Porphyry's rhetoric: text and translation

This paper provides a working text and translation of the testimonia and fragments relevant to Porphyry’s contributions to rhetorical theory. This paper collects, in Greek and in English translation, the testimonia and fragments relevant to Porphyry’s contributions to rhetorical theory. It may be viewed as a supplement to Smith’s edition of the fragments (1993), which is very selective in its coverage of the rhetorical fragments. It is also intended to complement the study of Porphyry’s rhetoric in Heath (2003a), which provides an introduction to and detailed commentary on the material assembled here, but which (for reasons of space) could not include a text or translation. The testimonia and fragments vary considerably in the directness of the evidence they provide for Porphyry’s work. In one case we have an extensive extract from Porphyry’s own theoretical writings (F7); in most others we have brief reports of or allusions to his theories in the words of others. In some cases there is doubt about the full extent of Porphyry’s contribution. It is impossible to determine how much of Porphyry there is in the multiply sourced F15, and the suspicion that he has contributed more to F9 than the author’s fleeting acknowledgement suggests cannot be proven. On the other hand, Porphyry is identified as a source of F2, which does not name him, by a convincing inference. This paper offers a working, rather than a properly critical, text. I have not undertaken any new work on the manuscripts; nor do I reproduce the information given in the apparatus to standard editions. In the case of extracts from volume 4 of Walz’s Rhetores Graeci I have selectively reported the collations of Py published by Kowalski (1940-6, 1947). Suggested improvements to the text in extracts from this and other volumes of Walz not otherwise attributed are (to the best of my knowledge) my own; but for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who has used them, I have not thought it feasible to try to cure all the problems posed by these badly transmitted and badly edited texts. Walz’s erratic punctuation has been subjected to extensive tacit revision. In F15 I have placed parallel passages from other sources in a separate column to the right of the Greek text, to facilitate close comparison; in each case the source (usually the Anonymus Seguerianus) is identified at the end of the relevant extract. The notes to the translation provide a very limited amount of explanatory comment on the content of the fragments. Readers should consult the article cited above for more detailed discussion of the rhetorical theory which they embody, and their place in Porphyry’s writings on rhetoric.