Jews and Others
embassy. That is of course not a significant problem, since Bardesanes could
easily have referred to Brahmins elsewhere. What is significant is not merely
that Porphyry happens not to explore Bardesanes’ Syriac works and their
Greek versions in the way that Eusebius does, but that he chooses to refer to
Bardesanes as a ‘‘Babylonian.’’ Far from implying that he himself and Barde-
sanes shared a common culture, he identifies him with an ethnic and cultural
group living beyond the bounds of the Empire.
More significant still, however, is Porphyry’s deployment of an allusion
to ‘‘the language of theSyroi’’ in the course of his very important discussion
of animals in book III of hisOn Abstinence.^27 If (he argues) animals do have
consciousness and reason, if they areempsycha(possessed of a soul or spirit),
we ought not to sacrifice or eat them. How can we be sure that they do not in
fact show signs of consciousness, for instance, in communicating with each
other by sound, and in receiving auditory communications from humans?
Is it an objection that we cannot understand the sounds which they make?
No, because, firstly, some people do turn out to have this capacity. Secondly,
we cannot understand or interpret the languages of foreigners, but this does
lead us to the conclusion that the sounds which they make are not language.
It is here that Porphyry chooses a very significant example:
As regards that which is uttered by the tongue, in whatever manner it
is uttered, in barbarian manner or Greek, or in the style of dogs or of
cattle, those living things which emit sounds participate in discourse,
humans uttering in accordance with human norms, animals in accor-
dance with those which each species has received from the gods and
from nature. If we do not understand them, so what? Greeks do not
understand the language of Indians, and nor do those brought up in
the Attic tongue understand that of Scythians or Thracians or Syrians.
But the sound made by the one group falls on the ears of the other like
the shrieking of cranes. And yet for each group their language can be
expressed in letters and can be articulated, as ours can be for us. But,
for example, the language of the Syrians or the Persians is incapable of
being articulated or expressed in letters [by us?], just as is for all men
the language of animals.^28. See esp. R. Sorabji,Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western De-
bate().
.De abst. , , –. My translation adopts the valuable suggestions by Leofranc
Holford-Strevens.