We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2022
THE STRUCTURE OF BOOK 4
Book 4 of Proclus’ Timaeus Commentary continues the structure introduced at the opening of Book 3. Proclus takes Plato's dialogue to provide an account of ten gifts bestowed on the visible cosmos by its creator, the Demiurge. Each of these gifts makes a progressively greater contribution to the goodness of the Demiurge's creation, rendering it ever more perfect and its life ever more divine and blessed. Book 2 (Volumes III and IV in this series) deals with the first seven gifts of the Demiurge:
1. Being perceptible due to the presence of the elements (Tim. 31b).
2. Having its elements bound together through proportion or analogia (31c).
3. Being a whole constituted of wholes (32c).
4. Being spherical in shape so that it is most similar to itself and similar to the paradigm upon which it is modelled (33b).
5. Being self-sufficient or autarchˆes (33c).
6. Rotating upon its axis makes it similar to the motion of Intellect (Tim. 34a, cf. Laws 10. 898a).
7. Being animated by a divine World Soul (Tim. 34b).
Book 4 (the present volume) provides the last three Demiurgic gifts to the cosmos:
8. Time, in virtue of which it is a moving image of eternity had by its intelligible paradigm, the Living Being Itself (Tim. 36e–37a).
9. The heavenly bodies in it, which Plato describes as the ‘instruments of time’ and Proclus as ‘sanctuaries of the gods’ (Tim. 39d; in Tim. ii 5.28).
10. All the living things within the visible cosmos make it an even more perfect or complete imitation of its paradigm since the Living Being Itself contains four genera of living things: celestial, aerial, aquatic and terrestrial living things (39e–40a).
Proclus’ commentary in Book 4 does not exhaust the tenth and final gift of the Demiurge. The present volume contains his account of the celestial genus of living things. The final section of the present work begins his discussion of the sub-lunary gods, a topic that continues in Book 5.The nature of the breaks between the books, however, finds some rationale in Plato's text. At 40d4–5 Timaeus says that he is finished discussing the visible and created gods. He next turns to a genealogy of the ‘traditional gods’ such as Ouranos,Okeanys and Tethys, referring to them initially as ‘daemons’.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
