things fabricated. For every demiurgic cause is exempt from the things generated by it; but that which is mingled with and filled from them is imbecil and inefficacious, and is unable to adorn and fabricate them. And thus much in common respecting the whole of the speech. “Let us then, in the first place, consider what we are to understand by “Gods of Gods,” and what power it possesses: for that this invocation is collective and convertive of multitude to its monad, that it calls upwards the natures which have proceeded to the one fabrication of them, and inserts a boundary and divine measure in them, is clear to those who are not entirely unacquainted with such-like discourses. But how those that are allotted the world by their father are called Gods of Gods, and according to what conception, cannot easily be indicated to the many; for there is an unfolding of one divine intelligence in these names.” Proclus then proceeds to relate the explanations given by others of these words; which having rejected as erroneous, he very properly, in my opinion, adopts the following, which is that of his preceptor, the great Syrianus. “All the mundane Gods are not simply Gods, but they are wholly Gods which participate: for there is in them that which is separate, unapparent, and supermundane, and also that which is the apparent image of them, and has an orderly establishment in the world. And that, indeed, which is unapparent in them is primarily a God, this being undistributed and one: but this vehicle which is suspended from their unapparent essence is secondarily a God. For if, with respect to us, man is two-fold, one inward, according to the soul, the other apparent, which we see, much more must both these be asserted of the mundane Gods; since divinity also is two-fold, one unapparent and the other apparent. This being the case, we must say, that “Gods of Gods” is addressed to all the mundane divinities, in whom there is a connection of unapparent with apparent Gods: for they are Gods that participate. In short, since two-fold orders are produced by the Demiurgus, some being supermundane, and others mundane, and some being without, and others with participation [of body], if the Demiurgus now addressed the supermundane orders, he would have alone said to them, “Gods:” for they are without participation [i.e. without the participation of body], are separate and unapparent:--but since the speech is to the mundane Gods, he calls them Gods of Gods, as being participated by other apparent divinities. In these also dæmons are comprehended; for they also are Gods, as to their order with respect to the Gods, whose peculiarity they indivisibly participate. Thus also Plato, in the Phædrus, when he calls the twelve Gods the leaders of dæmons, at the same time denominates all the attendants of the divinities Gods, adding, ‘and this is the life of the Gods.’ All these, therefore, are Gods of Gods, as possessing the apparent connected with