SOURCE: Spencer, Colin. “Plato to Porphyry.” In The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism, pp. 87-107. London, Eng.: Fourth Estate, 1993.

In the following excerpt, Spencer comments briefly on Porphyry's praise of the vegetarian lifestyle, as well as on his ideas about respect for all creatures as argued in On the Abstinence from Animal Food.

Porphyry was born in ad 232 in Tyre, Phoenicia. His original name was Malchus, which is a Syrian name meaning King. His name was hellenised at Athens by his Greek teacher of rhetoric, hence Porphyry—purple-robed. Besides Plotinus, another of his teachers was Origen, an early Christian theologian whose extraordinary celibacy was explained by his having castrated himself. After having joined the school of Plotinus at Rome, at the age of thirty Porphyry attacked it, writing a book to refute certain doctrines. Another pupil, Amerius, replied, and after a second confrontation Porphyry recanted, confessing his...