that its results were not to be trusted he had no hesitation in attacking the system frequently both at the Conferences and in his writings.
16.
Many Christians of this period amongst them sectaries who had abandoned the old philosophy, men of the schools of Adelphius and Aquilinus had possessed themselves of works by Alexander of Lydia, by Philocomus, by Demostratus and by Lydus, and exhibited also Revelations bearing the names of Zoroaster, Zostrianus, Nikotheus, Allogenes, Mesus and others of that order. Thus they fooled many, themselves fooled first; Plato, according to them, had failed to penetrate into the depth of Intellectual Being.
Plotinus frequently attacked their position at the Conferences and finally wrote the treatise which I have headed Against the Gnostics: he left to us of the circle the task of examining what he himself passed over. Amelius proceeded as far as a fortieth treatise in refutation of the book of Zostrianus: I myself have shown on many counts that the Zoroastrian volume is spurious and modern, concocted by the sectaries in order to pretend that the doctrines they had embraced were those of the ancient sage.
17.
Some of the Greeks began to accuse Plotinus of appropriating the ideas of Numenius.
Amelius being informed of this charge by the Stoic and Platonist Trupho, challenged it in a treatise which he entitled The Difference between the Doctrines of Plotinus and Numenius. He dedicated the work to me, under the name of Basileus (or King). This really is my name; it is equivalent to Porphyry (Purple-robed) and translates the name I bear in my own tongue; for I am called Malchos, like my father, and "Malchos" would give "Basileus" in Greek. Longinus, in dedicating his work On Impulse to Cleodamus and myself, addressed us as "Cleodamus and Malchus," just as Numenius translated the Latin "Maximus" into its Greek equivalent "Megalos."
