The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 2 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 p — Plato — John Shaqi
The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 2 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 p
Plato · en
There are different properties of different Gods. For some are the
fabricators of wholes, of the form of beings, and of their essential
ornament. But others are the suppliers of life, and are the sources of
its various genera. Others again preserve the unchangeable order, and
guard the indissoluble connexion of things. And others lastly, who are
allotted a different power, preserve all things by their beneficent
energies. In like manner every amatory order is the cause to all
things of conversion to divine beauty, leading back, conjoining, and
establishing all secondary natures in the beautiful, replenishing them
from thence, and irradiating all things with the gifts of its light.
On this account it is asserted in the Banquet of Plato that Love is a
great dæmon, because Love first demonstrates in itself a power of this
kind, and is the medium between the object of desire and the desiring
nature, and is the cause of the conversion of subsequent to prior
natures. The whole amatory series therefore, being established in the
vestibule of the cause of beauty, calls upwards all things to this
cause, and forms a middle progression between the object of Love and
the natures which are recalled by Love. Hence it pre-establishes in
itself the paradigm of the whole dæmoniacal order, obtaining the same
middle situation among the Gods as dæmons between divine and mortal
natures. Since therefore, every amatory series possesses this property
among the Gods, we must consider its uniform and occult summit as
ineffably established in the first orders of the Gods, and conjoined
with the first and intelligible beauty; its middle process as shining
forth among the supermundane Gods, with an intellectual condition; its
third progression as possessing an exempt power among the liberated
Gods; and its fourth as multifariously distributed about the world,
producing many orders and powers from itself, and distributing gifts of
this kind to the different parts of the world.