The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 1 of 2) : $b translated from the Greek, to which a seventh book is added, in order to supply the deficiency of another book on this subject, which was written by Proclus, but since lost, also, a translation from the Greek of Proclus' Elements of theology, to which are added a translation of the treatise of Proclus, On providence and fate, a translation of extracts from his treatise, entitled, Ten doubts concerning — Plato — John Shaqi
The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 1 of 2) : $b translated from the Greek, to which a seventh book is added, in order to supply the deficiency of another book on this subject, which was written by Proclus, but since lost, also, a translation from the Greek of Proclus' Elements of theology, to which are added a translation of the treatise of Proclus, On providence and fate, a translation of extracts from his treatise, entitled, Ten doubts concerning
Plato · en
the Persians, and Alexander among the Macedonians, proceeded
in their victories, almost as far as to the boundaries of the
earth, yet they only retain the name of good kings, and are
remembered as such, [and not as Gods.]
“But if certain persons, inflated by ostentation, as Plato says,
having their soul at one and the same time inflamed with youth
and ignorance, have insolently assumed the appellation of Gods,
and had temples erected in their honour, yet this opinion of
them flourished but for a short time, and afterwards they were
charged with vanity and arrogance, in conjunction with impiety
and lawless conduct; and thus,
Like smoke they flew away with swift-pac’d fate.
And being dragged from temples and altars like fugitive slaves,
they have now nothing left them, but their monuments and tombs.
Hence Antigonus the elder said to one Hermodotus, who had
celebrated him in his poems as the offspring of the sun and a
God, ‘he who empties my close-stool-pan knows no such thing
of me.’ Very properly also, did Lysippus the sculptor blame
Apelles the painter, for drawing the picture of Alexander with
a thunder-bolt in his hand, whereas he had represented him with
a spear, the glory of which, as being true and proper, no time
would take away.”
In another part of the same work also, he admirably reprobates the
impiety of making the Gods to be things inanimate, which was very
common with Latin writers of the Augustan age, and of the ages that
accompanied the decline and fall of the Roman empire. But what he says
on this subject is as follows:
“In the second place, which is of still greater consequence, men
should be careful, and very much afraid, lest before they are
aware, they tear in pieces and dissolve divine natures, into
blasts of wind, streams of water, seminations, earings of land,
accidents of the earth, and mutations of the seasons, as those
do who make Bacchus to be wine, and Vulcan flame. Cleanthes also
somewhere says, that Persephone or Proserpine is the spirit or
air that _passes through_ (φερομενον) the fruits of the
earth, and is then _slain_, (φονευομενον.) And a certain
poet says of reapers,
Then when the youth the limbs of Ceres cut.