Homer

It is to Porphyry, the disciple, editor, and friend of Plotinus, that we owe the single largely complete essay in the explication of a Homeric text—one might even say of a literary text—that survives from antiquity. Though the chronology of Porphyry's life has been reconstructed with care,¹ it is extremely difficult to locate his essay on the cave of the nymphs in the Odyssey within that chronology.

It has been traditional to attribute the essay to the latter part of Porphyry's career, later at...