The middle Platonist Plutarch was not read by Neoplatonists, or, at any rate, was not much appreciated by them. Porphyry was the only one to quote him abundantly - perhaps because Porphyry himself was not the man of a school. If we compare his treatise De abstinentia and Plutarch's treatise on the same topic, De esu, we find the same doctrinal references, the same target- that is to say the Stoics, and similar expressions or arguments. It is not only due to the fact that they both stood up for vegetarianism. Porphyry had in fact made much use of the De esu when writing De abstinentia. This leads us to think that, in De Abstinentia III, 18, 3 - 20, 6, he might have quoted a passage of Plutarch which does not appear in the current editions of the De Esu. A close examination of this text confirm this hypothesis and lead us to wish it would appear in a new edition of Plutarch's treatise.