SOURCE: Clark, Gillian. “Translate into Greek: Porphyry of Tyre on the New Barbarians.” In Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity, edited by Richard Miles, pp. 112-32. New York: Routledge, 1999.

In the following essay, Clark explores Porphyry's major writings in order to glean how the philosopher may have understood himself—as an intellectual in exile, a Roman, a Greek, a Neoplatonist, and a man in search of God in solitude.

[Amelius] dedicated the book to Basileus, to me. The name Basileus belonged to me, Porphyry, because I had been called Malkos in my ancestral language (it was my father's name too), and Malkos means basileus, if you want to translate it into Greek.

(Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 17)¹

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...