Greek author and Neoplatonist. Of Porphyry’s many writings only his immensely influential Introduction (Eisagoge) to Aristotle ’s ‘Organon’ (logical works) was translated into Syriac. Two versions survive, the first, anonymous, made in the early 6th cent., and the second, in the form of a revision by Athanasios of Balad made in 645. Commentaries on his Introduction by Proba , Dionysios bar Ṣalibi , and Yawsep II survive.
In two of his works Porphyry draws on a lost work by Bardaiṣan on the Indian Brahmans (‘On Abstinence’ IV.17, and at greater length, ‘On the Styx’, in Porphyrius, Fragmenta, ed. A. Smith [1993], 376F). Porphyry, who calls Bardaiṣan both a ‘Babylonian’ and ‘from Mesopotamia’, mentions that he had acquired this knowledge from an Indian embassy of ca. 218 to the emperor Elagabalus.