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
In the first place therefore, this deserves to be inferred by those
who love to survey the nature of things, and it is also fit that
they should attribute coordinate genera to intelligible forms.
For it neither was nor will be lawful for genera to shine forth
secondarily[196] after forms. Hence much more must it be admitted that
genera subsist in the intelligible after the above-mentioned manner,
by those who admit that there are intelligible forms. In the next
place, in addition to these things we must survey how this tetrad of
forms subsists, and how it shines forth in intelligible intellect
analogous to the principles. For it is divided into a monad and triad.
For so far as the idea of the celestial gods is arranged prior to the
others, it is defined according to a divine cause. It appears however
to me that intelligible intellect returning to the principles of the
whole of things, according to the conversion of itself, it becomes the
plenitude of forms, and is all things intellectually and at the same
time intelligibly, comprehending in itself the causes of beings, and
being full of the ineffable and exempt cause of all things, constitutes
the monad of the gods; whence also, Plato I think calls it the idea of
the gods. But receiving the intellectual causes of the three principles
posterior to _the one_, it exhibits three ideas after this, one of
them indeed, being the cause of air-wandering and volant animals, this
cause proceeding analogous to bound. Hence also it constitutes gods
that are uniform, elevating, undefiled, united to the celestial gods,
and which receive measures second in dignity to theirs, and have the
same relation to those gods that govern generation co-ordinately, as
the celestial gods have to these, according to exempt transcendency.
But it exhibits the cause of the aquatic gods, coordinate with
generative and infinite power, and which produces gods that are the
suppliers of motion and prolific abundance, and that are the inspective
guardians of life; since also this water itself which is the object
of sense is under the dominion of effusion, infinite lation and
indefiniteness. Hence likewise it is attributed to vivific powers. And
intelligible intellect exhibits the precedaneous cause of terrestrial
and pedestrious gods, in a manner adapted to the nature of that which
is mixed. It also generates gods who contain the end of the whole of
things, who are stable, who subdue the formless nature of matter by
the last forms, and fix the seat of mundane natures in the one centre
of the universe. For deriving their subsistence from the first Vesta
as it were, or seat of beings, they stably define this mundane seat.
Thus therefore forms first unfold themselves into light in intelligible
intellect, possessing their progression and order according to the
first principles. It is necessary however, in addition to these things,
to infer this in the third place, following Timæus, that according