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
“For divinity indeed, the father and fabricator of all things, is more
ancient than the sun and the heavens, more excellent than time and
eternity, and every flowing nature, and is a legislator without law,
ineffable by voice, and invisible by the eyes. Not being able, however,
to comprehend his essence, we apply for assistance to words and names,
to animals, and figures of gold and ivory and silver, to plants and
rivers, to the summits of mountains, and to streams of water; desiring
indeed to understand his nature, but through imbecility calling him
by the names of such things as appear to us to be beautiful. And in
thus acting, we are affected in the same manner as lovers, who are
delighted with surveying the images of the objects of their love, and
with recollecting the lyre, the dart, and the seat of these, the circus
in which they ran, and every thing in short, which excites the memory
of the beloved object. What then remains for me to investigate and
determine respecting statues? only to admit the subsistence of deity.
But if the art of Phidias excites the Greeks to the recollection of
divinity, honour to animals the Egyptians, a river others, and fire
others, I do not condemn the dissonance: let them only know, let them
only love, let them only be mindful of the object they adore.”
With respect to the worship of animals, Plutarch apologizes for it in
the following excellent manner in his treatise On Isis and Osiris.
“It now remains that we should speak of the utility of these animals to
man, and of their symbolical meaning; some of them partaking of one of
these only, but many of them of both. It is evident therefore that the
Egyptians worshipped the ox, the sheep, and the ichneumon, on account
of their use and benefit, as the Lemnians did larks, for discovering
the eggs of caterpillars and breaking them; and the Thessalians
storks, because, as their land produced abundance of serpents, the
storks destroyed all of them as soon as they appeared. Hence also they
enacted a law, that whoever killed a stork should be banished. But the
Egyptians honoured the asp, the weezle, and the beetle, in consequence
of observing in them certain dark resemblances of the power of the
Gods, like that of the sun in drops of water. For at present, many
believe and assert that the weezle engenders by the ear, and brings
forth by the mouth, being thus an image of the generation of reason,
[or the productive principle of things.] But the genus of beetles has
no female; and all the males emit their sperm into a spherical piece
of earth, which they roll about thrusting it backwards with their hind
feet, while they themselves move forward; just as the sun appears to
revolve in a direction contrary to that of the heavens, in consequence
of moving from west to east. They also assimilated the asp to a star,
as being exempt from old age, and performing its motions unassisted by
organs with agility and ease. Nor was the crocodile honoured by them