“Does the [daemon] starve, and does the drug make it waste away, and does it sometimes come out all at once or stay inside?”45 The view that Plotinus mocks seems to be the one Porphyry adopted, namely that evil daemons do enter the body through ingestion and linger there, causing various ailments and digestive complaints. It is also a view represented in many Christian authors. As Dale Martin points out in The Corinthian Body, Christian communities, such as the one in Corinth, had a number of different disease aetiologies they could draw on to explain human suffering, pollution, and illness. He argues that the tensions in the Corinthian community over whether or not one could eat food sacrificed to idols was the result of a misunderstanding between elite and nonelite members of the group over the causes of disease. The model Martin associates with elite members of the Corinthian community reflects the understanding that the human being is hierarchically ordered in a way that reflects cosmic order, and that health is a function of maintaining proper balance. The model he associates with lower-class Christians at Corinth is based on an understanding that the body is permeable and vulnerable, and that its boundaries are in need of protection from pollution, which causes disease and suffering. This pollution was primarily understood to be spiritual. In other words, the body could be possessed by other spirits.46
In another fragment from On Philosophy from Oracles, Porphyry suggests something similar, namely that the body is permeable to evil daemons who affect it by inciting the human being to partake even more enthusiastically of gustatory pleasures. The presence of these spirits is manifest in terms of the consequences of this indulgence in the form of grunting and breaking wind. Porphyry writes:
For universally, the vehemence of the desire towards anything, and the impulse of the lust of the spirit, is intensified from no other cause than their [the evil daemons’] presence; and they also force men to fall into inarticulate noises and flatulence by sharing the same enjoyment with them. For where there is a drawing in of much breath, either because the stomach has been inflated by indulgence, or because eagerness from the intensity of pleasure breathes out much and draws in much of the outer air, let this be clear proof to you of the presence of such spirits there.47
In other words, evil daemons both cause and benefit from human gluttony and desire for pleasure, possibly even sexual pleasure.48 And they incite human beings to participate in these more enthusiastically. At the same time, they may physically enter the body in such moments through the breath. Indeed, ingestion and incorporation of one body into another, either through eating or through copulation, is a risky business, one fraught with the dangers of pollution and alteration. Here Porphyry has signaled that danger by positing the presence of wicked daemons as participants in such human acts. These ideas mirror his position in On Abstinence, where he tells us that human alimentary and sacrificial action feeds the pneumatic vessels of these spirits. They also reflect ideas found in earlier and contemporary Christian texts.
Although Porphyry differed from Plotinus, we find parallel ideas in Christian writings. I am not making an argument that Porphyry read any of the works I discuss in what follows, but that he was certainly aware of what Christians were saying about evil daemons, given his connections to and criticism of Origen and other Christian writers and exegetes. Porphyry himself relates in his Life of Plotinus that Origen wrote a work entitled On the Daemons. He also tells us that he spent time studying with Origen. Until very recently, many scholars have assumed that this could not be the Christian Origen, but the careful work of scholars such as Thomas Böhm, Pier Beatrice, and Elizabeth DePalma Digeser has convinced many to the contrary.49
The Christian work that comes closest to Porphyry’s assertion that evil daemons enter into the bodies of human beings to enjoy food and sex is the Pseudo-Clementine Homily 9. Although this anonymous work is usually dated to the fourth century, scholars contend that it is based on earlier material that would have been contemporary with or earlier than Porphyry’s works.50 In the Homily, the author explains why evil daemons come to inhabit the bodies of the intemperate: “Being spirits, and having desires after meats and drinks and sexual pleasures, but not being able to partake of these by reason of their being spirits, and wanting organs fitted for their enjoyment, they enter into the bodies of men in order that, getting organs to minister to them, they may obtain the things that they wish.”51 The main difference between this homily and Porphyry’s views seems to be that in the former, evil daemons need to borrow a human body in order to partake of the pleasures they seek, whereas in Porphyry their pneumatic vessel serves as the means by which they can enjoy smoke and blood. Despite this difference, the parallels are striking.
The parallels between Porphyry and contemporary Christian writers regarding the nature and effects of evil daemons do not end there. In On Abstinence, Porphyry accuses these spirits of being the cause of almost every form of natural and human evil.52 According to him, they are responsible for plagues, as noted earlier, crop failures, and earthquakes. Furthermore, they incite humans to lust and longing for wealth and power, all of which lead to civil conflicts and wars.53 And they do all of this by deceiving ordinary people into thinking that they are gods, and also that “the same [behavior] applies to the greatest gods, to the extent that even the best god is made liable to these accusations.”54
In general, then, Porphyry and many Christians shared the view that evil daemons can and do inhabit the human body and cause disease. And he agreed with them more generally that those traditional rituals requiring the slaughter of animals were part of a grand conspiracy on the part of these spirits to get what they desired and even needed to thrive—the blood and smoke of sacrifices. In this way, they deceived the unwitting about the nature of true divinity. Finally, both Porphyry and his Christian counterparts believed that participation in these sorts of practices was ultimately polluting and could lead to demonic possession. Indeed, the issues of purity and pollution are central in both cases.55
Origen’s Concerning Daemons as a Possible Source for Porphyry
Modern readers may find themselves surprised by the close agreement between Christian writers and Porphyry on these matters, and by Porphyry’s demonization of animal sacrifice. But this is only surprising if one assumes that religious identity was the primary category that determined the views third-century intellectuals adopted and developed. As mentioned in the Introduction, the assumption of conflict and strict boundary maintenance between groups with different religious identities in antiquity has been challenged in the case of early Jewish-Christian relations. It has also been overturned in the case of Christian philosophers and “Hellenes” or Greco-Roman intellectuals. Work by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser has done much to contribute to the rethinking of religious identity in the third century in particular.56
In the first three chapters of her recent book, A Threat to Public Piety, Digeser carefully outlines the many connections between thinkers such as Origen, Plotinus, and Porphyry, by combing through what we know about their lives, their education, and how they fit into the important and contested lineage of the elusive Alexandrian teacher Ammonius Saccas.57 By convincingly dismantling the “two Origen hypothesis”—the view that there must have been two students of Ammonius Saccas named Origen, one a Christian, the other a “pagan”—Digeser demonstrates that Porphyry knew Origen well and spent time with him as a student. 58
Hence, Porphyry’s views on evil daemons are less surprising when one begins to consider the likely connections between these third-century Platonists on either side of the very permeable Christian/non-Christian divide. It is not unlikely, for instance, that Porphyry derived some of his thinking about spirits from Origen. Indeed, Proclus, in his Commentary on the Timaeus, tells us as much.59 Porphyry himself informs his readers that he was familiar with the contents of Origen’s library and was able to identify his teacher’s main philosophical influences.60 Furthermore, both Porphyry and Longinus tell us that Origen wrote a work called Concerning Daemons (περὶ τῶν δαιμόνων).61 A number of modern authors have argued for Porphyry’s dependence on Origen for
